BECOME A TOURIST IN YOUR OWN CITY

You know what feels really nice? Falling back in love with the city your living at. We always talk about visiting new cities, exploring new countries and cultures when sometimes (and quite often, really) we don't even know our surroundings. But you know what? Sometime's it's really fun to look at your city you've been living at for many years with different eyes and become a little tourist in it. I've been living in my city for my whole life (ahem, 21 years) and sometimes I get incredibly bored with it and want to hop on a plane and leave it, but when Winter ends and city becomes all green and beautiful again, I feel myself falling back in love with it all over again. And it's so cool!

Take a different road to your school / work

You've been walking the same road for many years and it has probably become super boring and you just walk like a little robot, without noticing anything around and just trying to reach your destination. But the next time you have to take this road, try taking a different road! It may be longer, it's even better if it's longer, but you will feel much better after doing so. You won't have to walk like a robot in a place that it's so familiar it hurts, you will see something new and you will arrive at your destination with a smile on your face. What could be better?

Look from above

Go to a tower or on the top of the hill or just to a very tall building and just look at your city from above. I cannot really imagine a city that would not look good this way when you can see every roof, tree and street from above. If you're not enjoying your city at the moment, climb on a hill and you will shift your perspective pretty easily, I think!

Go to the new cafés in your city

We all have this one favorite place where we like to get our coffee at. But instead of doing it, try finding a new place to get your coffee the next time! I'm pretty sure you already have some place in mind as you're reading this, that one place which always seems so cozy and nice, but you just walk pass it and go to your usual place. There are so many beautiful little or bigger cafes in every city (I'm pretty sure yours is no exception), so just expand your horizons and just go for it! Sit by the window with your big cup of coffee and spend some time looking through the window at people walking by, it's really fun!

Try walking more often

It's so much easier to hop into a car or take a bus instead of using your own feet and walking to where you need to be. We all do this, I do this as well, but sometimes it's SO nice to take a walk. Vilnius is not a huge city, so it's pretty easy to reach everything you need by feet and I love it, so when the weather is nice, I always try to take a walk instead of taking a crowded bus. So, unless you live in LA (I've heard no one walks there), I encourage you to take a walk as well! It's also a good exercise that you won't even feel you're doing, but you will also see your beautiful city even better than you would from the window of your car. 

Look Up

You can see incredibly beautiful things once you look up to the skies! All of these balconies, the churches, beautiful windows, the roofs are mostly seen only when you raise your head and all this beauty is not noticed enough. Try to put your phone into your bag and just look up to the sky and you will see so many beautiful parts of beautiful buildings and if the sky is blue, it's even better!

Take pictures

Take your camera or your phone and just take a walk like a real tourist who takes pictures of everything. I take pictures of everything anyways, so for me it's definitely not a problem to take a picture of a place I've seen for decades. Just go out and about your city and take pictures of everything beautiful that you see and I'm sure you will realize how many amazing places there are in your city once you have a memory card full of pictures. Go to the sights, go to the little streets or corners that tourists would definitely not know about and just explore your city without any real plans to reach a certain place, just explore like you would be visiting a city far away from your home.

MY ENDLESS LIST OF GRATITUDE #26

I have to remember to count my blessings. I believe that only when we appreciate what we do have, instead of what we don't, life becomes much brighter. And after quite a challenging time ( Februaries seem to be quite a difficult months to me these past years), I finally am feeling better and I appreciate it loads!
This past weekend was a beautiful little one, exactly what I've needed to feel better. I've spent the time with some of my favorite girls, laughed until my face started hurting, had some cocktails, went to see Fifty Shades Of Grey ( that's how single gals celebrate Valentine's day these days) and just relaxed a lot. Oh, I just have to mention it again, I got to see Ed Sheeran and goodness, that was awesome and amazing and the best thing ever, and I'm still playing his songs all the time and I really just fell in love with this guy once again. And this week even sun started showing more and more and snow is melting away and it's definitely a sign Spring is coming! I'm going to ignore that some kind of cold is starting to attack me and just shake it off because it's the weekend and being ill is definitely not in my plans.

