THIS IS ONE OF THOSE POSTS WITH NO HEADLINE

I can't really help it but, whenever I wear my hair like this, tucked in to my beret, I walk around feeling like I'm in an old movie. (Preferably a French one).

(Dress - Wings by vadumsrum, Shoes - Bullboxer)

DID YOU KNOW...

...that once you can roll your hair right and do a proper pin curl, you can manage any hairdo you want (well, almost).

Roll your curls in different direction, twist and turn them around to try out different styles and results. The trick is not only to roll it right, but also to learn how to fasten the bobby pin in such a way that it does not miss-shape or flatten the roll, and without showing too much. Bobby pins are easier to hide in dark hair, but you can also learn to cover them in blond hair like mine. The thicker the hair, the easier to hide since there is more to stick it in, but I suppose thinner hair has the advantage of fewer pins since it is lighter. How well you hair turns out also depends on it's level of cleanness or how fly or heavy it is, but in the end it's all about one thing: practice makes master!

In the picture above is, apart from a giant arm of mine, also my 30's inspired "faking short hair" -do, which always gets a lot of appreciation. If you have long hair like me here's a simple descriptive drawing and a quick tutorial of how I did it (if you already have short hair just roll the hair around your face inwards -step 1,2, 3 and 6- and curl the rest in the back with a curling iron or so):


1.Sleek your hair in the front/your bangs and fasten it to the side (in this example to the left). My bags are so long for the moment they need only one pin to stay in place.
2. Take a sling of hair from the top left and roll it inwards towards your face and place it so that it covers the pin which you fastened your bangs with. If you have shorter bangs and needed more pins, never mind - but then you can place some decorative pins to hold the front hair instead. Try pulling your hair slightly downwards between the pins to create the image of finger waved hair (you can of course do this with longer bags too).
3. Take the a little hair from the back togehter with the hair hanging on the side, roll it in the same direction as the previous curl and fasten it just beneath, leaving the roll 'hanging' on the ear.
4. Roll the hair under the ear inwards and fasten it just above the hair line in the neck, so that half of the curl 'hangs' in the neck.
5. Roll the rest of your hair in the back the same way (I make four more curls) going from the left to the right
6. Roll the hair on the right side of you face inwards in one roll (which will be in the opposite direction of all the other rolls you've made) and fasten it just above the ear.
7.Finish off with a high-shine spray.

PS. the promised tutorial of this 'do is coming up soon :)

SOME SUNDAY BAKING, pt.1

Now we're going to go all domestic here and kick off the week with some baking!

Ever since Ina read "Den Hemliga kocken" (the secret chef) by Matts-Eric Nilsson she's been making all of her bread herself, to avoid all the artificial additives that industrially produces bread contains. (The book is about "the unkown cheatig with your plate"; what chemicals and other man produced products our food contains - and that's a lot but one rarely thinks about it). Since I'm a lazy biatch I haven't read it (yet); I don't really have the time for all-home made cooking, even if I would want to.

Yesterday however we had ourselves a nice soft Sunday baking and listening to old records in Ina's original 1950's kitchen, which is very small, but still very functional (and manages to just fit us both in the same time). We made some bread on spelt and rye, and here's how:

The total baking time is about two hours. Basically you can use any kinds of flour for this recipe, but I think spelt is a winner both when it comes to healthiness and taste.

1. Mix the wheat germs, linseeds and speltbrans with the oil and the honey (of course you can use syrup, too, but honey is healthier so we go for that).

2.Mix the yeast into the fingerwarm (42'C) water. When using spelt flour, the water should maybe be slightly warmer than normally. With spelt you need less yeast, so if you decide to use some other flour you can consider to take a little more yeast than in this recipe. If you use dry yeast you should mix it into the flours, but note that dry yeast contains emulsifiers so then your bread will have unnecessary artificial additives...

3. Pour the water into the mix, add the salt and stir well. If you want variation, you can also add some herbs (like oregano or fennel seed) or why not some grated raw carrot, or chopped hazelnuts.

4. Mix the rye and spelt flours. Add the flours little by little into the mix. The dough is ready when it comes easily off the brims of the bowl. Don't, anyhow, let it become too "heavy" or firm.

4. Let the dough rise under a piece of cloth for an hour in a place free from draught.

5. Turn out the dough on a well powdered table and knead it well, it's important for spelt to be well kneaded. Make either two round loaves or smaller bread rolls/buns. (I prefer making many small breads and putting the ones I will not eat right away in the freezer.) Let the bread rise again at least half an hour.

6.Put them in the oven at 200'C for 30 minutes.

If you want the bread to stay really soft for a longer time, let them cool rolled into a doubled cloth, and when you put them in bags roll the cloth around the bags and keep it over the night.

(And yes it's fun to play around with Poladroid. Even though it made the bread picture look less tasty than it is :)