Bye bye 2010! Happy New Year 2011!!!

Dear all,

2010 has been for me a really full year, moving to anoity in another country, then moving back home (I must tell you I am really fed up with packing, altough I have become the packing queen). I took the liberty of getting inspired from Nookie and her blog fashion in my eyes as for to create the following picture selection of my 2010. It wasn't easy, I must tell you, but going through them was how a new NY's resolution resulted for me: in 2011 I want to be more photographed as from the moment I have gotton my new Nikon I am mainly the one taking pictures.

So here's my end of January, arriving at friends' house close to Berlin before starting my adventure at Montblanc in Hamburg. Little did I know that the snow here was a small example of what was going to follow in the next months. Hope 2011 will be warmer!


February was a bit Gaga...due to the new job and of course the season for carnival in Germany. Some friends and myself went to this huge party in Hamburg, with around 7 dancefloors...thousends of people were there...it was really crazy!


March was a month for myself, I relaxed, visited friends, fed an elephant, went back to Berlin (as you can see from the pic above) and had my first free day from work. This is also the month I started "Life and Luxury".


In April I came back home for some short vacation and this was the month I started going to vintage fairs. Once you start, it is difficult to stop!


May was crazy: visiting relatives in Germany, the harbour anniversary in Hamburg and the QM2 ship from Cunard, a new job proposition, which I finally accepted...


June 2010 was the month some crazy international people met in Monaco and started "the crew". I hope they will reunite soon. May the Buddah Bar power be with them...hahaha!

July 2010 was a month for visits and museums. This is me in a climate capsule. The idea of living in such environments in the future is a bit scary. Time to act for the planet!!!


Oh, August,...one week of discoveries with my dad! We had a really wonderful discovery tour of Romania and went to a lot of places I hadn't been before. This country is really amazing, one just needs time to discover it!


September 2010 was the month when we had our first highschool-reunion...just five years after finishing it. Another 5 years to go for the next one!


October 2010 - a great month for blogging - and for winter jackets.

November 2010 - dedicated to my passion: gastronomy.

December 2010 is now...I went to Bulgaria, met friends, wrote the 60th blog entry and counted over 7100 blog views (since adding the flagcounter). I am happy now and I can say I am leaving a good year behind and hoping for a great one ahead. But things are what you make of them, so I am happy I had so may friends I visited in 2010 and new things I learned, people I met (like Ada from classiq.ro), things I cooked, tastes I discovered, concerts I went to etc. As for 2011, there are some surprises for the blog and for my professional development.

Happy New Year, my dear ones, have a great year ahead!

Happy 60 blog entries!

Dear all,

as I have promised, here's a glimpse of the Christmas holidays which have passed, altough the mood is still up in the air over here,....maybe still meeting friends and receiving gifts every day helps the spirit to stay alive, haha.


I took some extra time this year, altough it was a bit difficult, and put some extra time in the presents and in the wrapping. I find that going to a mall and letting your gifts wrapped for free by some employee there is convenient but so without any heart put into all of the gifting process, that I just couldn't do it. And in fact, it's not the gift that counts so much, but what the gift represents that really impresses people. Make a small hand-made card and you'll see a diffrent reaction than to a ready-to-buy-one.



I must tell you, my mother was delighted by the Vivienne Westwood type of gift-wrapping which I did for her and both of my parents were most thrilled by the self-made 2011 calendar which is made from my personal pictures and which will be a gift for them to cherish the whole new coming year.




As for me, I got around 5 of the newest books from the luxury domain/luxury industry, which will help me be an even better blogger on this field for you guys and a better professional...for me! Oh, and I might change my mind about fashion as I also got the bible DVD for it, the September Issue. WOW! I simply admire strong and passionate women and seeing Anna Wintour the way I saw her in this documentary just gives me hope and power to follow my dreams and the path I have chosen for myself.

Enjoy the rest of the pictures and have a wonderful end of the year!

