Christmas 2015

Hello lovelies!
Another Christmas has came and gone and soon we'll say goodbye to 2015 as well (and I'll be correcting the date for another six months from 2015 to 2016). I feel like every year goes by quicker and quicker, someone should seriously get it a speeding ticket already!
I currently have holidays and finally I got some sleep. I wish I could say I was really productive these few days, but honestly I spent days in my pjs watching different Christmas and not Christmas movies (you should definitely watch Mike says goodbye!, a really good movie) and reading, reading a lot. I was fortunate enough to get quite a few books for Christmas (Santa knows me so well haha). I am actually a horrible owner of books, I still have a few from last year that I haven't read yet. I know, know, but it's really hard with everything we have to read for school and it just doesn't feel fair to the book not to devote all my attention to it.
This December was once again packed with exams and I must admit, sadly, that I didn't have much time for fun festive activities. I am one of those people who love Christmas more than anything and I own too many Christmas sweaters (I am still looking for new ones, guilty) and decorations. Not to mention my obsession with gingerbread men which I believe all my friends know for it, judging by the presents I've received this year. I probably love December that much, because I have great memories from my childhood when we didn't have to worry about exams yet.  If I could change anything in our schooling system I would definitely extend Christmas holiday throughout December even if that meant shortening summer holidays. In most of the countries they at least have holidays before Christmas eve while we have to go to school on the 24th of December! I must say I was quite cheerful despite all that, weirdly festive according to my family. Since the 1st of December I've been subconsciously singing Christmas songs and been unusually happy most of the time (I am usually not the most joyful person). I am glad that I've managed to get into the festive spirit unlike most of the people my age that I know.  But thinking about it it is really not as magical as it used to be. For one I now know that Santa isn't real. Imagine if he was? That would be the coolest thing ever! I will definitely try to conceal the truth from my children for as long as possible. Secondly, it may feel this way because of all the videos on you tube showing you tubers having perfectly decorated houses, gorgeous Christmas trees and lots of time for being festive. To be honest those videos also made me more excited for Christmas, so I guess they had double effect. Anyways, I still had a lot of fun with my family and I also got some pretty cool presents. If you want me to write more about our Christmas traditions let me know in the comments. Also let me know if you want me to do a "What I got for Christmas" post, because I'm not sure if anyone's interested and it seems to me a bit like bragging, although I know some people honestly enjoy reading this kind of posts.

Hmm...oh right! I almost forgot to tell you! Tomorrow I am flying with my family to Singapore and then we're going on a cruise visiting places in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Bali. I'm soo excited! I haven't packed everything yet (as usual) and we're leaving tomorrow morning, so it probably won't be the most exciting New year's eve. We'll probably just watch Modern family or Friends, which is in my opinion still a fun thing to do on a last day of the year. Do you have any more exciting plans? Wherever you are, stay safe.

Also, this blog reached more than 1000 views a few days ago! I know this might not be a lot for some bloggers, but It was really exciting for me! Thank you so so much! You are the best! I wish you lots of happiness, health, luck, love, good music, delicious food & unforgettable vacations in new year! See you in 2016!

                                                                      xoxo

Apple cupcakes and halloween chatter

Hello loves. I'm basically drowning in homework and all kinds of assignments, but my blog is not called a scent of stress, right? So let's just skip to fun things. Tomorrow is Halloween! Anyone excited? We actually don't even celebrate Halloween here, we have this holidays called ''Pust'' in February when we dress up in costumes and make doughnuts. The main idea is not scaring people, but chasing away winter and greeting spring. Also, when I say doughnuts, I don't mean American pastry with a hole. I admit the dough is quite similar, but our doughnuts don't have holes and they're just filled with apricot jam and sprinkled on top with sugar. I'll probably write a whole post about it in February, because I think it's too bad that so little people know about our culture.

