Blogging Every Day In October // The Video Game Challenge

Hey guys!

If you follow me on any other sites - twitter, facebook, etc - you'll probably know that I am a massive fan of gaming - Nintendo games in particular (you'll also see that I've mentioned it a few times before on my blog if you're a fairly regular reader)

So, when I stumbled across a gaming challenge a while back, I saved it and knew I wanted to do it somewhere, whether it was on my instagram or somewhere else, and I eventually decided that I was going to try and turn it into blog posts so I didn't have a character limit restricting me if I wanted to go into more detail, or if I wanted to post pictures or anything!

I know that it'll be pretty hard to do, and that some days I'll be posting longer blogs than others - some questions won't require much detail, whereas some will make me have to go into a lot more detail and post pictures - but I'm going to try my hand at blogging every day in October! It's only a 30 day challenge, however, so I'm going to have to either think of an extra question for the final day, or do some kind of summary or something. 

Anyway, I'll leave the photo of the questions in this blog post too, in case any of you want to do this too, and I look forward to starting this challenge - I hope you enjoy it too! 

It's something a bit different to what I'd usually blog about, too, but please let me know in the comments whether you enjoy it, or if you'd like me to go back to blogging about other things instead! 

Things I'm Grateful For

Hey guys!

As I've been having a stressful year so far (as I mentioned in my last post) I thought that I would compile a list of things that make me happy/things I’m grateful for, as I know a lot of people have it a lot worse than I do (even though I don’t always remember that as I’m wallowing in sadness on the sofa playing games to take my mind off things.) Some of the things on the list may seem small or petty to other people, but it’s my list so it’s what works for me. 

1 – my family and friends. 

I’m lucky enough to have an amazing support system of people around me, and even if I do forget to text people back sometimes and hate phone calls (oops) I’m so thankful to have people like them in my life.

2 – I have a roof over my head and food to eat every day, 

not to mention clean running water.

3 – music. 

As silly as it may sound, I love just putting on a pair of headphones, putting on a playlist of my favourite songs, then just settling down and losing myself in the music.

4 – health. 

I’m not the fittest or healthiest person by a long shot – I have a terrible immune system – but it could be a lot worse. I don’t have any life threatening illnesses or anything like that.

5 – going to gigs. 

Seeing bands I love with my friends, discovering new bands, and meeting new people as well as making amazing memories while listening to awesome music – what could be better?

6 – writing. 

I’m so thankful that I grew up surrounded by books and that I learnt to read at a fairly young age, as books help to inspire me to write, whether it’s blogging, writing fiction or just jotting down little notes.

7 – makeup and hair dye. 

I know this may seem pretty superficial to some people, but I’m grateful that my mum has always been willing to help me to dye or bleach my hair, even if sometimes she’s hated the end result, as it means I’ve had a lot of hair colours over the years which have made me happy. I’m also thankful that she’s let me wear makeup since I was about 13, as I really do not like myself without it and now I’m apparently pretty good at applying it!

8 – playing games. 

I’ve always used things like books and games as an escape from real life, and luckily I recently started a new game which is pretty intense and mega detailed, so I’ve been able to lose myself in that and keep my mind off everything while exploring a new world.

That’s just a small selection of things I’m thankful for and which make me happy, which have been helping me smile lately through all the sadness. 

What are some things you’re thankful for, and which make you happy?

Calming Colouring

Hey guys! 

Before I start, I'd just like to mention that I'm not being paid to write about this and none of the books I talk about were gifted to me (minus one which was a christmas present), I paid for them all myself and I am not sponsored to write this. I simply adore colouring books.

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved stickers and colouring in. My family were always buying me sticker books, colouring books and endless crayons, pencils, felt tips etc – occasionally, they’d also get me those colouring books that you just used to paint over with water to reveal the colour underneath (I loved those a lot too) and I think I used to make a lot of mess doing this, haha!

When I was a teenager, I used to love printing off pictures and patterns from the internet and colouring those in – mainly from Hello Kitty and The Bubblegum Club sites (I used to love the Bubblegum character greetings cards you could get, they were awesome!) and eventually, when I got bored of doing that, I started doodling patterns and colouring those in instead – quite often on my schoolbooks and planner, and even occasionally in the margins of my homework (which isn’t a good idea – I think I may have got detention a few times for doing that).

So, when I first heard about colouring books aimed at adults a few years back, I really wanted one for the nostalgia – plus, I wanted to see what kind of designs they’d have in more adult orientated colouring books! Plus, as someone who has anxiety, I find it calming to colour things in or do something that keeps my mind and hands occupied, so this kind of thing would be perfect for me, and other people who may feel the same!

I went on Amazon and looked around for a while, and there were so many that looked amazing! My eye was drawn to the tattoo colouring book first, though, so I actually ended up asking for it for Christmas last year. It’s beautifully illustrated, full of both large and smaller pictures, and it’s actually giving me ideas for other tattoos I’d maybe love to get one day, oops. I’ve only coloured in a few of them so far, as I don’t want it to run out too soon and half the time, I’m a lot calmer when I’m only partway through the picture.

I then saw another colouring book with a really intricate fox on the cover – the art therapy colouring book – and I fell in love with it, so I had to order that too! This one is slightly different, however, as it’s split into two sections – the first section is purely for colouring, and the second, slightly smaller section is for finishing the designs as well as colouring, which is pretty fun too!

A few weeks ago, I noticed that they sell colouring books in my local Sainsbury's, so I ended up buying some of the more beautiful, intricate ones I saw and fell in love with instantly - a couple of them are adventure/quest books as well as colouring, but I still think they're amazing, as they keep your mind working while you're colouring too! 

Tropical Wonderland colouring book

Animal Kingdom colouring book

Enchanted Forest colouring/quest book

Secret Garden colouring/quest book 

What do you think about colouring books? Do you like them and/or use them? Or do you think they should only be for kids?

General Life Update!

Hey guys!

I'm sorry I've not been around lately - as you can probably tell from my last post, I haven't really been having the greatest year, and it's been going from bad to worse since then too. I thought it would be better to kick things off again with a blog explaining why I've been away, rather than just chucking up a blog about something else as my first post back.

First things first, I'm really sorry I've been away - I've still been blogging pretty much every week over on Birds, but even that's been a bit of a struggle sometimes, and there were a few weeks when I literally only scheduled a post about 5 minutes before it was supposed to be live - although luckily that hasn't been the case for a while now. 

It also hasn't helped that my internet hasn't been working properly for a while - I've had my phone, sure, but I find it a lot harder to post from there, plus my data allowance isn't that high anyway - but luckily, I've got that sorted now, and while the signal isn't the most amazing thing in the world, it's definitely better than no internet, so I should be able to post fairly regularly again now. 

Not long after my ex boyfriend died, my dog got ill. He had been ill for a while, but he wasn't getting any better, and unfortunately after one particularly horrible night (where we were up all night with him) we had to make the heartbreaking decision to have him put to sleep. So, that really hit me hard - one death is bad enough when it's someone you loved, but it's even worse when you have another death and it's a pet you'd had for ages who was basically a member of the family. On top of that, my internet wasn't working, and I also had some other personal issues going on (that I don't feel particularly comfortable discussing) so I decided that it would be for the best if I took a break from blogging until I was feeling better and life had calmed down enough that blogging wouldn't feel overwhelming. 

I feel like now is that time.

It'll take me a while to get back into a routine, but I'm going to aim to post at least once a week from now - this will give me time to come up with content that will hopefully be interesting to everyone, as well as thinking of things that I actually want to blog about and will enjoy writing about.

So, here's to a new beginning.