Favourites: February ’18

Hi guys it’s been a while but I thought I’d share some of my current favourites that get me through the cold and snowy winter here in Germany.

Food:

I’ve been living with a Mexican guy for half a year. He is a great cook and always prepared the most delicious meals, which got me obsessed with mexican food so I decided to try and prepare salsa and guacamole myself (with his recipe). The last few days I really have been craving nachos with salsa, guacamole, sour cream and cheese and I hope I get around to prepare it today. It’s not an actual Mexican dish, but it’s easy and has the components I learned to love so much, so the perfect dish to warm yourself up with some spicy cheesy goodness.

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Another dish I really enjoy at the moment is a german pastry called “Krapfen ” or “Berliner”. They’re comparable to jam filled donuts and it’s typical to have it in Germany during carnival season in February. It’s a ball of dough with jam (or in variations with vanilla cream or chocolate) in the middle powdered with icing sugar. It’s kind of hard to eat without getting jam or icing sugar all over you, but totally worth the mess.

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Books:

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I have to admit I haven’t read a lot recently, but the one book I read luckily is totally worth recommending. It’s called “A quiet kind of thunder” and is written by the praised “Beautiful broken things” author Sara Barnard. The book tells the story of Steffi, who is a selective mute, which means she is technically able to talk, but can’t get the words out when anxious or uncomfortable. She meets the new guy at her school Rhys who is deaf. As she is able to use BSL (british sign language) they can communicate easily and soon fall in love. It’s a beautiful story about a first love under special circumstances, but with the normal first love problems and you can’t help but absolutely love the interesting characters. Really a read to warm your heart in cold february.

 

Series:

The whole country is watching topmodel and then there’s me overexcitedly watching Ru Paul’s Drag race. Season 7, 8 and 9 are on german Netflix now and I couldn’t be happier. Drag race is a casting show for drag queens where they have to do certain challenges and then there’s a runway challenge which they need to create costumes according to the weeks theme for. It’s just so bright, crazy and colourful and glamourous with the perfect amount of drama . Also you get to know the coming out and background stories of the contestants which can be really emotional. I love it and it brightens up every dark winter day.

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An other series I’m totally digging is british series “The end of the fucking world” which is also on Netflix. It’s about self diagnosed psychopath James and rebellious teenage girl Alyssa who run away together. James is quiet and awkward and his plan is actually to kill Alyssa who is the typical troubled teenager who provokes whoever she meets and does what she wants. On their road trip to Alyssa’s absent father they get involved in a lot of trouble and even a crime. I’m absolutely crazy about this series because it has this strange dark british humour and these totally over the top characters. Despite their weird quirks and their mostly wrong and immature behaviour you have to love James and Alyssa and their totally fucked up relationship. And if my opinion isn’t enough, it also scored 100% on rotten tomatoes. Literally the only bad thing I can find about the series: It only has 8 episodes !

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Beauty:

I’m really not good at talking about beauty products, but here’s a few of my current favourites:

Mascara: I really like Yves Rocher (yes, partly because they gave me a customers card) because they make their cosmetics from plants and don’t test on animals (as they say, no guarantee on that) and I found my favourite mascara there. I had a hard time with finding the right mascara beforebut their Vertige volume in black is just perfect for my lashes and makes them really long and voluminous. A good thing also is that it stays on really long without giving you these black like crums under your eyes. I’m really, really happy with it. I use the black one but it also comes in brown and blue.

Powder: I use the body shop all in one powder and foundation which I’m really happy with as it stays on for a long time and really covers your skin but without being really heavy and like a mask. As you can see I really can’t talk about make up I sound like an advertisment 😉 Anyway I also like that they don’t test on animals.

Lotion: As my skin and lips always get super dry in winter I use a lot of lotion and the one I like best (and basically use for everything) is nivea soft. It’s really light and moisturizes your skin without being to fat. Also really nice smell. I just really like it because it feels good on my skin.

