14Oct 2019

Thermomix Recipe: The quickest Salad

14 Oct 2019 0 Food Permalink

3.. 2.. 1.. done! I swear this is the easiest and quickest way to preparing a healthy and yummy salad! Slowly but surely I am falling in love with the Thermomix. I mean, I’ve always wanted one but then when Sam brought it into the apartment, I never really used it as much. I consider myself still being a fan of the “traditional” cooking. I love cutting the vegetables and foods by myself – I find it to being one of the most relaxing things to do after a long day at work. At the same time, however, I often just want to eat and not do anything at all. Ha, anyone feel me?

With the thermomix one can do a salad within seconds it feels. Ok, let’s be honest, not seconds. Yet, I swear it did not take me longer than 5 minutes!

One should start of with what you want in the salad:
1) Salad – I chose the Iceberg Salad, but any green leaves should do
2) Cucumber
3) Paprika / Bell peppers
4) Mushrooms
5) Radish
These are the ingredients that I used.

You simply need to add the salad (medium sized leaves), largely cut cucumber and bell peppers (around 5cm diagonal), the mushrooms and radish (I cut them in halves) all into the Thermomix. Then chop them all for 5 seconds at speed 4. Done. Take out the cut ingredients, add them into a bowl, feel free to add (for example) corn, fruit or seeds, and finish it by adding the dressing. I simply used olive oil and balsamic – and added one cooked egg on top (always gotta have that protein)!
5 sec / speed 4

10Oct 2019

Organizing my life with the GoodNotes App

10 Oct 2019 0 Organizational Skills Permalink

A good overview of all my to-dos, tasks, reports that need to be done are essential to keeping my life organized. I have always been a huge, huge fan of making to-do lists for almost everything. Be it for scheduling when and what I want to blog about next, what tasks I need to do at home (from washing to cleaning the bathroom sinks), what my travel plan will look like the upcoming weeks or months, or simply writing down ideas I get on the go.

Finally, after searching forever and trying out multiple apps, I have found the one: GoodNotes. I have been testing it for a while now and I am more than happy with it. For me, it’s important to be able to hand-write my notes. It gives me that warm tingly feeling of still being old-school haha. Also, it makes the writing down and crossing off tasks so, so much more fun. On the other hand, I am also a huge fan of having everything digitalised. That is, because I am always on the go and it is super practical to having the same notes on my iPad, my iPhone, my iMac (office and at home) or even my laptop (yes, I am an Apple fan!).

The app also allows me to work “offline” – or so it feels. I can sit down, away from my actual desk to write down notes and brainstorm certain topics, and still have it immediately show up on my iMac when turning around or going back to the desk. Especially now with the new macOS Catalina update, I can easily connect my iPad to my iMac or laptop. That is probably the best new feature the macOS Catalina treated us with! You can so easily write on your iPad now and have it immediately transferred to your computer (think about all those documents that you need to sign off on or when you want to annotate a PDF but still hand-write!). Anyway, before I drift off..

The GoodNotes app includes the following features (reason enough why I love them):
– possibility to hand-write notes, etc.
– can open several notebooks with different paper formats and styles
– possibility to easily switch between the notebooks (ex. I always have my meeting notes open, as well as my to-do lists and conference notes when on a business trip)
– possibility to search through your notes (it even recognises your hand-written notes!)
– able to type directly if you don’t want to use the iPad pen
– synchronises easily via Dropbox
– allows you to annotate PDFs, Powerpoints, Images, etc.
– inexpensive (8CHF for the iPad/iPhone and another 8CHF for my iMac is what I paid)

For those that have been looking for an app that can do all these things – the GoodNotes app really is a game changer!

01Oct 2019

My Man & I: Attending the Officer Ball

01 Oct 2019 0 Fashion Permalink

Happy Tuesday! We had such an amazing weekend and I wanted to share some insights with you. On Saturday the day started off a little hectic – we had to clean up the apartment a bit, Samuel went to the hairdresser, I got extra ready (shaving, peeling, creaming, etc.) and walking the dogs. In the late afternoon we brought both dogs to my parents – whom thankfully were in Zurich and agreed to dog-sit Saturday to Sunday. Then we stopped by the city for a drink – because you know, there’s little better than an apero in the afternoon ;) and then back home again to get ready. Saturday night was the officer ball. Swiss military officers with certain ranks were invited to The Dolder Grand in Zurich for a lovely evening with foods and for dancing.

