Earth Day!
Hello everyone! Today (22nd of April) is Earth Day and I celebrated it by participating in the national cleaning campaign called "Roll up your sleeves!". It was organized at over 150 locations in my country, 60 of which were in Belgrade, and I was at one of them. This event is happening for the 10th time, and it was my second time to participate as volunteer. This time it was organized at the same time in all locations, from 12h to 14h. I found a location near my apartment, took gloves, and I was ready to go. It's very sad to see how much garbage there is, but also it's nice to see a lot of people coming to clean, even with kids, and helping to clean the country. This time, action was probably the biggest so far, with 5–8000 people that participated.
Cleaning is harder than it looks
Even though at first look, it doesn't seem like there is a lot of garbage, once you start there is no end to it. A lot of garbage is just covered with dirt and plants. Cleaning is harder than it looks. You have to be careful, gloves are not resistant to everything and dealing with syringes, broken glass, and similar, can be very dangerous. Also, many things are hard to separate and dig. There was one big nylon bag, that took three of us to get from the dirt and roots of a tree.
In my spot there were so many snails I was very surprised. There were many snail's houses also, and at the end of action, I took some as souvenir and reminder of this day. I didn't take too many photos as I was rather focused to clean as much as I can in those 2 hours, and taking photos was taking too much time since I had to take off my gloves first, and put them back again. At first look there is not too much garbage, but once you start, the possibilities of what you can find are almost endless. Some of the craziest finds today were pieces of a toilet, probably, and 5-6 glass bottles that were buried perfectly next to each other.
100 bags of garbage less in the nature
And here is the result, about 100 bags of garbage less in the nature. On our location, one of 150, and probably not the worst one. It's crazy to even think of the amount of garbage collected in this day, and also devastating knowing it will take who knows how much more actions to clean the country, or get it better. I try to be eco-friendly as I can, but before, I used to think that it's foolish to collect other people's trash, kind of humiliating. I grow from that thinking, and realized I would rather be a fool doing something good for others and nature, than a fool that has no upbringing and conscience, and throws that trash. "Hating others is not patriotism, patriotism is when you collect other people's trash."
Lead photo and photos included in the article are original and mine.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
It's National Pet Day!
Hello everyone! Hope you are doing well!
I am not posting much here, but I am doing a HiveBloPoMo challenge on Hive, and I don't wanna jinx it, but so far I am doing well. However, it is National Pet Day - 11th of April 2023 so I don't wanna miss opportunity to share my lovies.
For me, as well as probably for all of you, every day is a pet day! The precious being that are always there to make us smile and comfort us. In this post, I will show you all my pets. I was always a dog person, and I wanted a dog all my life, but my parents wouldn't let me have one, so I was always with stray dogs. I feed them and pet them daily, and considered them my pets, for real. One of my favorite stray dogs was Escobar. It was too long ago, but fortunately, I have one photo with Escobar.
Since I wasn't allowed to have a dog, I wanted any animal. I got permission to have a turtle. I had water turtle at first and then later I had forest turtle, which was a gift from two of my friends, and it was already named Tiki. I loved animals so much, I had so many different pets, from warms to ants and spiders. At one point I even had a squirrel. It was a baby squirrel that was lost in our backyard, and we fed it until it become bigger to go into the woods.
I couldn't have a dog, but my aunt got one, and I was dog sitting him so much it was as he was mine. Meet Labrador Amos. He is the best and smartest dog, believe me. Part of that is because he grew up with his smart mom, next door, that thought he everything.
And then there was, my forever love, Medo. He was the best gift I ever received for my birthday and that I will ever receive. He changed all of us and losing him was very traumatic for the entire family. We were very lucky he left us with his son, Teddy. They are both samoyeds, and even though I never thought of having this breed, both of them made me fall in love with it. And Teddy is just amazing. I am so grateful that we have him, because we have a part of Medo. He is a big boy, but he still looks and acts as he is 2, tops. (Just realized I don't know how to caption photo anymore, so first one, Medo and me, second one, Teddy)
We never had a cat before, because, honestly, I didn't like them so much, and no one else in the house beside my grandpa did. They seemed too cold and reserved to me, compared to dogs. But there will always be some cat passing by and coming to eat at our home. Last cat was there longer and we kind of bonded more. We lost her in summer of 2020, and we decided to get a kitten, for the first time. Having kitten compare to adult cat is very difficult, and it seemed impossible to teach him anything, he was such a crazy kitten, and it was not real to me that he will grow up into the most loving cat I ever saw, my Tom.
After this, my aunt also took a stray cat to give her a better home, so Matilda joined the family. At the same time that we took Tom, my grandparents in the village took Marko. In village, we already had Medo. It was a neighbor dog that lost his owners, so my grandparents took care of him. Last year, there was a dog that was left by someone, so he joined a family as well, Jacky.
So as you can see, I love animals, and we have so many, and I don't know how I would live without them, I am grateful I have so many around me and in my life.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Let me tell you about Gimfest
Happy weekend and Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate it! Have a great day you all ^^
Last weekend I was home, and it was supposed to be a regular weekend for me, when I am home, I didn't have any extra plans. But Sunday morning, a friend called to wake me up so that we can go to the Gimfest. I didn't even know it was happening last weekend, and I hesitated a bit should I go, since I didn't have much time before I head to the village, as usual on Sunday, but it was a very nice day and I decided to go.
Let me tell you a little bit about Gimfest and what it is. Firstly, the name comes from two words, "gimnazija" and "festival". We have specific high schools here, like medical high school, art high school... but high school that is not so specific and has all the subjects you had in primary school (plus some more) is called gimnazija. It is high school that I also attended. So Gimfest is festival of natural and social sciences and art, that is held in high school and organized by high school students with some help of teachers.
It is an event that is prepared for 14 years now, and it always attracts many visitors as well as participators. Each classroom has it own theme, some of them are regular and repeat each year, such as math, physics, chemistry, a very popular game room... But some are special for each year, like there was an escape room this year, which I didn't see previously, mythology room... It is a perfect event for the younger audience to come and discover fun sides of science and maybe develop interest in some specific subject. It is also fun for former students to come and see professors and remember school days. When you walk through halls, you will see arrows pointing which room is where.
I will share some photos that I took.
There was one stand with two adorable mice. They were supposed to turn the wheel, but they were too little to do it. However, they stayed as attraction, and for sure they did that job amazing. No one cared that much about physics when they saw these cuties and all questions were about them, as if it were a biology stand 😁
Beside game room there are many stands where your interaction is needed which makes it much more interesting for everyone, weather are you taking some psychology tests, testing your skills or brain. Some even offer candies as reward. There are some cool places to take photos and I took some of my friends, but I covered their faces for privacy 😅 You could take photo as Asterix and Obelix and also there was some other places with flowers and other wall decoration that are made for taking photos for memories.
When I was part of this event I was in charge of decoration with some other friends, we helped others if they needed to draw something or to make posters or any kind of crafted decoration, and I loved to see some nice and creative work this year too, I loved these clouds. When we decorated it years ago, most popular were divers with fire extinguishers as oxygen bottles, and everyone loved it. Here is how it looked.
It was weird to be back in those halls now that I am not a student anymore, but also wonderful to remember old days and to see that younger generations maintain the tradition and still organize the Gimfest. After the festival, we went for a cup of coffee, and I was on my way to the village where I spent the most of my day.
Thank you for reading my post and I hope you had an amazing weekend ^^
Bullet journal - April
Hello everyone! It's so nice to see changes in the site, I always like to see them, not only because they are making the site better, but also we know that someone is working hard in the behind, and keeping the site alive.
March is over, and is it just me or that month diapered I don't remember when a month passed so quickly for me, and I can't say there is a specific reason for it. As the new month is here, so is the new bullet journal. This month I wanted to use balloons and flowers as my theme, but for the balloons I only found air balloons themed, and I already did that one. I also did a flower blossom before too, so I decided to go with something else. As I was searching for the balloons and flowers I found one simply but pretty, flower theme. Even though I have this flower in the garden, I forgot its name, but I think it's some type of garlic, maybe? Anyway, my inspiration was a video by "being me" on YouTube, the video was also for the April. My first step is always making the pencil sketches. It was same this time. So here is how they looked like.
After this I usually add ink pen, but this time (since it was better and easier) I added colors first, and then ink on top of it. And then I finished it by adding ink, which took most of the time. If it looks like I lost patience, it's because I did. Three pens died on me while I was doing it (maybe because color is kind of greasy, I don't know). But I went from 0.03 to 0.5, and I usually use 0.5 only to highlight some things when I do bullet journal. I was not happy about finishing it all with such a thick pen, but I had no choice. I also added one more day to the April, 31st, but I noticed that is not right on time to erase it, before I did the ink pen.
