How to start living a happier, greener life.

2012 is almost over, the apocalypse didn’t come (who really expected it anyway?) and yet the 21st of december could be seen as the beginning of a new era. I don’t mean it in a weird, fanatic way, but it was a bit like the 31.12.1999 I think. What I mean is, since people always like to change things with the beginning of a new era in time, why not start changing things now? The mayan calendar thing might be a whole lot of rubbish (after all with the only recently invented leap years, it would be summer 2013 in the mayan calendar by now), but 2013 is really close, so it’s time for a few new year’s resolutions, isn’t it?

I actually changed myself and my life lot throughout 2012. I used to be your average, junk food eating, drug store product consuming, energy wasting young adult who spent way too much time on facebook. Well, not anymore.

I have to admit, I’m a quite lazy person, I’m easily getting into habits and it’s hard for me to change them. So I know how hard it can be to change your lifestyle. It just happened to me that one day I opened my eyes and saw things I hadn’t seen before. I realised that, unlike I used to believe, it does make a difference in the world if I started to care more about it. This world is a wonderful place, it is just us humans who ruin it. I came to believe that nature provides pretty much all we need. I started eating more fruit and veg, I looked at it in a whole new way, it sort of fascinated me. Meanwhile I just can’t eat hamburgers and drink coke anymore. It disgusts me to think about all the nasty things in it. I also said goodbye to a lot of the things in my bathroom.

But well, you have probably realised things need to be changed yourself if you’re still reading this. Maybe you are willing to change, but just don’t know where to start. Well, the good news is, you don’t have to change your life overnight. Changing is a process, and every process takes time. Start simple.

1. Get rid of things you don’t need.

This is optional, but it helped me a lot to get some motivation. Just take a day or two or however much time you need and go through all your things. Clothes, shoes, jewellery, books, cosmetics and whatever things you’re hoarding, I mean EVERYTHING. Get rid of everything you don’t really use or need. Just ask yourself this for every thing you’re not sure about: ‘Would I be sad if the house was on fire and this thing was gone?’ No? Bin it, give it to charity, your friends, family, neighbour, or sell it on eBay. I felt so much better after reducing my belongings. It’s like taking a shower after falling into a puddle of mud with your face down.

2. Stop wasting things!

You’ve probably heard these things a thousand times, whether it was your Mum telling you to close the fridge and not leave the whole house illuminated, or some magazine you read on the tram on a Monday morning while you were still half asleep. These things, especially if your Mum told you, might seem like annoying know-all lectures that make life harder than it is. But if you secretly know you’re wasting too much energy, water et cetera, just think for a minute and ask yourself:

Would it really kill you to…

…use a lid when boiling water in a pot? (Saves a LOT of energy!)

…switch gadgets and lights off when you don’t need them (stand-by mode doesn’t count!)?

…turn the tap off while cleaning your teeth?

…reduce your shower time by 5 minutes? (If you’re one of the people who like to take their time.)

…use reusable shopping bags?

…go to the corner shop by foot or go to work on a bike more often?

…buy paper products (tissues, toilet paper, kitchen roll, …) which are made from recycled paper?

There are so many things, you might feel overwhelmed, but start slowly. Just pick one thing at a time and focus on it. After a while, you’ll get totally used to it and you can start with the next little change.

I am also trying to save paper by using a shopping list app on my phone instead of writing shopping lists every time I go to the grocery store. As much as I doubt modern technology, there are advantages. The app I use is called ‘Simple shopping list’ (Android), but there’s like a million different ones.

3. Care about others!

Especially animals, because they don’t have a human voice. These creatures deserve to live on this planet just as much as we do and they need our protection! I’m eating much less meat by now, but if you’re a carnivore, and vegeterianism or veganism isn’t an option for you, there are other things you can do. When buying hygiene and beauty products, just check the back to see if the company is against animal testing. I used to spend a lot of money on expensive shower gels, shampoos ect. by well-known brands. But the 1£-Sainsbury’s shower gel does it’s job as well and no animals had to suffer for it. As for all the make-up stuff (boys, carry on with with step 4!), I am totally in love with natural cosmetics. Most of them are cruelty-free, they smell nice and you don’t harm your skin with chemicals. The only disadvantage is, they’re indeed quite expensive. As you probably don’t regularly want to spend a fortune on shower gel or other things that you use a lot, two tips for UK people: Products by ‘Original source’ which are vegan and sold by most of the big stores, Sainsbury’s shower gel (available for men and women) and ASDA’s ‘N-Spa’ range, they do amazing lotions and body scrubs as well.

4. Make a change and fight!

Instead of checking your ex-partners facebook profile and getting pissed, because his or her new love  doesn’t look bad at all, try to change the world. Every voice counts. There are lots of petition websites like Avaaz, Greenpeace ect. where you can sign petitions to help save the planet. I assure you, this will leave a more positive feeling than stalking your ex! I actually left facebook, but that is a decision everybody has to make for themselves and I had many different reasons for that decision.

5. Love yourself!

If you don’t do already, start now! Accept yourself the way you are. You’re beautiful in every way. Go your own way, don’t follow trends and the opinions of others, because it’s YOU who lives your life and no one else.

6. Eat healthy.

Ban all the nasties from your diet. Avoid junk food. Appreciate the natural things. When you go grocery shopping, just keep in mind that nature is good. Food industry isn’t. It’s all about capitalism. Eat more fruit and veg. Cook with fresh ingredients. Choose free range eggs. Avoid bright coloured sweets with toxic colouring (check the E-numbers on the back of the package and look below for a link to a list of harmful food colourings!) Have some nuts or dried fruit instead. It will make a difference for your health, body and your life quality.

When it comes to cosmetics, I replaced a lot of crap with greener alternatives. Instead of using aluminium-containing deodorant which isn’t good for your body at all, I’m using herb-based natural deodorant now (‘The Greench’ by Lush cosmetics). I’m not using face wipes anymore to remove my make-up, but organic jojoba oil and reusable cotton pads. The oil moisturizes your skin, which is especially good for dry skin types. You can also use olive oil. For oilier skin types, there are tons of oil-free facial cleansers (based on rosewater for example) and the best thing is, you can easily make them at home. Homemade natural cosmetics are something I have a big soft spot for anyway and there’s already a big folder with recipe links in my bookmarks, so I’m definitely going to make some soon.

I don’t like blogs with highlighted links all over the text, it looks so much like advertising and it can be quite annoying. For that reason, I put some links right here at the bottom, so those of you who are interested can check them out.

Lots of helpful tips on how to live a greener life: http://www.justlivegreener.com

Tons of recipes for homemade cosmetics: http://www.makeyourcosmetics.com/recipes/ag.asp

List of harmful food colourings: http://www.dflock.co.uk/colitis/foods/enumbers.html

Save the world! (Petition websites):

http://avaaz.org/

http://www.wwf.org.uk

http://www.greenaction.de/
Natural cosmetics:

http://www.lush.com

http://www.thebodyshop.com

http://www.burtsbees.co.uk

 

DIY Advent Calendar

I totally love advent calendars, especially when they’re selfmade, so I thought this year I’m going to treat my boyfriend to one. I filled it with little gifts and his favourite sweets and hung it up across a wall.  Here are some pictures, if you like that sort of thing, keep them in mind for next year (yes, I’m late as always, I’m working on that :D) so you can treat your loved ones before christmas! :)

 

 

 

My Top 10 Songs in December

I really love Youtube for giving people the possibility to discover new music. My newly discovered favourites in December are true gems, I think. Taste in music is as individual as every human being themselves, but I do want to share these, because I think all of these musicians have real talent.

The most important things I look for in music are authenticity and uniqueness. There’s gotta be something real and something different about it, musicians gotta be independent and do what they do for the sake of it, not for the money, otherwise the music will suffer from it. Which is a pity if it does, because music has the potential to give us so much…

The Cure – Waiting

Johnette Napolitano – Who’s Holding You Now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j41SXBM0JII (Youtube won’t let me embed it, I highly recommend checking it out on Youtube though!)

Sam Beeton – Storyteller

Rae Morris – Grow

Jose Gonzalez – Crosses

Marika Hackman – You Come Down

Keane – My Shadow

Soley – Pretty Face

Southern – Just Think About It

Kill It Kid – Let My Feet Fall Heavy

Germany Holidays Pt. 2

First of all I wanna wish everyone who reads this a lovely advent time! In order to look back on summer (because being nostalgic doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, and because I am late as always), here is the promised update about my trip to Germany in August along with some nice pictures that almost make me feel the gentle warmth of the late summer sun on my skin.

I didn’t do much during this trip, just took the time to relax, so I’m not gonna write a lot about this and will just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Sunset over the fields…

Kitten ‘Monster’ hiding in a bush.