 Let's go back to Halloween. I'm not a huge fan, but I like the idea of it, pumpkins and spooky atmosphere. Knowing myself I would probably make a huge deal out of it if I lived in USA. The problem is that stores here sell more and more Halloween related things every year and that's actually one of the reasons why I am not so fond of the holiday. I have nothing against American culture, but it's really taking over the world. That's why I didn't make any Halloween treats as planned but instead opted for a more general autumnal dessert: apple cupcakes. If I haven't mentioned it yet (hard to believe haha) I love cupcakes. They are super easy to make and there are so many varieties: from basic vanilla ones to fancy ones with papaya and almonds And there are so many that you can always find a variety that is perfect for the time of the year or holiday. I mean what is more Christmasy than cupcakes with eggnog? Not to mention how creative you can get with decorating them. Sometimes they look so cute that I almost feel bad for eating them. Everyone in my family knows for my love, so they gave me a Cupcakes cookbook a few years ago. I must admit I am getting pretty good at making them and the apple ones turned out great as well (I have to trust my family on that haha). I'll show you some pictures, so you can see for yourself.

What I did do ''for Halloween'' is that I borrowed Nightmare before Christmas in the library. I know, how come I haven't seen it before? Let's just say my family isn't a big fan of Tim Burton. To be honest I was pleasantly surprised as well: it's a really lovely movie, great songs and a nice ending, quite expected, but also not too cheesy. A true Halloween classic for sure (or Christmas, I won't get into that). Do you have any special plans?  Have a faBOOlous Halloween!
                                                          xoxo

All the other ports from our North Europe cruise

Hello lovelies! This is I believe my last blog post about our cruise vacation. The whole cruise went by so quickly, but that is usual for when you're having a good time. We definitely did! I've seen just enough of Scotland and Norway to be determined that I'll come back as soon as possible. I don't want to post lots of posts about it, because I'm very late with this and I honestly just want to show you the photos, so you can fall in love with all the places as well. I will however briefly describe what we did each day.

After Shetland islands our ship sailed towards the continent and our next port of call Portree. The next day as we arrived we were pleasantly surprised with the lovely weather outside. After a cold and windy Norway we finally had a sunny and very warm day. Again we weren't sure whether to visit Glasgow or Stirling castle which was an hour drive away while we were already looking for a taxi. We were lucky to get a very friendly cab driver who was happy to chat throughout the drive to the castle (I found out all about Scottish school system, politics, food,  basically he was almost like a tour guide). The castle was situated on a hill and a cobbled narrow street led to it so you can imagine just how scenic the view was. The castle itself was glorious and I could almost see all the battles that It survived and countless banquets held in the Great Hall.  It is one of the largest and historically most important castles in Scotland. I won't bore you with history right now, but this is worth mentioning: just about two miles south of the castle lays the battlefield of the Battle of the Stirling bridge of the First War of Scottish Independence where the forces of Andrew Moray and William Wallace defeated the combined English forces of John se Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey, and Hugh de Cressingham on the River Forth. Some of the names might sound familiar to you from History class. Sadly we didn't have time to visit it as we hardly had enough time to even see the whole castle. Of course we returned to the ship for lunch and after it we decided to go around Portree a bit. We only had an hour till the ship departure so we practically ran around asking for the directions for the nearest bookshop. Yes, I admit that was my idea haha... I believe I've already read all the English books in our libraries that I like as well as translated ones, so I'm always on a haunt for new books. Since there are so many awesome English books that you can't get in my country, I prefer buying them while on vacation than ordering on eBay as it's much cheaper.

Our next port of call, Invergorden was the most disastrous one. Again we had warm sun shinning and beautiful landscape surrounding us, so what could possibly go wrong? Everything. First of all we had to wait for our rented car for additional half an hour as they'd forgotten to bring enough to the port. We had a perfect plan to visit most of the attractions in the area: Loch Ness, Cawdor castle and than Dalmore whiskey distillery. We only wanted to get a photo of Loch Ness, so we asked a seller in a souvenirs shop where we could do that and she gave us directions for the best photographing location. Unfortunately we ended up on the main parking place for the Loch Ness and we should had payed 30£ if we wanted to get anywhere near the lake, as the price also included the Urquhart castle and lots of exhibitions. We of course didn't have time for all that, so we just drove away and stopped beside the road, took a few pictures of the lake (they turned out quiet okay) and drove towards our next stop Cawdor Castle. We lost a lot of time with the Loch Ness inconvenience so we arrived to the castle just at time for lunch. There were no restaurants around, so we had to eat in the castle which didn't have a lot of dishes to choose from, so I ended up eating ham from sandwiches and boiled potatoes. I was really looking forward to trying some of the typical Scottish dishes, so this really didn't help with my mood. After lunch we basically ran through the castle as we had to be at the distillery at 3pm which was one hour drive away from the castle. I was really sad, because the castle was the most romantic castle I've ever seen and we also had to completely skip the gorgeous gardens. Fortunately we arrived to distillery on time and it did look very interesting. It was however very quiet and after we payed for the tour and actually entered it we found out why: the distillery is closed for two weeks every summer so they can repair and clean everything. Apparently nobody felt a need to mention it before we payed for the tour. If you think that a distillery tour is boring then think about a distillery tour where nothing is happening, seriously worse than a Maths class. Just as we got to the (at least for my parents) interesting part of trying the whiskey in different stages of maturation we remembered that there was a show with Scottish dancers and pipes on our ship at 4pm so we immediately left. As you can probably guess the show wasn't anything special, so we really ruined our whole Inverness experience. Lesson of the day: if you have limited time for sightseeing, choose one attraction and see it properly instead of seeing a little of everything. It's very stressful and unsatisfying and you can always come back and see everything else.