Other than my front page, and little calendar next to it, I always add habit and expense trackers. Sometimes I add mood tracker, but I am bad at tracking it. I decided to go with a simple one this month, so I don't waste time on something I might not even use.
Also, I leave little space to write what movies and shows I watched, as well as what books I read. This time I also added space for links/things. This is because I always bookmark sites that I don't need at the moment, but I might later, but then I never open bookmarks. I started exercising this month again (after so long) and also tracking my wight and other measurements, but I decided not to make an exercise table, as I want to exercise slowly, not to push my self, because it was so long, and it will take time to work out as I did before.
The pages that are not included here are pages with tasks or 'to-do' lists for each day, that I fill as the month is passing by.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Operation Noble Anvil
24 years ago, on this day, bombing of my country started. I wrote about it last year as well, but I will probably write about it every year, as it was something that would impact our lives forever, and no one here will ever forget it. Yugoslavia was bombarded by NATO, and it lasted for 78 days (2 months, 2 weeks, 3 days). Around 2500 souls lost, among them, around 89 were children. Material damage was huge, but it is nothing compared to lost lives, and also permanent damage that will affect everyone here for ages. In 2015, Serbia was first in Europe in terms of mortality from malignant tumors. The increase in deaths and diseased happened after bombing, and it was most likely caused by 15 tons of depleted uranium that NATO threw at us. Real consequences and all the damage will probably never be known.
The operation was officially called "Operation Allied Force", but in SAD army it was also known as "Operation Noble Anvil", here it was mostly called "Merciful Angel". "Bombs for peace" and "Bringing Serbs to hell - A massive bombing attack opens the door to peace" is probably how they tried to justify illegal bombing, because it started without the approval of the UN Security Council. And as you can see, it was pretty much us against the world.
"conflicted sides" - source: Wikipedia - https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%90%D0%A2%D0%9E_%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%9A%D0%B5_%D0%A1%D0%A0%D0%88
Although I was little, and didn't understand many things at the time, I do remember some things, and I was told many stories about it. What I will never forget, for sure, is the sound of sirens that warn everyone about attacks. I can't even imagine how was it living here in those days, in constant fear for your life and the lives of your family and friends. There were even some bombs thrown relatively near my house, because my home is near the place that they were aiming for. They wanted to destroy economics and infrastructure, and they made approximately 100 billions dollars damage. General stuff building in Belgrade was destroyed, and it stayed that way to this day, as a reminder of what happened.
With this article I want to make awareness, that there were other wars, and there still are other wars after World War II, many people don't live in peace that we all deserve. It is heartbreaking that in the 21st century, this is still the way that people solve conflicts. So if you pray for peace, pray for peace for everyone and everywhere. There are no winners in the war. Everyone only loses.
Thank you for making time to read my article. Appreciate it.
**Image includes in this article is screenshot of statistics from Wikipedia (source link available). Lead image in this article is taken from Unslpash.com
Weekend visit to the mountains
Hello everyone, it's been so long! I honestly didn't know should I come back or not. Last few months, I just didn't feel the need or want to be online much. But I am back! In this post I would like to write about my visit to the mountains the other weekend. Since this winter was very, very weak here, we almost had no snow at all. Two times here was snow in my hometown, but unfortunately I wasn't there. Even on mountains, there was no snow until after the New Year, and usually there is before it. People even had to cancel their holidays. So, the other weekend we had time and decided to go to the mountain to see snow, at last once this year. As I said, winter was very weak, so when we checked the first place that we wanted to visit, Divcibare, there was snow but not enough to ski. Even though no one knows to ski, beside me, everyone wanted to try it. I say I know to ski, but last time that I did it, was 10+ years ago, so I was sure I would be a beginner just like them. We changed our planes and went to the Zlatibor. Zlatibor is a beautiful place, but recently it was so urbanized that it's slowly losing its nature and beauty. However, the place to ski is not in the center of Zlatibor, but a few kilometers away, so we avoided all the buildings and crowded places.
A relatively new thing here, is gondola, which is quite popular. It is quite long, and it connects Tornik, where we went, and the center of Zlatibor. But this time around we didn't go for a ride, even though it seemed it has a beautiful path, and you can see amazing views from it. Tornik has a few slopes, for beginners and advanced skiers. The tops of the biggest ones, weren't even visible. I didn't make too many photos while we were there, it was hard to do it with mittens, and constantly taking them off, taking phone from the pocket, putting them on, putting phone back...it was just a waste of time. But I did take some, and I took some before we started skiing, so I will share those.
Once we got there, I started to remember how to put skies, but once I was on them, I was a bit insecure. We went to the slope for beginners, and even though I had the least trouble to get there of all of us, I still had 0 confidence. On my big surprise, as soon as I had courage to start going down, it all came natural to me. Turned out, skiing is just like riding a bike, you never forget it! I was thrilled I got down with no falls, and my confidence was pretty big. But, all my friends were stuck at the begging of the path, and kept falling and falling. I was waiting for them in the end of the slope, thinking how they will not go again, for sure. But, we did pay for all of it, and I was glad they don't want to give up. However, since no one was hurt, and I was the only one that didn't fall, it was pretty funny to watch them getting mad, I must admit 🤭 In the end I even switched to the next slope, since the beginners one was short and rope way was very slow.
All in all, I had a great time, and I am so glad I did it, because I was sure my skiing days were over, but now I am very excited and hopefully that next year I will book a holiday or extended weekend and enjoy winter like I did before. Now, at this time, it's so sunny outside and looks like we will have a nice spring weekend here.
I don't know will I stay for longer here, but I do miss writing and you guys. Hope you are all good and thank you for reading my post ^^
World cup 2022 - End of group phase
End of group phase meant end of the competition for some national teams. As a football fan, world cup is something that I don't miss. Specially this year when my country was among 32 that got a chance to play group phase. Even though I haven't watched the national team in a long time, due to many reasons, I was happy to see them play and to cheer for them. Another thing is the fact that this world cup is very controversial and very different from any previous, and I have to say it is questionable would I watched it if my national team didn't play. When I watched the second game, and when they scored one and then another time, I have to say, emotions were back in big amount. But it was very much different, and with all the hype that was since last year (when we qualified) it just didn't feel the same as it was before, when it was in summer, when we had songs that we know and listen even today.
I was confident that my national team is strong and good enough to pass the group, even with strong opponents. We were part of the group G, among Brazil, Switzerland and Cameroon. First opponent was Brazil who is one of the favorites in the entire cup, and possible new champion. It was close to nuts to think that we can beat them, but I always say, if you don't believe your team can win, no matter who is opponent and how hard it is, why you even call yourself a fan, and cheer for them? So yes, it was crazy, it was close to impossible, but many of us did have hope for a miracle. As that didn't happen, and we lost 2:0, it was time to move on and focus on the next game. The opponent was Cameroon, and it was the easiest one in the group. They surprised us with a goal, but we move on and recovered fast before half-time. Shortly after the second half started, we scored again and had it all in our hands, the win was already celebrated. But then, Cameroon surprised our defense not only once, but two times in the same way. And that was it. Our team desperately tried to have advantage again, but the game ended with draw score, which was 3:3.
It was time to move on once again. Even if we celebrated against Cameroon, and won, we needed to win against Switzerland to be sure we are in the next phase. Switzerland is a strong opponent, and they also needed to win to be sure, so I expected the game to be hard. But our team failed. And I have to say, no matter how much it hurts, yes, they didn't deserve to go to the next round. It is a bit sad, how we are so successful in so many sports, but football, that makes the most of the chaos, hype and cheering, we always fail at. However, to show you part of the atmosphere, here is Teddy ready for the match in colors of the Serbian flag.
By the end of the match, on the other one, Cameroon-Brazil, Cameroon was about to make another miracle, and I was actually cheering for the draw score at last, so that Cameroon had chance, if not us. Switzerland has some Albanian players, and it involves politics then, and we already had history with matches against them, so near the end of the game, things got heated up on the field. However, score remained same, 2:3 and we were at the last spot in our group, with pathetic one point.
I was hoping this post would be celebrating post, but unfortunately, our team was eliminated. As far as other teams are concerned, we already saw many surprises, and not sure what we can expect from now on. Before, I used to cheer from France as other national team, and I think they have good chances to be in the top 3, but I would also like to see other teams that already made a surprise by going to the next phase, not to drop the ball and to continue surprising.
This is my second post in #postmas2022 !
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Hello December - Postmas 2022
It's been a long time again, since my last post, and I am sorry for that. I don't know what is with me and my online world. I used to be addicted and post everyday and check every social media I have multiple times a day. But lately I have phases when I post on and off, for a certain period of time. Maybe that is for the best, but still, I would like to continue some activity, healthy one, not hours online each day. It takes so many days (51 maybe? I forgot how much exactly) for something to become a habit for us, but only one day (at last for me), for it to stop being a habit.
