My Year 2018 in Review

2018 has been an incredibly eventful year to me. I've made important decisions, laughed and cried. Thinking about the beginning of 2018, it doesn't feel like this was only a year ago. 

When the New Year 2018 started, I was studying for the Abitur exams. I panicked a few days later because I didn't know how on earth I would be able to remember all of this within a few weeks.

By the end of January, we went back to school normally after the Abitur exams and had to wait for the results until the end of February. 

In March, I had my oral Abitur exam. After that, there were no more lessons at school, but we've had to prepare for prom and all that. 

I was notified in March that I couldn't take the job at the Bureau of Finances which I had applied for last year. They had some technical issues and weren't able to hire anyone for this job beginning in 2018 and they gave me the alternatives of either waiting till 2019 or studying tax law instead. 

It was a hard decision. On the one hand, I wanted to study exactly that; it's an IT course and I'm into programming and mathematics a lot. On the other hand, I didn't want to waste a whole year. 

I decided to study tax law because I thought that it wouldn't be too different from what I wanted to do and I'd also get to stay at my parents' place, plus I wouldn't lose a year. It's still 2018 and I already regret this decision, but I can't change anything about it anymore. If I applied again now, the next possible start would be 2020 and by then, I'll be almost done with studying tax law. 

At the end of March, I've had the job interview for studying tax law at the Bureau of Finances. They called me the same day, telling me that they were impressed and I got the job. 

After that, I've had three months off between graduating from school and starting to work at the beginning of July.

I had bought a knitting machine, sewn some presents for my family for Christmas, relaxed a bit.

And then it was July and I started working at the Bureau of Finances, along with nine other trainees. It wasn't quite the way I expected it to be, but we didn't know anything yet, so any kind of expectations were predetermined to be wrong. The first week felt like an eternity with all the new things we didn't understand anything about.

In August, we started having lessons at college in a town pretty far away, which meant for me that I had to rent a room and live there on my own during the week, only coming home on the weekends. I've only recently returned home from college after four months, only to go back to work the next day. I haven't had a single day off within the last six months. 

I've come to loathe college. Just like everyone else seems to. It isn't much different from school actually though. In fact, I'd say the only difference is that the teachers don't want us to call them teachers and we're handed out the whole syllabus at the beginning of the course of studies. Of course the subjects aren't the same and most of the people at college say that it's a lot more matter, but that doesn't really seem to bother me since I don't really think it's that much harder than school.

At the beginning of September, I've met a friend of mine who I lost touch with over the last few years. We've had so much to tell each other about what happened since we last met and afterwards we texted each other daily. It felt as if we had never been apart, we were just as close as we used to be.

Then we met once more last week and it all changed again. We haven't talked much anymore after that and I really miss it. it was supposed to be a fun day we would spend together, but it wasn't for some reason.

Now, finally, in December (after a whole bunch of exams last week), I'm back home. It doesn't feel like Christmas is approaching though. I was working 8 hours a day this week, meaning that I'd leave the house at 5:45 in the morning and only came back home at 5 in the evening. I didn't feel like I could do anything much at home because I didn't have any time at home. And this is what my life will look like for half a century from now. But I will get used to the rhythm and find the energy to do things at home again.

I wish I hadn't taken the decision to study tax law and instead had waited until next year to study what I actually wanted to. On the other hand, if I had decided to wait, I wouldn't know anything more now than I've known six months ago. I think I've grown a lot more mature within half a year and I wouldn't want to miss that.

My year 2018 was incredibly eventful. I've graduated from school, taken tough decisions, met up with an old friend, lost touch again and taken my first steps into work life.

I'm wishing you all the best for 2019. Have a merry Christmas and happy New Year!

News about the Advent Calendar 2018

Hello everyone!

So, I announced last year that I would probably be making another Advent Calendar this year. Sadly, I will not be able to finish it in time as I have an unexpectedly high amount of work to do for college at the moment and for the past few months. I'm sorry to say that, but this year's Advent Calendar will most likely not take place.

I hope you guys understand.

Easy Last Minute Candy Corn Halloween Bag

Hello everyone!

As Halloween is right around the corner,  I was looking for a cute yet practical trick or treat bag. In stores around here, you can consider yourself lucky though if you find any halloween bags at all, but those just seem way too small most of the time. So I decided to make one myself. Literally decided to do so two hours ago, and here it is, along with a little tutorial on how you can make one yourself!

You will need:

* Fleece fabric in white, orange and yellow

* a sewing machine

How it's done:

Cut one strip from each fabric. Make the strips twice as long as you want the bag to be wide and about a third of the height you want your bag to be. I eyeballed it out by folding the fabrics in half. My strips were about 1 meter by 20 cm (40 by 8 inches). 

Lay the yellow and the orange strip together good side to good side and sew along one of the long corners. Lay the white strip onto the orange one good side to good side and sew the long side of the white strip to the orange strip. 

Fold the long side of your now combined three strips in half good side to good side and sew the side closed from yellow to orange to white. Sew the bottom (white) closed.

Pinch the corner at the bottom of the bag so that the bottom seam meets the side seam and sew across so that you can cut off a little triangle (I've sewn about five cm (about two inches) into the bottom seam). Do the same on the other side (pretend there was a seam at the side). 

