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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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! 😉

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??

Adjusting to My New “Normal”

Hi, there! Hope you guys are doing well. ❤ In my previous post I mentioned how the trials of sorting out my mental health have not been without its ups and downs, but how I was finally starting to work on creative stuff again. …Guys… it’s been absolutely amazing being back at it. I am someone who thrives off doing creative things just about every day, so to experience the dry spell I recently had where I had no desire to write or draw or do much of anything with my solo free time was a nightmare.

I’m so happy to be working on my hobbies again. I have really been enjoying working on the next draft for the book I’ve been writing, and I also have plans this week to get together with a friend to create some art. Hopefully I’ll have some new illustrations and maybe even a painting or something to share with you guys soon. 😉

I’ve also become a lot more outgoing recently. It’s been kind of surreal learning how to live a less anxious and more focused life, but hearing the positive changes my loved ones have been seeing really makes me feel like I’m headed in the right direction. ❤

Now that it’s summer, what things are you guys looking forward to the most? How are your hobbies going? I’m looking forward to more time spent with amazing friends (like this past weekend we spent with Mr. and Mrs. Cupcakes & Machetes having fun) and doing the things I love to do, as well as trying new things along the way as well! 🙂

 

Fighting My Devil Mermaids . . . er, I mean Demons!

To say creativity has been a struggle lately would be a vast understatement. Trying to finally tackle my depression, anxiety, and apparently ADD (look at that, I’m a triple threat now!) has been an entire process. I’m still only in the beginnings of this journey despite dealing with all 3 issues pretty much forever, but there is definitely an overall improvement in my quality of life even if things aren’t perfect.

I’ve been waiting for the urge to create things to return for several weeks now. This weekend I finally was able to scratch that itch. Mr. Moth and I just enjoyed a lazy weekend without any set plans of things to do and I found myself writing again and drawing this devil mermaid because Hell deserves mermaids too, damnit! 😛

What’s your go-to self care tactics for boosting your mental health? Also, what creative things are you guys all working on these days?? 🙂

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! 🙂

January 2022 Wrap-Up

Well, after dodging covid for nearly 2 full years, it finally reared its ugly head in our home. My husband and I had both been having these weird headaches for a few days and honestly, we have been so careful and had barely even gone anywhere around the time this happened other than the grocery store (both of us were even off work when this all happened) so the last thing we were expecting was covid. Well, my husband was due for surgery that week so he had to get tested and sure enough, he tested positive. 😦

Thankfully, other than being tired and having the bad headaches it was all very mild. Thanks, Science! 😀 Very, very glad we were both vaccinated and had our boosters. It could have been so much worse. Anyway, my husband’s surgery had to get postponed, so that’s coming up this week. We both had masks on when we went to the store, so that is just further proof that this Omicron variant isn’t fucking around. Be careful out there, guys. ❤

There were several other things that made January kind of a rough month, but I’m just thankful none of it was as bad as it could have been. Anywayyy, here are some things that brought me some joy in a month I would otherwise sum up as “mildly horrible”. 🙂

Books Read: 3

Vicious (Villains #1) by V.E. Schwab

I absolutely LOVED this book. Cupcakes & Machetes had read and raved about it years ago so it’s been on my radar for quite some time and I’m so glad I finally got around to reading it. I would have immediately dove right into the sequel but C&M and I are doing our annual beginning-of-the-year Harry Potter buddy read. It’s the fourth year, which means it’s time for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, baby! 😀

I recently decided that I wanted to re-visit some of the spooky comics I loved back in my teenage years, so I started re-reading the GloomCookie series of graphic novels by Serena Valentino. Volume 1 held up, with gothic modern fairy tale-like stories and spooky-cute characters and humor. I still enjoyed volume 2 as well, but not quite as much as the first one. A lot of the characters were just too angsty and bitchy this time around for me. Still gonna continue reading the series though. 🙂

Baking Buddies: New Achievement Unlocked!

I’m usually the baker in our household, but my husband joined in on the fun last month and we ended up making 3 different desserts together. 2 were great, and the other was “meh”, but I enjoyed having a partner in confectionery crime. 🙂 He made a delicious peanut butter buttercream for one of the desserts, and it was his first time making any kind of frosting, so kudos to him! We share quite a few hobbies already so it was fun trying something new together.

Some of my Favorite Things I Watched:

The Lost Boys (You can check out the buddy review C&M and I did for it over on our joint-blog Sugar and Scream if you’d like!)

Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train (OMGGGG! Amazing animation and fight sequences, and it’s got me so hyped for season 2!!)

Attack on Titan, Season 4 Part 2 (If you aren’t watching this show yet, GET. YOUR. LIFE. TOGETHER. AND. WATCH. THIS. MASTERPIECE. Seriously, if it doesn’t pull you in by the first episode alone I’d be stunned.)

Hobbies: Drawing and Writing

I’ll have to do a post soon with the drawings I made during January. (I think I only did like 3 for the whole month, but one was a rough/practice comic page, so that was fun and different.)

As for writing, it was a pretty productive month for working on my book’s second draft, especially given how stressful things were.

