Foldable, lightweight travel wellies - Hunter Original Tour Rubber Boots

Hunter Original Tour Wellies in black

This one is pretty funny. Every time I tell people that I urgently need quality wellies (rubber boots), the next best thing they answer is `but aren`t you living in Brazil - isn`t this one of the most tropical places with long sun hours and burning heat?`

It surely is. Nevertheless, the quantity of rain is very impressive all year round, the rainstorms and resulting immediate floodings cause totally muddy streets in less than 5minutes, streets would have to get redone about 2-3 months if they were to look about alright and tidy. But that`s probably just a dream of all residents, no reality in any case... I have often observed old people being really afraid of walking outside due to the totally slippery pavement and street, often the pavement is totally destroyed or simply non-existent, so everyone has to walk on the street instead. I already slipped several times - which isn t very tragic as my bones are still pretty flexible. But imagine someone older...

Hunter Original Tour Boots and its anti-slip rubber sole

And nobody likes to slip, if we are really honest, especially when it`s totally muddy. So shoes or wellies that have adequate soles for slippery grounds are very precious. Nevertheless, I also walk my dog in the muddy streets so.... he really doesn t care if the ground is totally slippery and muddy and will play anyway so my feet, legs and trousers will be totally soaking in water or mud when we come home (let`s not talk about Luke`s muddy condition after the walk here haha, that`s another topic). But well, good resistent waterproof wellies will pretty much resolve most of those problems. That`s why I decided to get quality travel rubber boots as I will also use them as winter boots, just with high boot socks to keep my feet warm in addition to dry during the autumn and winter months I spend in Europe. As I am going to travel with them, they should not be too bulky and heavy, and as I wish to use them both during walks in the countryside, but also in the city, they should be pretty as well.

Quite a challenge. But thank god, I stumbled over the following blog: libertylondongirl.com - Living in London and close to Hampstead Heath, food lover, sausage dog walker and passionate traveller herself who introduced her readers to her favourite Hunter boots. And following her blogs throughout the - what? about 5-7maybe few? years that she continues to passionately write about them, totally convinced me to get them myself.

Hunter Original Tour Wellies - foldable & lightweight,
but city-chic - perfect for travellers

They have some original sturdy ones for rain and snow which are more convenient if you only use them around your area but also have one model for travel bugs like me: The Hunter Original Tour! Foldable, lightweight and stylish-city-chic! So I`ve ordered them, in pretty black which combines with about every item of clothing I have I guess... (and if not, who am I to care :D All I want is having clean and dry feet and less washing jeans to add that one - lol), happy and lucky to have found those boots that just include everything I needed at the very moment =)

Design, build and live in your own house - all at the same time: Part 2

Update of my house plan

It has been quite some time since I had first written about how to design, build and live in your own house - all at the same time.

Blogpost:
Design, build and live in your house - all at the same time

I just stumbled over this old blogpost and realized that by now - almost one year later - we have changed quite a lot during the course of construction works and changes in our previous plans and needs. I guess the best and biggest change was that we managed to seperate the kitchen and living room space, first we were not sure if we were able to fit in all furniture into the rather narrow kitchen-laundry room area neatly and comfortly but luckily it all worked out perfectly - we did not even have to remove the hammock!

And now it feels like our whole house is bigger :D Both livingroom and kitchen have a much larger feel to it. Amazing what a bit of moving-furniture-around can make of a drastic change.

I really could not resist adding in this picture of Luke who decided to gently remind me that I have been sitting at the computer/laptop for long enough, gently pawing my foot *_* and bringing along his all-time favourite toy: An old t-shirt of mine! ;-)

Limonada de casca de lima (Limonade of Sweet Lemon Peel) - good for the flora of the intestines!

Today, the prince of sun`s India grandmum (Indio (masculine) and India (feminine) are the Brazilian expressions for ``Native``, not to be confused with India, the Asian country!) came over for a visit and brought a huge basket of "limas" with her. She explained that it is kind of a mix between lime and orange. She recommended having the fruit part just by itself and making juice of the lima peel.

Intrigued I immediately went on trying it out and was really surprised: The fruit pulp is really light, almost whitish and very mild compared to lime or lemons. Even Luke - who normally only plays with and barks at lemons or limes - ate half a lima.



The juice turned out amazing, just added half a liter of water and some sugar to the peel of one whole lima, put the whole lot in the mixer and then pressed the juice through a sieve. I have never tasted something like this before!

Very refreshing and delicious. Mild, just a tiny bit bitterish and sourish but again sweet and almost no aftertaste at all. I am loving this fruit!!!