Turn your bag right side out and fold over about two cm of the yellow top edge to the inside. Sew it in place all around the top (it looks a lot neater than leaving the raw edge to show).

Cut two strips from each color to make the handles. My strips were about 60 by 3 cm (24 by 1.5 inches). 

Stack a yellow, white and orange strip and sew them together at the top with a few stitches so they won't unravel. Braid them. Once you're at the bottom of the strips, stack the ends and again sew them together so they won't unravel.

Repeat for the second handle.

Pin the handles in place where you want them to be and sew them on carefully (they're pretty bulky so go very slowly). I've placed the seam onto the seam that I made for the top edge.

Cut away the excess where the thin strips were sewn together so that it'll look a bit neater. 

And that's it! 

I hope you enjoyed my little tutorial and got inspired to make a cute and easy Halloween trick or treat bag (with lots of space for the treats..!). Have a nice day and happy Halloween!

Minimalist Learning

As many of the people in my environment know, I have specialised on learning as much as I can in as few time as possible. That means while others revise frequently in order not to lose the connection to topics that have been dealt with a while ago, I prefer to start learning about a week ahead of the exams. Well, okay, let me be honest: I should start a week ahead, but I usually end up having only a few days left when I realise just how close the exams really are. So, let me explain to you how I try to get as many facts into my head as possible during just a few days.
Warning: this is not going to work for everyone. People are unique and the way they learn things best is as unique as they are themselves. These are just my tips that I can give you from my own experience.

Before we start: Do NOT make a tutorial while you should be learning. Yeah, I'm basically doing exactly that right now. Anyway, let's get started!

First of all, I personally find it quite helpful to use a binder for my learning purposes. I'm currently studying tax law and we have to be prepared to know everything we ever did at this course of studies for all of the exams in the future. That is why I think it is incredibly important to stay organised from the very beginning. So I have a binder for my summaries and I will divide it for each subject and keep adding my future summaries to it so that I will have everything in one place. Bonus tip: take photos of the summaries so you can learn anytime on the go as well.

Speaking about summaries, summarising what I have to learn is an essential step for me and it does make up most of my learning in the end. I need to get an overview of how much it is that I really have to learn and by going through my notes and thinking about what is important and what isn't, I already revise everything. That is why I actually prefer to do this close to the actual exam instead of frequently doing a little at a time. Well, procrastination probably tells me to do so anyway. 

So, now that you grabbed a binder and you've summarised your subject, what's next? Try to use as many senses as possible while learning! Don't only read it in your mind; get creative! When I find myself learning early enough, I sometimes draw a little picture besides some facts that I just can't seem to remember which has something to do with the words. Like some puns in drawn form. That way, when I try to remember these facts, I'll think about that picture and this will take me to the actual facts that I wanted to remember. Sarcastic comments are frequently found in my summaries as well. Those summaries are for you, no one will judge.
If you're short on time, make a voice record while reading it out. You can listen to it later while doing other stuff. 
If you happen to have the exam of last year, now is the time to check if you can answer all of the questions and if you can't, you'll know what you have to take a look at again. If you aren't as short on time, take your summaries, try to solve a problem without looking at it, check with your summaries and jot down what you've forgotten about. Repeat with a different problem until there are no points left.
Buy a scented candle that has a somewhat unique or unusual smell and put it on your desk while learning (don't light it though, just smell on it while reading through your summary). Each subject should have a different candle. It works like the well-known chewing gum method, except that it is usually not forbidden to place an unlit candle on the desk at school as long as there are no words written on it or something. The human memory largely developed from what was used for identifying scents in the past, so connecting memories with scents happens a lot. We can use that to our advantage! Just make sure your candle scent doesn't bring back other memories.

I hope some of these tips were helpful. If you aren't as prone to procrastination as I am, please do not start that..! It's always better to keep repeating so that the contents of your subjects get into your long term memory - my method is just trying to make the best out of my bad habit to only think about tests when they are imminent. 

The Absurdly Weird Concept of Home at College

As many of you know, I've started going to college this week. And like many others, I had to rent a room there because I simply live too far away to drive back home each day. So what I do is living here for the week and going back to my parents' place on the weekends.

That's what pretty much everyone at my college does, except for the lucky few who live closer to this town. 

During my first four days at college so far, I've had quite a significant number of times when I talked about where I'm currently living to my friends back at home. Not only did I tell them what I like and what bothers me, but I also just sometimes have to let others know that I'm available again. And those were the times when I texted something like "Okay, I'm 'home' now. What's up?"

You see what I did there? I always put that "home" in quotation marks. 

Today, I've asked a few other people at college about their opinion on the concept of home away from home. 

One girl from a higher year said that she thinks that there is no such thing as a definite home while she is at college. She has been here for about a year now in total and during that time she made a lot of friends here as well who make her feel more at home here.

Someone else said that it's pretty weird. He doesn't live with his parents anymore and he said that it had taken him a while to accept that his new home isn't in the same town as where he had grown up. And now he went to yet another town to stay during the week because of college. He said that he honestly can't imagine calling this place home at any point since he'll only be spending his time here for three years and then he's back at home again, maybe forever.