Image source mascara                                                     Image source powder

Music:

I gotta admit I’m not really up to date as I’m with anything in the music world, because I’ve been listening to the same 12 songs for 2 years, but an album I recently discovered is Halsey’s new album “hopeless fountain kingdom”. I just really like her style and she has some great duets for example with Lauren Jauregui “strangers” which happens to be my favourite song on the album apart from “bad at love” and “him&I”. I love how deep her lyrics are and the melancholical tone of the songs. Also I admire her as a person because she’s a strong badass, a role model for women and an absolut icon for me.

 

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I hope that gave you some inspiration to help with the winter blues and if you have some more recommendations you think I might like hit me up on our twitter @castway_minds

or on instagram under @castawayminds

Have a great rest of february!

Love, Alli xx

Quote of the week

“The moment you realize that your bones are made of the same dust as the planets, your lungs are breathing the same air as the migrating butterflies, and your blood is pumping because of the love and care of thousends; is when you realize that you are not as broken as you think you are. You are full of the world.”

(Unknown)

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Monthly Favourites June/July

Hi guys,

I know it’s super late, but here’s my Sunday Funday post. Todaaayy it’s time for my favourites *round of applause* *game show music playing in the back* So yeah here we go:

Food: I’m totally obsessed with Couscous lately, because to me it’s a really summery food. You can eat it warm, as a side or cold as a salad on it’s own. My two favourites are warm with peppers, fried mushrooms and garlic or cold with peppers, cocktail tomatoes, cucumber and avocado. It’s super yummy, really quick and doesn’t have many calories. Definitely worth trying!!

Music: An album I’ve been waiting for forever is finally out and I couldn’t be happier. Blink 182 are back with “California”. They replaced Tom Delonge with Matt Skiba and now it sounds like Blink 182 and Alkaline trio had a very beautiful baby. In other words damnazing. Very cool and punk, blink 182 are definitely back. If I had to decide on favourite songs on the album it would either be “She’s out of her mind” or “the only thing that matters”, but listen for yourself.

Book: I’m super obsessed with rupi kaur lately. She’s a feminist poet and I just ordered her book “milk and honey”. It has four chapters “the hurting”, “the loving” , “the breaking” and “the healing”. It contains poems about pain, being a woman, love, sex, heart break and self worth. I really love them because they always describe feelings super well and are incredibly poetic and beautiful despite being written in simple language.

App : We all know it (at least the ones of us with an uterus: it’s summer and you wanna go swimming, when it hits you : “do I have to take tampons? When did I last have my period ? ” Well I used to never know but now I have this app and it tells you exactly when you’ll be on your period again, when you’ll have your ovulation and you can add things like when you had sex , when you took the pill etc. There are lots of apps like that but I suggest urbia because it has a nice design.

Activity: It’s summer and that means no matter how much you hate going outside you probably will have to once in a while. As food makes everything better I’d suggest to just have a picnic. Make some salads, some sandwiches, some finger food and some cookies, take a blanket and call your friends . Nice places for a picnic are in my opinion always lakes or rivers, because if you get to hot you can jump in and get refreshed. But remember to check the weather before you leave, you don’t want the food to get all we.

So that were my favourites, I hope you liked them and maybe you’ll try/check out one of them.

Have a lovely day,

Alli xx

Monthly Favourites May/June

This month is my turn to write about what I particular liked this month and to be honest there haven’t been new ground breaking things in my life lately, so it’s more like something I particularly liked or used quite often.

Food: Bananas and Nectarines; water with lemon

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As you might know I have been on a ‘no sugar‘ month during this month, so as described in my other blog post I particular liked everything with banana and nectarines. Both have been a great source for natural sweetness and are also super delicious! The second thing I really liked has been water with lemon. I’m very bad when it comes to drinking enough in a day but this has helped me a lot to stay hydrated. Just take a glass (I always prefer a glass and a straw) put in some plain or sparkling water, cut 1 or 2 slices of lemon and put it in. Et voilà you have a delicious drink which is also quite healthy.