Even better that it is good for the flora of the intestines! ;)

Puppy play time: Luke and his best friend Rhalf

Rhalf close to Luke's ear, whispering: "Luke, you won't
believe what happened yesterday...  Oh dear,
I have to whisper they're listening in :D!"

A few days ago we went to see a friend of ours who has two dogs, one puppy called Rhalf and one adult dog called Hans. Luke is best friends with Rhalf and together they run and jump and build sand caves and do just everything, like people say here "os dois estão grudados como cola" (those two are stuck like glue).

Luke will stay with them during our spring holiday, he has already spent one week there and thank god was alright and not too homesick, although from the day we picked him up again, he was even more stuck like glue to me ;) But I do love it, I freely admit it hehe....

More pictures of the 'gang of two', playing, wrestling and drinking water, exhausted from playing like the crazies - next to the 'old, wise often grumpy a bit jealous but mild' German-shepherd-mix ginger Hans:

Love parcels: Belated Christmas bunching

So waiting patiently during Christmas and New Year really paid off ;)

Punctually at about 2 weeks into the new year 2014 (oh and I totally forgot: HAPPY NEW YEAR BY THE WAY)! 

A small letter with a wedding invitation arrived around the 10th of January, then the first two Christmas and indulgence related parcels from my mum arrived on the 14th and the last Christmas surprises parcel came from my sister on the 16th.

My mum`s Christmas parcel had a really sweet mouth painted postcard with a wintery setting, a decorated Christmas tree and a pretty child-angel holding a the top star of the tree, in the background of a snow-covered landscape with a cute bridge and little houses. And even Luke received his own postcard, with a cute Christmas sausage dog frontside and a tiny yummy", crunchy dogfood plastic bag. Luke`s eyes totally glimmered when he was eating it, so this was a true Christmas treat!

The second parcel was poetry and arts indulgence with a beautiful butterfly spray painting, a ballet-culture postcard, a tiny calender for 2014 and a mouth-painted calender picture with a beautiful quote by Jean Jaures (German: Die groessten Menschen sind jene, die anderen Hoffnung geben koennen. = English: The greatest people are those who are able to bring hope to others.) plus some amazing dividable dog-sausage treats for Luke which he absolutely loves - a good thing to use for our training sessions, need to get more of those when I visit my family in spring. Oh yes, I did not mention it yet, but YYYAAAAAY, we are close to another trip to Europe, this time together with the prince of sun and we are concentrating on Germany only with a short visit to our funky capital Berlin (and Berlin girl obviously) and other treats coming soon *_* - cannot wait to see my sweet niece and sister, brothers, mum and dad, grandma, friends.... aaaah =) By the way, I was really laughing at the name of the Orlando dog sausage product but cannot go into details due to privacy reasons but... I really love the fun thought behind it and understand why mum picked exactly those HILARIOUS! And finally, my favourite relaxing Camilla bath liquid *_*

  

Now let`s get to the final love parcel, sent by my sister (and partly my mum as well):

My puppy Luke: 10 weeks - 6 months timespan

Luke is recovering - actually much faster than we thought, climbing the stairs three-legged and starting to use his worst leg and foot more and more, thank god. Spending the last few days browsing and marvelling at his early puppyhood pictures I thought I`d quickly make a photo collage, kind of a 10 weeks to 6 months timespan - before - after comparison. Enjoy =)

Plus my current favourite picture, taken yesterday afternoon =)

*_*

Strong, brave puppy recovering after a pitbull attack: Luke aka Po the Panda Dragon Warrior

Since I can remember, Pitbulls and other so called 'fighting breeds' such as Rottweilers always had a really bad reputation. But I would always mention to haters that it is not the dogs that are to blame. So the dogs should go into rehab instead of the owners (who instead then should get put down to - er sleep or well, not that drastic, but they should get a thorough value schooling and should not be allowed to have another dog.

When I watched Cesar's show (the dog whisperer), I would always admire Daddy, Cesar's pitbull and his patience and kindness as well as endurance in any possible case Cesar would encounter during dog rehab.

I was not lucky yet to meet a pitbull like that and unfortunately, Luke had a really horrible encounter a few days ago... (We believe it is a pitbull mix as the face is very much pitbull, but the size is just so enourmous and almost hip-high (for small women like me), that s why we believe he is mixed with labrador or another huge breed). The (himself also bully-like) owner actually lives in our (one-way) street with his own family and often keeps his huge, black pitbull running around without supervision, without leash and collar, a hip-high dark-nacked mountain of muscles and teeth lying heavily and imperious in the middle of the street.

