Snow Days!

The first snowfall finally came!! We actually got a day off from school because of it! It was so much fun and I loved it.

I woke up, ran to my window, started screaming like a little girl, and sprinted down the stairs when I saw the snow. I annoyed my Mom and brothers so much by doing that but I honestly didn't care! Winter is probably my favorite season because you get stay all warm, drink tea, hot chocolate, and spend quality time with your family which beats everything really.

So after I was done getting excited like a little kindergartener I went and listened to music for a good 2 hours. Then I ate lunch and shoveled the snow. When we finished shoveling we had a snowball fight which ended with a nice cup of hot chocolate!

Then I did my homework like a good girl, made some Christmas cookies and went to bed. It was a very satisfying day. Sometimes you need days like those once in a while.

This was the snow after Church on Sunday

At the end of the day on Tuesday. The scenery looked so beautiful from my backyard I had to take a picture. This still doesn't show how pretty it looked. I honestly stood there for 5 minutes just staring.

My brothers, I guess I love them... :)

My Crazy Adventures (Part 2)

So this is my Chicago Trip for Thanksgiving Part 2

The first thing I did after the party was go home and go straight to bed. (I got home at 3 in the morning... shhh!) Then I woke up early the next day (I can't sleep in past 10 and even that's late for me, I'm just weird like that) and my younger cousins were downstairs so I decided that we had to take a girls picture which we did.

She loves her Winnie the Pooh. I have the cutest cousins ever :) 

The older one is 2 and half while the baby is 6 months old.

Afterwards I went to my other cousins house and we had a nerf gun fight and played some rock band. I am probably the worst singer on the planet!! It's okay though, I had fun anyway.

We also played monopoly and apples to apples where my little cousin (She's 7) and I were a team- we did pretty well in apples to apples but unfortunately we didn't win.

Then on Saturday I went to some more cousins house where I played "house" and I was the "older sister" and my "mom" was my little 4 year old cousin (she's my twin because she also has hearing aids, which I helped her put on!!) and my "sister" was my 9 year old cousin. After about an two hours I had enough and we made flowers pens with duct tape. Then I went to hang out with my older cousins who are 18 and 25. (The 18yr old is in the cousin picture with me in my last post.)

I was having so much fun I forgot to take pictures :(

That night I went to my best friends house where I saw my 2 best friends and our hangout ended up looking something like this...

This is the most normal picture we took all night... And yes I am wearing 2 hats.

My friend does gymnastics so I put on her leotard as a bib (Don't ask why)

I think I look sexy but that's just me :)

My friend made me the Avatar (They had a bit too much fun with my makeup)

I also got to eat the famous Chicago style pizza while I was there which was amazing as always.

Pretty soon it was time to leave my first home and go back to where I actually lived. On the car ride home I got bored so I started taking pictures.

It's after Thanksgiving so it's officially okay to have this blanket! 

(And listen to Christmas Music, YAY!!!!)

So now I'm back at school and looking forward to my next big trip (Going skiing in Colorado for Christmas!) and the next time I get to go back home (January!)

BTW skiing is my favorite sport so it'll be intense.

My Crazy Adventures (Part 1)

I have been soooooo unbelievably busy recently so this post is going to be split into 2 parts. I'll start with things that happened 2 weekends ago and work my way forward.

So there was another great big party for the Croatians and this time the Canadians from Oakville came and partyed with us which was very exciting. I wasn't taking as many picture at this event as I should have but I did manage to grab a picture with my NYC friends and my new Canadian Friends.

It was very fun and we played the accent game where I found out that Canadians say "eh" quite a bit at the end of their sentences. Apparently I draw out the 'a' sound a lot when a word contains the letter 'a'. It made for a very interesting conversation I can tell you that!

After that nothing exciting really happened until Thanksgiving came around and my family I drove out to Chicago to visit our family and friends. It was really nice to see everybody and it was weird to see my friends because they looked so much older and more mature than the last time I saw them.

So I had Turkey day without eating any Turkey (shame on me right!!) but instead of Turkey I had a schnitzel that contained chicken on the outside that was wrapped around ham and cheese inside. I call them zagrebački šnicle. It is on my list of favorite dishes. It kinda would have looked weird if I took pictures of my food at someone else's house so of course that means you'll just have to look look it up and what all the fuss is about and fall in love!!

That night we went to my other aunt's (I call her teta) house and ate some more (dessert's this time- my all time favorite Thanksgiving dessert is Pumpkin Pie.)

Then we picked out Secret Cousins and all the older kids got to go to the Thanksgiving Mladež or social at the Chicago Croatian Church. There I saw all of my Chicago Croatian friends. (I took a couple more pictures here!)

