Learning to play a new instrument by yourself?

I love music. Seriously. I couldn't live without it. My brother plays many instruments but first of all, he learnt to play the guitar at a young age. I was soooo jealous. I watched him as he played and sang - we have terrible voices but also have the passion to sing. I wanted to play the guitar, too. I wanted to close my eyes and sing and I wanted to write songs- and be Taylor Swift ( don't we all want that? ) However, I did not know how to begin and my brother tried to teach me but it just did not work.
One day while listening to a Kina Grannis song called "Valentine" I desperately wanted to learn it to play to my boyfriend- cliché, I know. It did not work and he looked at me like I was crazy. I probably was but in that moment I decided: one day I will play the guitar.
In that year Pink came out with the song "f*cking perfect". I was totally obsessed with it. Then one afternoon I sat down in front of my laptop and typed "f*cking perfect guitar chords" into the Google search bar. I could not understand a single thing. How do I play a G chord? or a D? or an F? what are these lines with numbers written on them? I googled the name of the chords and typed "f*ucking perfect guitar lesson/tutorial" into youtube, grabbed a paper and pen and started writing and drawing whatever I saw.

  (It took me AGES to find the original paper but I found it!!!!!)

I learnt that the numbers mean your fingers: the first is your index finger, number 2,3,4 are your other fingers and number 5 is your thumb.
I won't lie: it was hard and painful. Yes, painful cause the first time I put my fingers on the strings I thought "ok, this is impossible. It's bloody masochistic" . However, after sitting down and grabbing my brother's guitar again and again and again, after trying to play it many-many times it started sounding like a song. Then one day I woke up, sit down, tried to play the song and I finally understood: "OMG, it's easy, you just keep putting your fingers to different places" Sounds stupid? Yes, it does but after that I just understood and learnt where to put my fingers, how to play some basic chords and it wasn't that painful anymore. Yepp, my fingers looked terrible for many weeks but I can tell you: it worth it!
There are many songs which has the same, easy chords - Taylor Swift songs have really eeasy chords and are perfect for those ones who want to learn to play the guitar.

Youtube is also a great help, as many amazing people do great tutorials for various songs.
For me it was easy, I could always borrow my brother's guitar. However, if you can borrow one from someone or if you can afford a cheap one and you really want it: you can learn to play the guitar from the internet! How amazing is that???! When people ask me "where did you learn this?" and I answer "from the internet" they just keep staring at me, not knowing that it is not that hard after all.
No, I can not play it perfectly, I do not know many chords and if you put sheet-music in front of me, I will just stare at you not knowing what to do, but I can sit down on lonely nights, close my eyes and play and sing! It is an amazing feeling and helps me to get through hard times (like when I wasn't sure if me and now-my-boyfriend would get together and I played "untouchable" by Taylor Swift every single night)

For my 19th birthday I got my own guitar from my brother, I love it! It is from Cort.

It is also good to have a capo as it is needed many times to play the easy version of songs :)

I use really soft pickers but after a while I learnt to strum without them ( the first time I tried, it looked impossible)
I really hope that you like this post and that I could inspire you to be brave and try to learn new things from the internet- After all, it is an amazing place :)
Have a lovely weekend!
Alexandra

Healthy muffin recipe

One thing I always ask from my mum when I'm about to go back to the city is to make me some apple-oatmeal muffins. They are amazing and so easy to make! Today while we were baking some, I took some pictures and decided to share the recipe with you guys.
What you need:
2 and a half mug of flour ( I actually use my tea-mug for this-as you will see)
2 mug of oatmeal
1 mug of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of cinnamon (I put more in it cause I really love it)
3 mug of  apple - cut it into little pieces
2 mugs of sour cream ( you can also put a little milk or yoghurt in it)
 You can also put some chocolate in it or almonds or some other nuts

Put the ingredients into a big big big bowl. The bigger the better as it is not so easy to mix it.

 Then mix it! Be careful to really mix it - I did not do it properly the first time I tried! Even when you think you mixed the ingredients well enough, check the bottom of the bowl to see if you did not miss some parts of it. My advice is to mix it while adding the ingredients, as it will be easier in the end.

