45 things you (probably) don't know about me

45 things you (probably) don't know about me

1. I had a black rabbit named Snoopie as a kid. I would take her with me every holiday and walk around the campsite with her on a lease

2. I used to be (and still kind of am) terrified of doing a forward roll (let alone a backward one!)

3. Someone once seriously asked me if my natural hair colour is pink

4. I'm naturally a red head

5. My hands and feet are ALWAYS cold

6. When I go out for lunch and they have tuna sandwiches, that's what I'll order. It's my mission to try every tuna sandwich there is.

7. I used to hate pink until about 3 years ago

8. Same counts for Hello Kitty

9. I basically eat anything, except for liver

10. I used to take horse riding lessons until one day I got kicked in the shin. I really want to ride again though.

11. I've never watched The Godfather and I'm too ashamed to tell anyone

12. As a kid I once stole a single earring with a (fake) diamond on it from a store. I felt so badass

13. I used to win a lot of colouring contests

14. So far my career choices have been: veterinarian, 'something with horses', writer, tattoo artist and illustrator.

15. I used to play piano, but I never got really good at it

16. I can't work with a mac. I tried countless of times, but it's just not happening. PC forever.

17. When we went on holiday to the Caribbean I got my entire hair braided and it hurt SO BAD. Both getting it done and taking it out.

18. I can't (under)stand people who 'aren't dessert people'

19. I also can't stand people who don't finish their plate or eat very slow

20. When I was about 10 years old I won a book writing + illustrating contest with a story about a dog that dies of cancer and leaves behind a sad little puppy. I still don't know how I ever came up with that story.

21. I can't go a day without eating bread

22. I love doing the dishes

23. When people tell me they don't like to eat a specific something, I take that as a challenge. Like, I will 'hide' the disliked ingredient in the dish, or make something vegetarian for a meat lover and not tell them there's no meat in it. Usually people love what I cooked them and I take a lot of joy telling them my secret afterwards :P

24. I liked the world better when it didn't have smartphones

25. I'm pretty shy, but when I have to act out something or someone I go all out!

26. My favorite alcoholic drink is a dirty Somersby, which is apple cider with blueberry vodka

27. I used to be a horrible nail biter (so bad that it made people cringe), until one day, I just stopped. Now I can't imagine doing it anymore

28. The year I turned 11, I was extremely upset when I didn't receive a letter of acceptance from Hogwarts.
29. I used to write fanfiction about Frank and Gerard from My Chemical Romance

30. I talk (and apparently also giggle?) in my sleep. I can also get pretty violent (kick or slap you in the face :P)

31. I grew up on an island

32. My favorite Disney movie is Beauty and the Beast

33. I know how to do Reiki. When I was young I had some classes and I kept doing it a little bit ever since. I like to believe it really does work, if even just a little bit.

34. I'm already an aunt 7 times!

35. When I was in middle school people teased me by calling me a lighthouse (since I was so much taller than everyone else and had red hair) and I remember it used to really upset me.

36. The only part of my body I've ever broken is my arm. By falling off of my bike (oh Dutch people and their bicycles..)

37. I only own 3 pairs of socks

38. and only one pair of pants

39. I've never had a nickname. It's always been just Sarah (or Saar for my Dutch family and friends)

40. 90% of the books I read are from the 'young adult' section

41. I have Restless Legs Syndrome

42. I have the greatest fear of 'bumping' into a jellyfish whenever I go swimming in the sea. Sometimes I'm brave and go in anyway, but usually... no.

43. I apologize to everything I run into. Chairs, cats, plants.. everything.

44. If the shower sucks, I am not a happy person

45. I am actually a ninja.

picture sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

I Will Love You

Today, all I want to share with you all is this beautiful piece of writing by one of my all time favourite authors: Lemony Snicket. The last part made me tear up a little bit.♥

Always. Continuously. With increasing apprehension, and decreasing hope.

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

- The Full “I Will Love You.” Letter. The Beatrice Letters, Lemony Snicket

Current Loves: Spring is Here! ♥

Avocado toast ♥ Playing pool for the first time ♥ Finishing all of MTV'S The Challenge seasons AND starting the new season: Free Agents! ♥ Finally receiving the photoalbum I made with pictures of the boyfriend and I and our wild adventures during the holidays ♥ Blue frootloops ♥ starting a new blogilates calendar ♥ Dove Purely Pampering Pistachio cream with Magnolia body wash ♥ Watching a new Shameless episode under a soft pink blanket + eating ice cream ♥ Yummy salad for lunch ♥ Painting and/or drawing something everyday ♥ Starting to use Instagram again ♥ Going for walks around the neighbourhood without having to wear a coat ♥ Frozen Yogurt at nomnom's! Cake batter with nuts + Reese's pieces ♥ morning cuddles ♥ hanging out with friends ♥ getting tickets for concerts and festivals! ♥ the fact that it's Friday!

Art Post: Bioshock Tattoo

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm currently working on a Bioshock tattoo design. My boyfriend is a huge fan of the game and wants to get a full sleeve, so he challenged me to come up with a design! I have no idea if it's going to work out since I'm not very experienced when it comes to tattoo design, but it gives me a nice project to work on and also gives me a good reason to dive into this game and get to know its fascinating story, characters and artwork!

I don't know if anyone is interested, but I thought it would be nice to show you guys a bit of my process so far since it's been a while since I did art posts like this.

Moodboard

This is a statue from the Songbird. I helped my boyfriend get it as a graduation gift as he'd been obsessing over it for weeks. Especially after we randomly stumbled across TWO of them at a videogame store (they're pretty hard to get by at a reasonable price)! It's really cool and really well made. I hope we can start an awesome collection of figures like this!