Ladybirds having a yellow plum feast.

Drinking bubble tea on the riverside.

Looking across the ‘Weser’.

I love campfires.

Campfire food & drink.

Moth resting on a lamp.

A day out in November

And once again the skies turn grey and trees turn into wooden skeletons…

 

 

Germany Holidays Pt.1 – Elephant riding & Hurricane Festival

In June I went to Germany to see my family and I had an amazingly good time and lots of unforgettable experiences. I know it’s been a while and this post is real late, but you might have noticed that I took a break from blogging until about month ago, so I gotta catch up on some things that happened during that break and share them with you. Anyways, here’s some summer feeling for you :)

On my way to Germany, we went through London and had to spend a couple hours in Liverpool Street station. It was quite a long journey, I was tired and cold and I’m not the biggest London fan since it’s just loud and big and hectic, but we were sitting there, early in the morning and read the weather forecast in the newspaper, which foretold three months worth of rain in a week for the UK and we were quite happy to escape.In Germany, we went to a zoo one day where you can actually ride on real elephant’s backs. It was absolutely great. You don’t realise how big they are until you sit on their back and look down. It was a bit scary, because you never know if they spontaneously get sick of carrying stupid humans around, but that zoo has been offering elephant riding since I was a small child and nothing ever happened, so I don’t think these gentle giants would freak out. They actually do have really thick skin as well, thicker than you might think. If you fancy elephant riding, make sure to stop by at ‘Tierpark Preußisch Ströhen’. I enjoyed it a lot.There was also a peacock which crossed our way, it wasn’t even in a cage, and it was really photogenic, striking a pose just for us. Truly beautiful…I loved the Pumas as well, this one just looked so elegant, yet strangly sad. There is something in her eyes that stunned me.This baby Alpaca eventually stole my heart. Such a cute little fella and so fluffy, I thought I was gonna die ;-) Shame you can’t have Alpacas as a pet in your house.

Towards the end of June, we went to Scheessel in Northern Germany, it is a small town near Hamburg and hosts one of the best German music festivals every year, the Hurricane Festival. It was actually my first big festival. I used to attend local free ones every year, but could never see the point in paying unreal amounts of money for seeing two or three musicians I like and just getting stressed out by the insane amounts of people. Well, the 2012 Hurricane Line-up changed my mind. For me, it was definitely the best Line-up I could ever have asked for. My two most loved bands in the world, The Cure and Bat for Lashes, were playing as well as the following I was planning to see: BOY, City & Colour, Ed Sheeran, Madsen, New Order, Noel Gallagher, Rise Against, Selah Sue, The Kooks, The Shins and The XX, just to name a few. When we arrived, Bombay Bicycle Club were playing on the main stage, a great band I hadn’t heard of back then but since that day I’m a huge fan. The Cure also made an amazing festival start for me on Friday evening and although my feet hurt so much from standing there all the way through The XX’s show and throughout the Cure’s two and a half hour set, I enjoyed every second and even managed to get in the front rows :-) Each centimeter closer to a stage with Robert Smith on is a big win!We were quite lucky in terms of the weather, it was all nice and sunny from Friday afternoon until Sunday. We used to walk three kilometres into town every day to buy food supplies and use the bathroom of a small pizza place. The Italian owners were really friendly and let the festival attendants use the bathroom for free. My Saturday’s musical highlight however was Noel Gallagher, without a doubt.City and Colour unfortunately didn’t show up, much to the disappointment of my boyfriend. I still don’t know why, but I’m pretty sure they had a good reason. Saturday was all sunny and warm which had one little disadvantage: When I went to see Rise Against in the evening, I could see the whole crowd disappearing in a huge cloud of dust from miles away. It was getting really hard to breathe, so we went back to our tent after a while.On that Saturday, when we were in town, we had been warned about the rain that should hit us on Sunday morning, so we bought rain ponchos that pretty much looked like bin bags with three holes in and a hood. And the guy was totally right, Sunday morning, when I just crawled out of the tent, it started to rain. We put on our ponchos and walked into town. When we came back, we stood there, awkward creatures in the rain and watched Selah Sue who was pretty amazing and really thankful people were getting soaked just to see her. Later that day the sun came out just in time for gorgeous Natasha Khan a.k.a. Bat for Lashes’ show. She was brilliant as always and even performed some of her new songs. I was standing in the front row, so I had an excellent view and I couldn’t have been much more satisfied.By the time we came back to our tent that afternoon, the steady pouring rain had partly leaked through the ceiling of our tent and it didn’t look like it was going to stop anytime soon. With wet clothes, wet shoes and water dripping down inside the tent, we decided to leave early. I missed New Order and The Kooks that evening, which still bothers me today, and I missed The Shins as wells due to a badly (for me anyways) organised timetable. In the end it was still totally worth the money, though. I had a great time and also bought a smurf hat :-DThe holiday ended way too soon and we had to go back to England, we went by ferry this time and I got a really bad sunburn when I fell asleep on the sundeck. For the good news, I discovered something really tasty though. It is called Cafe Zero and it is a weird frozen iced coffee thing with a slushy consistency. Yum!I also took a pretty cool picture in London at night:That’s it for now, Germany Holidays Pt.2 will follow soon with a nice little story about my trip to Germany in August!