 I added some chocolate to it and it tasted amazing! Cut the bar of chocolate into little pieces and just add it to the mixture. I used baking chocolate.

When it is mixed, it should look something like this:

Then put it into little muffin cups.

It will not really grow so you can fill the cups up to the rim. 

Put it into the oven.

When it's finished, it should look something like this:

If you use this recipe you will have 24 delicious muffins! I can not express how much I love them!
Give it a try! :)
Have a lovely day!
With love,
Alexandra

What's in my bag

 When my father looked at me in total disbelief when I pulled out a great amount of stuff from my bag the other day, it gave me an idea to do a "what's in my bag" post. Previously, I wrote a post about my new bag from Zara. I have to admit that I took out my surgery knife and rubber gloves of it as it would have looked weird in this post- don't worry, I am not a serial killer...I am a medical student :)
So. Let's begin.

 I have my little pink bag in which I keep my make up. It is from Clinique and I love it! It is the perfect size and so easy to carry around. Later I'll do a post about it's contents I think.

 I always have my card holder in my bag. I learnt it in the hard way never to have your ID card and other cards in your wallet. When I was around 15 somebody stole my wallet. I had around a pound in it and all my cards. Well... I paid a serious amount of money to get new ID card, medical card and so on. Since then I have my cards in a card holder. I got this for my birthday. It is a leather one, simple but looks good and helps me keep organized.

 I always carry around my notebooks. Sometimes I take my e-book reader with me, too.

 In January I had to buy a new planner. I have seen a beautiful black and white one but since I was quite scared about this year I thought about getting something a bit more colourful so I ended up getting this lollipop one. I love how it makes me smile and I also love that it is a smaller size. No too small and not too big. Simply perfect.

 My wallet is from Stradivarius. I got it in this pale pink colour which will be really in this spring. (though it wasn't the reason behind buying it, I just loved it) . Somehow I always get my wallets in Stradivarius. They have really cute ones, in a reasonable price.

 I always have my hand sanitizer, hand cream and lip-balm with me. The lip-balm is from The body shop and it is amazing! I have a L'oréal lip gloss, some chewing gum and pills for head-ace in my bag.

 I always keep some pen and pencils with me and some sticky notes. They are really handy in uni.

 I keep my keys in a little bag as I tend to lose them otherwise. It is a really good thing to do cause it is so much easier to find them.

 My glasses and headphones are those things which I always have with me. I can not go out without my headphones. They are from SONY and I love their quality and also that they are available in various colours.

 It is a good idea to have a bottle of water in your bag cause it is the worst feeling when you can not go out to get one but you are really thirsty.

Every single time I go out without an umbrella it starts to rain so I learnt to always have it in my bag.

Maybe it is just me but I really love to know what others have in their bags cause I am nosey like that and I love to get new ideas about what to carry with me and how to organize my bag. If you are like me, I hope you liked this post!
Have a lovely day!
Alexandra

Glass jar business, DIY

For Christmas We got some home-made dishes in glass jars from my brother and his girlfriend. After a few weeks they were completely gone and the glass jars stood on the shelf feeling sad and lonely.
So I came up with the idea to do something with them and ordered some chalkboard sticker labels from E-bay. They were around a dollar.

I decorated the jars with these, different buttons, lace and they look amazing. If you wanna do something similar to this, here it is:

 Always make sure that you have good scissors as it will make everything 10 times easier. I also like to put everything I will need on the table so I won't have to run around to grab things.

 I used a glue-gun to glue the thins to the jars. Be careful it is really hot and I am pretty sure I burnt my fingers more that 5 times today with it.... I always put some used paper under it so I won't get the glue on the table.

Glass jar no.1.

 I glued the lace to the jar.

 I sticked the label on it and wrote "sesame seeds" on it

I also glued some buttons on it. I used buttons for every jar so they look different but have 1 thing in common.

Jar no.2
For this I used a different lace. It was a bit too short and if it went the whole way around I wouldn't have been able to stick the label on, so I used the buttons to cover the end of it.

 It looks like a happy jar :)

Jar no. 3
This is my favourite one!

I really- really love the outcome! Hope you like it, too. It will add something extra to these amazing jars and make me smile every single time I look at them :)

Have a lovely day!
With love,
Alexandra