New Moon, Who Dis?

Woo! It’s a new moon, which means I’m thinking all about new goals and intentions for the weeks to come. This, of course, includes my blog! I wanted to dust some of the old cobwebs off and give the ol’ gal a bit of a makeover. So, I changed my color scheme around to include more purples and updated my header art, as well as my little icon/avatar thing. Nothing too different, just a little bit more life breathed into them.

THE OLD HEADER ART:

ALL-NEW, RE-VAMPED HEADER ART: 

THE OLD ICON ART:

ALL-NEW, RE-VAMPED ICON ART:

I guess I mainly just wanted bolder colors and cleaner line art than what I’d previously had up. It’s a cold, rainy and beautiful fall day out over here, so it’s been the perfect day to get cozy and snuggled up with a blanket and pumpkin spice chai latte with honey and extra cinnamon while I work on giving my blog the update I felt it so badly needed. ❤

This October has been amazing so far and I really hope to keep that momentum up as we draw closer to Halloween. I’ve been doing a lot of writing and editing again on my book after being so busy and burnt out for what feels like ages. Hoping to keep at it, especially with NaNoWriMo right around the corner. 😉

How’s your October going?? What goals and projects are you working on?

Rested & Ready to Rock!

Have you ever reached one of those moments in your life where you just need to step back, reflect and do some real soul searching about yourself and what you want in life? That’s pretty much where I’ve been at lately, and I now feel like I’m somewhat ready to find my footing again and move forward.

Thankfully, we recently got back from a very fun and relaxing vacation with the besties. I think we all needed that trip, and it was great to get away and not have to worry about being responsible for anything for a few days. Mr. Moth spotted a really cool book shop called BAM! (Books a Million) that we happily checked out. We each left with some new additions for our bookshelves and Cupcakes & Machetes and I enjoyed some seriously delicious coffee from the book store’s cafe. ❤

Hopefully this latest book haul can help me finish my Goodreads reading challenge before the year ends. I’ve read 42/50 books/graphic novels so far this year, so I think I’m in good shape to complete my goal. 🙂

Fall is fast-approaching, and I always find myself feeling more creative this time of year. Do you have a certain season that brings out your creative side? I just bought my supplies for this year’s Inktober art challenge, and for the most part, I’m digging this year’s prompts.

Given how hectic and crazy things like to be, I’m not even going to attempt to predict how the remaining months of this year are gonna go, but a few things I know I want to continue working on/toward are:

• Inktober art Challenge in October and NaNoWriMo Writing Challenge in November.
• Making more time for myself and the things I want to achieve and enjoy doing.
• Not stressing as much and learning to embrace things/go with the flow more.

What are your big plans for the fall? What kinds of projects and/or goals are you currently working toward? 

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! ❤

Back From Beyond the Blogosphere

Egad! What year is it? *Dusts off cobwebs and coughs up grave dirt* Well, I certainly didn’t mean to go on hiatus for like a quarter of the year, but life was . . . to put it mildly, a raging dumpster fire. Truth be told, it wasn’t ALL bad, but damn, did it get overwhelming. To be fair, there were some good points over the past few months, but for the most part, it’s just seemed like one exhausting and endless loop of me or any assortment of my loved ones being sick/injured/having surgery/requiring around the clock care at any given time. Aaaand, to make things even more stressful, apparently, somewhere in the back of my burnt-out mind, I thought this to be the perfect time to throw bringing home a puppy into the mix, because, who really likes being able to get even a moment’s rest anyway? Not this girl, apparently.

Buuuuut, things are looking a little more stable (for now, at least) so I wanted to make sure to dust off my trusty old blog and try to catch up with my favorite blogging buddies. ❤ How are you guys?? What exciting things have you been up to lately, and what are your plans for the last few weeks of the year?? 🙂

As we continue to race ever closer to the new year (can you believe 2022 is almost over?!) I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my goals and the ways I can best check them off my list one by one. Aaaand, to be honest, I’m getting pretty damn excited about it. More news on that to come though! 😉

New Year, New Goals: The 2022 Edition

When you’re trying to be productive in the new year by starting a new Planner and your cat decides to flop down on your pens and stickers for it like, “Nah. Our only plan for today is to be lazy and comfy.”

Happy New Year! ❤ I hope everyone had a great holiday season and is ready to kick some ass in the new year, and by that I mean, of course, find and do all the things that make you happiest in life. 🙂

Now, before we get on with this year’s resolutions, let’s see how I did with my goals for 2021. *drum roll, please!*

After the dumpster fire that was 2020, I decided to be gentle with myself when setting goals for 2021. I really wanted to work on my focus last year. My brain is all over the place all the time, my attention span sucks, and I have a tendency to start ALL the things and complete almost none of them. (It’s not beating yourself up when it’s 100% truuuue!) 😀

That said, I think I nailed this goal. 2021 was the year I completed the first draft of my book I’ve been working on, which was a HUGE milestone that I’m very proud of. ❤

My other goals had been to push myself out of my comfort zone more, and to work on my mental health. I think these were both kind of a mixed bag for me, and they’re things I’d like to continue to work on in 2022.

SO, that said, let’s get into the year at hand: 2022 😀

Goal #1: Finish the second draft of my book. I’d really like to get this done by mid to late summer if I can.