 

Beauty: Hair and coconut oil

I particularly liked the ‘wonder hair’ oil by Garnier Fructis. I use it along side with their shampoo and conditioner and it really made my hair feel super soft. As you can use the oil in different ways, I always use it after I washed my hair and put around 2 or 3 pumps (I’ve got quite long and thick hair) in the ends of my hair. But my best friend also used it in her dry hair to give it a bit of shine and it worked perfectly fine (after she left the house she also went out and bought it ;)). Beside of this hair oil I also liked coconut oil. I know, I know that everybody always swears on it and you can read it everywhere but it honestly works wonders. I have quite strange hair which isn’t easily tamed and can also be very dry at some parts and coconut oil really helped with that. I use it either once a week or second week as a hair mask. I usually put around 2 tablespoons in my hair (once again I have very thick and long hair, usually you don’t need that much) and leave it in over night. But also putting it during the day or if you don’t have much time, putting it in for around an hour works perfectly fine.

 

Make-up: Look

I haven’t tried any new make-up products this month (which is very unusual for me since I’m a make-up addict) but I liked one make-up look in particular. I left my skin fairly natural and with just a touch of bronzer and blush and also quite a subtle lipstick, so I concentrated more on the eyes (which is usually how I do my make-up anyway to be fair). I just used Maybelline’s Colour Tattoo 24h in ’35-On and on Bronze’, put on some black eyeliner, with or without a flick depending on my mood and then quite a bit of mascara. It’s very quick, very easy but I think it looks super good. Good for school, uni or work days or the days were you don’t have much time for your make-up and it’s also super easy to build up with some darker shades in your grease.

 

Book: Miss Carter’s War by Sheila Hancock

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To be totally honest with you it took me ages to read this book and I gave up quite a few times before I actually finished it but now I’m happy I did. It’s a great book if you like books about British history (it starts right after the second world war and ends at around the 90/00’s), feminism, courage, a bit of poetry but also about the power of friendship. For me the struggle was that I don’t know this much about British history and the language was quite hard sometimes. Nevertheless I really enjoyed the book but I would only recommend it if you really like English and you have no problem with older words as well.

 

Music: ‘Jet black heart’ by 5SOS and ‘Welcome to my life’ by Simple Plan

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As Alli, Lili and myself have been to a 5SOS concert there was no way I’m not mentioning a 5SOS song. I particularly liked this song because how Michael sang it at the concert was just beautiful. It’s one of my most vivid and favourite memories of this night and also my favourite video to watch of my videos I recorded during the show. It’s just something beautiful about how he stood there, spotlight on him, looking at the crowed and getting emotional. Knowing that there are more people in the world who suffer from mental illness, having problems, social anxiety or even feel like there is no place for them in the world.

I discovered the second song because I was listening to one of Alli’s playlists on Spotify (yes I’m the biggest fangirl of the other 3, so what?!) and this song came up. I really liked the message of the song and this month it seemed very fitting to my life. So welcome to my life when you’re listening to it.

 

Random category

This next favourite is quite random but also as important as the others. So my last favourite of this month were (beside of the concert and the time in Berlin) the other girls of this website. To be fair they’re always my favourite but I want to address it once again. They always stood by my side and this month they have been super supportive. It also happened that it was our anniversary on the 14th of June which showed me once again how lucky I am t have them as friends. So big thumbs up to you girls and yes, I’m showing once again that I’m a creepy fangirl of them, but I couldn’t care less! 🙂 ❤

#GuyBoss James McVey

Hello you lovely person reading this,

two weeks ago Lili was the first one who introduced a Sunday Funday category to you, which was our #GirlBoss of the month. As all of us is about equal right of men and women we had to made the same category for guy, so here it is, our #GuyBoss of the month.

