2023 BFF Bucket List

Having a fun weekend with my bestie (the notorious Cupcakes & Machetes )  got me thinking about all the fun things I can’t wait for us to do together this year. We spent this weekend enjoying a healthy mix of relaxing while watching movies, playing with the dogs, and starting the new season of The Legend of Vox Machina before bundling up in multiple layers for warmth and venturing off into town to enjoy the local ice sculptures and delicious donuts from one of the food trucks (fluffy mini donuts drowning in Bavarian Cream and chocolate sauce, and chai sugar mini donuts, perfectly fried.) As you can probably tell by Noi’s face in the picture below, they smelled AMAZING, and tasted even better. ❤

So, what other shenanigans do we hope to get up to in 2023? Let’s dive right into our bucket list, shall we? 🙂

Couples trip to Anatomy of Death Museum and local oddities shops.

3 Buddy Reads together throughout the year.

Dress up and attend Marche du Nain Rouge

Celebrate C&M’s graduation from college (last day of class: April 29th!)

Try to finally visit the Toledo Zoo together.

Take the dogs to Watkins Lake Preserve dog trails for nature adventures.

Work on some sort of wood project together this summer involving woodworking and pyrography.

Have C&M beta read the next draft of my book this summer.

Plan an epic joint birthday party for our pups in August.

Photoshoots with the dogs throughout the year.

Annual cookout.

Couples trip to Kalahari Resort and Water Park

Best friend tattoos in September.

Attend the Renaissance Festival together.

Try making some new recipes together.

Cider Mill crawl in the fall.

Make Halloween costumes and attend Theatre Bizarre.

Visit 3 new bookstores neither of us have ever been to.

Looking forward to another amazing year of fun adventures with my partner in crime! ❤

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August 2022: Victories, Video Games and Vaudeville

Is anyone else absolutely blown away by how quickly this summer is going by?? I, for one, am always Team Autumn so I’m not completely heartbroken about it, but it’s certainly shocking that August is already nearly at an end!

As per usual, things have been pretty busy. Family medical stuff, work, big career moves, and more haven’t left me with as much free time as I’d like but I think I still managed to squeeze in some time for a lot of good stuff. 🙂

READING:

Cupcakes & Machetes and I had a couple back-to-back buddy reads, and as luck would have it, we really enjoyed BOTH books!

Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia was the first of the books we read, and we’ll be posting a buddy review for it in the near future over on our joint blog Sugar & Scream so keep an eye out to find out what we thought of this gothic horror! 😉

Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals, by Laurie Zaleski. This one was C&M’s pick and I was a little reluctant, expecting it to be a total tear jerker but although it definitely had its sad points, it was SUCH a good book. C&M already posted her review for it over on her blog, so be sure to check it out. We both loved it!

As for solo reads, I’m currently reading I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy. As shocking as the title is, it isn’t hard to see her motivation behind it while reading through the chapters I have so far. The author does not hold back anything as she unveils the story of her mother’s manipulative, psychologically abusive and toxic parenting, as well as the way the life of a young child actor was forced upon her when she never even wanted it.

BAKING:

I tackled a new dessert and baked a S’mores Cake for my sister-in-law’s birthday. We’re talking a graham cracker crust bottom, chocolate cake, vanilla marshmallow frosting, topped with toasted marshmallows, a chocolate drizzle, and graham cracker crumbs.

My dad’s birthday is right around the corner as well, so I just picked up the ingredients to make him the cherry cheesecake that was his birthday treat of choice this time around. 🙂

DRAWING:

With limited free time this month, I haven’t drawn anything yet in August, buuuuut I am brainstorming some ideas for a video game themed collaboration with C&M’s hubby for his streaming channel https://www.twitch.tv/heathen_rite this November. (More to come on that later!) 😉 I’m also eagerly anticipating the prompts for some of October’s art challenges like #inktober and #corpsetober to pop up (hopefully) in the near future so I can start cooking up some ideas for spooky season as well.

WRITING:

Writing has been touch and go lately. With a lot of family stuff going on and whatnot, I haven’t had much time for writing, but when I have, it’s been a lot more productive than usual. Now that I’m taking medication for my ADHD, I can definitely see a difference in my ability to focus and not get as distracted by other things during writing time and other activities. It’s been really nice. 🙂

EVENTS:

I recently got the honor of presenting at this year’s International Gentle Teaching Conference. It was such a great experience and I couldn’t have asked for a better person to co-present with. This was definitely a high point for me in my career and I’m so proud to have gotten the opportunity to present among so many wonderful speakers. Public speaking is TERRIFYING to me, but thankfully, since I’ve started actually treating my anxiety, it is now something that is much more possible.

As for events coming in the near future, after a few years off due to Covid, Theatre Bizarre finally makes it’s grand return to Detroit this October! If you don’t know what that is, imagine the most epic Halloween party ever. Multiple floors in one of Detroit’s historic buildings are transformed into one big spooky bash with live performances, sideshow acts galore, fire performers, devils and deranged clowns, and more. We immediately snagged our tickets as soon as they went on sale. Aaand, to make things even better, Mr. and Mrs. C&M are attending this year for their very first time! We’re so excited to get to go together this time around. Time to start working on costumes! 😀

In other vaudeville-themed news, I also recently got in touch with another event planner in our neck of the woods and got the inside scoop that they will be bringing back the “Carniville of Madness” (a Gatsby style upscale event with performers and oddities) which made its debut before the pandemic hit. Mr. Moth and I had a blast there but since their first year was right before Covid, we feared they may not make a return. Thankfully, those worries were put to rest and we now have another great costume event to look forward to.

Also, a couple’s resort vacation with Mr. & Mrs. C&M is right around the corner and after all the stress and chaos the past couple years have brought, we are ready for a relaxing vacation with our besties! ❤

AAAAND, we haven’t nailed down the details yet, but in October Mr. Moth and I will be celebrating our 2nd wedding anniversary, so we’re hoping to swing another vacation at that point too to celebrate. ❤

VIDEO GAMES/ENTERTAINMENT:

Re-playing Mario games with Mr. Moth for fun is always a nice way to enjoy a bit of free time.

I’ve also been continuing along on completionist mode in Hungry Shark World. After you beat the game, you unlock 2 extra sharks that have really high goals and I just pick at those goals when I need to mindlessly de-stress for a bit.

I’ve had a lot of fun lately nerding out with Imperial Rebel Ork over the Predator movies. We even did a buddy review over on the Sugar & Scream blog for the latest film installment in the franchise Prey.

So, that pretty much sums up how things have been going on my end. How have you guys been? Any exciting August moments I may have missed? How’s your summer been??

Shark Week Art Update #1

Hoping your guys Shark Week has been absolutely Jawsome so far! ❤ Over on my Instagram the Shark Week shenanigans have been in full swing, so I wanted to share some of the illustrations I’ve made and have been sharing here on my blog as well! 🙂

Hungry Shark World fan art of the zombie shark you can play as. This game has eaten up pretty much any of my free time the past 2 weeks.

King Shark from The Suicide Squad movie. Had fun playing around with some different brushes in Procreate when working on this one.

Ebisu in her shark mascot costume from the anime Dorohedoro. Such a fun series! It’s weird, violent, funny, and unique in all the best ways, and the characters are awesome!

There will be more shark week art to share soon, but I wanted to hop on and add these while I had a little bit of extra time. Have you been watching any of the new Shark Week content this year? There’s been some really good stuff! 🙂

Work has been one big Shark Week party and my participants have been loving it which makes me SO happy! They really are the best! ❤ One of the girls in my room is loving the sharks I painted on the window so much that she always comments on them when she comes in in the morning and today she told me the big shark I painted was “so cute and so special” and it absolutely made my day. ^_^ We’ve been doing lots of cool shark art projects, playing Pin the Fin on the Shark, doing sensory with water beads and toy sharks, and more! It’s been an absolute blast.

Happy Shark Week!

Woo! It’s that magical time of year again! ❤ I’ve been gearing up hard for Shark Week this year, so expect lots of fun shark-related posts. I’ve been working on fun shark-related drawings, using any ounce of free time I can get to play the video game Hungry Shark World, and am all set up with my Discovery+ account to binge-watch some fin-tastic shark content!

I may have gone overboard at work, but I know my class is going to have an absolute blast this Shark Week. I’m generally the only room that does Shark Week in the building, but this year our excitement seems to have caught on, and another team is joining in on the fun as well. 😀

In case any of you haven’t seen it already, here’s this year’s Shark Week lineup, as well as the extras available on Discovery+. Aaaand, don’t forget to check out all the oldies but goodies that air all throughout the week as well. 😛

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Will you be partaking in Shark Week this year? What’s your favorite fictional shark? I couldn’t find any art challenges going on this year, so I mostly just drew shark fan art for fun. I hope you guys all have a Jawsome Shark Week! Looking forward to nerding out about sharks with you guys! ❤

Long Time No See!

*Gently dusts off blog like it’s an ancient relic from an archeological site.* Hello, there! It’s certainly been a while. I hope everyone is doing well. ❤ I’ve been away working on my mental health and trying to adjust to slowly reentering the world again after the past couple years of mostly living the pandemic hermit life.

I am seeing a new primary care physician who is wonderful and has been so helpful in starting my journey in actually treating my depression and anxiety. I’ve “lived” with these issues for far too long and I finally have had enough. Something had to give. I’m already seeing a world of difference. We’re still in the process of nailing down the right course of action for me, but I really do think we’re on the right track. I’m hoping it will help me become a lot more productive with all of my goals/ongoing projects as well. 🙂

Mr. Moth and I are out of town right now visiting with our besties Mr. and Mrs. Cupcakes & Machetes for the weekend to celebrate C&M’s birthday! ❤ We gave her her prezzies, went bowling (which was surprisingly a total blast!), tried a delicious restaurant none of us had tried before, played video games, and made plans for lots of exciting upcoming adventures! It feels so good to be making actual plans again. 😀

Also, speaking of exciting plans, keep your peepers open for an upcoming update over on the Sugar and Scream blog as we finally plan to resurrect it from its long slumber.

Looking forward to catching up on your guys’ blogs soon, but if you have any special news I’ve missed while I’ve been away, let me know! 🙂

Happy Shark Week 2021

Aside from binge-watching Shark Week goodness all week, I’m celebrating by participating in the #DrawingSharkWeek art challenge hosted by Marcc the Shark over on Instagram. 🙂

Some of these haven’t been posted yet on my Instagram page, but I’m posting them here anyway because I don’t feel like waiting until the end of Shark Week to do my celebratory Shark Week blog post! 😛

Prompt #1: Hybrid (Puppy Shark!)

Prompt #2: Reef

Prompt #3: Earth

Prompt #4: Titan

Prompt #5: Galactic

Prompt #6: Mutation

Prompt #7: Chonk

I hope you guys enjoyed my silly shark drawings as much as I enjoyed creating them. ❤ This was my first year doing digital Shark Week drawings and I really had a blast with it. Even though I don’t always finish all the prompts for the art challenges I participate in, I still like to give it a shot when I can since it’s a good exercise in thinking outside the box and coming up with ideas for things you may not have drawn on your own, and it’s always good to push yourself and try to learn more. 😀

Have you been watching Shark Week this year? What’s your favorite type of shark?

A Special Blogging Announcement

Cue the confetti cannons and put on your party hats, it’s big, exciting announcement time! Behind the scenes, my BFF and blogging partner in crime, Cupcakes & Machetes and I have secretly been plotting and working on something we’re very excited to finally be able to share with you guys!

. . . wait for it . . .

It’s a brand spanking new blog that the two of us will be co-hosting! We’ll still be keeping our own respective blogs too, but this new blog is a fun new way for us to revel in our love for all things horror, fantasy and science fiction and to toss some fun extra things in as well, like our experiments in baking and other hobbies/interests. So, without further ado, allow me to introduce you to our new blog Sugar and Scream!!

We welcome you to hop on over to join in on the fun with us! 

Bread! Booze! Buddy Reads!

What time is it? RECIPE TIME! 😀 I I was so excited to get to spend New Year’s Day baking and boozing with the amazing Cupcakes & Machetes during our very first Virtual Baking Party. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better way to kick off 2021. ❤ One of the things I’ve always loved so much about our friendship is that it never matters how far apart we are or even how long it’s been since we’ve last been able to actually see eachother, it’s always an amazing time when we get together. Here’s my favorite pic from our Zoom session, of C&M, being the reigning Queen of Silly Faces that she is. 😛

C&M made a delicious-looking Eggnog Bread with an Eggnog Icing and I made a very yummy Honey Beer Bread and (because I happened to have an abundance of cranberries) I made Cranberry Cosmos and Cranberry-Cinnamon jam. We both loved what we ended up making and had a blast along the way. 😀 If you’ve been video-chatting with any of your friends during the pandemic, I wholeheartedly suggest throwing some fun activities into the mix sometime. It was a little tricky at first, but we quickly found our groove and it was fun to drink, bake, and plan our next Buddy Read together. Thank goodness for modern technology. I couldn’t imagine having gone through the pandemic without it, or without C&M for that matter. We may be miles and miles apart and forced to Quarantine away from each other for months on end, but being able to video chat and keep in touch via text and online has been a lifesaver! ❤

What’s been keeping you sane during the pandemic?

4 Years Ignited

Woo! If you see a bunch of fireworks lighting up the night sky tomorrow night, no need to be surprised. They’re clearly in celebration of my blog’s fourth birthday! 😉

With social distancing the new norm these days, what better celebration than an online celebration? And who better to party with than all the amazing blogging buddies I’ve made these past four years?? ❤

So, how are we celebrating? I thought I’d try something interesting and get some creative input from you guys. 🙂 After all, there’s no way I would have stuck around this long blogging if it weren’t for all you amazing people that make up the WP community. ❤ Since the 4th of July officially marks my 4 year blogiversary, I figured I’d have each of you who want to participate give me 4 bits of inspiration for drawing, and that I could post the illustrations I come up with based off your individual input. So, here are my 4 questions posed to whoever is game to play. (No pressure!) All you have to do is leave me a comment with your answers to the following 4 questions and I’ll (eventually in the near-ish future) draw pieces that you helped inspire. So, let’s get onto it, shall we?

My Questions For YOU:

1.) What is your favorite mythical creature?

2.) If you lived in a fantasy or science fiction story, what sort of occupation would you want to have?

3.) What is your favorite character from a well-known fairy tale, fable, or legend?

4.) What real-life animal do you find to be the strangest-looking?

I hope you liked the questions I posed for you guys and that you will join in on the fun and leave your input. When I draw something based off your answer(s) I’ll post it here on my blog and leave a link to your blog in thanks for the inspiration you gave. Like I said, I just thought it would be fun to try a little something different.

Thanks again to each and every one of you who has kept me coming back time and time again over the past 4 years. I hope you all have a great weekend, and Happy 4th of July to those of you who celebrate it! ❤

 

January 2020 Updates

I can’t believe the first month of the new year is already almost over! January is always a big month for reflection and goal setting for me. It marks not only the start of a new calendar year, but also a new year in my life since it is my birthday month.

I know my blog posts have been far and few between and while I’d like to say that that is about to change, I’m afraid I can make no such claim. This year is going to be nuts. Between planning our wedding/honeymoon, my creative pursuits, work, etc. I will do my best to post when I can, but I also am not going to beat myself up over it if it isn’t as often as I’d like. 2020 is going to be an interesting year full of lots of crazy adventures and I’m kind of just living in the moment and trying to push forward to work toward my goals while also making sure I have time for the things and people that make me happy. ❤

Anywhoooo, onto some of the stuff I’ve been up to the past couple weeks!

Currently Reading:

I’m currently hopping back and forth between Mira Grant’s second Parasitology novel, Symbiont, and January’s book club choice, Missing in Michigan, by April A. Taylor. And because reading two books at once is never enough, I’ve decided that adding a graphic novel into the mix was obviously the right way to go. 😉 Lady Mechanika, Volume 1 has been on my TBR List (and bookshelf of neglected titles) for too long, so I finally decided to take the plunge. Between one book about everything that could go wrong when scientists play God with genetically engineered tapeworms, another about a mystery-solving therapist to the dead, and yet another filled with lots of steampunk and monster goodness, I think I have plenty to keep me entertained no matter what I’m in the mood for.

Currently Playing:

Mr. Moth and I gifted each other a Nintendo Switch for Christmas and we’ve been having an absolute blast with it. I have always loved Mario Kart 64 but never ventured into any of the following iterations of the game over the years. I always worried with all the loopy crazy tracks that it would bitch smack me with some serious vertigo. Fortunately, this turned out not to be the case. 😀 There’s definitely a lot of differences from what I’m used to with the Nintendo 64 version, but I love it. We’ve been playing some other games along the way and have really enjoyed Unravel Two. It’s such a mellow and oddly-calming game. Kind of reminds me of how I felt when I played Never Alone. Speaking of games I’ve played and enjoyed before, Shovel Knight was one we decided we wanted to re-play. “All hail the Troupple King!”

In other gaming news, although I, myself, am not playing it, I have been watching Mr. Moth play Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. It’s a cool puzzle-based blend of history/mythology/psychology, and it’s been fun (and frustrating) helping Mr. Moth hunt for runes in the game. I like playing games, but I also enjoy watching others play them as well. 🙂

Current Creative Projects:

Back in November I found my writing groove once more through NaNoWriMo, buuuuut then the holiday season brought it all to a grinding halt. Thankfully, things have finally settled down once more and I’m back at it. 🙂

In other creative news, I have a very exciting update regarding my future art projects. Although my birthday isn’t technically until the end of the month, celebrations have already begun. Among other awesome prezzies, I received a snazzy new drawing tablet! I’m so excited about it. There’s a lot for me to learn and it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to work on any digital art, but I can’t wait to get the hang of it and start making lots of new illustrations.

Anyway, that’s it for my January update post. 🙂 I think I’ll try to at least do one of these types of post near the end of each month, and then we’ll see what else I can pepper in here and there throughout the months to come. I hope everyone is doing well and having a fantastic start to the new year. ❤ ❤ ❤