♥ I love seeing how my gratitude jar is filling up more and more, it's such a nice feeling! 

 ♥ When sun starts shining again after the Winter, my city becomes one incredibly beautiful place once again.

♥ Yup, another one picture of Ed Sheeran from the show. I was so so amazing and if you love this beautiful redheaded guy, you should definitely go see him play live!

♥ This is how I miss the sunshine, it seems completely normal to look up to the blue sky and take pictures of it. Even though trees are completely naked, blue skies make everything better.

♥ I love when I get the chance to hang out with this big beautiful boy living in my Friend's home. He is a very good-looking cat, I shall say!

P.S. { 10 ways to have a better day }, { My 8 favorite bloggers }, { Rome City Guide }

FESTIVE VILNIUS / BLOGMAS ❅ DAY 10

I feel like my city looks gorgeous in the Christmas time when it's all festive. I love my city anyway, but in December it looks exceptionally beautiful with the Christmas trees and all of the lights around and I feel really happy about living in this city on the Christmas time. Every day I get to be in the city center where it looks the most beautiful and I just love that, because I get to experience this beauty every day and I can get myself in the mood every day more and more.
Couple of years ago I went to London on the Christmas time and I absolutely loved how it looked, the Winter Wonderland was amazing and it just can't get look more like Christmas, the Oxford Street was also very festive but I feel like Vilnius looks just as beautiful at this time of year. Except we sadly don't have our Winter Wonderland. Vilnius is a pretty small city, but in my opinion it looks pretty nice, doesn't it? This city is also way less crowded than London is at this time of year and it also is pretty nice. The only thing missing right now is snow, it just doesn't feel quite right without snow on Christmas time, but here's hoping that Christmas will be snowy this year!

10 BEST THINGS ABOUT CHRISTMAS / BLOGMAS ❅ DAY 5

1. Christmas trees. Let's be honest here - it would be real Christmas without beautiful and sparkly Christmas tree at home. I love decorating it, I love the smell of it, I love how it looks all light up, I love coming back home in the evening and putting the fairy lights on and sometimes I just like siting beside it and watching the lights on the tree. 

2. My city all decorated. It's so nice that my city is reaaally beautiful at this time of year and there are so many places to go and see and fully get yourself into holiday spirit.

3. Hot chocolate with marshmallows is the best treat you could get when you get back home all freezing but when you make yourself a big cup of hot chocolate, you forget all the troubles and worries and just enjoy wonderful taste of chocolate. 

4. Mulled wine. My family has a tradition to have mulled wine on Christmas and my Dad makes it all really spicy and it tastes amazing.

5. I live in a country where we get all of the four seasons, so we are really used to Christmas with lots of snow. And even though I get sick of winter really quickly, I still want Christmas to be snowy. This picture is from 2012 and that year we got to be in the real winter wonderland, however last year it was sunny and looked more like Spring, so here's hoping that Christmas will be snowy this year!

6. Fairy lights everywhere. If it was up to be, fairy lights would be all around all year round. Right now I'm sitting in my room with my fairy lights on and it's so so cozy, I love it.

7.Buying presents and wrapping them up. Yup, I actually do love buying presents for people I love. To me it's fun to think about the gift, about the reaction of the person that gift is for and I also really like wrapping gifts and do it differently every year. 

8.Baking (and eating) ginger bread cookies. 

9. Festive nail manicure. Glitters, candy canes, Santa, reindeers, snowflakes...

10. That it's appropriate to wear sweaters with reindeers or big snowmans. 

Have a good night,

MY ENDLESS LIST OF GRATITUDE #10

♥ I love having fresh flowers in my room, they add such a special touch to my room and I try to always have them once Spring finally comes.

 ♥ My Mom found this beautiful tea cup at my Grandmother's home. It is vintage and is very pretty for on it's own but it's even more special to me because it belonged to her and it reminds me of her all the time.

 ♥ I have been braiding my hair a lot more recently and I'm absolutely loving it!