After hearing these answers, I began to wonder what home means to me. Is it really just my parents' house? Is it my family and friends that turn it into home? Or is it here now? Can I call a place home when I know that I won't stay here for longer than three years? These are so many unanswered questions! I don't feel at home here yet. I'm loving in a room of someone else's house and share the kitchen and bathroom with the actual owner who I don't really know yet. I don't really know anyone here yet. Well, except for the girl sitting next to me in class. I have to buy and make my own food now and I haven't really found anything worth doing in my free time here. But maybe this will change within the next few weeks. 

The reason why I'm writing all this is that I think the concept of "home" isn't bound to a place. I'd say it's rather bound to the people. It also really depends on your point of view whether you want to call the town you live in for college your home or not. But I personally think it's okay to find home in several completely different places at the same time. It may just get a little confusing for the friends in your hometown if they don't know which home you mean right now.

Excited and Terrified - How I feel about going to College

For many people, going to college marks the first big step into adulthood. Most have to move away from home into the dorms or an own apartment and have to get by without their parents for a longer period of time. 

Of course everyone has worries about this new phase of life, but there are probably just as many hopes as there are fears. So in order to demonstrate just how normal it is to feel like this, I'll be telling you about my hopes and fears one week before I'll be heading to college. 

First of all, I'm feeling extremely overwhelmed. I've been talking to quite a bunch of people who are attending this exact college lately and they all said that it's a lot of work and pretty hard. Well, except for a few who said that they really liked going there since it's the best opportunity to make friends! Looking at the books we had to buy, it seems like it won't be managable to ever get a broader knowledge about this subject matter and this really scares me. 

On the other side, I'm so excited to get to know new people. I think there's no better chance of making friends than when you are studying the same subject voluntarily. I mean, that indicates that you do have similar interests, doesn't it?

My college is a bit special; other colleges have more than one course to offer and (at least in Germany) you're widely left alone with digging into the matter. At my college, we'll be organised into classrooms and the lecturers will teach almost like at school. Questions will be asked and answered, tasks will be given and there will be homework. This makes everything a bit less new to us, but there are so many horrible stories about this place that we're actually all scared of how it will actually be in the end. 

I'm really afraid of living on my own, only seeing my parents on the weekends. I mean, what am I supposed to do when something goes wrong and my parents can't help me? Of course, I'm old enough to solve problems myself, but there probably are some problems that I have never had before and don't know how to deal with. 

Living away from my parents for the first time can also be an opportunity though. I will make a lot of new experiences and I won't have to listen to them complaining about my messy desk anymore.

I'm scared that I might not make friends with anyone in college. Like, how am I supposed to survive the stressful phases without anyone to get my thoughts away from the textbooks every once in a while? 

Looking at it a bit more realistic, I'll probably find a bunch of nice people to spend my time with. I mean, among 250 newbies, I'm pretty sure at least a few will like me just the way I am. 

The one thing that most terrifies me about going to college is the tests. I was so glad when school was over and I had three months off. In Germany, the longest holiday we ever get at school is six weeks, so three months were like kind of an eternal phase of freedom to me. Well, at least until it ended three weeks ago when I had to start working. I'm so worried about the tests because I'll have to sit there in front of my desk for hours every day after classes and learn everything we've done so far. I remember doing this for the Abitur exams and I think these were the most horrible weeks of my life so far. And the people going to this college keep telling us that the Abitur was fun compared to this. 

But I'm confident that I will make it. Maybe it's exactly what I've always wanted since I was quite bored at school usually. Maybe studying this will be kind of fun. At least I keep reminding myself of the fact that so many people have made it through this course before me. 

The key is to keep believing that you will make it. Believe it with all your heart any it will be true. Don't let others get you down and stay excited about the years ahead of you!

Quick Crafts #4: Smart Mousepad

Working on a laptop can be a pain if you don't have a separate mouse to work with. But sometimes, you just won't have a table available to put your mouse on. Operating the mouse on your lap won't really work either, you might drop it or it just doesn't respond that well.
So what else can you do? Well, there usually is a bit of space on your laptop right beside the touchpad. You could use that space for your mouse if it's a small one. And as we all don't want to scratch our laptops, why don't you simply make a little mousepad to fit that space? So, here's my newest invention.

You will need:

* Fabric (preferably non-fraying, like fleece or craft foam)
* Hot glue
* Pressing iron
* Baking paper

How it's done:

Cut your fabric to size so it fits into that corner of your laptop. You can use an old mousepad as well or craft foam. If so, you won't have to make it non-slip as it already is. Round off the edges and shake it well so all the leftover fuzz will fall off (and not into your laptop).
To stop it from slipping, there are several methods to do this. You can either fuse your fabric to craft foam or an anti-slip mat and cut it to size, but this might add more height to your mousepad. I didn't want the pad to be thicker because I want to leave it on that edge when storing my laptop away.
The method I used isn't particularly safe for children, but it's quick, easy and most people probably have it handy like I did.
Grab your hot glue gun and make dots of glue on the bottom side of your mousepad. I made lots of little rows of dots all over the pad. Then, take your pressing iron, heat it up and spread baking paper over the glue dots. Press it until you can see the molten dots through the paper. Let everything cool down a bit and take the baking paper off. Let it cool a few more minutes and you're good to go.

Depending on the speed settings of your mouse, that very little space can be more than enough to get your cursor all the way from one side to the other and all across the screen. It's pretty much the best solution if you don't have a table. And that is one reason why laptops were invented, right?

