Christmas break haul

Hi!

So since I'm back in Helsinki and the after Christmas sales are going on, I've been doing way too much shopping for the past 2 days so I thought I'd show you what I got. I think only few things I bought weren't on sale.

A new thermos mug from Starbucks to keep my tea in on school mornings.

I went to look for a new book to read from Akateeminen and my friend recommended this and it sounded pretty interesting.

From Kicks I got IsaDora's peel off base for nails and Hugo Boss's Jour Pour Femme body lotion.

The Body Shop had brought back couple of their body scrubs I had missed when they were on sale so I got the raspberry one. It literally smells like raspberry jam.

From Sokos I got IsaDora's transparent lip liner, Rimmel's stay matte powder, a back up for my favorite makeup sponge from Cailap, Rimmel's Scandaleyes mascara, I Love... hand soaps in Raspberry & Blackberry and Mango & Papaya and Cleansing wipes from Nivea.

A book about how to keep your apartment clean and put together in a laid back way. I will probably need this more than I even know.

Went to Sokos again and got a GOSH lip lacquer in Crispy lips, a lip brush from We Care Icon and a night cream from Lumene.

I went to a different Kicks and almost died when I saw they had Dior eyeshadows HALF OFF. I've been dreaming about owning one of these for about 5 years so I just had to get one. This one was in 954 Pink Pompadour.

I went a bit crazy in Lush since their holiday stuff was half off. I got sets called Cozy Christmas and Good Tidings. Both of them include different kind of shower and skin care stuff.

Lastly we went to a toy store and I just had to get all the ridiculous One Direction stuff because why not. They were all on sale anyway. I got a secret diary (not so secret anymore) that is also a pillow, some toothbrushes (which are probably the funniest things I've seen), a singing toothbrush, stickers and some Frozen sticker packs.

See you soon!
~Susanna

What I got for Christmas 2014

Hi!

And merry Christmas everyone!! :D I will post more about this Christmas later but I thought I'd do a "what I got for Christmas" post as we just opened presents and I personally love reading these kind of blog posts so I thought it might be fun to write one too.

I didn't really ask for anything this year as I got a flight to Helsinki to spend Christmas with my family. There were couple of things I had mentioned to my mom but mostly all of my presents were complete surprises which was nice.

From my friend from school I got a pack of Clipper organic white tea with raspberry and from another one a suuuuper cute stuffed penguin, a Lumene set with my favorite face wash that I'm almost out of, a moisturizer and a glitter nailpolish and a I love mango & papaya shower smoothie.

From my brother I got a cupcake holder. Now I have to make cupcakes when I go back to Rovaniemi hahah :D

I got a box full of some of my favorite candy

My brother's god parents/ my best friend's parents got me some amazing socks and a Redken Color Rebel Hair makeup which is a temporary hair color. I've never even seen these so I'm excited to try it.

I got some pyjamas from my parents and omg these are so cute :3

My parents also got me a One Direction bed sheets and their newest perfume, You & I gift set :D These were the things I told my mom I'd like to maybe get and I'm so so so happy I got both :3

My best friend totally surprised me with her gift. She got me The art of Frozen book (I looked through it quickly and it seems so interesting omg), some Frozen cards and stickers (can you tell I love Frozen? :P) and a huuuge thing of different kinds of tea which all sound super yummy.

That's all for this time. What did you get for Christmas this year? :D

See you soon!
~Susanna

Christmas Tag

Hi!

Yeah, I kind of gave up on that blogmas thing. I told you it would fail. Here's a Christmas tag for you guys though:

1. What is your favorite Christmas movie/s?

A Finnish film called Joulupukki ja noitarumpu is my absolute favorite! We watch it every year on Christmas Eve with my brother. 

2. Where do you usually spend your holidays?
Home in Helsinki. Actually just flew back to spend my Christmas vacation here :D

3. Do you open any presents on Christmas Eve?

All of them. It's a tradition in Finland.

4. What made you realize the truth about Santa?

I think I had my thoughts about him not being real for a while and then we talked about it in school with friends and that made me sure about it. 

