Excitement!

Hi!

Life is pretty stupid and boring like 50% of the time but I would like to focus on the other 50% that makes my insides cheer with excitement and makes a horrible day a little better. Some of those things are happening in the near future and I'd like to express my happiness about them right here and now:

The Amazing Book is not on Fire (Or: TABINOF)
A very exciting book that's almost arriving at my house is The Amazing Book is not on Fire by Dan Howell and Phil Lester. Yes the youtubers. And I know that 99% of the youtubers have a book now, but that doesn't take away my joy that Dan and Phil decided to join in. I've known these two for at least four years now, they've always been there to cheer me up and they're still here, doing new things to make me happy.

To be very honest I have no idea what this book is about, but Dan has said repeatedly that we should just trust them (I do, very much, trust them) and that it is not entirely written in Comic Sans. So that's definitely something to be excited about.

X

Apart from this awesome book that looks really amazing on the outside and will definitely be more amazing on the inside, they are also going on tour. First they go on tour in the UK (ugh why don't I live where things are happening) but they might take it to the rest of the world! In a recent live show Dan mentioned he'd love to come to The Netherlands too, so I'm confident that it will happen. I don't care if I have to go alone, I will go. What will happen on stage is still a huge surprise too, but again: I trust them to make it incredible.

X Look what's part of the set: a plant! 

Check out TABINOF here! Dan's youtube here and Phil's here, in case you didn't know them yet. Also their shared youtube channel where they play games in the most incredibly funny way possible. (I love them)

Marble Sounds
Ohh I am so excited about this one. About five years ago I was just randomly listening to new cool songs on the internet when I came across Marble Sounds, a post-rock band from Belgium. The song I heard first was The Time To Sleep and it is to this day one of my favourite feel-good songs. It's so great to just listen to in any season of the year, to clear my head and de-stress.

The rest of their music came to my attention a few months ago, and the rarest thing ever happened: I liked every single song. Besides their amazing songs, their music videos are really creative and cool too. Check this one out :)

The exciting news is that they're releasing a new album this January!! After their first two albums Nice is Good and Dear Me, Look Up, a new one full of new songs is actually happening. I'm super excited.

There's so much more I'm excited for but I think this should be enough for now :D Let me know what you're excited for!!

love,
Mia

March week 2

So last week the weather was GREAT. Like ‘SUMMER IS ON THE WAY’-great. That gave me a huge boost of energy and creativity. The weather today is less great, but that has given me the opportunity to write down the things that made me happy the past week.

I bought awesome socks. I actually bought them a few weeks ago, but I only started to appreciate them this week. I love them. Look at my socks. My socks are awesome.

I also passed the ice cream section in my supermarket this week and saw that the Ben&Jerry’s were temporarily cheaper than normal. So I had to buy one. Ice cream is my favourite food. I picked up the Vermonster flavour. It has maple syrup, caramelized pecans and a caramel swirl. Oh man. It is THE best ice cream I’ve ever tasted. It melts on your tongue and the caramelized pecans stay behind and are delicious and just hmmmm. So good, trust me. Buy it. Now. I’ve had it every day for the past week.

X

When it starts to feel like spring and summer are very close, I start to feel more colourful. That leads me to two awesome things that have occupied my mind last week: nail polish and The Colours of Madeleine. I love nail polish, but I hadn’t been wearing it a lot over the past months. Now I’m very excited about the colourfulness nail polish gives your outfit, and how much it makes me feel like summer is really very much coming. 

And The Colours of Madeleine. Yessss. I’ve written about Jaclyn Moriarty before, read it here. She’s an Australian author and wrote The Year of Secret Assignments, among other awesome books. She is my all time favourite author. She has started a new trilogy: The Colours of Madeleine. I read the first when I got if for my birthday from my sister: A Corner of White. I fell in love with it on the first page. It was so good. And a few weeks ago part two came out: The Cracks in the Kingdom. I ordered it the second I found out about it. It comes out in The Netherlands on the 25^th of March, so I’ll have to be patient for a few more days. Moriarty has also been writing a few blog posts. She interacts with the people who comment on them, which made me love her even more. She even responded to my (unfortunately anonymous) comment on this post. The way she writes is just so funny and generally happy (fits my blog, you see).

Of course I haven’t been all creative and cool all week. I’ve been watching a LOT of George Gently. I watched the first episode when it was on the Belgian tv and fell in love. I’d seen one episode before, but never really continued watching. Now I just had to. Quick synopsis: a detective series that takes place in the north of England, about a detective chief inspector and a detective sergeant. Solving murders basically.
I am especially in love with John Bacchus. He is a racist, sexist idiot but I love him. His character is so interesting, so real. Lee Ingleby is incredibly good. Gently is of course an essential character, he’s the only reason Bacchus isn’t a super corrupt policeman yet. I love the dynamic between the two, and the historic facts about England 1964 are super educational. They really emphasise the real problems: sexism, racism, homophobia. John is always the problem, but his being wrong gets pointed out. And apart from that it’s just a really good detective series. Would recommend.
I've also watched Penelope yesterday. It has it all: James McAvoy, Simon Woods, Peter Dinklage, awesome outfits, an amazingly decorated bedroom, even Hoppipolla. If you want me to go into detail on this film, let me know. But it was awesome.

Song of the week: My IT’S SUMMER song
Buildings and Mountains by The Republic Tigers

Alright I've been loving a lot this week I see. More next week?

See ya then!
Love,
Mia

What´s in my bag?

I always love to see what others have in their bags. I checked a lot of them out on Flickr and I noticed that everyone has lip balm, a moleskine book and pens. I always have my lipbalm in my pocket with my phone, so they´re not on the picture. This is my bag:

There is:
- My jumbo (supermarket) name thingy and little notebook
- Stuff to write with
- My wallet
- Paper handkerchiefs
- A calculator
- Some cookies
- A receipt
- My diary
- Gloves
- Something to drink
- Moleskine 'Le Petit Prince' special edition
- A notebook without lines
- Above my Moleskine is some liquorice to keep me alive
- A pen
- My keys
- Hand cream
- A little flashlight
- My pink IPod shuffle
- A USB stick
- Deodorant
- Chewing gum
- Medicine
I usually bring a book just to read, but I didn't have it in my bag when I took the picture. Currently I'm reading The Hunger games (part I) for the third time.

It has the autograph of the bass player of The Gentlemen! Super proud of that!

I forgot to put this with the other stuff, but it's a bottle of water.

My sisters bag is of course a lot more interesting than mine!

Especially with her Diana+ camera:

I'd love to see what's in your bags!! Send me pictures and I'll definitely watch them :)

Love, Mia

Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre never really appealed me. I had seen the series a thousand times, but I never really liked it. I think I grew out of that dislike, because when I heard that there was going to be a new film with Mia Wasikowska, I was thrilled! I really wanted to see it so I went to Zwolle with my sister.

The story of Jane Eyre is filled with mystery and excitement. Of course most of all, it´s filled with romance and heartache. Jane is a very clever woman, also a very good woman despite her experiences in the past. I just love Jane, but when I learned that Mia was going to be the leading actress in this film, I couldn´t be happier. I knew Mia from Alice in Wonderland and I thought she was wonderful. She was also a good Jane, but she´s just too beautiful.

The film was just so beautiful. The music, the colours, the images were all amazing. Everything was peaceful. It was really relaxing to watch it. The setting was so beautifully filmed, like you were really there and you could almost feel the wind in your hair.. The dress Jane wore was so beautiful. It was simple, but everything Mia would wear, would look stunning..

I hope everyone will enjoy this film as much as I did. I´ve been listening to the soundtrack suite for weeks now and suddenly I felt the need to read the book. (I know, shame on me for not have read it yet, but I don’t have time for these little joys in life since I’m in the final year of school)

I will definitely read it, and when I have I will tell you how much I loved it.

Love, Mia



My favourite authors

Hello there!

This might be a very boring post: I'm going to talk about my favourite author.
Well, I don't actually think that my favourite author is very boring. If you'd ask me: Who's your favourite author? a few years ago, I'd have replied: 'JK Rowling, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien' (Do you notice that they all have more than one name? It's not J Rowling, but JK. Would I be remembered as MA van den Hoorn? Who knows!) (Anyhow, off topic..)
Now I say:
Jaclyn Moriarty (just one name this time, how original!) (I love the surname: Moriarty) (If you don't know who Moriarty is, check this)
Jaclyn Moriarty is the most amazing authoress I have ever read books of. She wrote a lot of books, mostly about the school Ashbury in Castle Hill (Australia). There's a lot of characters that keep coming back in her books, such as Lydia, Emily, Cassie, Astrid, Toby, etc. It's not very interesting to read these names without knowing who they are.

All the books she's written are:

Feeling Sorry for Celia
Finding Cassie Crazy (or: The Year of Secret Assignments)
The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie
Dreaming of Amelia
The Spellbook of Listen Taylor
I have a Bed made of Buttermilk Pancakes

I've read them all, except the Spelbook of Listen Taylor and I have a bed and so on. I just finished Dreaming of Amelia. It was one of the most amazing books I´ve ever read! I laughed out loud and it got a little scary sometimes! (And note: I do read a lot of books). I love Moriartys books because her characters are so different but still I know them all so well. It's really like they're my friends (that sounds very stupid, but it's also very true)

I even want to buy them all! I've read most of them in Dutch, except Dreaming of Amelia (which I actually bought, the rest I got from the library), but I want to read them in English too. I find that books in their original language are better than translated into Dutch. Especially when they're translated into Dutch. So, I'm going to buy them all :)

You can check her official website or her blog.

Love,

Mia, dreaming of Amelia

PS: My mum just handed me a lovely pink flower. I smelled it and it reminds me that summer is coming. Mixed feelings.

My one and only Thrift-Find

Of course we have a thrift store, but not like the thrift stores you can find in the US or the UK or what other country you live in. We have boring stuff. You have to search really hard to find something you like. A while ago I went to a thrift shop and I found a beautiful book. I love old books with old bindings and beautiful covers. The book that I found is super cool, because it has little drawings inside and the language is old Dutch. It was only 1 euro! Oh, I love thrift stores..! I like to watch vintage-blogs, and American girls find gorgeous dresses and shoes and coats, and all we have is oldfashion stuff (no real vintage), and cups and plates. I just wish I could find the perfect vintage dress with perfect vintage shoes and a perfect vintage purse and a perfect vintage hat..

 

Even Alice loves it :)



Yes, her right eye is blind. It looks really scary and it's painful for her. I've got medicins, but they don't work. We'll have to let her eye taken out...