I wore the black dress I had ordered some time ago from Zalando – such a good catch! Unfortunately I cannot find the dress online anymore, though I’m sure its available somewhere. Let me know if anyone is interested and I’ll make sure to find a link!

I love this picture because I look oh-so-skinny!

We stayed until the end of the officer ball until around 2am. The next day we seriously noticed our age. I am not as fit anymore and I always dread staying up too long! It feels like my body needs days and days to re-generate!

Sunday we picked up the dogs from my parents and took them out to a big field where the dogs could run freely and enjoy themselves with other dogs. It was so fun seeing them have fun and bathe in the river! Afterwards we had a lovely super-late lunch at Fork & Bottle – their pulled beef burger is to die for! But also the truffled fries. Oh, and the ribs. They are so so good, too! I also love the fact that its a huge beer garden, one that is dog friendly, and you can sit outside and enjoy the surrounding nature. I think we stayed a good 3,5-4 hours! It really was lovely.

26Sep 2019

Dog Photography with the iPhone 11 Pro

26 Sep 2019 0 Dog Permalink

Happy Thursday! Ahhh.. I couldn’t say no. I tried, I really did – then it happened. I had to have the new iPhone Pro 11. Why you may ask? Well, the easy answer is: the camera. Of course I did have a few other reasons, but let’s be honest here: I am a tech freak and proud of it it!

I really do enjoy the new camera though of the iPhone. The number one reason for me to upgrading a phone usually is exactly that: taking good photos. As I love to take snaps of everything, all the time – it only makes sense to have a good camera on hand in your phone rather than carrying around another, large and heavy one.

The iPhone 11 pro has 3 cameras at the back, and one at the front. The three cameras make it easier to shooting lighter photos in a dark environment. It also includes a wide angle lens now, which is super practical when trying to get more background into a photo. Or, when photographing your dog’s head and making it look like there is no body behind it! Ha – check out the below photo! How cute does Luna look here?

This below photo is also taken with the wide lens.

Another improvement is the sharpness of the images. You can go quite close to an object and have the same sharpness you would expect from a good camera (maybe not a pro pro camera, but a good one!). Also, you now have the option to edit your photos right after taking a picture. With the iPhone 11 pro, I can edit the exposure, the brilliance, the highlights, shadows, contrast, brightness, black point, saturation, vibrance, warmth, tint, sharpness, definition, noise reduction, or add a vignette! With all these new features for photo editing, there is almost no more need for fancy filters (even though you do find a range of filters in the app itself). Personally, I still stick to adobe photoshop lightroom and some of the filters I use there that I only have to slightly edit. Yet, I have tried all features of the photos app and with some practice, I can almost achieve the same results!

What do you think of the new iPhone 11 Pro camera? Anyone else that has tested and tried it these days already?

22Sep 2019

Organizing your iPhone Apps

22 Sep 2019 0 Organizational Skills Permalink

Happy Sunday! What a week it’s been again! I was in London Monday till Thursday for business and attended a two-day conference. The flight back and forth was rather calm – I usually sleep the whole flight! I did manage to stay awake though, both times, for roughly 20 minutes. Whilst listening to a podcast, I used the time wisely and decided it’s time to “clean up” and re-organize my iPhone apps.

As you can perfectly see – it was the perfect chaos! I mean I did know where everything was that I always use and need. Yet, I almost pushed this task to another day and with more and more time passing the look of my iPhone really started to bother me. I decided to not only re-organize the apps, but also to delete everything I have not used in a year and what I surely don’t need anymore.

Now, I do have quite a few apps I rarely use, though needed to keep. These are usually business related, and include logins that are needed for certain banks. Those, of course, I had to keep.

I wanted a clean look. I decided that no more than 12 apps should be shown on each iPhone screen, and I did not want more than 3 iPhone screen pages (is that the right word?). The first slide is the apps I use on a regular basis – and those I cannot live without. The second slide of apps I use almost everyday, though not as often. The third slide is all the rest that I don’t use as frequently but need either for business reasons or simply just apps I like having but the usage of is rare.

This was the final outcome:

Slide 1 – as you can see, is now clean and has the most important apps for me
Slide 2 is likewise clean and has important apps I use every few days. Slide 3 has allays that I still use once in a while but not as frequent.

To all those that have not yet organized their iPhone (or I guess same thing goes for Android?), I highly recommend it. Not only is it super satisfying, but also so much more efficient in the daily use.

I have seen some people organize all apps by color. Although I do love the look of it, I did not find it practical. I actually tried it for page one, but really, it made it worse for me to try and find apps. So this solution worked much better for me!