Next we headed towards Queensferry, port of call for Edinburgh. I was soo excited for the capital of Scotland, because (it may sound weird) we have this text in our English Students Book about it and it sounded so mysterious and spooky with cobbled and narrow streets when we were working on the text in school, basically wonderful. I was very happy as we had a whole day (our ship departured at 10pm) for exploring it. Of course we couldn't have a perfect fun day, oh no, we had to wait till 11:30am to get to the shore as it was very windy and too dangerous for our tenders. The atmosphere however was perfect. When we finally got to the Edinburgh with a shuttle bus it was already time for lunch, which is no surprise, I mean I have to eat every two to three hours. We found a very nice restaurant with typical Scottish food and it was delicious. I even tried a bit of haggis which tasted surprisingly good (I'm not a big fan of liver). After a warm brownie with vanilla cream and apple crumble we headed towards the Edinburgh castle. The nearer that we got to it the more crowded it got. We knew it would take the rest of afternoon just to see the whole castle, so we decided to go down the Royal Mile instead and visit all the souvenir shops. The sun peeked out from the clouds, so we had a really lovely time strolling down the cobbled streets and admiring beautiful architecture. As predicted we ended up in a bookstore again. While browsing through books time really goes by quickly and soon it was five o'clock in the afternoon. I really wanted to see more of Edinburgh, but my dad and brother didn't want to miss the international food night for the 4th of July with stalls with food from different parts of the world. I must admit I've never had so much different food to choose from, so I was glad that we haven't missed it. I can always come back to Edinburgh later on in life (I definitely plan to!). 

Our last destination was Port of Tyne, near Newcastle, UK. I must admit I was  quiet hyped about it, because I love UK and  we were also planning on visiting Alnwick castle where a few scenes of Harry Potter were filmed (fellow potterhead right here). My mum had booked a car rental as it takes approximately an hour to get to it from the port. It was really hard for me, because we could pick the car not sooner than 10:30am & I wanted to spend as much time as possible in our last port. Finally we got the car and header towards the castle. We reached it at around 12pm and because we had to be back at the car rental branch till 3:30pm,  we decided to see only the castle and not the gardens as well. The castle is huge and I loved all the furniture and pieces of art. It was a bit different as a family actually still lives there, so we could see photos of their children and some of their personal items. I can only imagine how cool would be living in a castle like that. After lunch I convinced my mum to find a Superdrug store, because I love you tuber and blogger Zoella and I really wanted to buy some of her products. Unfortunately we found out that the new collection was scheduled to launch one day after our departure and they were also out of stock of the original products. I was quiet disappointed, because my parents won' let me order her products online and I don't think we'll visit the UK anytime soon. Nevertheless it was a very enjoyable day even though I was very sad to leave Britain.

The last day was at sea and from the morning till the dinner I was going straight from one activity to another, learning everything from Windows 10 to how to make salmon burgers. You can never be bored on a ship, trust me. They also held a High Dutch and Thailand tea in the main dinning room with lots of cute little desserts which tasted equally good.