Leveling up to 35: My Birthday

With everything going on, it ended up being a very low key kind of birthday. My husband gifted me with a bounty of awesome books/graphic novels, and we got takeout from one of our favorite local restaurants (with cookie butter cheesecake for dessert!) 😀

Well, that pretty much sums up my first month of 2022. I hope you guys had a better start to the new year! ❤ What was your favorite part of January? Any plans for February that you’re excited for?

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?

November 2021 Wrap-Up

Hello, December! ❤ It’s kind of bizarre to think that 2021 has already nearly come to an end. It feels like we were JUST wishing for 2020 to be over. What even IS time anymore since the pandemic hit? 0.o

I hope you guys all had a great November. 🙂 What was your favorite part of the month? Here’s some of the things I enjoyed most throughout November:

NaNoWriMo: NaNoWriMo was definitely interesting this year. This was the first year I’ve gone into it in 2nd Draft/Revisions mode, so it was a little more difficult for me to get my footing at first. I definitely added to my word count and fleshed out a lot of the bare bones areas of the book, but I also spent a lot of time moving things around and merging my new material in with the old. Near the end of the month I found myself less focused on the word count, and more focused on just doing whatever needed to be done. All in all, I may have veered off course as far as my original NaNoWriMo goal, but I still think it was a very successful month of writing/editing, and I’m proud of what I accomplished in that amount of time. 🙂

Buddy Read: Cupcakes & Machetes and I did a buddy read for Science Fiction month of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. If you want to see what we thought of it feel free to check out our post we did about it.

Thanksgiving: We kept things very small, just immediate family, and everyone involved was vaccinated. I like laid back holidays so I thought it was really nice. ❤ My dad and I love Bruce Campbell, so we watched his new movie Black Friday.

Watching: My favorite shows I watched this month are definitely Arcane (on Netflix) and Dragula, Season 4 (on Shudder).

Reading: I only finished reading ONE thing this entire month, and it was my buddy read with C&M. Buuuut, I did also just start reading Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, which has been very interesting right from the beginning. 🙂

Video Games: I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Kart 8 this week. 🙂 

Baking: Meh. I was pretty excited to try this no bake pumpkin pie recipe, but it was bland as hell, to be honest. I’ve only ever tried making 2 pumpkin pies in my life, both for Thanksgiving with my family, and both were terrible. The first one was when I was a kid, my dad and I made a gorgeous pumpkin pie but forgot one of the ingredients… SUGAR. D: So I guess failing at pumpkin pie is a family tradition at this point. lol

What are you most excited for in December? Any last minute projects or goals you have going on before the new year? 🙂

 

October/November 2021

Well, to say things have been busy, would be an understatement, but fortunately (for the most part) October and November have been a lot of fun. I hope you all had a spooky season full of horror movies aplenty, sweet treats, and Halloween fun as well!

Here’s some of the highlights of what my October was like:

Mr. Moth and I celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary, as well as 6 years of being a couple. ❤ 

I completed about half of the Corpestober art challenge prompts for the month.

At work, I dressed up as Coraline for our fun Halloween festivities. It ended up being cold and rainy the day of the work Halloween party, so I was thankful that part of my costume involved a rain coat. 😛

Halloween weekend we went to Hell. (Hell, Michigan that is.) We went with Mrs. and Mr. Cupcakes & Machetes and met up with a couple of their friends for a hellishly fun game of putt putt, an amazing lunch, and just some general shenanigans and adventuring around the little town. It was such a good time. The day before that (Devil’s Night) we spent going to multiple cider mills, carving pumpkins, and watching scary movies. It was an absolutely amazing Halloween weekend with absolutely amazing friends. ❤

We also got our booster shots of the vaccine at my work, so that was nice to get that done so easily.

The whole month of October I took a break from writing and just focused on fun stuff, which meant getting to play video games, too. Something I love, but haven’t been able to devote much time to for a while. (Too many dang hobbies!) Mr. Moth got me the game Lost in Random and I absolutely loved it. ❤ 

So far in November my main focus has been NaNoWriMo, aaaand I have a buddy read of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells with C&M for Science Fiction month. I’ll probably be fairly scarce around here the next 3 weeks or so since I’m really trying to reach that 50,000 word count for the NaNoWriMo writing challenge this month. I’m a little behind where I want to be, but still hopeful I can make up for it. 🙂 I won’t beat myself up if I don’t make the 50,000 words I’m aiming for. I have a lot to do in preparation of the holidays, Mr. Moth’s birthday, and plenty other things to keep me busy, and I’ll still be co-hosting Sugar and Scream with C&M so we’ll see what I can do with NaNoWriMo this year.

Did anyone else watch the new Netflix show based off League of Legends called Arcane? Mr. Moth and I watched the first 3 episodes and it’s sooo gooooood! 😀

Anywho, I’m off to try to slay the NaNoWriMo beast. Hopefully I’ll have something successful to report when I return. Have a great November, everyone! ❤ ❤ ❤ Hoping to return to a somewhat normal blogging schedule in December. 🙂