How to make a Bedside Caddy

Getting organised is an ongoing task in many people's lives. Some might have less trouble with it than others, but in the end we all need some place to put everything back to in order to keep a room, appartment or house tidy. 
This being said, just putting everything onto a table or night stand probably isn't a good approach to tidying up. It'll just look very crowded and not exactly pleasant. And that's where this tutorial kicks in. 
Just imagine creating a spot for all that clutter on (and maybe even around) your night stand. One that will not take up any precious floor space and comes in extremely handy if you have to reach something directly from your bed. 
This by the way also makes a great gift for people of any age and it's actually a pretty fast and easy to make - you won't even need a measuring tool!

So here's how it's done:

1. Gather everything you want to store inside your caddy and lay it out on your bed. Make two or three rows if you have items of varying sizes. Put the small items into the first row, bigger ones into the middle and the biggest in the back. 

2. Organize the items in an order that is useful. Bring the items you'll need during sleep somewhere near the head end of the bed, those you probably won't need closer to the foot end. 
3. Group your small items, you don't want to sew a pocket exclusively for your ear buds, so you could group them with your glasses or charger. 

Step 1-5

4. Put bigger items behind the smaller items in a way that you always have one or more pockets of the front items aligning with the middle pockets. This makes sewing a lot easier. Take a look at the picture to see what I mean, one pocket is always a group of items without any space between.
5. Space your items out. You can use the whole length (or width) or your bed if necessary, so don't be afraid of using more space than necessary. 

6. Now choose your fabric. Stiff cotton fabrics work great for this project while stretchy fabrics might be a little more tricky to sew. I chose to use some fabric from old tablecloths which I don't really like. This project can be an extreme fabric waster depending on how many things you want to store, so I would recommend using inexpensive fabric. The back piece of fabric will have to hold the whole caddy in place by shoving the excess under the mattress, so the length has to be as long as possible and at least twice the height of your caddy (or once if you don't want a huge pocket in the back) plus a few inches to tuck it under the mattress.
7. Cut your fabric to the width of your caddy (which is a bit more than the width of the items spread out, just imagine you would put another pocket on either side, leave enough space at the edges). 
8. If necessary, hem the top edge of your fabric. As I used old tablecloths, the edges were already neat. 

Step 6-10

9. Lay your front fabric on top of the middle fabric and mark the pockets for the small items. If you don't know how wide your pocket needs to be, take the item you want to put inside, push down the right edge of the pocket, slide the item inside and push down the other corner. Mark about an inch wider than the second corner so that you can slide your items inside more easily. Mark the seams that will only be needed for the front row differently than the ones that will go through two layers. I used an air erasable pen to mark my edges, but pins will also do.
10. Decide on the height of your front and middle pockets. I eyeballed it out and added about three inches because the pockets won't lay flat when they are filled. One inch more would have been sufficient though, but I didn't want to risk that my items might not fit in. Cut the fabric to size.

11. Sew the bottom edge of your front and middle pockets together with both good sides facing up, so you basically sew a good side to a wrong side. Sew it just the way it's pictured in the image for step 6-10. If you only have two layers of pockets, skip this step and the next and go straight to step 13.
12. Sew a straight line from the bottom edge to the mark of each pocket that only exists in the front and doesn't form a pocket in the middle row. In my case, this was for example between the key on the bottom left and the hand lotion.

Step 13

13. Decide on a height for the last row of pockets and sew the bottom of your two existing rows onto the third piece of fabric right side to right side, upside down, as far away from the top as you want the height of the last row to be. If you have enough fabric, I'd recommend making at least one large pocket in the back, you never know what items you'll find that don't have a space of their own yet. 

Step 14

14. Flip the first two rows up again and sew the lines that go through both layers onto the third layer. 

After step 14

15. Fold all the rows down so that the pockets are on the inside and sew along the two side edges. Turn it right side out and hem the side edges of the back piece if necessary. If your caddy isn't as wide as mine is, you might decide to be done now with one large pocket in the back. For mine, I needed to divide the back pocket at least once near the middle because the huge back pocket would have dropped all the way to the floor and I wouldn't be able to grab my items easily that way. To do this, choose a long seam that goes through the front and middle pocket layer and sew along this line through the back layer as well, making the new seam all the way to the upper corner of the back pocket as well.
16. Cut all the thread ends. At this point, I eyeballed how much excess fabric I want to be tucked under the mattress. I wanted it to "cover" about half of my mattress's width because I'd be filling lots of heavy objects inside (like my laptop and my 3DS consoles). That is about 20 inches (50 cm). If your caddy won't hold too many heavy objects you can shorten this part of course. I'd say that the excess should be about as long as your caddy's height. I made sure that my backing fabric would be more than sufficiently long before I started. As I'm a bit lazy, I didn't hem the raw edge at the very top after cutting the excess at the top of the caddy because that edge will never be seen anyway since it's hidden under the mattress (for a gift, I would hem that edge though).
17. Speaking about it, now is the perfect time to install your caddy. If your mattress is heavy, get someone to help you hold it up while you spread the excess of the caddy under the mattress. Lighter mattresses can often be flipped up against the wall so you could do this on your own. Lay your mattress down again, making sure your caddy doesn't slip too much while doing so. And that's it. Now you can put your pillow and blanket back onto the bed and fill your caddy.

