Starfish

Showing posts with label Joy of living. Show all posts

Our Elegant Rustic Dream Wedding in Miami - Vendor Guide

My urge to share bits and bobs of this happy day with the world could not be contained. 😀 This post is an expression of my happiness and endless gratitude to everyone involved from our dear guests to all the amazing professionals whose talent and scrutiny turned our ideas into the most blissful reality!

More productive, conscious and mindful way of living challenge - One Year Later

One year ago I wrote a post about undertaking a challenge to commit to more productive, conscious and mindful life habits. Today I am counting my gains and fails.

More productive, conscious and mindful way of living challenge

It all started with a growing frustration over my idle habits and a desire to become a better person. To be better tomorrow than I was yesterday, a week ago, or one year ago. “Better” is rather arrogant word but it sort of summarizes all the points I am going to mention further, so I will use it for now.

I should probably start by describing my personality. An irrational 32-year old with an attention span of a monkey and a 1GB system memory in the era of 32GBs growing like mushrooms after the rain, I am one of those people who try to open their apartment door with their car keys, arrive at the airport at 12 am instead of 12 pm, stop in the middle of the road and then realize they ran out of gas... I forget things, confuse things and never finish things.

My imagination, on the contrary, rarely fails and during the course of a day I can live multiple exciting life scenarios in my imaginary world, where I am either an artist, or a musician, or a writer; where I travel the world and make a difference; where I succeed at any ventures. In reality, I hardly accomplish anything, jumping from one thing to another, being constantly late, procrastinating profusely and never keep up with my routine. My lists of to do things and resolutions are endless, hardly ever getting fulfilled. Why? Dreaming is fun and easy. Doing and accomplishing is hard, tedious and often frightening.

What I love the most about blogging and some thoughts on the “true self”

Since I started Atstarfish blog about half a year ago, blogging has become the absolute favorite thing to do in my spare time. It incorporates pretty much all of my passions – writing, photography, telling stories about my travels and being somewhat creative. But the main reason why I love blogging is the fact that I can be truly myself in here!

It might sound arguable, so let me explain why I feel this way.

As hard as it is for a person to actually see oneself clearly and objectively and to claim “realness” of one’s personality, I think it is fair to admit that everyone has a certain image or perception of the self. It gets even harder to stay true to yourself when interacting with others. So for this post my idea of the “real self” is the person you become when there is nobody around.

Magic of Christmas or why I Believe in Holidays

I love winter holidays – this time of the year when cities and homes get transformed into wonderful fairylands and people into happy inhabitants of these magic places. When smiles and laughs replace worry and sorrow and every grown up at least for a moment becomes an 8 year old again. When big happiness fits into a small blue ornament, hung with care and love on the pine branch.

I am not a religious person and I am not a follower of any faith. I am on the side of agnosticism when it comes to the question of God. But I am a believer and I wanted to share with you my humble version of faith which makes sense to me and makes me peaceful and hopeful.

I believe in holidays. I believe in the power of positive energy. The power of good deeds. The power of happy thoughts. During winter holidays everyone becomes a little bit happier, a little bit more joyful. You can physically feel this joy in the air and unlike red bull it really does give you wings! I believe that during such times magical things happen and dreams come true. I believe in people and all the good, great things they are capable of, when their minds and hearts are full of happiness and kindness.

I wish everyone to have great holidays this year! Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

The children of 80s… The children of the streets

Close to winter holidays I always feel somewhat nostalgic and sentimental. Today I felt like browsing through my childhood pictures and as a result came up with this post.

I was born in a little town Tomsk, which is hiding in the pine forests of Siberia, Russia. When I was seven, my family owned a two-bedroom apartment in a five-story condominium building in a…well, let me call it uptown or sleeping quarters. The building was the exact copy of dozens or even hundreds of other buildings placed in a certain order around the neighborhood. Those were the Soviet times. Everything had to look the same – buildings, clothes, furniture, cars. People were deprived of choices. The choices were made for them by the caring communist government. But despite of certain weirdness and in some cases even absurdity, I always remembered those times fondly. That was my childhood and those were great times: fun and active, free and happy, barefoot-and-loose-hair kind of times!

In a relationship – how to find the truth among so many possible options?

Some say that weak people tend to end relationships when there is a bump in a road and look for new ones, while strong people work on their relationships and move along through the years.

According to another popular opinion people keep staying in not satisfying relationships because they are afraid to be alone and start it all over again.

Some of us just get used to the things the way they are and too lazy to make a change, while others choose to tolerate an occasional suffering for the sake of their love.

When it comes to relationships, I've never been able to see things clearly.

The License to Be That Way. An Interview with an Amazing Yoga Teacher at FIU Fitness Center and a Fascinating Person – Bonnie Quiceno.

The room is spacious, bright and inviting; with hardwood floors and huge floor-to-ceiling windows which let Miami sun feel welcomed in here, just as welcomed as all regulars or any random curious visitor. Abundant greenery, palm trees and the bay on the other side of the windows complete the picture and fill this space with energy. Once you open the door, you want to stay a little longer.

Florida International University Wellness Center added yoga to the existing classes back in 2000. The idea came from brainstorming ways to improve students’ general wellbeing and was an instant success. Students loved yoga and the schedule quickly changed from one class to four classes a week.