Goal #2: Work on my overall well-being. Health, Mental Health, Working on my goals, but also making sure to set aside time to have fun.

Goal #3: I set my Goodreads goal for 20 books/graphic novels this year. I wanted to keep the number of books I read reasonable since I will be spending so much time writing. Another part of my reading goal is that I primarily want to read things I already own.

Goal #4: Scheduling my days and living by a solid collection of To-Do Lists is how I thrive, so I want to try to structure my days out a little better this year so I have time for all of the things I enjoy and want to achieve.

Goal #5: I’ve been struggling with making time for drawing AND writing, so I’d like to try to find some balance there if I can.

What are your goals for the new year? How did you do on last year’s resolutions if you made them? What things are you most excited for in 2022?

My Year in Books: 2021

Does anyone else look forward to when Goodreads posts your “Year in Books” at the end of the year? 🙂 I always think it’s fun looking back on things you’ve done throughout the year, so maybe that is something I’ll try to keep better track of in 2022 in general. For now, though, I’ll just let GR do most of the work.

This year I surpassed my goal of reading 30 books/graphic novels, and read a total of 45. (Though, let’s be honest, A LOT of those were graphic novels this year.) 😉

The SHORTEST book I read was: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, at 118 pages.

The LONGEST book was: NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, at 692 pages.

Favorite Buddy Read of the Year: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

Favorite Novel I Read This Year: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Favorite Graphic Novel I Read This Year: I literally read all 34 volumes of the manga of Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama, so I think it’s a safe bet to say this one took the cake for me in 2021. 😛

How was your own year in reading? What was your favorite book/graphic novel you read in 2021? How many books do you hope to read in 2022?

 

Mission Accomplished: First Draft

“Writer Girl Summer” is finally at its end, and so is my blog hiatus I was on. My entire summer was pretty much just a caffeine-fueled writing frenzy of utter madness. It feels really damn good though to have completed my (very rough) first draft. I am so ready to take a much-needed break from writing to let the story breathe, and to regain some of my sanity before I go on to tackle the dreaded second draft.

Luckily for me, Halloween is just around the corner, so I’m going to use the full month of October to recover from my crazy writing binge and to just focus on doing all the things I love to indulge in during spooky season. We’re talking horror movies galore, catching up on some creepy video games, reading scary stories, fall baking, etc. I’m also planning to participate in the 2021 Corpsetober Art Challenge, so I’m really excited to get back into drawing. I really didn’t draw much this summer since I was so focused on completing the first draft of my book, so I can’t wait to get back at it and practice some more with my iPad Pro. It was kind of torturous just seeing it collect dust all summer, but I’m glad I remained focused. 

I can’t wait to start catching up on everyone’s blogs over the next several days, and see what you guys have been up to while I was away. In the mean time, how was your summer?? What are you most excited for this fall?

37 Day Hiatus

Oof. Deadlines are ROUGH. As I previously mentioned, this summer is all about finishing the first draft of the book I’ve been plotting/writing. Now that I’m in the home stretch (just 37 days left to go) I really need to shift my focus into high gear and remain focused. It’s because of this that I’ve decided to take the remainder of this summer off from my blog and devote just about all of my attention and free time to making my self-imposed deadline.

I’ll still be contributing to Sugar and Scream during this time though, so I won’t be totally removed from WP. Here’s hoping I make it back with a completed first draft AND my sanity intact come the fall. 😉

 

1 Month Into “Writer Girl Summer”

Secretly this past month, behind the scenes, this ignited moth has been busy. Today marks one month since I’ve started my own personal writing goal for the summer. You always see the “Hot Girl Summer” hashtag so I tweaked the name and dubbed this summer “Writer Girl Summer”. 😛 I have a tendency to want to work on a million things at once, but this summer my focus is on writing (with the exception of a couple small drawing challenges like the Shark Week art challenge I previously posted). The goal is simple: take the scraps of writing I’d previously been working on, the very detailed plot outline, and a metric fuck ton of caffeine, and use this summer to complete the first draft for my book I’m working on.

I feel like this past month was REALLY productive, but the past couple days I’ll admit, I’ve been slacking, so what better way to get motivated again than to hold myself accountable by posting about it here on my blog? 😉 Changing some of my writing habits has been really helpful, and I really want to keep that momentum going.

What are you working on this summer? 🙂 Do you find that the more people you talk to about your goals, the more successful you are in the long run? I’m sure hoping that sharing my writing journey here will help keep me on track. 😀

 

Haunted Garden Art Challenge

I’m sure most of you know by now that I LOVE a spooky art challenge, so how could I possibly pass up on Grace.Moth‘s Haunted Garden Art Challenge? An art challenge hosted by a fellow moth? Clearly this was just meant to be. 😛

I can’t wait to join in on the fun of another art challenge, especially one with such fun prompts. Aaaand each prompt gives you two days to work on it, rather than having to do one per day, which should make it less stressful to take part in. Any medium is welcome, so I’ll most likely be taking this as an opportunity to practice more digital art, but I may throw a traditional piece or two into the mix. We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? 😉

I’ll be posting them according to the prompt schedule over on my Instagram account, and then I’ll just post a few at a time periodically here on my blog throughout the challenge as well.

What do you think of the prompts Grace.Moth came up with for her challenge? I love them. ❤ Are you working on any challenges or special goals at the moment?