My finished caddy

Quick Crafts #3: Lazy Susan

Do you ever have trouble reaching certain spices or dips on the table? Or grabbing the scissors at the far end of your desk? Good news for you: here comes the lazy Susan and you might already have everything at home to make it! 

All you need are two wooden plates with a ridge along the edge and a few marbles. Lay your first plate down with the ridge facing up, place some marbles on the ridge and sandwich them with the second plate with the ridge facing down. And that's it. 

Now you can put a few dips or art supplies on top and rotate the top plate to reach your desired item. Simple, eh?

Three Ingredient Chocolate & Banana Popsicles

The days are getting warmer and longer again on the Northern Hemisphere and we all know what that means: Summer is approaching! To celebrate this, I decided to make up a simple recipe for you to enjoy. This very simple recipe can be adjusted to all kinds of tastes and allergies and makes a healthy and child-friendly snack to cool down on a hot day.

So without further ado, let's get started!

You will need:

* Cocoa powder (any kind will do; if you use unsweetened cocoa powder, I'd suggest sweetening the mixture, e.g. with honey)
* a ripe banana
* approximately 300g yoghurt
* a popsicle mold

How it's done:

Put half of your yoghurt into a mixing bowl or cup.
Add a few teaspoons of cocoa powder and mix it, then taste it. I took about four teaspoons for 150g of yoghurt. You can sweeten it if you want.
Scoop the chocolate mix into the molds to fill them about halfway.
Now put the rest of the yoghurt and the banana into a blender and mix it (you can also use a hand-held blender). The consistency will be pretty liquid, so you can actually pour it into the molds. Since the chocolate mixture is thicker than the banana, they will not mix up, so you won't have to wait for the first layer to freeze.
Now close your mold and put it in the freezer for about 4 hours or overnight.

Enjoy!

Quick Crafts #2: Kneadable Soap

Hello everyone!

Today I have another quick craft for you that you can make from materials you probably already have at home. This time, we'll be making soap that you can knead to add a bit of fun to washing your hands (or those of the kids). These can be a fun gift for friends and family as well and they are fairly easy to make!

You will need:

One part shower gel

Two parts starch

Cookie cutters

Optional: glitter, food coloring, a jar with a lid

How it's done:

Put some shower gel into a bowl and add starch. Knead the mixture and add starch or shower gel to get a consistency that is neither sticky (too much shower gel - add starch!) nor crumbly (too much starch). This part is actually harder than it sounds; try pressing the crumbs together to see if they are sticking to each other before adding more shower gel. And yes, as this is starch, it will be a bit messy.
Now, you can add glitter or food coloring as you like, but be aware that some food colors might stain your hands when using the soap. I'd recommend leaving the soap plain and maybe using shower gel in bright colors if you want colorful soap. My pink soap is made from pink shower gel and I didn't want to add any color since I like the pastel colors, they remind me of marshmallows. 

Now, spread some starch on your working surface and roll out the mix as you would with cookie dough (if you're only using up some leftover shower gel like I did, it's easier to press it flat with your palm). I used a piece of baking paper to cover my surface because this stuff does stick quite a bit. You can cut squares out of it or use cookie cutters or a dull knife to make nice shapes. I tried to make two little marshmallow shapes out of two pink and two white strips, sticking them together with a few drops of water. The dough does crack though, but maybe it's just because my mixture contained just a bit too much starch and I had run out of shower gel.
If you want to give them as presents, let your shapes dry over night and put them into an airtight container such as a glass jar afterwards so they won't dry out and become crumbly. You can tie a ribbon around the jar and maybe add a little tag saying that these are kneadable soap bars. If you want to use them yourself and don't really care about the shapes sticking together in your container, you can put them away right after making them. They only stick to surfaces if they were pressed onto them, but you can also put a little but of starch or flour on top and bottom of each soap cookie if you want to make sure they don't stick to each other.
Be aware that the shapes will probably disappear after washing your hands with this soap a few times, because no one can resist this somewhat fluffy kneadable structure of these little soap pieces. It's just too tempting!

About the Importance of Priorities

Priorities. Everyone has them in some way. Some value a good meal, others strive for glory or power, then again there are people who can't live without their family. 
But what is it about priorities that makes them so important? 
Well, priorities have an immense impact on our decisions. On important decisions that will be life changing. 

Personally, I struggle with setting the right priorities. For many people this can be problematic, because we all have certain role models like our parents who we value highly and think of as perfect somehow. 
We meet a lot of different individuals every day and they all seem to be happy or at least content with their lives. And we often find ourselves thinking about what it might be that makes their lives happier than ours. The truth is, everyone struggles sometimes and you might as well appear like a happy person that has everything you ever wished for. 