This is why I decided to make a challenge for myself, and try to post each day in December. As many of you could probably guess postmas is inspired by popular YouTube challenge 'vlogmas' where people post each day in December till the Christmas. That would be till 25th of December, but for me, Christmas is in January, so I will try to post till the New Year, if not the Christmas itself.
As far as the content is concerned, it will be a mix of different things, from usual daily life style, to some more important subjects, that should be talked about more. I like to go with the flow, and post some things that happens in real time, but also since I wasn't active for so long, I have so many things I wanted to write about previously, but I haven't yet. Therefore planning posts in advance is not ideal for me, but it is also not so bad for the days that I can't think of anything, and don't know what to post about.
It's nice to be back here, and I am enthusiastic to continue posting, just hope it will not end like previously, with another big break 😅 For tomorrow, I know what to post, so there will be at last two days, since this is my first #postmas2022 post :D
Thank you for reading my post ^^
This weekend in a nutshell
The weekend came to an end, and in this post I will write about how I spent it. Before weekend, I watched the weather prognoses, and it said it will rain entire weekend, it even started raining on Friday night. On Saturday morning I had little hope it will not rain, but just as I needed to get out, it started raining again. However, rain didn't ruin my mood. I went to have coffee with my friend, and we went to one interesting coffee shop that inside reminds me of Hogwarts. They had cute autumn decoration outside, which I liked a lot.
In the afternoon, we went to Ikea. I love the labyrinth in Ikea, made of rooms and kitchens and bathrooms. I think it is a great way to get ideas on how to arrange your own home, what to put where, how it would look... However, I think their prices for furniture are a bit high usually, but it's great for finding many useful things to organize your home and make it more practical. And also for some decoration. The idea was to get shell for the kitchen, but once you are there, and you see good prices, you easily realized you need more stuff. All the stuff we got was practical, but mostly it was jars. We put many things inside, such as flour, tea, nuts, seasonings... It might not be necessary, but it's practical for me, because things are separated nicely, everything is completely closed and vacuumed, and everything is visible and looks nice.
One thing I definitely didn't need, but I still got, are cactuses. They are so cute, and I couldn't resist them, but I decided this was last time to get them, since some of them were so good and died quickly (when I got them before) and the price is now higher. I would probably just move on if I didn't see some that I didn't have before, and they do have very big variety of cactuses.
Today, on we went out for a lunch in one Asian food restaurant. It is a new one, in the neighborhood, so we wanted to try it out. I didn't try too much of Asian food so far, but all that I tried I loved. Food was very good, and it came streaming and boiling.
The restaurant is modest inside, but outside it has beautiful and simple decoration outside - Christmas lights, but so many of them. This reminded me to finally go to the store and get my lights, because previous ones were broken. I looked for them in Ikea also, but they seemed to be a bit expensive, because I know I can get them in Chinese store for much less and much more of them. I was right and I got mine for $3. I didn't even realise that I got bigger ones this time, and they had addition to its end, so they can be extended. In the other words, if I decide to make LA of my small apartment, I can do that with 2-3 more packs :D
In the evening I enjoyed my lights and played a game with my friends, after a while.
All in all, it was a nice weekend, busy and fast one, but I enjoyed it a lot. Hope you had a nice weekend as well :)
All photos in this article, including lead photo, are original and I own them.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Teddy turned 8!
No matter what age he is, I can't stop looking at his as anything else but as a puppy, because that is how he acts, Teddy will always be my baby boy. Today, he turned 8 years. I can't even believe it's been that long. In this post, I will share some photos of him as baby and older, some facts about him, and a story of how we got him. It was an unfortunate event that lead us to having Teddy.
I originally had a dog named Medo, that I got for my birthday as a gift. It was the best present ever, and I will be forever grateful for that. Unfortunately, Medo was killed by a car when he run out of our front yard chasing some other dog. Everyone was devastated, and they even didn't tell me for a while. Previously, Medo got his two puppies with Bella, and we told her owners that they can keep both puppies as we didn't know anyone who would we gift one. However, when Medo died, my family wanted to take one puppy. I was against it, but I saw how they are all suffering a lot, and I realized this is a only way to have 'part' of Medo with us. I told them to chose a puppy with yellowish ears, and that was Teddy!
What happened to Medo is reason why Teddy is a bit spoiled and also never let out without a leash, we didn't want to risk it again. Teddy has a beautiful, playful soul, and he loves everyone that give him any attention. Usually people can't believe how old he is because he is always acting as a puppy. He loves other dogs as well, and always wants to play with them, even too much. Bad thing that we did is let him growl when we play, and he doesn't know the actual meaning of it. So sometimes people get scared because he growls or bark. He barks a looooot, but that is just how his breed is. Guess I forgot to mention it, he is Samoyed and pretty much has most of the features they have. However, unlike other Samoyed, he likes to swim and be in the water. This is because of his best friend, Amos, who is a Labrador. Teddy also plays with our dogs in the village, specially with the new one, Dzeko, who is younger so he can keep up with Teddy. Although he is usually playful with the other dog, Teddy is a bit jealous of our cat, Tom. They still do get along very well, and I am very happy because of it.
I guess I could go on and all and write about all the things Teddy do and loves, but this is enough for this post. Happy birthday, Teddy, and thank you for being part of my life and making me happy ❤️
All photos in this article, including lead image, are original and I own them.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Bullet journal - November 2022
Hello everyone, hope you are doing well and that you had a good day. As per usual, at start of each month, I am back with my bullet journal spread. Only two more to go this year. For the next year I might change some things and do some things in advance that might ease my work later, if I do I will post about it. I might also share more pages of it again, as I usually do only the first page, which I call spread, just because that one is most interesting to me, and other pages are usually the same, with some of the decoration and details from the theme that I chose.
First, I thought I would do a mushroom there, or leaves. I looked at a few videos on YouTube and there were three that I like the most. First one was a potion theme, very simple but effective one. But then I saw one that was with books and clouds. However, I also saw one with coffee/tea theme and I loved that one too. So I decided to draw mushrooms on other occasion, and for my spread this month, to mix two videos that I saw and to have both books and coffee. As per usual, first I did a pencil sketch. It looked a bit messy, probably because my eraser is ready to be changed. I love that eraser, but it's getting messier and messier, even if I don't have to erase a lot. After pencil, I did black pen, but not on all parts. Some of the clouds weren't outlined, and I left them like that. I used 0.03 size.
After that, I started adding colors which were black, gray, blue and light pinkish and orange. Even though I had trouble with books at first, the coffee cup looked the worst now and there was just something missing there. Also, my pen started to fail me and was near to go out of ink. I had a rule not to buy new art supplies for a while, but I guess it doesn't count if its a replacement for something :) I decided to use another pen, the next size that I had which was 0.1 and to go over it all but also the clouds that I didn't outline at first. This way everything was more visible and came more to life. I also added white pen on some parts, and I really like to do that. It was a bit random and not the same theme for the entire spread, but I like how it turned to be at the end.
This is my third post for this month, and my challenge is going okay, so far 3/30.
All photos in this article, including the lead image, are original and taken and owned by me.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Bad experiences with online shopping
Now that I think about it, I mostly had bad experience with online shopping. Many people use this as the default way of shopping, and I know it's very practical and can be a better option, but it wasn't good for me a few times. Usually I prefer to go to the store and see the product by myself and decide is it good or not for me, no matter what it is, but sometimes it's only available online or store is not close, I can't go for some reason... In this post, I will talk about my purchase back in September, but before that, let me mention a few bad online shopping before that one.
Sending bad product
If you order online, you don't see the exact product that you get, so they can send you anything. Product may have small or big defect. You can send it back, of course, but I think they try to plunge (google says this is the word) you the product, hoping that you won't return it. One time I ordered some bag from a popular store here and what I got looked nothing like the photo. The front was almost washed out, and clearly it was damaged, so I had to return it. They accepted it (I sent photos of the bag and how it looked on site). However, they sent a delivery man to wrong address (wrong city to be precise) and I ended up taking the bag to them. This same store also sent me a book that was a completely different issue than the one on site. Price was the same, but it was a boomer because I already had a few books from the same collections, and now this one didn't fit in. But I didn't return it, I didn't want to go to all that trouble again, and also I was pretty sure they sent that issue because they didn't have the one I ordered, so I would not be able to exchange it. Another time, I ordered a book from another store and I got a book with dirt on it. I'm not exaggerating, I had to clean it with wet tissue and didn't want to touch it for a while.