Santa's gifts

Hello my dear ones,
hope your previous days were filled with lots of love. I know I was really happy and hope the people around me felt the same way. Today I'm back to work, back to reality, but somehow it's all going slowly....maybe because most of our partners and clients are on holidays. That's why I'm sending you a teaser now. Have a nice day!

Merry Christmas!

Dear readers,
hope Santa was as good to you as he was to me. Here's just a short glimpse of what I got. Have wonderful holidays!

Yours truly,

Inge

Bûche de Noël

Yes, I know,...it's been a while. So many things have happened recently, some of them less pleasant, which have kept me away, from you, my dear readers. But I have not been away-away, from the shadow of my laptop I have followed my favourite blogs and indulged in the entries on Christmas. And I have had a blogger-"date" with Ada from classiq.ro, which was really nice and I hope we can repeat it sometime in the near future.

Going back to postings of other bloggers, I have seen a lot of suggestions on Christmas decorations, Christmas clothing, gifts, moods etc. etc. so as an addition to all of that I will write today on what I like most: food!

Two years ago I had a pre-Christmas-dinner in Monaco with my landlady from then, now my friend. She showed me some insights on their traditions. It was a pre-Christmas dinner as I went home for the so-called "real deal", meaning Christmas with my family.

I will not go in too many details, as French eat by definition a lot in many variations (and you can hardly see it deposited afterwards on their body), so I picked 3 of my long list of favourites.

The first one, a starter, is smoked salmon served on warm blinis combined with sour cream. A smooth combination of flavours and origins: salty, sweet, sour with Nordic, Russian and European composed a lovely French hors-d'œuvre.

(Picture Source: http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/imageBank/cache/s/_e_73d1d5236a676223e137df8d9124a841.Salmon-Blinis_13K)

The second one, is also a starter and I associate this one more with France than the first one. I could eat it till I would drop: the traditional foie gras. The perfect combination for me? Take some foie gras du canard mi cuit and serve it with toasted bread and jam made out of figs: again you have a salty, fatty flavour embraced by the smoothness of the sweet jam.

(Picture Source: http://www.comptoirgastronomique.com/images/files-extra-fields/coffret-foie-gras.jpg)

Most of the main dishes are found in Germany or Romania as well, so for the third gastronomic favourite, i will go directly to the end of a dinner: the traditional Bûche de Noël. As the name tells us, the traditional preparation and decoration/presentation of this cake is made that way in order for it to look like a log ready to be thrown in the fire. It is generally made from a sponge-cake (or pain d'Espagne) which is rolled into a cylinder, being filled on the inside with a butter-cream and a chocolate-butter-cream on the outside. Some make small mushroom-cakes out of meringue to decorate the Bûche (log) with it or use fresh berries, to give it the chopped-off-branch-from-the-forest-look.

(Picture Source: http://vanillepatisserie.com/images/BucheDeNoel.jpg)

As things evolve in taste and gastronomy as well, several variations of more modern cakes are to be found on the market: from different glazing (strawberries, bananas, etc.) to the small plastic decoration which is put on the cake, as you can see in the picture below. In Monaco I have seen some with small Star Wars or Harry Potter figures. These are of course for the little ones.

(Picture Source: http://www.howdididoit.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/041225buchedenoel.jpg)

Luxury can never avoid gastronomy (or gastronomy can never avoid luxury), so this year a renowned Patissier, Pierre Herme, offers a modern view and presentation of the traditional cake. Nevertheless, the composition is not the traditional one, being made of chocolate biscuits wrapped in a light dark chocolate layer. All to come in a superbe silver box, for stunning 160 Euros in all Pierre Herme boutiques. Or you could just take the time, take a or more family members, and have the fun and pleasure of baking it together. It will probably taste more like Christmas and holidays!

(Picture Source: http://www.luxuo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/herme-buche-noel-2010.jpg)