But if that's true, what does make people happy then? How can you actually become the happy person you deserve to be? Well, I think this highly depends on your priorities and the decisions you make accordingly. 
Do you really need lots of money to be happy? It is true, money can't buy happiness. But what else could, if not money? That, my friend, depends solely on you.
We've all seen these images and movies of happy parents playing with their children and watching them grow up. We have all seen people who don't have much money at all and who are still happy. We all know of rich people who are deeply depressed. 
Different people have different things that make them happy. It can be anything really. A wonderful home filled with precious memories, a cheerful family, a friend's joyful smile when they receive a gift from you. And in order to find the happiness you are looking for, you have to make sure you find out what it is that makes you happy. Then the next step is to make it your priority in life. 
You like to make other people happy? Try volunteering or look for a job that involves helping others. You want to see the world? Go for it and visit other countries or learn a new language and get to know different cultures. You want to have more time for your family and don't care that much about earning less money? Downshifting could be exactly your thing. 

I know that it might take a lot of courage, but acting according to your own priorities in spite of what everyone else does is the first step into a wonderful future. It doesn't matter if your role model says you're supposed to work for the money you earn if this is not what makes you happy. It is your own life. And no one can tell you how you are supposed to live it. 

Quick Crafts #1: Stickers

In this new series, I want to show you quick crafts with items almost everyone already has at home. This first one is really fun and versatile, so be sure to check it out!

When I was a kid, I loved stickers, but I never seemed to be able to actually use them because I didn't want to waste them. I think this mostly had to do with stickers being "rare" - I couldn't just make them, they had to be bought and they were quite expensive. So what would you say if I told you you can actually make them on your own? 

You will need:

* Clear tape

* Water

* An image

How it's done:

Stick your clear tape over the image you want to turn into a sticker. This can be from old magazines, advertisements, something you printed out (with ink) or even a picture drawn with colored pencils (felt tips won't work and pencil smears a bit; if in doubt test it out!). The magazines may also have glossy paper, it'll work just fine. If you need more width, you can stick a second piece of tape beside the first one, but make sure they overlap at the edge. 

Rub the tape on firmly, you want all of the image to be transferred. 

Now cut the image out in the shape you want your sticker to be and put it into water (I used a plastic cup, but if nothing's available you can also put it in the sink) for at least one minute. I'd suggest longer soaking times for glossy paper.

After soaking, take the pieces out and rub the paper off the back completely. It might stay at some edges, if so hold it under running water and continue rubbing until no paper is left. Shake off the water and hold the stickers for a while to dry before sticking them wherever you want them to be. Mine stick nicely on paper and glass. 

Now, what could you do with those? You could stick them onto paper of course (preferably white or at least light, there's no white color on the stickers), but what else? You can mark jars and plastic containers with them, for example print out words like "Sugar" and "Flour" in a nice font and stick these onto the containers they belong to. You can also put pictures or names onto glasses for a party so they won't be mixed up. The possibilities are endless!

Tips and Tricks:

You can store the stickers more easily if you haven't soaked them already. If you have, you can stick them to thick plastic from packaging, stickers are fairly easy to remove from plastic without damaging them. 

Some kinds of tape tend to turn yellow after a certain period of time; you can avoid this by using self adhesive clear book covering instead of normal tape. It's also possible to do this with a complete sheet of images you want to turn into stickers if you stick it on very carefully.

I hope you have fun trying this out! 

On Parents, Children and the Time Between

Waking up, I sometimes have the weirdest of thoughts. Today, I was thinking about the awkward situation my parents must be in. They've had two babies and now we're both officially adults. Those little kids went from fragile babies to fully grown people in an instant!

I remember that time felt a lot slower when I was little and somebody once told me that time will seem to go by faster each year. So by the time I'm at my parents' age, a year won't feel like a lot anymore. I remember that I used to think that a year is an almost endless period of time. Lately, it feels like the year has barely begun and then it's already halfway over! A day that used to have a lot of room for all kinds of activities feels like a very limited bundle of hours now. Thinking about this from my parents' perspective, my brother and I must have grown up ridiculously fast. One moment, we've been tiny little creatures that didn't really know what they were doing, and then the next moment we've gone to school and graduated. And while we were away each day for several hours, we've grown up just a little more every day, unnoticed. 

As a child, time felt like an infinite resource to me. I just did what came to my mind when I was home from school and helped my parents here and there. Later, I started thinking about time as a precious treasure and thought about what would be best done with my time. I've spent so many hours thinking about what I might want to do that I often went to bed, having done nothing that day at all. While it might be a good thing to collect ideas and decide what to do, it clearly is not helpful to spend all the time available on finding the very best thing to do right now. I've learned that the hard way, yet I still catch myself doing exactly that over and over again. 

Actually, while I'm writing this, I'm thinking about what I might do with the rest of my day. Yet, I'm doing something while thinking which isn't completely useless, so this is not time wasted, right?

About the Black Holes Inside the House

Everybody loses a few of their belongings every once in a while. While almost every sort of item that can be moved will get lost at some point, there are some that disappear particularly often - socks, hair elastics, pens, cellphones, keys. Why that? Well, one might say this is due to the fact that these are handled pretty often and that this might lead to forgetting to place them back to where they were taken from or that they are small enough to disappear among other stuff. But that would be too easy. 

The truth: there's a magic black hole in every house. And it seems to be located right below the washing machine. 

You might be shocked at this realization, but don't worry, there must be a fix for it somewhere, right? Right. So here are my tips for minimizing the amount of items that get lost in daily life. 

Take some sort of clip to join the two matching socks right when you get them off your feet. In a bigger household, you might also want to consider a seperate container for collecting the used socks and washing socks only among other socks to prevent them from getting lost inside a shirt or pillowcase. 