Out of stock
Many online stores don't update they stock status on time, so you order something just to get email they are out of it. One time there was some sale, and both me and my sister ordered sneakers (it was one order). We got confirmation mail, but they didn't come in more than seven days, so we called the store. They said they didn't have the sneakers my sister ordered, but they didn't care to inform us or ask do we just want the other one sent. But also opposite thing happened go me with bookstore, where I ordered dirty book. I actually ordered one other book (which was over $10), and 'dirty' book I just added to my order because it was on big sale (it was only $2). When the order came, there was no book I actually wanted, but just the dirty one. They were out of stock and didn't care to inform me and ask do I wanted the other book, but they just sent it out. It's as if they knew I would cancel the order. When I called to complain, they said someone new was working and didn't know they should inform me.
Most recent semi bad experience
Now, about my experience from September. I was looking for new shoes/sneakers for the fall and rain time. I love the converse, and I found a site with so many of them, but it was only online shop and I had to order. I was looking two models and I decided to go with totally different model that I never had before. Size was different, but they actually called and asked, and turned out they had the exact size that I needed. However, when sneakers came, they looked as if they were used. The sneakers soles looked fine and new, but leather on the side was wronged out, and color was different on a few places. Photos don't show it well, but here are some.
I sent photos to them, and they immediately called, said they were sorry and that they will send a delivery man. I exchanged them for other model that I thought about, because they didn't have another on in the same size, and they were even cheaper. Since they accepted my complaint, the cost of returning sneakers was paid by them. So I have to say, in the end it was good, but still if they just checked shoes before sending we wouldn't go through all that trouble of sending back and forth. At least they accepted their mistake. Although I wanted different model, the one I got maybe even better choice, since they are waterproof. Here is how the other one look like.
I have to say, after this, last month I ended up ordering online more than ever, but I will talk about it in another post (I am still waiting for some orders).
What is your wors online shopping experience, if you had any?
Thanks for reading my post ^^
Photos included in this article are original and made them.
Lead photo is from Unsplash.com
Have you forgot me?
Hello everyone! Happy new month! I hope you are all doing well and wish you a great November. Instead of a month when I will write each day, it ended up in a month when I wasn't active at all. I have to say, obviously it was my fault, but also part of me was disappointed that I really make effort for some posts, and they don't do well at all, while some posts that are so random do well. It felt like I put time and effort, and it's just for nothing.
However, this month I decided to post either way, and see if it pays out in the long term, like it did before. Also I found some prompts for writing, so I guess that should help whenever I have blockade. But also, I have so many posts I previously planned but didn't post at all. So there should be material to survive the month.
In fact, I was about to come back even before first of November, but I went home for a few days, which I didn't plan before, and I spent my time with family more instead of online.
So, this is my first post of the month, something as introduction post, and each day I will post either something that I planned before, something that happened recently, or I will use a prompt if I can't come up with something else.
I don't have a specific prompt list or table, but I might make one ahead, just to make it even easier.
Lead photo is original and I own it.
Thanks for reading this, and supporting me even after this much time ^^
Bullet Journal - October 2022
New month means new bullet journal spread. For this month, I didn't have to think much, I already knew what theme I would probably go with. I was sure there is going to be pumpkins included, but also I was thinking about some Halloween things as well. There were many videos on YouTube with pumpkin bullet journal theme, mostly for the October. And in general, I loved most of the themes and how spread is done, that I saw. They were not all from this year, but that doesn't matter. In the end, I went with video that was made on "Les astuces de Margaux" channel. It was a French YouTuber. It had pumpkins and also magic wands, and it felt like a good combo. I didn't do it exactly the same, and also I did the font of the October word differently.
As per usual, I do it with pencil first, which is not that precisely, but its purpose is only to make a sketch, and then when I do it with black pens, I take more time and I try to make likes better. Also, before doing it with black pen, I try to erase most of the pencil, because it's easier to do it before then later, and risk to get black pen messed up. I used unipens, in size 0.03 and 0.1. And October word was thicker than that, bolded, I could say.
After that was done, it was time to add some color. I don't have much colored pens, so I just used yellow, orange. brown and green, all in one shade. I tried to make more shades, just by doing orange lighter and stronger.
For the details on other pages, I did some more of the Halloween objects. Like spider web, more pumpkins, but this time craved ones, some ghosts, but also leaves. I did my regular Habit and Expense tracker page, but also I added books and movies again (I didn't have it previous month) because I know I have more time that I will spend doing that. This month I keep track of some sites that I am trying out, but I decided to keep that one separately and not include another page in here. Also, I am a bit indecisive when it comes to exercising, and do I want to do it again, so I made a table for that separately as well.
Just to show you how much I love pumpkins, here is how my spread looked last year. Also pumpkin themed. And I realized after I did font this time, that I did similar last year as well. But those letters just look nice and goes with most of the themes.
There will be more similar drawings for me this month, separately from the bullet journal, just because I like these themes, and I like to draw them.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
September summary and goals for October
Hello everyone, hope you all had a nice weekend. I am here with my September summary and also plans and goals for this month. As I already mentioned, September is not my month, and I was busy and mostly not active online. This is why I didn't expect to earn much, but secretly I was hoping I could reach my 2BCH. That didn't happen last month, but this should be possible. We will see.
Hive/Ecency
On Ecency I made only 6 posts for the entire month. I was close to not earning enough for this month Power Up day, because I transferred all my previous Hive before the September. However, in those 6 posts I was participating in contests with 4 posts, and I won 2 of them. This is what helped me make a total of 11 Hive by the end of the month, so that I can participate in Power Up day with all of the 11 Hives that I made. In short term it means I have 0 balance again, but in long term, I am growing my account, which I think is important.
For this month, I will try to post each day on Ecency. I already tried this in July and one day I had to skip it due to bad internet connection. I think I can do it this month, but we will see.
Read and Noise
On Read I made only 3 posts which is probably the lowest since I started to be active regularly. Maybe I would make more, but the second 2 of those 3 didn't get rewards from Rusty, so it was a bit demotivating to write that much, considering I don't have a lot of time, and that didn't turn out to be worthy. So I stopped for the month, knowing I would have more time and things to post in this month. This is why for this month I plan to post each day, if it's possible. I was supposed to give my sister my laptop for a week, and that would make it harder, but now that it turned out that I don't have to, it will be easier to go through with it.
On noise, as expected, I also wasn't active. But I did make some posts, I posted about my year on noise article, when I also discovered about new noise site and now app. This made me very happy and excited, because I am hoping it might, can be as old noise, or hopefully even better. I know it just started, and it will take time for it to be done, but we have hope now, and something is finally happening.
Other sites
Even though most of the other sites don't give me as much as Ecency, Read and Noise, I decided to keep the track of all of them for this moth and see if there is any worth of using. It's only the games on luck site that I plan to stay on for sure, but that one is games on luck. so it can be good, it can be bad. it's not certain.
The lead image is from Unsplash.com
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Goodbye September - Hello October!
Hello everyone, hope you are all doing good. Another month has passed by, and I don't know what is it this year, but time is passing by so fast. I don't know when summer started, and it already ended with a blink of an eye, at last for me.
As I already mentioned, September is not my favorite month of the year, and I am glad that it is over. My life has been a bit crazy and chaotic last couple of weeks, and not all has settled down yet, but I do feel better now, and hopefully things will go into their place, soon. I don't want to go into details, but September is usually a stressful month for me, and this one was extra stressful, but now things are better.
Also, now I have more time and more motivation, will and ideas what to post here. Even maybe too much, but I hope I won't be overwhelmed by all of it, and that I will be consistent and go through with my ideas.
Something that I look forward to, is Inktober, which is a drawing challenge during October. I will write more about it in some other post. Besides that, I also plan to make more drawings/paintings in this month, as I have more time now and that is something that I enjoy a lot.
Today is also a International Coffee day, and as huge coffee lover that I am, I can't skip mentioning it here as well, as well as some coffee photo, which I also like to take a lot. Since it is October I will go for a Pumpkin Latte again, because they are back on the menu.
Pumpkins are another association with October for me. For whatever reason I really love them. I like to see them, I like to draw them, and of course, I like to eat them. Specially the pumpkin soup.
I feel like October is a month of nice and beautiful fall colors and phase from summer to colder and rainy days in November. This is why even thought I don't love fall so much, I do like October, and all that it offers.
For my goals this month I would really like to stay active daily, but we will see how it goes. Also I would like to post daily on Ecency. Now that noise app is active it is a pleasure to be more active there as well and enjoy it becoming better and better. As far as other sites are concerned I don't have much plans, but I might try out some new sites this month.
This post is mostly just come back/ update post, and I look forward to be active here again and post more regulary.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
One year on noise cash
Even though I wasn't active the entire year, in August I marked one year since I made my first post and since I joined noise. In this article, I would like to write about my experience and time spent on noise, as well as some of my opinions regards it. I also saw @Duvinca post about same subject, and we have similar experience there.