I'm trying to read up on it as much as I can (since I'm not a gamer playing the game would take me forever), so I also started reading the book! 

Always with a nice cup of tea of course :)

The first stage is just a lot of research and sketching, getting familair with the characters and various objects from the game and getting to know their meaning. 

It's a lot of fun to me because everything is so creative and interesting and I keep finding out new things!

Listening to the soundtrack for more inspiration :) and cool artwork on the side of the statue's box.

This is a sketch of what I'd like the top half to look like, but I'm gonna need to do A LOT more test sketches to piece everything together nicely. I'm a little stuck right now to be honest, so I'm just working on other small projects and will get back to it again in a few days. It's going to take a lot more work, but I'm excited!

Is anyone familair with Bioshock? What are your favorite things about it?

Online Loves: weddings & skulls ♥

Just a few of my favorite things I stumbled across online the past few days...

♥ This girlie grunge skull necklace by Betsey Johnson - *drool*

♥ This wedding at Voodoo Doughnut - so cute and such lovely pictures!

♥ This beautiful video by Honey Maid - I'll admit.. it made me tear up a little bit.

♥ This gorgeous owl tattoo by Annie Frenzel - the glasses, the hearts, the pink! So unique.

♥ This wedding cake by Black Cherry Cake Company - check out their awesome website!

♥ This cover by Alkaline Trio of The Cure's Cut Here - Can't wait to see them again in June!!!

Review: Joico Color Intensity PINK hairdye

Since the place where I usually buy my pink Stargazer hairdye isn't around the corner anymore, I thought this would be a nice opportunity to try some other brands! I got this dye at the so called 'The Beauty Supply Centre', a place where you can buy professional/salon hairproducts. They had this Joico Color Intensity PINK creme hairdye, which I had never seen or heard of before and looked pretty interesting. For around $14 CAD I got this 118 ml tube. Let's see how it works for me shall we...

What I always do is I dilute my pink dye with conditioner because:
     1. it'll last me longer (and since I touch up my hair once a week that saves me a lot of money) and
     2. because the color on itself is usually way too dark and
     3. because one tube/bottle of the hairdye itself usually isn't even enough to dye my whole head of hair
So I did the same thing as usual: I dumped a lot of cheap conditioner in a tub and added a small squeeze of dye. which is usually enough. With this dye I only got a really pale pink though, which is pretty but not the kind of pink I wanted to go for. So I added more... and more.. and more... until I used over half of the tube and decided to stop before I would use it all up in one go. (you always want the mixture to be a bit darker than the colour you're going for)

Then I applied to mixture all over my hair and covered it with a showercap and left it on for about one hour. What I did notice was that it didn't stain my skin as bad as my usual dye, but I actually don't consider that to be a good thing because to me it feels like then the color won't stick to my hair as well either.

Eventually I rinsed my hair with luke warm water, let it air dry and styled it as usual with some moroccan oil and a straightener + heat protecting spray. And this is the finished result! Left in natural light, right with the light from our regular lamps.

It basically gave me the same result as my usual Stargazer dye, I just needed a lot more pink dye to get the color I wanted. I simply don't feel like spending $14 every other week. I don't know what it will look like after one wash, but I feel it will fade just as much as the Stargazer dye (which means touching it up every week if you want to keep it vibrant). Maybe if you just want some strands of pink hair this product is great, but other than that I wouldn't recommend it.

For next time I'm actually planning on ordering Jerome Russel Punky Colour in Flamingo Pink, since I was very impressed with the turquoise I had a few years ago (and it's only $9.39 on Amazon!). I'll do a review on that as well when I do :)

*Thursday Wisdom*

Just a little wisdom for this Thursday... I think it's such a beautiful quote. It might just be my all time favorite!

Hope you'll have a lovely day ♥

My Spring To-Do List!

We've had two sunny, above zero degrees celcius days in a row! Hooray! It instantly put me in an even better mood and motivates me to do things. So I hereby present you...

My spring to-do-list:

Things I want to do: start doing yoga, eat lots of fruit, buy/grow spring flowers, find the perfect spring tea, go out for drinks and/or ice cream and hang out outside, swing on a swing, go for walks (preferably hand in hand :) ), start running again, practice pin-up style hair updo's for the opcoming hot weather, clean out my bookmarks/back-up computer/etc.

My wishlist: a cute off the shoulder dress, hair flowers, a (pink) camera, lipstick and a nice new perfume that's perfect for warmer weather (any recommendations?)

Clothes/accessories I can't wait to dig out of my closet again: my light leopard print coat, high waisted jean shorts, magenta ballet flats, pink heart shaped sunnies, my hot pink Hello Kitty Loungefly purse, knee high socks (without tights underneath, finally!) 

Books I want to read: The Art of the Teese by Dita von Teese and anything else that is easy to read. Do you know any books I MUST read?

Some things I want to cook: lots of quinoa salad, homemade pizza with lots of fresh toppings (peppers, arugula, tomatoes nomnomnom), Orange Creamsicle French Toast 

On my to-bake list for this spring are: oatmeal lemon creme bars (probably will make these for easter! They're a big hit every time I make them), strawberry cheesecake, Coca-Cola Cupcakes with Salted Peanut Butter Frosting 

What I'll drink: lemon/mint/cucumber water, floral green tea, fresh mint tea, Blogilates Detox water for Craving Control and Beautiful Skin & iced green tea!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Now pleasepleaseplease don't let there be any more snow...