I really missed these girls!

My older cousin Ivana

The 'triplets' (another story for another day) but they're also my cousins.

I hope you enjoyed this post- it feels good to be writing them again! Tomorrow I'll show you the second half of my trip where I hung out with more of my cousins and took some pretty stupid/crazy pictures with some of my other best friends I left behind in Chicago.

Artsy Things

Hey Guys! I thought it would be cool to share what I've been doing recently and what I've taken up.

I participate in my schools Art Club and I wanted to show you some stuff that I have finished or currently am working on.

I did a zentangle of my hand and this is how it came out looking. (I'm pretty proud of it!)

You can't see this one as well, but I just started making a portrait of Emma Waston.

I also decided that I wanted to learn to become ambidextrous (able to write with both hands) and that should be exciting!!! Basically I got the idea from my English class because ambidextrous was one of my vocabulary words and I thought it would be a cool experiment. I'll see how that turns out and show you guys how bad my handwriting looks once I start.

*Just a Heads Up*
I have some very exciting things going on this weekend that I will blog about soon!!!! :)

SIG Soccer Game

Hey Guys! The first quarter in school finally ended so hopefully I'll have time to blog more often!

Anyways, yesterday I went to my Dad's company soccer game, which he played...
It was over thirties vs. under thirties and it was hilarious to watch!!! I'm guessing you know which team my dad played for (*Hint- he's over 30!)

But yeah, I took some pictures and here's what it looked like.
Most of my good photos got deleted- I'm not even going to go into that story but here's what I have left

Blue Shirts are Under 30 and Black Shirts are Over 30

My Cool (Wink-Wink) Dad taking a well needed break

I had a pretty good weekend and I have some fun things going this week that I'm excited to share with you so stay posted!

Nutella Topping

I'm not quite sure if I invented something or not... Either way I love it and I'm going to be eating it for a long time! Meet man's best creation:

*drum roll please*

the Nutella topping!

I honestly love Nutella, It tastes oh so good with everything and anything. I now have another reason that I love it- read below you chocolate lover!!

It's creamy, melted, chocolatey goodness, and i'm going to tell you how to make it.

You Will Need:
Ice Cream of Choice (I used Turkey Hill's Cookies and Cream) OR
Anything that you would want to put molten Nutella on
Nutella
Microwave Safe Bowl

Step 1: To start you're going to want to spoon out 2 spoonfuls of Nutella into the microwave safe bowl. (Depending on how much ice cream you have this can vary- I had a big bowl so you may want a little less.)

Step 2: Put in the microwave for 35 seconds. Make sure your Nutella doesn't get soupy.

I sort of forgot to take a picture of this part so here's the bowl after I poured it onto my ice cream.

Step 3: While you are waiting for your Nutella to be done in the microwave spoon out as much ice cream as you want into a bowl OR get your dessert ready.

Step 4: Slowly pour the Nutella over your ice cream/dessert. As you pour it over it should thicken a bit as the ice cream is quite cold.

Step 5: Watch TV, relax, and enjoy!

Please don't get mad a me! I know that ice cream is out of season but you know, I still had some in my fridge and I couldn't let it sit there...

Locks of Love Foundation

So today I have a day off from school so it was the perfect day for me to get my hair cut. Yup, I cut it! This is my fourth time participating in the Locks of Love Foundation and I love how doing something so simple like cutting your hair can mean a lot to someone who may not have any.

My mom found out about the Locks of Love Foundation through the internet. I had really long hair and she wanted me to get it cut short since it was getting difficult to take care of. She found the organization as a way for me to want to cut my hair. She knew that I loved helping kids so naturally I said yes right away, since then i've continued to grow my hair and cut it!

As many of may or may not know i'm deaf and I had cochlear implant surgery when I was 5 years old. (Click here to read more about that.) I just remember wanting to help other little kids because I knew that there were worse things out there than being deaf. I also only spent a week in the hospital and I hated it! I couldn't imagine having to stay longer than that so it was nice to be able to do something for them. I also think there's something special about having a kid help out another kid- It sort of shows them that you've got their back and you're here for them.

Plus it only takes about a year and half for me to go from super short to really long hair so it's not really difficult to do.

Below are some before and after pictures- what do you think?!

*You only need to donate at least 10 inches so that Locks of Love can make your hair into a wig! I donated about 11 inches since my hair is has so many split ends on it and they probably couldn't use that part.

Click here to find out more about the Locks of Love Foundation.

100th Anniversary Weekend

I'm so sorry that I haven't been blogging recently! I've been so busy with school and family stuff that I haven't had time too. So anyway this past weekend I went to a party for the Croatian Church's 100th Anniversary. The pictures pretty much sum up all the fun I had!

This was me being goofy with one of my best friends. We performed Croatian Kolo (traditional folk dancing) for the special occasion.

Performing Kolo.

I'm taking pictures with some of the girls i'm friends with.

I'm doing a basket weave with some of my friends.

Taking a picture with one of my best friends!

I love the way the light fixture looks in this picture! Again, another great friend of mine.

So yeah, that pretty much sums up my weekend. Hanging out with all my Croatian friends, going to a Croatian party, and having lots of fun!

I got my dress from the Juniors section at Macy's and I couldn't find it online in case you guys were wondering. The brand is Bar III. My necklace is also from Macy's.

My favorite songs right now:

Story of My Life by One Direction

Adore You by Miley Cyrus

*I'd like to thank both Kristina's because I took some of there photos for this post, thanks guys!

Quaker Instant Oatmeal

As a blogger it's my job to let people know what I do and do not like. Judging from the title you can probably guess what I'm talking about today... Yup, OATMEAL!

I LOVE OATMEAL!!!!!!!

I swear, sometimes I think I resemble my grandparents. I have a bowl of oatmeal a day.. Yea...

In my defense oatmeal is really good for you and it's also extremely tasty, so don't you dare mess with my oatmeal!

I love the Quaker Instant Oatmeal because it's easy to make and you can just stick it in the microwave and be done with it. You could also make it over a stovetop if you would rather do that. Quaker Instant Oatmeal also has really good flavors and I love all of them! (Once you get started you get addicted- beware, the oatmeal craze is approaching.)

I'm going to show you how to make Oatmeal in the microwave:

1. Grab a package of Oatmeal and pour the contents in a bowl big enough so that it can boil inside the microwave.

2. Pour 2/3 cup of water in the bowl and stir the mixture.

It may not look pretty now but wait and see!

3. Put it in the microwave for 2 minutes.

4. Let it cool for about 2-3 minutes so that the water all evaporates and then eat the healthiest and tastiest thing ever!

Okay it still doesn't look pretty but since when did looks matter right?! It's what's on the inside that counts. *Say that last line with a look of tearing up and clutching your heart.*

Oatmeal is such a great snack when you get home and it fills you up enough until dinner comes around. I love how it's great for you too!

Yea, I didn't have a hard time finishing my food- I eat this stuff like candy. Seriously- what's wrong with me, who's ever heard of a high schooler who loves oatmeal?!

If you are looking at this blog post with an "Ew that's, disgusting" face, don't judge it before you try it-you never know until you try something :)

Eat, Sleep, Love Oatmeal <3

Sweaters

It's that time of year again when the leaves fall and you start to wear sweaters to school/work and all that good stuff. I thought that I would share some of my favorite sweaters. I love sweaters personally. I basically live in them throughout the fall and winter months. They are just so cozy and stylish at the same time.

In advance I would like to thank Jessica C. for generously giving me most of the sweaters I have shown here on this post.

I would also like to say that since I have been given these sweaters I do not know where you could buy them so use these as examples for some that you can maybe find or buy somewhere.

1. This sweater is gorgeous- it's the perfect cozy fuzzy sweater and perfect for the fall/winter months.

2. I love this sweater because it has stripes on it. I got this at target a few years ago and it's just a go to sweater that's comfortable.

3. I love this sweater! It's so bright and colorful and it adds a nice colorful touch to otherwise dark colors that you would normally see in the fall. I got this sweater from GAP.

4. This sweater is another great sweater for the winter and I love the color on this one since it looks flattering with my eye color (which is blue.)

5. I love how this sweater is sparkly and fun and has a bit of sheer on the back of it. It's not the warmest sweater and definitely more of a fashion statement but I still love it.

6. This is one of the most comfortable sweaters I own! It's oversized and I think that's why I love it so much. I love the way it falls on me and it just gives off a really relaxed look.

7. Another gorgeous sweater! I love the stripes and color. Again- it brightens things up a bit in the sea of brown and dark fall/winter colors.

8. I think the collar on this sweater is just so unique and just adds a bit of coolness to the sweater.

9. Another sweater I would wear to a fancier occasion, the sparkly collar totally umps up a look.

I hope you guys enjoyed the sweater post today! Let me know if you enjoyed it or if you have constructive criticism on how I should run my blog.

I am thinking about doing a mini guide on what to wear for the holidays once it comes a little closer so let me know if you would be interested in something like that.