For noise cash I heard long time before I joined it. I was active on another social media app, and I have seen a post or a two about noise from time to time, but I didn't give much attention to it. I noticed most of the people that shared news about noise, with time, stopped using this other app. Since they earned much more on noise, no wonder. But I have to admit, I was skeptical at first. Now that I look back, I am not even sure why, since I was already familiar with crypto, but mostly I had bitcoin. I guess the main problem for me was how to sell that bitcoin cash that I earn, because my country is not accepted by many sites. It was a bit complicated, but not that hard, in the end, so I am sad I didn't join noise much earlier, when I first heard of it.
The first day, I was already in love with it. There were many familiar faces there, I liked the layout of the site, I loved the fact that they are very strict and against spam and plagiarism, and I could see the first day there that I can earn more than all the other sites that I used at the moment, combined. Sounds too good to be truth, right? Some of my friends joined at the same time, more people that I know were coming day by day. They added the invite feature, so it was all just growing and getting better. The freak that I am, I started making detailed journal about my earnings there and realizing how much I can earn there, with only my post and content.
I can't say I didn't have a few not so great experiences there (content stealing and some rude users), but that is expected, and it's not sites fault at all. I joined read cash as well, but it was long later when I started using it. It was all good until the end of November. In November, price of all crypto went up, and so did BCH price. At the moment I decided to sell some of my BCH because I knew I will need that money in the next months, but also I didn't want to see all, just because I wanted to be one BCH holder, and I believed price could go even higher. Unfortunately, as we all know, that didn't happen, and from that moment price went down. In December, there was a new feature on noise called 'free tips'. I realized it was present before on site, but removed. At first, I was very excited about it and I got it in the first days since the update. I saw it as a great opportunity to reward content more or less in value, based on our opinion. Sadly, this new feature was made that way, that you can choose now much % you want to keep for yourself, and many users took advantage of it. Instead of rewarding others, they rewarded themselves. Also many gave the least possible reward, and kept 80% of it, which was far less than how much like was worth before, Not long after, this feature become only way of earning, and like didn't have any value. This, along with low BCH price, resulted in less earnings for me, but still, I thought it was just a phase, and that it will get better.
In January, it got worse. I was among the rare that took the least % of the reward to themselves, I posted only original content, I was active daily, yet free tips were taken from me. I didn't get any amount of it anymore, and I thought they will come back, but they didn't, not till this day. This meant I need to give tips back from my wallet, and basically earn nothing. Also, since I couldn't give like before, it resulted in losing many followers and tippers. Still, I kept posting there and had hope I could earn again.
Even though I made very detailed statistic of my earnings, at the time, it's hard to tell how much exactly I earned. This is because I didn't know it's better to do it in BCH, not $, and also in the meantime I changed wallet, and used second one for other sites too. But what I know for sure is, by the 9th of the November I made ~0.4BCH, and I sold 0.3BCH at the time, for about $200. Which mean I earned 0.4BCH for 2 and a half month use of noise. With the price that was at the time, that was a pretty good amount. Until end of November I made another 0.2 BCH, for December I am not sure, and then in the January I made 0.11 BCH. After that, I was using it less and less and stopped my detailed daily statistic, as I didn't even make cash out daily anymore.
In July, I stopped being active online, so since then I haven't posted there. I am not ready to leave yet, but I just don't wanna post while not being able to return support to everyone. I don't know why I lost my free tips, and I am sure I didn't do anything bad to cause that. I wish noise had some kind of support which would make using the site much easier. I know many people just made new accounts, but I didn't want to do that.
This would probably be a kind of farewell letter to noise, but I saw the news. They are making noise app. This is now my only hope I could be back to noise and things will be good as they did one year ago. Also, I hope there will be some kind of admin or support. So, I guess this is not a goodbye, yet, but it's hard to believe noise could be the same place as it was a year ago. It is still in demo mode, but if you didnt join yet, and you want, you can use my link https://noise.app/invite/aqdv3c0v
I also need to say a huge THANK YOU to this platform, because this is how I started learning and discovering more about crypto, specially about BCH which is now my main crypto and crypto that I earn the most. This have show me another world of opportunities, so no matter what happens, noise will always be in my heart and reason why I am into crypto and BCH as much as I am now.
In this article I shared some screenshots from how it was before, and how it was later and how it is now.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Bullet journal - September
I wonder will I ever make this post on time, and not toward mid of the month. That most likely won't happen next month either, since I am a bit busy to do it earlier and on time to post, but we will see. However, it's not even that important, I guess, but I like when I have more schedule how and when to post what. For this month, when I searched for inspiration online, I found many similar main pages, or themes, which were mushrooms. I really liked the idea, and almost went with it, but then I saw another one, a different, which was more fitting for me, and for my month of September. Now sure how to call the theme of this one, but maybe mix of desk and things on it, and fall vibes. Well, you will see the photos so you can decide for yourself. As per usual, I didn't want to spend much time on it, but also I didn't want to make it too simple this time, and plane. But what I have learned is, no matter how much time you plan to spend on it, you will definitely spend more. It happens to me every single time. Nonetheless, I enjoyed making it, and I am happy with the result, but it's just a side note.
In case you want to check out the video that was my inspiration, here is the link. Of course, I didn't make it exactly the same as in the video, just because I didn't measure anything and did the same proportion as she did. As you can notice things are not in real proportion, but I don't have a problem with it in general, and specially with drawings like this, it's not that important at all. Besides, not placing some things and drawing everything as she did, I also didn't have any washi tapes or other stickers or anything like that to add. I can say they are not so popular and common here, which is maybe for the best, in my case, because I feel like I would buy them all the time and have way too many, and also spend much more time on making things like this. Anyway, I left out the place where she taped the pattern, and I meant to just color it and add black lines, but in the end, I just left it as it is. I will share photos of the process of making it. First I do pencil, then I do black pen, and this time I did all (except word September) with 0.03 pen, oddly, it seemed too thick for me, for some reason. And then coloring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8NUhLphvA
I didn't have as many brown shades as she did, nor the same shades, but I tried to do best with what I had. Also, black parts I did with black color pencil instead of pen, because my paper is not that good, and it would be visible on the next page. And the last change I made, was adding that "to remember" part. As I already mentioned, September is not my favorite month, but I want to try my best to make it a good one this time. I know it will be hard, but have to stay positive and do my best.
Other pages that I won't show this time, are my habit tracker which I changed this month, after so much time. Expense tracker is also there, as well as regular pages with to do tasks. And another different page this month is "dump" page, where I will just add and write whatever I need or feel to write. Such as mentioning some good movie I watched or book I read (since I know there won't be many of those this month for a separate section), or some good new song I hear, maybe a site to remember later on, or something like that. You get the idea.
That would be all, I guess. Hope you liked my post and maybe got inspired to do something similar for your bullet journal next month. Next month I am excited about for bullet journal, and it should be different, but you will see that in a month, or hopefully, less time.
All photos I included are original and taken by me.
As always, thank you for stopping by and reading my post, and sorry for my inactivity here, and not visiting you as much as before. I will try to fix it.
Hello September
Hey guys, it's been a while. Hope you haven't forgotten me. I had some plans for August, but like always, it turned around. I was pretty much offline most of the month, both here and on most of the other sites I use and post on. If this post is a summary of the previous month, there is not much to say about my online activity.
On noise, I haven't made a single post, so no wonder I didn't receive anything. Here, on read, I did post a little in the first half of the month. With a total of 8 articles, if I am not wrong, I got ~0.032BCH which was little less than $4 when I made the screenshot.
But as you can see above, I did make some nice (at last for me, it's nice) profit in the last month. Both marked wallets are from the same site, I just kept it in two place for practical reasons. I got there 0.405 BCH, which was around $46 at the time that I made this screenshot. Besides this, I also got $15 in Solano, from some giveaways. I had one bad experience as well, I got $5 in BCH on giveaway, but I was never paid for it. It's not a big amount, but it was my first giveaway that I won, and I was so happy, specially because it was in BCH, and then I never received it. But lesson learned. I still have the other streamer that I watch and participate in giveaways because I know he pays.
All in all, when half month was gone I already knew I won't post and earn much that month, so this total amount of ~ 0.44 BCH was amazing for me. And if I continue that, plus with my activity here and other sites that I didn't use, it can only be better this month. As always, I transferred all to my main wallet on bitcoin wallet application, and now I can track my earnings for each site this month easily. Also, I am very happy to see that my main balance is growing, and I might be reaching new milestone at end of this month, but we will see yet about it.
It is crazy to me that September is already here, and we are more near to this year's end. September is not my favorite months, it's quite opposite for me, but I will try to make it the best that I can. Not only related to my online earnings, but in general. I don't know why, but it's just a bit depressing month for me, maybe because summer is ending, maybe weather constantly changing, or my life happenings in September, but it's just the way it is. There is even song called "wake me up, when September ends" , and that is how I feel for this month. But maybe some good things happen, we will see.
