5 ways to get cozy this autumn

I have to say, each year, after almost 3 months of autumn, I always find myself craving for some sun, a warm day and a green, flowery landscape surrounding me when I feel like going for a walk. Even so, every time autumn arrives, it's like my brain suddenly catches on fire, I get inspired, loving and warm and fuzzy on the inside. I love everything autumn/fall related and I can never get enough of what it brings with it until.. well, I get enough and the rainy weather is just too much for me.

Source: Bath&Body Works

This being said, here are 5 ways you can get cozy and comfy this autumn, whether you love it or you hate it:

1. Scented candles
I am a sucker for scented candles and I can never have too many. When I happen to run out of candles, there are always scented incense sticks at my place that give my room a welcoming touch.
The ones from H&M are the most accessible to me, as I don't need to order them online and can go shopping for them at the mall. However, I have to say that the ones from Bath & Body Works are very hard to top as they have amazing scents that I wouldn't mind having around the house the entire autumn (this isn't to say that their other seasonal candles aren't as great!).

Source: Free People

2. Oversized sweaters
There is a reason autumn comes along with the most genuine sweater weather, and that's because there is nothing comfier on a chill, rainy fall day than an oversized, warm and soft sweater to make your day better. And let me be frank, there aren't a lot of things I love to do more in the fall season than style oversized sweater. Just two words: ENDLESS. POSSIBILITIES. Between us girls, Pinterest offers some very nice styling ideas.
Can we please talk about the awesomeness of these Free People oversized sweaters? Obsessed.

Source: Free People

3. Hot chocolate/Tea
You name it. Either one of these two on a fall day makes me wanna bundle up in front of the fireplace and be the absolute lazy ass that I am when the weather is grumpy.
Give me some marshmallows with the hot chocolate or a linden tea and I am never leaving the couch again. Here are a few ways that the miraculous Weheartit teaches us how to spice up our hot chocolate. And don't even get me started on the very tasty pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks.
Speaking of couches and beds, this brings me to the next way you can level up on your coziness this autumn, which is:

4. Blankets
Yes, blankets.On your bed, on your couch, on yourself, you name it. Blankets and their fluffiness are something that I welcome into my home be it autumn or winter season and I very hardly part from them in the spring. Let's face it. They're fancy, they're the definition of cozy and they can put me to sleep in a heartbeat. I always know that the new season of Castle and being all snuggled up in bed under a cozy blanket will never lead to anything good. Or myself getting to the end of the episode, for that matter.
And don't you dare tell me this isn't the most autumny throw you have ever seen, 'cause I won't believe you.

Source: Missoni Home

5. Cooking
Cooking is amazing as a hobby, it's healthy for the mind and body and your house smells ah-mazing after a dessert cooking session on an autumn afternoon.
One of my go-to recipes this autumn is definitely the carrot cake. Ever since I've been to Amsterdam and ate the best carrot cake on the planet, I cannot get enough of it. Yum Yum Yum!
I find that this is the best carrot cake I tried so far. Be sure to check it out and you'll be guaranteed that your house will smell divine.
Add this to the scented candle smell and your house will never know anything but autumn for itself.

Source: Allrecipes

This is what I do or plan on doing this autumn to make this season even more inspiring than it already is.
I honestly can't wait to eat carrot cake and be lazy under my blankets while the leaves are turning yellow. Right now it's pouring outside and I find it the most relaxing sound.
Be sure to send me pictures if you decide to try out any of these ways to get cozy and snuggly.
                                                  -Sophie Pugh

Review: Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green, David Levithan

Source: Goodreads

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I have a problem with devouring books in a much too short period of time. I end up sad, unable to stop picking up the book to continue reading, realizing there's nothing left to read.

This happened to me with Will Grayson, Will Grayson, but it didn't take long to wear off. The book sets out to present the lives of two boys wearing the same name, with very different personalities and lives whose destinies intersect in a very don't-believe-in-coincidences kind of way.

One Will Grayson has to decide whether or not he likes his friend, Jane, while another Will Grayson falls in love with his cyber male friend.

This book is honest, but not afraid of exaggerations. However, I feel like even though it's a teen fiction book, it lacked the exaggeration it needed when it came to the characters' experiences. What happens when someone comes out to their family? What happens when a friend betrays you in such a way, you feel like you'll never trust someone again? What happens when you're not able to appreciate the people around you and need a punch to come to your senses - most of the times, the mental punch proving to be more painful than a real one - ?

I feel like the authors were on to something very important when they chose gay characters, especially in highschool, yet somehow that point was lost along the way of unshared romances and a not very complex evolution - of the plot or the characters. When you choose gay characters in their highschool era, teen fiction or not, certain expectations are bound to arise. There's too much pressure around the subject and it's a much too difficult experience in relation to the schoolmates, friends and family 90% of the time to not talk about how baffling, demanding and unbearable it most often is to be in such a situation - when in fact, the characters had it pretty easy except for a few moments.

The writing is spot on, I'll admit to being very proud of the authors for how diverse the characters felt and how easy it was to distinguish between their personalities and follow their storylines. 

I was very happy with how the ending took me completely by surprise and made me content with the turn the events took even if maybe I wasn't really hoping that would happen - the book made me love its ending more than I would've loved my own.

I consider this book to have a very original plot, very pleasent characters and the ending was satisfying and surprising, yet the book left me wanting more from certain scenes, expecting more tumultuous consequences and growing more attached to the teenagers. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish what they were going through brought us closer together, when in reality I kept feeling like a reader, not a friend.