5. Favorite festive food?

I don't really like many traditional Finnish Christmas foods. Porridge and ham are my favorite ones but our family usually eats reindeer on Christmas and I like that too :D

6. Favorite Christmas scent?

Gingerbreads right out of the oven, glogg and peppermint.

7. Do you have any Christmas Eve traditions?

In Finland we actually celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve so usually when mom (or this year me) gets out of work, we go to a Christmas sauna, eat our Christmas meal, I watch a Christmas movie with my brother and then we open presents. 

8. As a kid what was the one (crazy, wild, extravagant) gift you always asked for but never received?

Honestly I can't remember

9. What's the best part about Christmas for you?
The Christmas feeling that's in the air minus the stress. I also love all the Christmas lights, they make everything look so pretty.

See you soon!
~Susanna

Blogmas day 7

Hi!

Few of the girls came over yesterday to have a little Christmas party. I had such a great time :3 It was Finland's independence day so we started early enough to make some gingerbread cookies and decorate them before watching the Presidential Independence Day reception, which is a few hours long program of our president shaking hands with about 1800 guests. So we watched that, judged some dresses and ate probably way too much. Here's some pictures:

We also had fun taking pictures with my laptop's webcam

See you soon!
~Susanna

Blogmas day 6

Hi!

Happy Independence day Finland! :) Here's a video:

Post by Susanna Kyrö.

See you soon!
~Susanna

P.S. sorry I forgot to write yesterday you'll get a pretty long post tomorrow

Blogmas day 4

Hi!

So since Christmas is the time of giving I thought I'd share another thing that I love. This time it's random acts of kindness and giving back videos. It's just so amazing to see how even little things can make someone's day. These videos just get me in such a good mood. Here are some of my favorite ones that I've seen so far. Enjoy.
















See you soon!
~Susanna

Blogmas day 3

Hi!

Today I thought I'd share my dream Christmas wish list. I didn't really ask for anything this year other than couple of things that mom is probably going to tell to relatives and family friends. My dad already bought me a flight to Helsinki so I told my parents that's enough because I get to spend Christmas with my family :)
But you know, a girl can always dream. What if I could put literally anything on my Christmas wish list? It would probably look a little like this:

Dior eyeshadow quad
I go drool over these once in a while because they are so pretty but I don't think I'll ever get to actually own one because they are so expensive.

Clarisonic Mia 2
I was actually thinking about wishing for this this year since they finally sell Clarisonics in Finland. I've been so into skin care lately that this would be just perfect right now.

Wildfox jumper
I see people wear these all the time and all the designs on these jumpers are just so pretty and cute. But once again, way too expensive.

Harry Potter complete series
I've wanted to get the Harry Potter books in English for such a long time now and especially this set looks really pretty and I'd love to have that on my bookshelf.

MAC lip glosses from the Holiday collection
MAC always brings out the most beautiful holiday collections and ah, maybe someday...

Urban Decay - Naked Vault
This is probably on every UD lovers' wish list this year. Unfortunately they were really limited and are sold out like everywhere.

A band member
Preferably from One Direction. I promise to feed him!

See you soon!
~Susanna

Blogmas day 2

Hi!

So today I thought I'd talk about something I love. Which is Christmas music. I think there's just something about listening to certain songs during one time of the year. I'm going to list a few of my favorites here. I don't think I'll even remember all of my favorites because I have so many but I'll try. Most of these songs are obviously performed by many different artists but I'll list my favorite versions.

Suvi Teräsniska - Varpunen jouluaamuna

Post by Susanna Kyrö.



Love this so much we decided to sign it with my friend :)



Suvi Teräsniska - Tulkoon joulu

I was in a choir through whole high school and we always had Christmas concerts during Christmas time and this was always my favorite song to perform for some reason. And now that I'm out of high school, it brings great memories of how much I liked being in the choir and how much we rehearsed for the concerts.

Jari Sillanpää- Lapsuusjoulut





My mom has had this Christmas album as long as I can remember and it's really not a Christmas without listening to it. We always listen to it when we bake gingerbreads and I love all the songs but I picked this one because it was the first one that came to my mind :D

Jingle Bell Rock




I mean.... Do I even need to say anything about this?