 Overall they had very delicious and diverse food on the ship. The staff was very friendly  as well and they practically did everything that we asked them to. They even bought apple vinegar as I told them I couldn't use the balsamic one. As there were mostly old people on the ship me and my brother stood out, so everyone knew us by name, which was pretty cool as well. It was one of the best vacations and I can't wait to visit the North Europe again. Despite the cold weather I still prefer the north than the south especially because of its gorgeous landscape. And what do you prefer: the north or the south? Once again I apologise for posting this late, but it took me quiet some time to find all the photos. I hope that you still enjoyed the post. Lots of love.
                                                                              xoxo

My first day of sophomore year

I got this idea while trying to fall asleep yesterday (I get the best ideas when I am about to doze off. Maybe that's why It takes me so long to fall asleep? Hm....)  to write this post like something that I would write in my diary. Tomorrow on the first of September I am starting a new school year and I thought I'd be fun to share my feelings with you. Just an excuse for me to have a whole post to ramble on to be completely fair with you. 

It's the last day of holidays for me.  I honestly have no idea where the summer have gone. I mean just  a few days ago I was saying good bye to all my classmates (trust me, it was a happy kind of good bye) and thinking how I have more than TWO MONTHS to completely forget about school and only have fun written all over my calendar.  But let's be real, I've been dreading September since the middle of July and it have only got worse every day. So now I'm here all prepared with new notebooks and a carefully chosen outfit for tomorrow (I've only spent like two hours thinking about that). I feel really hyped and I have no idea if that's stress or excitement. There, I said it. I think there is a small, very small part of me that is actually looking forward to a new school year. That's been really bothering me, because all my friends and my brother are basically crying over the fact that we're going back to and I really do consider them normal. The thing is that school definitely brings more bad things than good, just thinking about all the stress, people staring at you in the halls, forced socialising because you don't want to be a class freak, zero hours of free time and countless hours of studying makes want to crawl under my sheets and never come out. On the other hand I just can't stop thinking about how much I want to learn new things and give my brain something else beside pondering what to eat for lunch. As a quite organised person I also kind of like the routine that comes with school and all the schedules I make up in my mind (though my other family members probably don't agree with me). No more hours passing without me doing anything worth mentioning if I want to pass the year, but also no more hours of watching my favourite you tubers or searching for new music artists. Do you see what I mean? All my excitement will probably disappear tomorrow morning at 6am when I'll have to wake up for school, but I'll try to stay positive about the whole thing. I mean in the end you're the only who can decide whether you're happy or unhappy in life and I'm really trying to have a better approach to all the obstacles that get in my way. We'll see if I'll be so upbeat tomorrow when I come home. Till then adios amigos!

I survived. But it was hard, very hard. It's just the first day of school and I already want to stay in my bed for the rest of the school year. To think I was excited! Ha, definitely not anymore. Even the most positive people would lose their motivation after two hours of listening to our Maths teacher telling us how sophomore year is the hardest of all years, because we'll be learning completely new things. He also said that that's the year when hormones strike. Well thank you, that's really a great way to make students feel confident about the new school year. But it wasn't just our Maths teacher, it was getting worse with every teacher. They just kept on telling us how we'll have the hardest subject matter this year. Chemistry, Physique, Maths...my favourite subjects (note the sarcasm). I was surprised that we didn't get loads of homework on the first day already, because it seems like we'll have an additional month of school if they want us to learn that much. You may think that I was happy to see my fellow classmates? Um, to be honest I've been hanging out with the ones I actually get along with in the summer as well and I really didn't miss the others that much. Not to mention all the other students in our school. If you don't know yet, I really really don't like crowded places which is basically a definition for a high school. Everyone is taller or at least looking older, so I feel like a twelve years old kid among all this confident cool teenagers. I mean walking in the school halls you see so many different fashion styles and everyone looks fabulous. And than there's me, in plain jeans and a sweater, carrying an embarrassingly big school bag, feeling like a mule. I really want to try some new styles, but firstly I am not confident enough and secondly I would have to throw away most of my clothes. Yeah, my taste in clothes changes a lot, you can read all about my not so fabulous style struggle here. I'm going shopping tomorrow and I might buy something different. I hope I don't change my mind till then...that would be totally me. So this have changed into a complete diary post very quickly...I have to stop before I start telling you about what I ate today heh. The point is that I'm the opposite of happy to be back in school right now and I don't think I'll change my mind anytime soon.

So I wrote this a few days ago. Since then a lot have happened and I definitely still have a lot to say about school ands school related matters, but I'll leave that for another blog post, of course if you'd even like to read more about school? I totally understand if you're sick of it already. I really do hope however that your first day wasn't as bad and that you're excited for the new school year. Good luck and talk to you soon!
                                                                     xoxo