I would recommend this book to anyone who looks for a cute, young story and does not search for a heavy reading. All in all, this book is quite enjoyable and easy on the mind.

- Sophie Pugh

What I learned from my trip to Paris

It was a cool decision to do a Eurotrip rather than take a cheap, little-to-no satisfaction Turkey trip on an isolated holiday complex. My boyfriend and I decided to visit my cousin in Liege and expand and explore for 10 days for as long as our legs could work and our heads could stay at least at the tip of the clouds.

The flight to Brussels was my first flight ever. The fact that I’m a well-known, self-proclaimed hypochondriac has nothing to do with the (deathly) expectations I had over the flight. Sure, I thought everything and anything that could go wrong would go wrong, of course I was silently, mentally praying that our pilot was sane and had no recent relationship issues or that a bird wouldn’t suicidally fly into our engines – basically all the things that bring a plane down were on my mind – but I was chill. I was trying to be zen. 

I decided I wanted the window seat so that my first flight experience ever was as rich as possible. My kind boyfriend agreed, yet somehow karma got the best of me and gave it all to him. The take-off was rather gentle for what I had heard of take-off's, my ears were hardly that clogged from the high pressure and the view was extraordinary – to put it lightly. And that was the absolute perfect moment my motion sickness decided to kick in and I established it was the best idea to give my window seat to my boyfriend. Karma.

What do you expect when you fly with a plane for the first time? Moreso when it’s the first time you are leaving the country. Quite frankly, I felt rich, I felt luxurious and I felt like I couldn’t wait to eat the famously delicious airplane food and drink a glass of wine while watching which country we were currently flying over. Well, our flight was low-cost so there were no monitors. The food was great, and expensive. And so was my water.

The minute I got the sense we were starting to lose altitude, I felt relieved and worried over how the typical Brussels fog could somehow take down the plane all by itself. That was not the case, even considering that most of our flight we had to keep our safety seatbelts on and turbulances were present 90% of the time. My stomach was not happy. The landing was smooth and just as I thought we were safe, the airstrip was nearly over so the pilot had to hit the breaks pretty hard. Then that was it. We got off, my cousin picked us up and we got some rest for what was about to be the greatest travel holiday ever.

Out of all our must-see destinations, Paris was, of course, our first. The road was long, the driver had to pee a lot and the passengers were silent, even seeing as a period of at least half a year had passed since the last live conversation. Yet excitement was predominant in the little environment that was our car. Excitement and the GPS.

So what exactly did I learn from Paris?

I learned that gipsies got to it before I did, and they apparently loved it, because they are everywhere – starting with the hotel's neighborhood we stayed at in the North, all the way to under the bridges over Seine. Moreso, I learned they beg in Romanian. Right in front of the Notre Dame.

I inevitably learned that Paris has more McDonald's than Amsterdam has H&M’s, and that’s not even a compliment. Coming from my boyfriend or any other McDonald's lover, well, maybe that would be, but it’s not.

I learned that Marks&Spencer set out not to limit itself to clothes and opened up a food chain. Presumably Romania is way under-developed to have even heard of Marks&Spencer alone ( okay, we do have a couple of those stores).

I learned that snobbish people can rent cool cars on Champs-Elysees for 90 euro for a 20 minute drive and that they won’t even mind that 20 minutes are insignificant in the Paris traffic.

I learned, of course, rather too late, that you can get the same touristic crap for extremely various sums of money in numerous places in Paris. Even from the infinite amount of street sellers.

Sadly, I learned that 10 P.M. is late for Paris and most of the restaurants and pubs close, so there is hardly anything to do if you want to have a beer by the Seine with your cousin and boyfriend. Furthermore, walking for two hours trying to find a pub or a shop to buy beer will prove useless. Useless and cold. And that was only a reminder of how poorly Paris stands regarding to little markets, especially in the center. This is how I learned that you should plan in advance the amount of water you are going to need because you are not going to find a store when you need it. Or in the next 3 hours of searching one. And don’t even get me started on those people selling water bottles being kept in blue buckets. They are reused, the seal is broken.

All of us – and our hurting legs – learned that if something looks really close in Paris and seems like a good idea to walk to it, it’s probably not. NOTHING in Paris is close and nothing is what it seems and you will find yourself walking from one end of the Seine to the other just because the spinning wheel looked close or wandering for 3.5 km because the Eiffel Tower „was so close to us the entire time” and there was no point in taking the subway. There is ALWAYS a point in taking the subway in Paris and most of the times it’s cool, fast and even gives you a nice view over some of the neighborhoods.

Last but not least, I learned that the Eiffel Tower, but Paris in general, are – with the risk of sounding corny – breathtaking and amazing and like nothing I have ever experienced before, especially if you decide it to visit it for the first time at nighttime.

Regarding food, I enjoyed the most amazing and delicious meal I ever came across in my entire life at the L'assiette aux fromages restaurant on Mouffetard street. If you have the time, be sure to check it out.

- Sophie Pugh

Disclaimer: Please understand that this was my personal experience in Paris. I chose to recount what my perception of this city was and not to review every attraction.

Although I chose to narrate my experience in Paris in a rather critical tone, as say my last paragraphs, Paris is unbelievably surreal (pardon my redundancy) and I absolutely cannot wait to visit it again and sometimes call myself its faithful inhabitant.