Buy the same socks multiple times. Well, this isn't as much about preventing them from getting lost but rather a quick fix in case one sock got lost somewhere or a sock had a hole or something like that. This way, you can match a different pair of socks from two socks that lost their mate. 

Have a distinctive place for every sort of item. Like hair elastics. Keep them at one spot and force yourself to put them right back as soon as you take them out of your hair. This is easiest if you have that collecting spot at a place where you usually take them on and off, for example in front of the bathroom mirror or on the bedside table. You can set up multiple spots for the same sort of item too and distribute the items evenly every once in a while when you run out of them in one spot. 

Don't ever put your phone to silent mode when it is not required. That way, you can simply call your own phone and listen to where it rings if you can't find it. There are some apps doing the same job, too, telling you where your phone is at the moment from another device. Certain keychains will light up or make a sound when you whistle, so if you keep losing your keys, this might be a good investment for you. 

And lastly and most mighty: ask mom. An item is only lost if mom can't find it. 

Why I love and hate Video Games

As a person who has grown up with tons of different video games, I of course do have an opinion about them. During my childhood, I've been playing various video games on different consoles and I've also had a phase in which I was constantly playing flash games. I loved video games so much that I decided to program my own once I'd be an adult.

I've never actually been addicted to playing, I just enjoyed it and I loved the fact that I could be anything in a game - be it a cute little dragon, a professional photographer or a brave hero. When I got a bit older, I started to enjoy the Animal Crossing series a lot because I didn't have to be anything, I could just dwell in this virtual world, visit concerts, go fishing, decorate my house and design new clothing. 

But among all the joy I've had while playing video games, there has also been that dark side, too. Every now and then, just like today, I've been thinking about my life and what I'm doing with it and I always came to the conclusion that video games are a huge waste of time. 

While I might be a super rich tradeswoman in a video game, all I effectively did to achieve this was sitting on the sofa or lying in bed holding a handheld console and staring at a screen. 

I always kept wondering in those moments what my life would be like if I had never been introduced to video games. I could have spent so many hours doing so many more interesting things that might have made me happy. More happy than any game can. I probably would have gone outside a lot more often, I would have met other people more frequently. But those games and apps and the internet in general always kept me inside the house, wasting my time watching movies, playing games, searching the internet for how to be happy. Isn't it ironic?

Getting Melted Plastic off the Stove

I messed up in the kitchen today. While cooking, I placed the plastic spatula beside the stove and it slid onto it unnoticed. When I saw it, it was too late - the edge of the spatula was already melted, leaving both the spatula and the stove a mess. I was pretty panicked, I mean, I just melted one pretty expencive (tupperware....) spatula and there was a melted puddle of it on the stove top..! My desperate tries to get it off while the stove was still hot were useless, it somehow didn't seem to move at all. 

So I turned off the stove, let it all cool down until I could touch it and then I tried to figure out how to get that plastic stain away from the stove. And here's what I came up with.

You will need:

* Baking soda or Cream of Tartar (some sort of chemical base that isn't going to cause damage if it ends up in your food)

* Vinegar (lemon juice should work too, since it's just an acid needed)

* some sort of hard object (e.g. a plastic spatula for a ceran stove, or a blunt knife for those ridged stove tops)

* a spray bottle

* a sponge or dishcloth

Sprinkle some baking soda onto the hardened plastic puddle, making sure to cover the edges. Fill the spraybottle with vinegar and spray some of it onto the soda. This will form some bubbles. Use the hard side of the sponge and rub over the plastic stain until you can't see the baking soda mixture anymore. Don't worry if it doesn't come off that fast, just keep repeating this and use your fingernails and a plastic spatula or blunt knife to try to scrape the plastic off the stove top. It took an hour for me to do this on one of the ridged stoves, so be patient. 

But what about the melted spatula? Well, if it smells like burnt plastic, you should better throw it away. In my case, the spatula didn't have any weird smell. So I carefully cut off all the protruding edges around the melted tip of the spatula with a utility knife and used sandpaper to smooth it all out. And it actually looks pretty exactly like it did before, except for the fact that the spatula is now slightly shorter. That was one quick fix and the spatula is working fine again. 

I hope I could provide at least some of you with a possible solution for this very nasty problem. Have a good day ^-^

Final Exam Survival Tips

Finals are really stressful for many of us. The preparations are one thing - making a check-list of what to learn, planning when and in the end actually learning it all. But when the exam is actually taking place, there are a few additional challenges to face which no one really thinks about beforehand. 

1. Get up early the day before the exam, too. If you have to get up at 7 am, it could be a good idea to get up at half past six the day before to be prepared to go to bed earlier that evening. 

2. Don't learn too much one day before the exam. It's okay to do a few quick exercises, but you should be done with all the topics up to this point and therefore should not have to learn anything new anymore. Instead, just repeat what you've already learned and take a bath before bedtime if you like. Do something relaxing. Thinking you will have that one essential realisation is probably an illusion anyway, so you should concentrate on not worrying too much instead. 

3. Don't let the others get you nervous. When you're having your final exams, you're usually asked to come a bit earlier than you're officially required to. Chances are that you'll stand in front of the room you'll be taking the test in, together with some of your fellow students. Try not to talk about the subject of the exam and if someone does, don't worry if you don't understand what they're talking about - you probably won't need that anyway and even if so, you'll understand it a lot better when you read it during the exam. 