I don't know if anything changed here, or it's all the same, but hopefully, I will catch up with you guys and everything soon. I hope you are all doing well, and I wish you all a great month!
The lead photo and photo that I included are original.
Thank you for reading my post, and hope to see you more in the next days ^^
"Sun city" in Trebinje
Trebinje is a wonderful city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it deserves a post on its own, but this time I want to write about "Sun city" that is nearby. We went there thinking it's only aqua park, but it is more than that. Location of "Sun city" is only 8 km from Trebinje and you can say it is a small city, or a complex, with a lot of pools and slides and space to chill.
We went there for fun activities in aqua park, but we discovered there is more to it. The complex is very big and has a few little hotels, a bunch of pools, many spaces to chill next to the water, spa and sauna, a few restaurants and so on. We paid tickets 15 km (this was a half day ticket, entire day is more expensive) which is close to $8. First, as we were hungry, we went to a restaurant. Even with using the map, that was a challenge. We didn't expect that the complex is so big, and it took us some time to get there. Also near the restaurant, we noticed a little farm, which was cute, and it's a zoo part of the complex, but with domestic animals only. Food was great, and cheap. We couldn't eat it all (because it was a lot of food, not because it was not good :D ).
After lunch, it was time to chill for a while and then swim and go to the slides. Since we knew which slide was the biggest, we went there. There were actually two slides there, red and blue/green one. Now, I will tell you a funny story about it. I am not afraid of anything, expect the dark. Not from any animals, clowns, anything, but dark. And even that is due to electricity restrictions that we had, but that's another story. So aqua parks and slides I love, and specially the crazy ones, I love adrenaline pumping.
I was looking at slides and the blue one seemed better, it was closed which means it moves you more inside, and also the bends were with bigger angle and I thought it was better ride. A friend then told me: " but you can't go in that one, because you are afraid of the dark". Since I was in parks before I knew it's not pinch black inside, because there are parts where pieces are merging, and you have light there, and also plastic is show through, and it's not completely dark. I went up there and most people were waiting in the red one, so the boy that works there told me I can go in the green one right away, and I did. It took a few seconds and first bend to lose all light from the entrance and realize that the entire slide is pinch black. Completely black, no light at all from anywhere. And I went straight to a panic mode, I started counting because I saw on the site that slide was 20 something seconds, but instead it took an eternity to finish the slide and all the bends and get out of it. My heart was about to jump out how fast it was ticking. It was so scary, but the dark part, I didn't pay any attention to slide itself. Since I love slides I decided to go to the red one, and after I didn't get an adrenaline attack, and it was slower than the green one, I was a bit disappointed. I had to go again on the green one. But this time, I closed my eyes so that I am not aware of the dark, and I enjoyed the ride. Unlike the first time, this time it was so fast and I didn't even realise on time it's end of the slide and I am entering the pool. So I found the way to overcome the fear and enjoy the best ride there.
After the slides, we had some time to chill more, and than we left to go to our accomondation. Overall, we had nice time there and it's good place to spend entire day and have both fun and relaxing time.
I included some photos from there to this article. All photos are original.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
We need rain
This summer has been very, very dry and hot. Temperatures are not much higher than usual, but there was no rain for a very long time. They said there will be rain a couple of times so far, but somehow it always skipped my town, or fell so little that you couldn't even tell there was rain.
I don't like rain at all, but when it comes to things like this, I know it is needed, and I hope for it. Summer big rains can be fun also, and great refreshment. But this is not about refreshment, but need for the water. Before, we didn't have problems with water, not only because there was rain, but also, because the river was enough to provide for a specific amount of cities. However, with bad government that we have, they decided to use that water for more places, and as it turns out, that little river is not enough for it. Last summer we already had water restrictions.
Worst part is that these restrictions start from villages, and then goes to the city centers. On one hand, it makes sense, because most people in villages have wells as a source of water, but some don't. So imagine living in the village and having a lot of vegetables and fruits that you grow and take care of the entire year, and then it all dries out, because you don't have one of the most basic life needs, water. Unfortunately, I know in some parts of the world, having fresh clean water is a struggle throughout the year, and that is very sad, and not fair. Water should be available for everyone, everywhere.
It's not even about small farmers, but also big plantations that the entire country get goods from, are in danger. And short rain can't help, as well as the big one, because all the water just goes through the broken land and goes deeper. It needs long and slow rain, so that land can soak it all in. This is why summer rains are important, and necessary.
We almost don't have grass in our yard, it is all yellow, and we don't want to water it, because it's not that important, and water restrictions are possible. But so far, since there were no restrictions, all plants are alive. If there are no restrictions, it will be okay. Reason why we don't have restrictions yet, is because they probably are mixing river water that we use, with another river. You can even see the difference in the taste of the water. This is why I am not sure is it good choice, but we will see.
This weekend we finally had rain. It sucks that weekend was bad weather of all the days, but rain was much needed. I can't say it was long enough to prevent restrictions, but it was long enough to soak the land, for a while at last. It might also save the big fruit trees, that you can't even water them because you need way too much water to make any difference. They say we will have more rain this week, but it's hard to believe them now. We can only hope for the best.
I know it's a bit random post, and I still owe you many posts I already said I will make, but they are coming. I hate it that I have content and what to post about, and yet it somehow gets away and something always comes up, and yet when I have time and everything, I have no content or motivation. But it is how it is.
All photos included in this article are original and I own them.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Visit to Visegrad
Hello everyone! I am here with stories from my vacation, finally. After so many things happening and sabotaging me, it's a time for me to share some stories from my holiday and to show you some cities that I visited. The first stop on our trip was Visegrad.
Visegrad is a city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, best known for a beautiful bridge, The Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic bridge, or Bridge over the Drina river. But this bridge is mostly called and known as "Na Drini cuprija" which is the name of the book that Ivo Andric wrote about this bridge, and won Nobel Prize for it for literature, in 1961. The bridge was finished in 1577. and building it took 6 years. Its length is 179.5 meters. Architect was Mimar Sinan, but it was ordered by Grand Vizier Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic and that is why it's named after him. This bridge belongs to UNESCO World Heritage.
We didn't travel long until we reached Visegrad, because it is close to the Serbian border, but we arrived there very early. This is because it was not our final destination for the day, and we didn't want to be there too late. So we were there before 8am, and most things didn't work. The sun was already out, and we used the time to take a walk over the bridge. Once we reached the other side, we saw there is a road uphill, that could possible lead to the place with the nice view of the bridge. It was not too long that we realized that the road was very bad, but we didn't give up and made it to the top. And it was worth it, since there was a great view of the bridge and city. Other positive side of an early visit, is the fact that it was almost empty, both city and bridge.
We spent there and on our way back some time, so it was already 8 o'clock and cafes were open. Before sitting in a cafe, I wanted to visit some local markets. My goal was to buy "dzezva" which is a little pot for making coffee, but I didn't find anything that worked for me. However, the seller was quite charming, welcomed me with some homemade brandy and said I was his first costumer of the day. I ended up buying a pepper mill that we needed at home, and I got some magnets as a gift.
Then we sat down for coffee, enjoyed coffee and view of the bridge from the other side. If we were there later in the day, and had more time, we would also visit Drvengrad (which means city of wood). But other than that, I have to say, I am not sure that the city has more to offer. Don't get me wrong, the bridge is beautiful and something to see, but the rest of the city just looks regular to me.
Other stuff that you can do here is take a half hour boat drive on the river Drina, which I believe is very nice, but due to our time limit, we didn't go to it this time.
Can't wait to share more stuff and photos with you guys, this is just a start. Hopefully internet, electricity and my phone won't sabotage me more. Also, I changed my writing ritual a bit. I love to post at night, but sometimes I am too tired and go straight to bed, but now I will write my post during the day, and just publish it later.
All photos in this article, including the lead photo, are original, and I own them.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Teddy hates bathing
Hey guys, we are having some electricity and internet problems lately. It is so strange and weird, since it just goes off and on, and no one is saying anything about it. It's strange because even mobile data doesn't work at times. Yesterday even stores couldn't work since they couldn't give bills. Very strange.
Anyway, today it seems to be working so far. We wanted to bathe my dog for a while now, but we didn't have shampoo, weather was not good, and we kept procrastinating it. But today, this naughty boy get himself even more dirty, and it was time to do it now. I went to get the shampoo even though it was crazy hot. We put shampoo in empty beverage bottles and add water so that we can use it the best way. Since he is big and has long hair, we use half of the bottle of a shampoo.