To be totally honest with you guys it was extremely hard for me to come up with a guy that inspired me at some point or somehow. As a young female person who’s all about feminism I recognized that the people who actually inspire me are mostly women. Of course there are a few male person who inspire me but I can’t really write about my dad or my uncle, can I? Beside I’m not too sure how much they would like it if I share some information about them with totally strangers to them. So, I had to annoy the others to ask them for suggestions. Of course they had plenty of ideas and these people do inspire me a lot, but still for my first #GuyBoss I wanted to introduce you guys to somebody who really inspires me. So when I actually got read for bed just now, it stroke me whom I could write about. Going to bed has to wait for a bit now I guess :P.

The person I want to introduce you to is a person who’s around my age, despite being so young he has reach a lot in life already. The person I’m talking about is an English singer, guitarist and YouTube personality, his name is James Daniel McVey. He’s most known as a member of the British pop/rock band ‘The Vamps’ along side Bradley Simpson, Tristan Evans and Connor Ball.

From a young age on James knew he wanted to pursued a career in the music industry, so he started posting cover songs on YouTube. In 2011 he discovered the young singer/guitarist Brad and contacted him asking if he’d be down for some song-writing and doing music together. Both of them took this quite seriously and drove to each other every possible occasion. It didn’t take long and they saw a video of Tristan playing the drums in a video. Once again they contacted him through social media and from a Duo it was made a little band. Only a couple of months later they met Connor through a mutual friends and he was down to join the band as well. Since James already had a management behind him when he stared looking for potential band members, it didn’t take them long to storm the charts. And the rest is history. So far they had 5 Top 10 hits in the UK and both of their albums also launched in the Top 10 in the UK. If you want to know more about them go and check them out. I only can highly recommend them/ their music.

But back to James and why I have chosen him as my #GuyBoss.

Firstly I think its quite remarkable to starting a band at such a young age as he was. I adore about him that he knew from such a young age on what he wanted to do later in life and pursued his dreams even though everybody knows that the music industry is quite a hard business to be successful in. But not only his musical talents and how he went for his dreams makes him stand out to me, the one thing in particular for me is his YouTube channel. Once again, if you haven’t already go and check out his account, I personally love it.

7 months ago he started his own channel were he mostly posts chatty videos, vlogs or challenge videos. What I enjoy the most are his chatty videos because in them he discusses serious topics that every young person can relate to. He for example talks about bullying, how he stays positive, how he beat acne and fought spots and also about what he wishes every girl knew. Of course you can find videos like that everywhere on YouTube but what it makes it stand out to me is that he’s really genuine about it. Mostly he talks about personal experience and how he dealt with the situation at this time or his thought about the topic in general. In this videos you can feel that he really means what he’s saying and truly says his opinions on things.

I guess I like these videos that much because you can see, that even though his band is quite successful and he made his dream come true, his still really down to earth. He tries to keep in contact with his fans and that’s what I especially like about him. He knows that without the people who are buying their Singles, Albums and coming to shows he wouldn’t be able to live the life he always wanted to live. Not only keeps he in contact with them but also talks openly about things to them. I also don’t know a lot of famous people who tell their fans that it really doesn’t matter how you look like and you always should look for the personality in a person. Of course everybody always says that but for some reason he says that in such a natural ways that I really believe him that he does so and believes in what he says. Beside of talking about serious topics and making me believe in the things he says, he also never fails to make me laugh in his vlogs or challenges. He just seems so genuine and nice that I really believe that he’s a really nice person in real life. Of course a lot of people might say that he just knows what to say and a lot of girls like him because of his looks anyways, but if you would watch his videos with your eyes closed, I believe that they would still have the same impact on you. He just makes you start thinking about things and I think that no matter how you look like, not everybody achieves that on the Internet.

In case you never have heard about him or you’re curious now what he’s really like, please do go and check him out. Obviously his link of his YouTube channel will be below as well as his social media. I only can advise every person I know to check out his videos as I really like them and I think he makes great content.

I hope you all have a lovely Sunday Funday and if you want let us know which is your #GuyBoss of the month and why.