Glee - White Christmas




I just had to put one Glee cover on here :D Out of all the Christmas songs they have covered I think White Christmas is my favorite one. Mostly because it's Darren Criss and Chris Colfer.

I think that's all for today :D

See you soon!
~Susanna

Blogmas day 1

Hi!

So I thought I'd try Blogmas which basically means I'm going to try my best to blog everyday until Christmas. This is probably going to fail but since it's almost midnight, this feels like a great idea. I'm probably gonna regret this in the morning.
So what I'm planning on doing are some Christmas related posts and some about what I did that day. This one is going to be the second one since I went back to school after working for 5 weeks today and it was great.
Our classes didn't start until 12:30 so I got to sleep in which was nice. I went to school about an hour early to eat lunch (cause who doesn't like free food) and catch up with people. It was so nice to see everyone again! And it was kind of weird to be back at school but I liked it.

Morning mirror selfie :P please ignore the mess especially if you're my mom

I was really nervous about the classes we had today because we only had sign language with a deaf teacher without his interpreter. I didn't get to sign a lot at work so I was sure I didn't remember anything anymore but I understood most of the stuff he talked about during the class. I was pretty proud of myself to be honest.
After school I went shopping with my friends. It was the first time we were all actually together after about 7 weeks. I probably bought too much stuff once again. Oh well. One of the things I wanted to go try on was a dress I had spotted on Friday because we have a Christmas party on Saturday and I thought it would also be nice to wear on Christmas Eve. I ended up loving the dress and it was the last of my size so I got it.

So that was my 1st of December. Couldn't have started this month better.

See you soon!
~Susanna

Exchange year - how it changed me

Hi!

I thought I'd write a bit of different kind of post today. As some of you know, I spent a year as an exchange student in Oklahoma, USA in 2011-2012. One of the main reasons I wanted to do it was to learn new things. It's been over 2 years now since I got back to Finland and I've finally started figuring out how much I actually learned during that year and how it changed me. Obviously I can speak English much better now and I learned a bunch of things in school during that year but what I'm going to focus on this post are the life lessons that I learned that you can't learn in school. As someone who moved across the country from the city I've lived my whole life in just few months ago, I'm even more thankful to my parents, host parents, friends and everyone who was involved in my exchange year. It was definitely the best year of my life and here's how it has helped me with moving out, starting a new school and living alone.

I used to be the person who never wanted to really do too many things out of my comfort zone but there is no comfort zone when you're an exchange student. There is no one to translate what you want to say, your home is somewhere across the world, you don't know anyone, some things are done so differently than in your home country... The list is endless. You just have to learn to step out of your comfort zone and that is probably one of the biggest things I learned and I feel like it has opened up so many great things in my life.

Moving across the country would have probably never even been a thought in my head if I hadn't been an exchange student. Now that I've lived across the world for a year, moving across the country didn't even seem like a big deal. I was way more excited than nervous about the move, actually. Of course it felt bad to leave my family and friends but at least we would be in the same country, I would go back home for school holidays and we could call each other as much as we want.

Another thing I learned was to be more independent. I've heard so many times that there will be this stage in living alone where I'm going to feel really lonely and homesick but I don't think I had that too badly. Even though I lived with a family in the USA, I feel like I somehow learned to be more on my own. It's really hard to put in words but somehow the exchange year helped me with feeling less lonely while living alone.

Living so far away from my friends and family probably would've felt a lot worse if I didn't live across the world for a year. And like I said before, we can still see each other on school holidays and we can call, text and skype each other as much as we want. If we survived a year without seeing each other, we can survive this :D

Making new friends was totally the thing I was most nervous about during both my exchange year and moving over here. Somehow I managed to meet such amazing people both times though. Making new friends is also a tiny bit easier now because if I somehow managed to make friends in the USA in a foreign language, it shouldn't be too hard to do in my first language.

There are so many more life lessons I learned during that year but these are the main ones I can think about right now. It's absolutely amazing to see that even after two years I still find new things about how that year changed me. It would be so amazing if everyone had a chance to be an exchange student because it teaches you so much and lets you see things in such a different way. I will be forever thankful that I got to experience such an amazing thing.

See you soon!
~Susanna