Nottingham shopping haul

Yesterday I went to Nottingham to buy some christmas presents and some warm winter clothes for myself. I was quite stunned when a bubbly girl came up to me and asked me if she could take a picture of my DIY Customised Ankle Boots, cause she really liked them. People asked me where I got them from a couple times that day and it really made my day. Since I got so much positive feedback, I am thinking about making more of them to sell them. I mentioned before that I would like to open an etsy or Dawanda shop… well, it seems not to be as easy as I thought, but I’ll work on that.

For now, I’ll share my shopping haul with you guys. :-)

1. Cosy faux suede / fur lined vintage mittens (New Look – 5,99 £) 2. Jeans shirt with lovely star constellation print (H&M – 19,99 £) 3. Fur lined cosy knitted house socks & knitted fox footlets (Primark – 3,00 £ each) 4. The Cannabis Cookbook* (Bargin Book Time – 3,99 £) 5. CD: Bat for Lashes – The Haunted Man (hmv – 10,00 £) 6. Knitted owl cardigan (Diva – 9,99 £) 7. Owl jumper (Primark – 14,00 £) 8. Faux suede brown leggings (Primark – 6,00 £) 9. Solid natural vanilla perfume (Lush – 6,50 £)

*I am not supporting the usage of drugs in any way and although this book has obviously been written with the idea of using THC-containing plants as a food ingredient, I am not recommending that. Cannabis and hemp, which are two closely related plants have been used by humans for many different purposes for thousands of years. Whereas cannabis contains THC, which is known for its psychedelic effects, hemp is pretty much THC free and I personally simply like the taste of it. Apart from recipes, the book gives a lot of interesting information about the different ways the plants are used in and its history.

DIY One Line A Day Diary

A while ago, I found a pretty cool diary on amazon. It is called ‘One line a day’ and as you can guess, the idea is to just write one line in it each day. It’s got a page for each day of the year and enough space on each page to write down your daily lines for many years. I really liked it, I’ve always been a fan of diaries and journals and all that stuff, but I’m too lazy to write much, so I thought the idea was perfect. Especially, because sometimes I find myself wondering what I was doing on this or that day two, three or five years ago. But as I’m always broke, the diary just ended up on my wishlist, although it’s really not that expensive. Considering the fact that it is something you can use for many years, the price (it was about 15 £, now cheaper however) is really good.

However, I stumpled upon some gorgeous vintage style notebooks at T.K.Maxx a while ago and made my very own ‘one line a day’ diaries.

I think it is perfect for all the lazy diary lovers out there and it should make a pretty cool christmas gift as well. I’m already excited about reading mine again five years from now. :-)

A summer photography collection

Because summer is beautiful and, let’s be honest, even though we’re all in our cosy christmas mood and it’s not all that bad, we can’t wait for next summer, can we?

I definitely miss those long days and warm nights.

All copyright by theatticroom.wordpress.com

Autumn Love

I really love autumn. I think it’s the most beautiful season of the year… the huge range of colours, the rustling of leaves, the feel of the fading sun on your face, the falling leaves as you walk through a forest all snuggled up in warm clothes, hundreds of amazing smells… I always know exactly when summer ends and autumn starts. It’s that day when I step outside the house and just smell it. I’m pretty sure it is my favourite smell.

And because I love autumn so much, I took a few lovely photos at my Dad’s house two weeks ago:

I hope you like them as much as I do and I also hope you have a wonderful time enjoying this great season! :-)