 ♥ Once again there's one more picture of my city. Since for some reason it took me absolutely ages to get used to living here after I came back from my trip to London, I'm really enjoying the fact that I started noticing how beautiful this city is and I keep taking pictures of it all the time.

♥ I like these colors together so much! It reminds me of bridal nails a little bit and I'm not going to get married anytime soon but I loved how feminine my nails looked. This sparkly nail polish has been my favorite since December and apparently it looks great with pastels which I'm loving at the moment!

MY ENDLESS LIST OF GRATITUDE #9

 ♥ Tulips are always the true sign that Spring is coming and it makes me so so happy to see that snow has completely disappeared and there's more and more flowers everywhere!

 ♥ I don't usually celebrate Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) but I can never say no to pancakes so my dinner last Tuesday was absolutely perfect.

 ♥ International Women's Day was yesterday and this is the beauties I've received.

 ♥ There was also a big traditional fair in my city this weekend and there were so many goodies to buy there and I simply can't resist walking by cotton candy and not buying it so I just had to get myself one big dose of sugar!

♥ There are times when I forget that my city is a very beautiful one and walk there every single day simply ignoring it but once Spring comes, snow melts and sun starts to shine I start noticing again how incredibly pretty all these narrow streets are and I start to enjoy living here more.

TURN ON THESE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS

 Me and my family have always had this tradition - we always went to see new Christmas tree in town and to event when it's being light up. So whenever December (or sometimes November) comes, I always go to the same place to see how my city is starting to feel Christmas coming. It's always an exciting time to me, there isn't a time in a year which I love more than this! 

Now I'm not going there with my family, I mostly go with my friends but I try to never miss this event. Not everyone is that excited about this but I really like Christmas and everything about this time of the year so this is a must do to me. This year I went to see this beautiful Christmas tree with my lovely friend and it was such a good day. For that moment when Christmas tree is finally light up, I can turn on my Christmas mode! Are You excited for Christmas?

♫ ♪ ♫ TUNE OF THE DAY * i finally opened my Christmas folder in my computed and I must warn you - I like really cheesy Christmas songs (:

ROUND MY HOMETOWN MEMORIES ARE FRESH

 Couple of weeks ago when it was still sunny and warm, one great thing happened. A beautiful beautiful park was opened in the city center. From that moment my city (which I already loved a lot) became even more amazing. Once I entered that park, I felt like I was walking in Paris again or in Central Park in New York. It reminded me so much of Paris and its parks where people just sit, talk, chill and enjoy Parisian life. I remember looking at these people just chilling there with a little bit of jealousy when I was in Paris. I wanted that kind of spot in my city and it really was missing the place where you can spend your time just chilling outside in a beautiful place. It's just a little sad that it was opened last month, we only got to enjoy couple of sunny weeks this autumn and right now its a little too cold to be anywhere outside your cozy room. I'm sure that fountains are not working anymore and the ground is full of colorful leaves and it's not that sunny like in my pictures. But I'm sure that I will wait for real warm spring to come even more and then I will spend much more time at that beautiful place. I already imagine myself sitting there with my friends enjoying the sunshine, drinking coffee by the river or reading a book somewhere under a tree. Oh, I just wish winter wouldn't come that quickly...

VILNIUS IN BLOOM

 I adore this time of year when it's so so beautiful everywhere you go. With all these blossoms around us it feels like we live in a real paradise. And I certainly felt like I was in paradise when I went to see these gorgeous cherry blossoms. I waited for couple of years for them to finally bloom and it was really worth waiting. I really wanted to stay there forever it was so incredibly beautiful. The sad thing is that this beauty lasted only for 5 days and after them all these blossoms were gone. I wish they could stay as beautiful as that much longer and make everyone happier. It's so much beauty around with all these trees blooming in the city and my city is finally finally green after this endless winter we had this year. And this city is really green, sometimes it seems like it's surrounded by forests. I just wish trees could have these beautiful blossoms much longer, spring is way too short for me :)