We were coming back from a walk and the sun had already set - it was getting dark but was still really hot outside, a normal summer's evening so a lot of neighbours and their friends or relatives were talking in front of their houses in little groups.

His left paw on the upper side, third day after
visiting the vet

We walked into our street - as usual I had Luke on the leash - the prince of sun was carrying a few heavy bags. It all happened really fast. Out of nowhere appeared the black thunder and next thing I knew, he was all over Luke. I tried to lift him up, but was not fast enough and the huge, heavy pitbull was almost covering him already, heavily bumping his heavy body against my legs and hips and his nails rushing over my legs, but I did not feel anything at the moment it happened.

His owner called him over and over again (no reaction at all from the pitbull) and came over with a thing that looked like the stick of a broom. It probably was only seconds, but it felt like hours. While Luke was screaming in desperation, the prince of sun (seeing that the owner was only making his dog more furious while hitting him with the broom while ripping Luke's leash out of my hands), jumped into the scene, forced the pitbulls mouth open and pushed the dog a few meters away. He tried to lift Luke but BOOM, the pitbull had already come back and was again all over Luke.

His fixed right leg-axle (I will spare
you the other bite wounds)

A second time (the owner was still hitting with his broom causing mad fury in the pitbull), the prince of sun forced the pitbull`s mouth open and away from the screaming Luke, grabbing his legs and this time, while turning around to throw the pitbull further away found himself next to a wall crushing against it with his complete right side and face and the pitbull in his hands (with all people around us only standing right behing and next to him, being in the way and staring stupidly at him), threw the huge 50kg-heavy pitbull over their heads further away while the crowd run to the sides. (It was other people telling me everything afterwards as I only remember everything like a dense fog and did not see anything but Luke and the prince of sun, the pitbull and his owner, all bundled up in one horrible chaos.

Then I saw my very own superhero Clark Kent aka prince of sun in his blue shirt and red trousers-shorts coming close and felt enormous relief while he picked up bitterly crying Luke. And we went home, I even forgot the heavy bags that the prince of sun had thrown on the floor when the attack happened and only remembered them (they had our keys and wallet and other precious things), when the prince of sun asked me to pick them up. Then we entered our home, shaken, with no look back. The pitbull and owner and other neighbours, I have no idea what happened to them next. But the whole street was in complete silence (and that`s something I almost never saw in our lively street). The only thing I remember was that we arrived in our own house and HOME.

I have never thanked god more than the second, that we realized while examining Luke's horrible bite wounds, that somehow:

When your alarm clock does not wake you up anymore... although it had done it for about almost 27 years

I could never believe it when people told me that they just didn't hear their alarm clock. I thought they did hear it and would just ignore it until it finally stopped.

I was one of those people who would stand on their feet (on their bed) with eyes wide awake trying to silence the alarm clock at the 2nd or 3rd ring at the latest. I almost never arrived late in school due to missing my alarm (rather due to confusing days a few rare times). It also never happened at my work places and this did not change at all, even when I started working from home at often rather confusing and changing hours, often also night shifts, I could always pretty much rely on my ability to immediately wake up to the first few alarm rings.

Until now.

It is just after Christmas. My neighbours decided that they would have a three day party from 24th to 26th of December. 24h. Night and day. Without stopping. Not a single hour. I am not kidding.

But unfortunately, they only seemed to have two CDs to back their (rather poor-taste-like, primitive-level) music selection up. Which I now still have unvoluntarily playing up and down in my own head. (It`s nasty lyrics. Really nasty ones.) And this is pretty persistent. o_O So yes, I was working during the Christmas time, rather crazy hours sometimes more than 10h, to make this worse and I did not really get much more than 2h sleep per day as my whole house rather seemed like the next best club: the walls would often vibrate slightly with the bass sounds and rhytms. On the third day, I was pretty much exhausted and slept through various unsuccessful phone calls by friends and family, worried people coming until my house trying to call me from the street in front of my house and not getting through to me as I was obviously slipped away into near-coma-state sleep phases even with the whole crazy sound phrame around me (my dog was in the same state funny enough, poor thing with red eyes and sometimes desperately barking at the noise with no effect of course, just as the neighbours dogs did who had to live through this three-day party right at the heart of the chaos) and therefore did not wake me up either, he was sleeping on the floor next to my bed....). I finally managed to sleep in the afternoon and only woke up, when the prince of sun walked in totally worried as I did not react to his phone calls.

