As some of you may have noticed, my last blog-entry is written in German. As much as I love English and as useful as it is, sometimes it is just easier to write in my mother tongue. One half of me feels like it should be ashamed of itself, having studied English and having spent quite some time in England, I should really not make a fuss about it and just get it done and the other half tells me “It is your blog, you write it for your pleasure, so if German is easier for you then write it in German”.

Considering the internet and it’s multicultural and international dimensions, which I love so dearly about it, I really should write in English. Plus, it helps me to improve my vocabulary.

Germany, or at least the part of it where I come from, the Rheinland, is famous for it’s carnival. It’s a pity that carnival here means 3 ° and rain, but then again it was traditionally celebrated to drive winter out of town and welcome spring, so I guess celebrating it in the middle of July wouldn’t make much sense. Everyone puts on a costume, usually drinks a lot of alcohol and – after a while – loves everyone around them. The music is horrible (carnival Volksmusik, horrible, I tell you) but I love the costume part. All my life I have loved to dress up as a different character, I have been fascinated by fashion (especially fashion of past eras) and –for a few years now – make up. Although I do not wear much make up in my everyday life ( I guess I am just too lazy), I love what you can do with make up skills. You can turn a man into a woman, make a slim person fat and the other way round. Hollywood shows us every single day. Thanks to the treasure of the world wide web you can find make up-tutorials of any kind online, whether you want to look like a Victorian gentleman or Frank’ n ’Furter. My favourite make-up artists on youtube are the two sisters of pixiwoo. Check out their channel, it is amazing what they can do with a brush and some paint:

http://www.youtube.com/user/pixiwoo

I found them when I was googling how to be the best Amy Winehouse I could become. (It was my costume for a Christmas party at work. Unfortunately I was not the only one, I think there were 3 or 4 of us. But I definitely wore the best make up ;-) And tattoos! (You could actually get the original Amy-tattoos as stickers)) Until now youtube has helped me with many of my costumes. The zombie-look can be so easy, e.g. Or 20s make up. Mr. Schön and me, we like to host parties and we like to host motto-parties (I know, a lot of people hate motto parties, but we never heard any complaints. And we would let people enter without costumes, but our friends are amazing dressers, when it comes to costumes. Maybe that is the influence of carnival…) For one of our birthday parties (we celebrated the 60^th, cause together we were 60) we decides to have a 20s party. I had seen a wall of great pictures from the 20s in a café I liked and I wanted to have one wall like that myself, but with my friends looking as if they were in the 20s. Does that description make any sense? Anyhow, we had a great party. Due to the idea of a photo-wall I wanted everyone to look as genuine as possible and was prepared with make up, stolas, whigs, etc. But the costumes were amazing, one looked more stunning than the other, I loved all their looks!

 When I look at those pictures today I am more and more impressed at what my friends can pull off. They all look gorgeous and I think we should definitely rethink our current fashion style. Maybe it is time that flapper-dresses and dark and heavy eyelids come back. (Truth be told, I really think that gloves should have a comeback, they make every outfit all the more elegant. Plus, most of us have icy hands all the time anyway, don't we? But who am I kidding, I am not even wearing gloves myself, although I think I should. Will try it in the future.)

Although our birthdays are in October and November, we still haven’t celebrated the last ones and might do that in summer, as we have a big balcony which is of not much use in winter (aside from some sad smokers standing outside in the rain). I thought of different options for a motto: either Mad Men, so 60s. 50s. Villains. (did that once, great party) or just characters from film or television. Mmmh…. I haven’t decided yet, but I will surely show you how the costumes turned out this time.