4. Take a safe item with you. Exams can be extremely stressful and frustrating at times. That's why I'd suggest taking something nice with you, such as a lucky charm or a small plush toy. Just make sure that it's something that is allowed to be brought with you. 

5. Take some candy with you. Of course you shouldn't forget something "normal" to eat and a bottle of water either, but candy really helps calming down and thinking more clearly. And it'll treat you quite a bit, most of all if you choose chocolate. But get rid of any loud wrappers before you leave the house and just put the candy into a small lunchbox so that you won't disturb your fellow students during the exam.

6. Check how much time you needed for each assignment. In exams like this, you'll have a lot of time and a ton of assignments. If you're just a tiny bit too slow, the time loss could build up throughout the exam and you might not be able to finish all the assignments on time. So be careful to check the clock after at least every other assignment and adjust your pace accordingly.

Bonus tip: Use a biro for writing. What has been written with a biro can't be washed away by water (in contrast to ink). So if you accidentally spill your water over the paper, the thing can still be read and you won't have to start all over again. And you won't have any trouble with a leaking pen cartridge either. I suggest taking at least three biros with you, just to be sure. 

So those are my tips for final exams. Do you have any additional tips or did something different? Let me know in the comments. And for those who haven't had their exams yet: good luck and don't panic!

Graduation - the Beginning of the Real Life?

As a child, I never really thought about life; I knew I was alive and I was thinking that life would always be that way. I didn't have a lot of trouble, I was just having fun with other children, everyone around me was happy and no one seemed to have any problem that was more serious than losing a toy at the playground. 
That was until I went to elementary school. I had really been looking forward to going to school, being one of the "big kids" who know a lot of things. I hated elementary from the first day on. I hated having to spend time at school on things I already knew. There were quite a few interesting things we learned at elementary school though and that were the days when I came home and was simply happy. I spent my whole time at elementary thinking that life would be better once I'm done with school because working couldn't be worse than this, could it?
When the time had come for me to go to fifth grade, to another school, I was really excited. The holidays didn't seem to go by and my pleasant anticipation grew with every day. Then, when the holidays were finally over, secondary school turned out to be even worse than elementary. My new classmates seemed to hate me, I didn't have that one class teacher that held most lessons but for each subject I got a different teacher. And the surprise tests started. We hadn't had any surprise tests at elementary. We had known exactly when the next test would be. But in secondary, that calming feeling of security was simply wiped out. So I spent years at secondary, wondering how long it would take to get to 11th grade and finally being able to decide what I want to learn. During this period of my life, I thought that the real life would begin once I'll have retired in about half a century. To me, "life" meant to be able to do whatever I want to with the time I have. I can't remember the time before I went to kindergarten. So my real life would come when I'm old. 
11th grade came just as fifth grade has come; I was excited, I couldn't wait to finally be allowed to choose the subjects I want to take. Well, there wasn't much to choose; out of 14ish subjects I used to have, I had to pick 10, but there were strict rules concerning what can be chosen in which combinations. So in the end I was stuck with 4 subjects I absolutely hated, 2 I didn't care about and 4 I actually wanted. Turned out later that one of the subjects I wanted simply wasn't a good choice, but it's fine, I hate it but I'll get through it. In a good two weeks I'll never have to worry about it anymore, so that's great. I just remembered the saying on our graduation pullovers; it says "start life", as if life would start right after graduation. But if my life starts in a few weeks, what has this all been? What has all the time spent laughing, crying, dreaming, creating.. what has this all been if not life? It won't magically get better. We won't be happier just because we graduated. Life won't get easier. Life won't simply begin after graduation. It'll be different of course, it'll be difficult, it'll be easier at times. But we've already experienced major changes in our lives, so that's not a concept that's new to us.
Nevertheless, there's a bit of truth in this saying; it'll be the first major decision that only we alone can make. We'll decide where to go, how to get there and at which pace. We'll decide on our occupation, whether we want to study or do an internship first. We will have the power to decide, on our own, what we'll turn our life into. May it be getting famous, earning lots of money or doing what we really want to do against all odds - it will be us who decide. 

Happy New Year 2018!

Time for New Year's resolutions! As we probably all know, people are more likely to stick to their resolutions if they share them. So I'll start doing that right away!

For this year, I decided on a few managable New Year's resolutions which I will actually try to manage.
So, on the one hand I will continue learning for my Abitur exams tomorrow and I will keep repeating everything until the exams are over in about a month.
I'll be nicer and more understanding towards everyone around me and will also help more people. I also plan on spending more time with the people I like because when the exams are over, I'll have some more time to relax and hang out with friends and family.
Talking about time, I'm also keen on spending more time on sewing and maybe learning a few more skills to be able to make better plushies and clothing that actually fits. I'll start pretty soon since I definitely decided on sewing my dress for the graduation ball myself (since I couldn't find one I really liked anywhere in a store or online; you can find the prototype I made for my doll here).
I want to do more sports and eat more slowly and maybe I'll finally lose some weight this year.

So that's my list of good resolutions for 2018. What New Year's resolutions do you have? Let me know in the comments and I wish you all a happy and healthy new year!