So... the moral of this story:

`Pimenta nos olhos dos outros é refresco`: Tissue Burns through Brazilian pimenta vegetables

Yesterday, my sweet sister in law gave me a whole basket full of fresh vegetables and fruits. Her husband had been at a friend's farm and came back with a car boot (trunk) full of fresh goodies.

Delicious smells of freshness, amongst others, we got heaps of sweet, mild bananas, passion fruits, green peppers, lettuce, sweet potatoes, mandiocs and other veggies, not to forget green and yellowish-orangy Brazilian pimenta vegetables, which are comparable with chili.

A Brazilian proverb says:
`Pimenta nos olhos dos outros é refresco'.

This proverb has a WHOLE NEW level of cultural understanding for me NOW! (But more to that one later).

So that's where the actual story begins... Today I decided to try cooking with pimenta - the prince of sun believes those pimentas are called pimenta de cheiro. (But he is not totally sure, it might be pimenta malaquita as well...). (*update a few days later on 15/12/2013: my sister in law told me that pimenta de cheiro is not hot and burning at all, it is more for your tastebuds and smells delicious (cheiro is the Portuguese word for smell) - she thinks that the one I prepared is another powerful vegetable-spice called: PIMENTA ARRIBA SAIA! update end)

I have already had many dishes that included pimenta, most people use a bit of it and put a pimenta-oil mix on the table for those who like it more spicy and hot. In general, a few tiny drops are wayyyy enough, I sometimes just sprinkle a little bit in one corner to check my current state of 'spicyness' (haha) and then mix it with the rest and add a few drops more in case I'd like some more. But most of the time, I don't actually mix any pimenta oil into my food.

So I was totally aware of the sheer fire of this vegetable. I handled it reaaally carefully and thought, alright, you'll just put in a few tiny bits and then go from there, tasting and checking along the cooking. I would just start with 1/3 piece of this innocent looking vegetable which actually turned out really nice (with a reaaally slight sensation of tinglyness burning in the food which turned very delicious and could even have had a bit more of the pimenta....

But I was totally unprepared for what was expecting me about 1h after using, washing, cleaning out and cutting ONE SINGLE pimenta vegetable....

Funny enough, I did not feel the slightest sensation when washing and cutting it at first. But about 1h later (I was in the middle of washing up), I felt a crazy sting-like sensation on ONE finger. I thought ---- oooookkkk, did I just miss a bee around here that decided to sting my finger. I carefully examined my finger (the one, that I had just used to tear out the tiny seeds inside the pimenta and then ALSO hold it to cut it), but besides feeling a sensation of total burning inside-out, I did not see a single change in my finger's state (it did get a bit pink later on, but that might be due to myself trying to find a remedy and working what-not into my hands :D).

That left me totally confused. I kind of remembered that I had used pimenta, so I thought, OK, that might be that one and decided to thoroughly wash my hands, then I put some Calendula essence and Arnica lotion (those usually save me from whatever inside-outside pain I am suffering from) onto it. I thought that simply washing the pimenta-rests off my finger would resolve the problem.

NOT THIS TIME.

About 10 minutes later, my WHOLE LEFT HAND and parts of my right hand were ON FIRE. I kept on washing my hands with coconut soap then switching to putting my hands into the freezer and taking out most ice cubes that were available. They just melted in few seconds. I have really never seen or felt anything like this in my whole life, my hands seemed to be soaking in pure acid. I spent about 30 minutes between washing and freezing my hands, which left BOTH my hands burning like crazy. It always felt like when I was washing and cooling my hands, the sensation went away, but the second my hand dried, the burning went back WORSE! In my attempt of ridding myself of the pain, I had actually DISTRIBUTED THE burning THING!

I had only one option of salvation left:

London's best kept budget-books secret: Southbank Centre book market

Southbank Centre book market under Waterloo Bridge

I have always been a book worm, starting from a tender age of four when I wasn t even able to really read - didn t matter, I would still take out my favourite books and pretty accurately tell each story word by word to my younger siblings - by heart.

This passion has not really changed, although nowadays I have less time than I wish for curling up with a thick novel....

One of my favourite London budget-books markets is under Waterloo Bridge, right in front of BFI Southbank: Southbank Centre book market.

Passing London Eye
on my way to the market

You can get almost all genres, novels, poetry, cooking, children's books - the list of 2nd hand and antique books is infinite. Prices vary, you can get smaller books for 1-3 pound, heavier or newer books and depending on the genre the price can be higher.

Beautiful view on London Eye

As far as I know, the market is the only outdoor second hand and antique book market in London.

Address and opening hours: