DIY Halloween Mask | Pumpkin Home Decor

So here it is! The Halloween special blog post! The idea came to me not so long ago when I, very randomly, remembered the time we made masks in school. Now, we do not celebrate Halloween at all, other than an occasional carved pumpkin or two, but we do have a similar holiday in February where kids mask themselves and some towns organise parades. Therefore, we made masks in February.
Knowing there is a lot of you who love little DIY projects, this seemed to be the one worth sharing in the spirit of the Halloween!

All you will be needing is a homemade glue, a pile of newspaper and a balloon. Do not use regular glue because your mask needs to harden and not be a floppy paper.

A balloon

For the home glue mix 1 cup of plain flower with 1 cup of cold water until there is no lumps. Boil 2 cups of water and add your mixture to it. It will get lumpy again so stir it the best you can and cook for about 2-3 mins more until the consistency is slightly thick. Once that is done, preheat the glass jar or any container of your choice and transfer the glue into it. Leave it to cool down.

Flower & water homemade glue

Once your glue is cooled down, prepare your workplace because this can get messy. Start by coating the surface of the balloon with a layer of glue. Place a piece of newspapers on top of the glue and keep repeating the layers until you are happy with the thickness. Do not overuse the glue, you do not want the whole thing to slice off. Once you are finished, support the balloon with a bowl and leave it to dry off ~ that took me a day and a half plus a hair dryer since my house is too cold xP.

DIY Halloween mask | Pumpkin

DIY Halloween mask | Pumpkin

You do not necessarily have to make a mask. This technique can be used to make lots of different home decorations such as candy holders or, as you can see, I made a pumpkin. Though it depends on the shape of the balloon.

Now, the wisdom behind the balloon. In order to use your mask/decoration/bowl, you have to pop the balloon to detach it. Make sure the whole thing is dry completely or you will have a hard time peeling that balloon off. Use the scissors to cut the parts you do not need and get painting. I am not the best artist so my masterpiece ended up looking like this.

DIY Homemade mask | Pumpkin ~ finished look

•NOTE: If you make this pumpkin DO NOT put a candle inside, instead use battery operated one. No need for the fire.

Happy Halloween!

5 Things I've Learned While Living Solo

5 Things I've Learned While Living Solo

I never was the person who wants to live with their parents for too long. Since forever, my goal was to move out and have a place to call my own. The time for that came when I was nineteen, and had to move for my studies. Even though everything was payed by my dearest father and I was not as independent as I felt like, it was a great learning experience worth sharing with you.

• Cooking takes time
Whether you are home a lot or not, cooking could be a problem. I had my classes during lunch time so I relied on meals that are easy and quick to make. If the time is not something you have, consider trying out meal preparation. You basically take one day of the week and cook a bunch of nutritious food, portion it in smaller containers and place those into the fridge. You can also make some snacks this way to last you throughout the following days. Be careful the food you choose will not go bad too fast.

Cooking preparation

• You are a ninja
You may be the 'World's Biggest Scaredy Cat' but once you have no one to save you and get rid of a strange mutant bug running around, your skills will get so sharp in order to avoid and remove it without having to touch it.

• You are the boss around here
If you are a careful money spender, like myself, going to the store will be very satisfying. Finally, you are able to decide when to spend it and when to save some. I love being the one buying the food as it allows me to monitor how many nutritious groceries I get, while going with parents results in 3/4 of money being spent on the stuff you should not eat that often.

Coins

• Landlords can be 'rude'
No matter where you are, if you are paying the rent, you have the right for privacy. My flat layout was made so my room doors were about tree meters away from the front doors. Imagine waking up to the sound of the front door unlocking ~ with you being the only one living in there ~ while you are still in your pajamas  and fearing someone will burst into your room ~ because they do have a key and you do not know what they are doing in your space. It is also very inappropriate of them to let other random people have the key to your flat without notifying you, only for them to use your washing room or the empty room as their storage. I don't know about you, but that does not sit well with me!

• You will smell much nicer ;)
Because I was on my own, I did not have that much clothes to wash. So it would happen that I would wash a piece of clothing after wearing it only once, to have enough to fill up the washing machine. That, of course, resulted in me constantly smelling of clothes softener. Not that I complained.

Ornel - Clothes softener

These are just some of the perks/flaws of living alone. I could possibly think of more so there could be a follow up post. What do you like the most about having your own space? Do you miss anything?
Thank you for reading!

My 10 worst habits/flaws

No one is perfect, right? I saw this question in a lot of interviews ~ yes I like to watch those ~ and I thought it would be a good subject to write about. It is good to sometimes take a step back and look at the things you can improve about yourself or at least accept your flaws. And that is what I am doing. So, what are my worst flaws?

1. I mess up my speech
It would be nice to know exactly why this happens. Perhaps I do not talk enough or it is because I am bilingual ~ plus learning two more languages. I noticed that I usually either combine two words into one or I am thinking of the next sentence, then start saying it before finishing the one before. If not that, then I say a word from other language and make it sound like a word from language I speak at the moment. I know, makes no sense.

2. I pick at my skin
I never really had any skin problems ~ except one lovely month when my whole forehead was inflamed with acne. Other than that my face was always pretty much clean. However I do get a couple of pimples here and there and THEN they go dry, and THEN they annoy me, and THEN I start picking at them trying to get the dry, dead skin of. I do not make any new wounds but I always feel like there are bits of dead skin I need off my face so I sometimes have a red dot or two.

3. I can be very blunt
This is one of my embarrassing characteristics. I do not have a problem saying random thoughts, whether they are (playfully) rude, funny, dirty minded or just weird. And I am prone to randomly embarrass myself which I do not mind at all. I like making people laugh but sometimes they do not get the joke so they look at me strangely. And I do not like to be judged. :(

4. I am very strong minded
I was raised to be independent. And maybe that was not the best idea because it caused me to concentrate on bigger things than what normal child should worry about. And that caused me to develop some serious opinions on my own. I sort of know the kind of person I am and I realise my perception on the world is usually different than anyone else's so that leads to some arguments

5. It is hard for me to stick to one thing
I am the type of person who wants to know EVERYTHING. However, my attention span is so short that by the time I just got into something I have already found something new. So I start feeling like this is taking too much time and I never get to being 'really good' at anything. Ahh, so many hobbies gone down the drain…Would you like to know more about those?

6. Sometimes I let myself go back to the bad place
This past year was really hard for me. I went to a really bad place where I lost myself, my purpose and my goal. That is hard for some people to understand but it often happens when you finish your education and you are free to do anything. I got scared of everything and felt forced to live by someone else's rules which I can not do thanks to being stubborn. Recently, I have been doing good but there are still times where I can not help but feel bad especially if I start my day wrong.

7. I am socially very awkward
I blame non existent socialisation process in my childhood for this. I went to daycare for an extremely short amount of time and have not had the best time there. Add to that the fact I grew up with a bunch of neighbourhood kids with whom I felt comfortable around. So basically, I never learned how to make friends and develop relationships with people. I get so flustered when I have to meet a group of people at once so I stay quiet and make bad first impression on people. I am sorry. But if you read this and still want to meet me, I will do my best to be my normal self. =)

8. I do not clean my room often
Guilty as charged! Cleaning is like a therapy for me. The state of my living space is the current state of my mind and it is not likely I will clean it unless I am determined to start fresh or I am just really annoyed by the mess. But you will be happy to know I do not have mice or cockroaches running around and there are no spider webs. I would never go that far, ew.

9. When fighting, I say mean things to hurt the other person
I do not like the confrontation. I always start crying when arguing, mainly because I find it hard to cry and I have a lot of bottled up feelings of frustration in me that come out at worst moments. It hurts me to fight with anyone and because I deal with so many emotions and hurt I selfishly want the other person to feel like I do for a moment. I don't know, maybe it is a way for me to tell the person that I am hurting.

10. I can not do something if someone commands me to
Just so you do not think wrong, I am polite and I do try to be genuinely nice. But if I am in a bad relationship with you right now and I feel like there is a lack of respect, there is no way you will get me to do something for you by ordering me to do it. I do it out of spite, I know that. I just can NOT be forced to do something if I feel like I have to do it because you expect me to because it is my obligation, and not because I would want to out of love. ~ That is a lot of 'becauses', I do not know if that even makes sense.

Please do not take this post extremely serious. I am not trying to bring myself down, I am just acknowledging my imperfections and I am fine with that. I tried to make it lighthearted. If some of them are a bit negative, I am sorry, it is a post about flaws, what can I say.
If you took the time to read this, thank you so much! I love you and enjoy your day!