He hates getting a bath, so as soon as he realized what is happening, he laid down and didn't want to go to the place where we planned to do it. But he also knows he has to do it, so in the end he gives up, and he is mostly calm and good behaving. He only shook and got us wet a few times before we finished. We need to get him wet first and it takes a while because his hair is special, and makes water slide and not go to the skin. So we need to make sure his under hair (he has 2 coats of hair) is wet, before we shampoo him. Same at end, it take some extra time to make sure all the shampoo is out, and nothing is hidden in his under coat, because it's not good if there is shampoo left.
Teddy looks so funny while he is bathing and while he is wet, because he has such long and fluffy hair, without it, he looks like a little mouse and much smaller than usual. People think he is big and fat, but in fact most of his appearance is his hair, and without it, he is very light and thin. You can see here how he looks while he is wet. But he has a lot of hair, and it takes us a lot of time to get him completely wet and shampooed. Also, we have to get it all out very good, and it takes time as well, while he gets more impatient.
As soon as we finished, he was just like crazy, running around and shaking a lot. I guess he was feeling more energetic because water cooled him down a bit in a hot day, but also he hates it, and he just wanted water off him.
He also started rubbing himself on ground and grass. I guess he can't stand to be clean even for a minute. But it was not that bad since it was grass only, he didn't get dirty again. I made video of him while he was doing that, but unfortunately I can't share that here, but I shared a few photos to show you how that looks.
Unlike getting bath at home, Teddy actually loves to go on the river and swim, I will show you that in some other article.
All photos in this article, including lead photo, are original and I own them.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Roads of Bosnia
Hello everyone! Today I am sharing first part of my journey. Our first destination was one city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we stayed for a while and made a break. And then we stayed the rest of the day in another city in Bosnia, where we spent the night as well. On our way there, to the first place, and then to the second place, we passed by a lot of nice and interesting nature, and there was almost no traffic at all on the roads and most of the time it felt like we are alone there. We also passed by two lakes, Klinje and Bileca, they are just next to the road, and we made two stops, one on each of them. I will share photos of them as well.
What was the most interesting to me, related to roads in Bosnia, is that you can run into cows often, and many cows too. Since I was already passing by these roads, I already knew it, and of course, there are many signs warring about it, because it can be very dangerous and drivers must be careful and drive at lower speed. But this time at one moment there were so many of them at once, and they were just so casual and chill. I took a video of it, and even though I can't share it here, I can tell you, there are 30 seconds of passing by them, and also it's just since I started filming. Maybe I can add screenshot of video. I love cows and I didn't mind it at all, but I get it can be frustrating for some people, since it's not good, and it can be dangerous for both sides, but it's just the way it is there.
We crossed about 250 km of the road in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it was all very nice, calm, slow driving. We weren't in the hurry, and we also wanted to enjoy the views. Not only that, but we passed by a few places, Gorazde, Gacko, Tjentiste, Foca, and Trebinje and Visegrad where we stayed at. But mostly it was all roads and various nature views, which I enjoyed a lot. I wish I would make better photos, but taking photos while driving is never so great, but I will share some views. At the time I was not using GoPro so freely and didn't know all the settings, and all photos were just made with my phone. On our way back I made better photos with GoPro, but then we were taking other path, and didn't go through Bosnia and Herzegovina again.
I will share just a part of it, we had planned things out already, therefore we couldn't make too many stops, but there were many nice places to just stop, take a break from driving, maybe eat something and just enjoy the nature and beautiful views all around. When it comes to my preference, I like to see hills and a lot of greens, but I like there was different nature to see here, and it was not all monotonous and same.
My phone is not giving me a break, aside from no memory, now I also can't charge it. I will add photos as soon as possible, if not at the same time as posting this article, thank you for understanding!
All photos in this article, as well as the text, are original and written by me.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Bullet journal - August
Hey guys, another month is here, and I am back with more bullet journal ideas. This month I had more time to do it, so I put more time into month spread page, or main page, and I also added another page next to it, that I mostly don't do. Therefore, the focus of this post will be these two front pages, and not the other ones. Other pages I mentioned in my previous posts, and this time I haven't done anything special with them.
The theme that I wanted to go with was sea, and I searched on YouTube ideas for this. Once again, my choice was Amanda Rach Lee video, and I pretty much did the same as she did. I found her drawing easy and simple, yet effective, and with most of the use of ink pens, which I have and use. I made a pencil sketch first, per usual, then I added all parts with ink, and then color.
First, I meant to use the thinnest ink pen for all parts of the drawing, and mine thinnest is 0.03, but then it seemed too light, and I used the next thinnest, which is 0.1. In the end, I used mixed of these two, and maybe I wish I did all with thinner, but then I wouldn't have more thin pen for parts that were meant to be a bit lighter. I only used my thickest pen to make August letters, and also to color fully black parts. That pen is 0.8.
For these types of drawings I could use a ruler and divider, specially for the second page, but I don't. These are not meant to be perfect, and I do all of it free-handed. I use pencil first to make it better, but then I don't take too many times with ink lining, and you can see a few mistakes I did, but it really doesn't matter that much.
Next one was coloring. I didn't use the very same colors as she did, the shade were not the same. I used a bit lighter blue, and also I didn't have mustard yellow, so mine was regular yellow, but I did use gold instead of regular yellow, in some parts. And also, I didn't add white pen highlights, even though I have white pen. It doesn't have to be detailed as much, for me.
Parts I didn't include here are just the ones that I always add: habit and expense tracker, mood tracker, and I also added online earnings tracker this time. Also, reading list and movies and shows list. I wanted to add also exercise tracker for the first two weeks that I will exercise at home, but I decided to do it separately again, as I did before. It is just more simple and clear, and easy to use for me that way, specially because I am not doing it all month, so I don't need full calendar.
This would be all for this month bullet journal. I thought to show full and done bullet journal in July, but I was not doing almost anything for the half of the month, so it wasn't the best example, maybe at end of this month.
I think tomorrow I will finally start with my vacation posts and showing you some beautiful cities I visited so hope you will like them.
All phots included in this article (as well as lead photo) are original and I own them.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Weekly participation in contests
This was meant to be posted a while ago, while I was still active in July, and it is an article that I started but didn't finish and post in the end, but before I start participating in contests this month, let's sum up the once that I participated in July.
Deranged photography contest
As this one is one of my favorites, I participated again, and I was a winner once again. Theme wasn't the best for me, it was portraits, which I don't do much, but I remembered some older photos that I had and shared three from the same photo 'session' and then one bit different, from the other time, but with a silly face and showing more personality. My photo was chosen as second place in amateur tire, and I was thrilled, as I only posted to participate and didn't expect to win anything this time. The prize was 3 hive and since I wasn't active half of the month, this was a nice boost to my balance. The next theme was yellow, and I wanted to participate while on vacation, but I missed the deadline. The next one after that was cars, which I also skipped as I didn't have any good photos that I haven't posted yet. For this week theme is street photography, and I want to participate but not sure do I have the right photo. We will see.
Reflection contest
This is a contest, that along with shadow contests, I participate from time to time, since it is constantly happening. I have chosen some coffee photos with flowers reflections in it, and also added one with my cat's reflection in it. Since it's one photo that can participate, I have chosen one with a flower. However, the host of the contests asked me to use the one with Tom and chose it as winning, and I had nothing against it, of course. I was selected to be one of 10 winners, I believe, and the prize was 100 points and 1 hive. Here is the winning photo:
Marc Allaria contests
For the first time I participated in two of the Marc Allaria contests, in July. My photos didn't win anything this time, but I am glad I discovered new contests that I can join. I missed some good themes after these, but I will participate in the future again.
Sea photography contest, theme: Sea and Boats - photo that I took in the morning in one little marine
World photography contest, theme: trees - photo of the various trees in Danube park in Novi Sad
That is all that I have not post before. This time I didn't participated in POB contest and now it's also on a break, but I will continue. As well as other contests, just not sure when and how often I will post update, it probably won't be weekly but we will see. It aslo depends on the themes.
All photos that you see in this article (including the lead photo) are original and I own them.
Thank you for reading my post ❤️
Earnings summary - July 2022
Hey guys, I am back with another monthly report. I start to wonder will I ever be happy with these. But I have to say the month started good. I was posting each day on Hive and almost each day here, and then I just stopped on all. But considering that, I guess I can't be so unhappy, and also I can only be motivated to do it this month. It will be hardest here, just because last month I wasn't doing so well here, but we will see. Here is my report and earnings for main sites that I use.
Read cash
The month didn't start well for me. BCH was very low and Rusty didn't visit much. I made a big tip by accident and part of my BCH went there, so my earnings would be a bit bigger now (BCH wise, because price was low at the time). And I have to say I was earning more on other sites that I didn't put much effort like here, so it was a bit demotivating. And with statistic here now, you will see why:
12 articles I wrote in July
5 were not rewarded
1 got more than a dollar
0.03 BCH earned
didn't reached goal for July
earned 3 times less than in June
As you can see, it was not good, but part of it was my fault, part of it maybe low BCH price, so hopefully I can do better this month.