Pumpkin Soup – Fall in Love with Fall!

It finally feels like fall in Miami! It is windy, foggy and rainy and I love it!

I usually have no complaints about Miami always sunny weather, but I miss seasons a lot. Especially fall. Well, in winter I will most likely say, especially winter *smile*.

Anyways, days like these are rare and I cherish them greatly!

So, I decided to add some color and some flavor to the already perfect rainy picture from my balcony and to make a pumpkin soup.

It is so simple, so delicious and so fall-like-bright-orange!

About birthdays and about age. And some fun moments of my birthday boat party.

I have always loved my birthdays. I love being the center of attention for that one day and feeling special. I love birthday wishes, presents, flowers and balloons and fun birthday cards. As far as I can remember, I always wake up happy and excited on the day of my birthday anticipating something magic to happen, almost like on the New Year’s Eve (which for Russians is the biggest holiday of the year, when Ded Moroz brings presents to kids, like Santa Clause does on Christmas).

When you get older, I’ve heard, birthdays tend to become less exciting and even depressing. It’s the day when you get one year older and it’s not that fun anymore as it was in your 20’s. I’ve been waiting for this to happen with a sinking heart for a couple of years now. Yet, I didn’t feel sad or depressed on my birthday this year, just like the last year or the year before that. I turned 32 on Friday. “Yeay!” I told my boyfriend, “I was born today and I am so happy that I did!”

Plated.com - pros and cons of food-delivery startups based on my free trial experience.

I couldn’t help but notice a number of food-delivery startups being advertised all over the internet lately (it’s been happening for a while, I know, I am slow as usual). Plated, Blue Apron, Hello Fresh – just to name a few. They assemble and deliver meal boxes to customers with all the ingredients and instructions to cook meals at home.

So, I thought, “I love startups, I love things being delivered to my door and I love trying new stuff. Hmmm…I have to find out what it is all about!”

A few thoughts about falling apart and pulling yourself together…and about relationships.

There are people for whom it is so easy to fall apart, but so difficult to pull it together. I am one of those people. I have always envied the lucky fellows whose confidence is as steady as a rock. On the contrary, my inner confidence and harmony have always been fragile and could easily falter because of mere ignorant comments, especially if that comments have been made by someone, who is supposed to be your closest person. Being younger, I used to build shields to make me immune to words which could easily hurt, offend or ruin my self-esteem. With time I became more relaxed, patient and stopped paying much attention to who said what. We are all different and nobody can expect that others would say exactly what they wanted to hear. You listen, consider, accept it or deny it and go further.

Feel like cooking breakfast this morning? Try something unusual - Russian cottage cheese pancakes! For the curious reader - their authentic name is syrniki.

I have never planned on posting recipes to the blog. First of all, because I am quite an average cook and second, because I did not want to promote any diet, since I follow none and my food choices are rather inconsistent. In other words, the last thing I wanted to do is to position myself as somebody knowledgeable or skillful when it comes to culinary practices. But… yes, there is always a “but”.

The other day I woke up in such a great mood and, as a logical consequence, felt like cooking breakfast (which is a rare occasion for somebody who is not a morning person). Anyways, I checked the fridge and decided to go for syrniki. As I was mixing the ingredients and humming Kiesza’s “Hideaway” (oh, those miserable attempts to succeed in singing, can I accept already that I am doomed for life?), I had a thought. I wanted to create a blog focused on positive things, things which make people and me in particular happy. Food (its consumption, as well as preparation) is a huge part of those things! For me even more so, because I looove delicious food. Ok, enough of excuses, I am posting a recipe and so be it!

How about watching sunrise?

I spent the past week or so planning, scheduling and mapping out my upcoming trip to Germany, including a 4-days road trip to France. I've never done this before, being blessed with a boyfriend who is always in charge of our travel plans, and let me tell you – it is no easy task! Of course, I could easily choose one of the hundreds of tours offered by travel agencies, but I've never been a fan of bus tours. They lack the spirit of adventure and freedom, which road trips are all about.

Anyways, with the time pressure, I've ended up feeling pretty stressful and this is not the feeling I hoped for before my long awaited Europe journey. So, to shake the stress off and to boost my positive energy, I decided to begin the day by going to the ocean and watching the sunrise. Best decision ever! Even though it was a bit cloudy and the sun did not make its full appearance, nothing compares to the beauty of sunrise! Well, maybe only the beauty of sunset.

Having awesome time, while spending almost no money! (or two great evenings for $40)

Life is beautiful, when you live in Miami and the weather is gorgeous all year round. Life is especially beautiful, when the summer semester is over and you have the whole month just for yourself (work doesn’t count if you are a freelancer and work from home at your own convenience, as I do). So, once I stopped being ecstatic and got over the happy thought that there will be no more classes for a WHOLE month – naturally followed the question “What do I do with my free time?”

So that you better understand what kind of person I am, I probably should mention, that I love saving money and experimenting with living on tiny budgets. Not because we are struggling with money, but because there is always something useful you can do with it, instead of carelessly throwing it away. Anyways, here’s how we spent two awesome evenings for a total of $40.

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