Lots of love,

Jenny xxx

James’ Instagram

James’ Twitter

James’ YouTube

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First Picture, YouTube Banner, Last Picture

Storytime by Alli

Hey guys, today I want to introduce another one of our new Sunday Funday Categories, which is called Storytime. Basically, it’s one of us telling a funny/scary/exciting story of our lives. So yeah here it goes:

This is the story of a brave prince, who heroically climbed up the tower, where his beautiful princess slept and knocked at her window, while the stars were sparkling and the moon was shining bright.

Wow no that sounds wrong…. let me rephrase that:

This is the story of some drunk twat, who thought it was a good idea, to climb up to the bedroom window of the chick he crushed on and knock on it in the middle of the f*cking night.

Yeah that sounds different. You see there are two ways to tell this story and I guess it depends how the gesture is received : does she like him back and thinks it’s romantic or does she not like him and thinks it’s creepy ? I think you have all guessed that I am indeed, mentioned princess/chick and when this happened to me I wasn’t sure what to think of it , as I (as so often in my life) wasn’t sure about my feelings for the prince/twat.

But let’s start from the beginning:

Once apon a time in a Kingdom far away there was a ball, where young maids and gentlemen celebrated having passed their final exams. As usual lots of magical potions were consumed and everyone was feeling a bit tipsy. The prince and the princess were attending the event as well, he had been in love with her for some time, but she didn’t quite know what to make out of it as things were complicated. After rejecting him, the princess and one of her maids went home to the tower where she lived and went to bed. Later that night the princess was woken up by her mother the queen who told her, that the young prince had been knocking on the window. Anyway from this point I can’t romanticize this story any longer, because looking back I still get annoyed so let’s get back to the facts. This dickhead knocked on my bedroom door where my friend, who stayed at mine after the party, and I were sleeping. My friend woke up and got really, really scared because she thought it was a burglar trying to get in. She told me she’d just been laying there in shock, trying not to move and hoping he would leave. He didn’t stop so after a while my mum, dad and brother woke up as well and after he had stopped knocking on my window and rang the doorbell they opened him . The only person who didn’t wake up that night was, of course, me. I had had a few magical potions that night and they always turn me into sleeping beauty, that means I had a very deep sleep. When my mum finally managed to wake me up to ask me if it’s okay to let him sleep downstairs on the sofa, I just muttered a yes and went back to sleep. The next morning I was pretty upset and I felt sorry for my parents and friend that they had been scared that way, but that tiny part of me that already liked him still thought it was romantic. Looking back, it wasn’t. Hearing noises at my window has been making me uncomfortable ever since, same for when the doorbell rings at midnight. Turned out that it had scared me more than I realized back then. It’s just not an okay thing to do to invade someone’s privacy like this and scare them out of bed in the middle of the night. And I don’t think it would have scared me less if I had liked him back, having someone knocking at your window while you’re sleeping is never nice. I think it’s okay and romantic when the other person knows before and is okay with it and prepared to let you in. As in any other case it’s the consent, that makes it romantic, without it it’s just creepy. Yes, it might have worked in one of the most popular fairytales, but girls nowadays are not like sleeping beauty and marry the guy who climbs into their windows ( seriously girl, that guy kissed you without your consent, while you were passed out and you marry him, what’s wrong with you ??). We are more like Rapunzel from Tangled: climb into our window and we will hit you on the head with a frying pan.

In this story I ended up being sleeping beauty after all: I briefly dated the guy who knocked on my window, but of course it didn’t have a happy ending.

So here’s some advice if your drunk romantic side is showing and you think it’s a good idea to surprise your sleeping beauty by knocking on her bedroom window:

DON’T

And after they stopped romanticizing being scared out of bed in the middle of the night they lived happily ever after .

Alli xx

Pic  : http://www.silverpetticoatreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Sleeping-Beauty-Featured.jpg

gif from :tangledindreams-blog.tumblr.com

Lilis #GirlBoss of the month: Caitlin Stasey

Taken from Caitlins website herself(.)com

„People think that beauty opens doors; but it opens doors to cliff edges.“

A very happy Sunday Funday to all of you 🙂

Let me introduce you to a brand new „Sunday Funday“ category on this blog: Each month one of us chooses a woman or a girl that inspired us, changed something in society or spoke up about an important issue, to be our #GirlBoss of the month. We hope in return that you feel empowered to be the best selves you can be, after reading about the amazing women we chose.

This April it was my turn to choose a #GirlBoss and I decided on the Australian actress Caitlin Stasey.
To me it’s always a big question what my childhood heroes grow up to be, whether they’re still as inspirational as I thought they were when I was a kid and of course if they’re still acting.
Some of you may know Caitlin Stasey as this childhood hero from her part as Frankie in the Australian kids series „The Sleepover Club“, maybe you’ve also seen her on „Neighbours“ or „Reign“. But for me she’s always been the self confident Frankie from „The Sleepover Club“, I always wanted to be like. So naturally I wanted to see what she’s doing now and I was honestly pretty overwhelmed.
There was one YouTube Video in particular that stood out to me and that actually made me think about creating a post like this. The video was on a channel called StyleLikeUs, which was created by a mother daughter duo, who in their own words are „leading a movement that empowers people to accept and express their true selves“. The channel on its own is worth checking out!
Caitlin Staseys video deals with the challenges young actresses that arrive in Hollywood have to deal with.

As for me, I never felt the trouble of not feeling represented in the media, as an average white girl and therefore probably had it easier coming to terms with who I am. Still, Caitlin talks about the problem of type casting young girls to play the sexy, pretty girl next door, all the boys want.
We are represented as white women, there is no doubt in that and it is also not arguable that there needs to be a bigger variety of ethnicities and all kinds of shapes people come in in movies.
But we also have to consider that these changes that need to be made start with women not being sexualized in the media anymore, as this sexualization just sends the wrong image to young girls. And to me that is a huge problem and I love that Caitlin is talking this openly about it.
She even mentions that when Jessica Biel addressed the problem she had of only being cast as the beautiful woman, no one in the public eye took her seriously and shrugged it off as some luxurious problem. Cases like these led to women and girls in the same position being afraid of asking for more or asking for a different part because they didn’t feel entitled to do so, because they were afraid of coming across as arrogant.
After all, there are more important problems in the world than actresses being type cast.
And yes, maybe there are bigger problems, but as Caitlin mentions and also in my opinion it is part of a bigger problem. The problem being, putting labels on people, which is still a huge issue in our society.

But back to Caitlin Stasey; she points out that she often feels like a variation of a theme of the same girl every casting she goes to. She even has to go onto shopping trips with her manager or send her manager pictures of her outfit she plans on wearing in public so that casting directors don’t get the idea she’s not sexy enough or not chill or cool enough.
One casting director actually thought she was incredibly boring just because she was wearing High Waisted jeans, he judged her based on her clothes.
To me this really proves the cliche of these old white men writing movies and TV shows for young girls although they really don’t have a clue what young girls need to see or hear. Of course it’s easier to just objectify women, it has worked for years in the movie industry but just because this is the case doesn’t mean that it should go on like this. There needs to be brave new directors, producers and screenwriters and more strong and beautiful young actresses like Caitlin Stasey who speak up about the topic without being afraid of the reactions they might get from casting directors. Maybe in a few years every girl can feel like they’re good enough and their type of person can be found in popular movies. In the end, only then we can tackle the problem of labeling people and objectifying women.
In case you want to see the whole interview of Caitlin, just click the link 🙂 Caitlin also launched a website called „herself“ so if you’re over 18 feel free to check that one out as well 🙂

I really hope you enjoyed learning about my #GirlBoss of the month Caitlin Stasey and you feel inspired or maybe just happy that people like her exist in our (sometimes brainwashed) society.
I’ll also link Caitlins social media down below!

Have a wonderful day you magnificent human bean reading this.
Loads of love,
Lili xx

Where to find Caitlin:
Caitlins Twitter: @caitlinstasey
Caitlins Instagram: @caitlinjstasey

Where to find Castaway Minds online:
Twitter: @castaway_minds
Instagram: @CastawayMinds