One funny thing that happened this month on read was 0 tip. Well not exactly a 0 and not exactly a tip since there was no notification about it, but I received this:
I don't know what it is and where it came from, but it was weird and funny. Maybe it happened to you as well?
Noise I will mention, but there is not much to say, I was not active there as now I am only posting my article links there, and sometimes not even that. I have to check it to see if there is any changes there, which would be great if I can reward again, but I doubt that happened. Here is what I got there:
HIVE
On Hive, I can say I did well, even though I was active for little more than half of the month. I tried to be active daily, and I was successful as long as I did it. Have to say that it's easier there, because it's connected to many hive platforms, and one day if I go for a longer walk I can just post Actifit report and not write too much or edit photos, or I can just post a video. Also, there are many challenges in which I participate, so my earnings are also boosted by winning in some of them, but also they help me what to post. With a total of 19 posts I earned about 42 HIVE, and since I was not active as I wanted, and not active for almost half of the month, I can say that, and I am happy with how I did.
Other sites
Ironically, I earned most in the previous month on the gambling site. And as well I was active only as much I was active on other sites too, which was about half of the month, and this is what makes my earnings for the previous month worth something. If I could keep it up this month, it would be amazing, but it's only luck, so you never know. Here are my earnings from games on luck site:
On one other site that I use I had bad experience. They suspended my account saying I was not active more than 90 days, which is not true, and I have proof of it. Now I contacted support, but I think my account and all my earnings there are lost. If I count it in my report it means I lost last month more than I gained, but I will have to hope a bit longer just in case they recover my account. Site should be legit, I don't know how this mistake happened with my account.
Conclusion and goals for this month
It was crazy month with some losses and some gains, but offline I was great, so this doesn't even bother me at all. It was good month and I am ready to have next one even better. As far as goals are concerned, I don't even know for read anymore. I want to keep it real but still to earn something. Let's say goal for read is 0.1 (since I did 0.09 before, I think its possible). On Hive I will leave my 50 Hive goal, but I think I can do better than that. And on gambling site I actually have the highest goals, since there will be level system there soon, and deposit will probably be required, I want to try to get 50$ in BCH by the time level system is on. This is crazy, and probably not possible, but I will go for it and try.
Well that all for this one. All photos included in this article are original and I own them.
Wish you all a great month guys!
Thank you for reading my post ^^
I am back!
Hey guys, it's been a while. But really a while, like 2 weeks. I didn't plan to be away for this long. First, I wanted to post about participation in contests, and I even started writing it, and wanted to post while on my way home, but it didn't happen.
When I reached home, I was there only for a day before I went on trip, so that day was really busy and chaotic, I had to pack, buy some stuff and see some people I haven't seen in a while. And I couldn't post again, but I thought it was okay since I already planned to post on my vacation, making a semi journal for each day. First day of travel I was outside all day and in other country and I didn't want to waste much internet until we reached apartment, but Wi-Fi was not so good, and I was so, so tired, and decided to post from the next day when we reach place where we stayed longer.
Tomorrow we had only about an hour more, but when we reached the destination, we unpacked and went to the beach as soon as we could. In the evening we went out so once again, I didn't have time to post :D You can see a pattern here now, right :D Well, long story short, Wi-Fi was still bad even in the new place, and I had limited data in other country and didn't want to use it to post photos etc., so I don't waste it fast. And although I thought I can write each day and post later, that didn't happen. You can say I was too lazy, or just had too much nice and chill time, and decided to go almost completely offline for 9 days.
Vacation was great, and I have a lot of cool things to share, but I am not sure yet will I have enough content to share each day separately, I might combine some days, or just post the "highlights" of vacation. I also have many other post ideas and things I wanted to post already but didn't, and some of my regular posts, so I think I can finally pull out posting each day in August. Also, it happens it is end of month as well, so I can post earnings report for July, even though it is far from good, unfortunately.
All in all, this post is just to say hi, I am back, and I will be active in the next days for sure, if not every day, it will not have two-week gaps for sure. I have more time in the beginning of the month, so if not the entire month, first weeks should be quite active for me. This time around I might even try to prepare some articles in advance, like the ones from vacation, so if something comes up, I always have something to post and not to miss day. But in the end, it is not that important, it is just easier once you write daily and have habit, than with breaks.
I don't know if anything changed here in the meantime, I know bch is finally up a little, and hopefully that trend will stay and it will keep rising up. If there is some update, let me know in the comments.
Hope you are all good, and had nice weekend and I am looking forward to catch up with you.
Lead image is from unsplash.com
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Evening walk in the woods
Last few days were nice here and not too hot, specially evenings and nights. Yesterday it was even warmer than before, but still very nice and comfortable weather, specially for evening walk. There are a few nice places to walk in the city, a bit more nature, and greens, but they are always full of people, specially now that weather is good for walking. And also, I prefer more of the wild nature, and fewer people.
This is why this time, we went a bit outside of city, in less visited but nice woods with paths and even some places to sit. It's also not too up and down hill, so it was good for walking, without being tired too much. I will share some photos of the woods, paths, and also the view. We walked for about 45 minutes in one way, and then started walking back. There was this one spot that was good to sit and rest a little, but also not too far from the exit of the wood, so that we could exit it before night came.
At that moment when we were sitting, it was sun setting, on the one side, and dusk. And also moon rising on the other. We were lucky to be on the good spot and see it, and woods didn't cover our view. I looked on phone when it will be, and we waited to see it even though we weren't sure will we see it good from there. We were lucky that it was very beautiful and visible from there. Of course, photos are not as near as good as it was in real life, but I will share some that I took. It was even more special because it was the day of the full moon, and when it was 100% full.
After we watched the moon for a while, we continued toward the exit of the woods. There was one nice meadow on the way out, and it was surrounded with woods, so it was a perfect spot to watch stars. We decided to stay there for a while and use a flashlight later, if it gets too dark. But we forgot that moon is full, and we didn't need any light at all, it was all very light in the sky and everything was visible.
There was not too many animals in the woods, it's funny because I see squirrels in the city, and there was not any in the woods. But we saw a snake, and also a cute little hedgehog that was not in the woods but near the road, actually. He was so little, I even thought it was a rat at first. I also took a photo of him, so I will share with you to see.
This walk and visit to the woods was definitely worth of the time, just wish it was closer so that I could go there more often. Overall, long walks, long talks, full moon and watching moonrise in the woods, then watching stars from the meadow, it was all beautiful and perfect way to spend an evening outside. I can't wait to go there again, but not sure when it will be, since soon I am going back home, for a summer holiday and I won't be in Belgrade for a while. But I am very happy I discovered this place, and will be back sooner or later, for sure.
All photos that I included in this article are original and I took and own them. This includes the lead image as well.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
Vacation is booked!
After so many days, searching, situations changing, other unplanned things happening, I can finally be relived of the stress of planning a vacation. Even through things didn't go as planned, and the plan changed almost completely, I think that things turned out for the best, and I booked an apartment in a place that I know, and I was already there, and I know it's good. I didn't believe that they have room, I thought it would be all booked.
Destination is Montenegro, and it wasn't my first choice but because of some events that happened, this had to be the only option. But we plan to also visit Bosnia on the way there or on the way back home. So the plan is not completely done, we are not sure which city and will it be from this side or on the way back, we have more options, so we didn't decide yet which it will be. Also plan is to visit another city on the seaside and I will share that with you here.
What makes me happiest for this trip is actually one new toy that I will be using for the first time, and I really hope I can make a lot of good content with it, plus I am sure I will make tons of photos anyway, like always. Only thing I have to do is make sure my memory is free :D Some things never change, right :D But I don't wanna give away what it is about, though you might can assume what it is, I guess. Since its travel gadget, and I can say it's not camera, but I can't wait to have one.
I would like to make a daily post, and make some kind of vacation journal, but I am not sure how interesting each day will be there, it is a vacation, after all. But I do know that I will have few interesting things, if not more. Just because I love adventure and only laying on the beach is nice, but something more makes my heart more happy. Also, I am not sure about Internet connection down there, but it should be fine, if it's bad we can buy sim card with 10-100 GB, and it will be enough.
This vacation is so not what I imagined and wanted, but I am happy and grateful to see sea side, even if it was not my first choice, probably next year things will be much different. And my goal is to make money here so that I can buy camera, which will make all travel more interesting to me, because I love taking photos everywhere that I go. So far I always had something that was higher priority then camera, but now I want to have it before some other travel trips that I plan for future, so now, it is my first priority to get camera, than to travel :D
Do you have any plans for this summer and vacation?
Photos I included in this article (as well as the lead photo) are original and I own them.
Thank you for reading my post ^^
@moonlight22
