16th January 2025

9:59pm | Mood: Productive

Had a very productive day today, at work and at home. Did a few routine monthly checks at work, did a lot of cleaning, replied to many emails, sent many emails, and once 5:30pm rolled around I made a hasty exit out the door to make it to my hair cut on time.
Hair wise, I went for a regular layered style, cut my fringe back in, and evened out my shaved sides - after a few years of shaving the sides of my head, they had started to get quite uneven.

Got home, tidied, did a load of laundry, painted for an hour, hung the laundry up to dry, did the dishes, packed lunch & breakfast for tomorrow, and packed my gym bag. Feeling very productive today! So hoping to finish off my evening with a nice hot shower, a cup of tea, and spend some time working on salvaging resources for Salvaged.nu. If I have time, I'd like to darn some socks and do some knitting. Or read for a little bit.

14th January 2025

11:25pm | Mood: content!

Wasn't as tired after work today as I was last week. It was a very excel-spreadsheet heavy day, but a nice day nonthelesss. I have baked some banana bread to bring into the office tomorrow, hopefully that will help us get through the 'mid week slump'. I've also packed myself a hearty lunchbox and breakfast as I'm planning on going straight to the gym after work tomorrow.

I didn't ragequit my quilting today, infact I got the first half of the binding completed! All that is left to do now is pin it into place on the other side, bind it, and wash. And then voila! another completed quilt! One of my goals for this year is to finish all of my work in progress pieces, whether it be knitting, quilting, painting, studying, etc... I'll see how that goes.

Unofficial list of things to do in 2025

12th January 2025

11:49pm | Mood: a bit headachey

Today started off well, I cleaned the house, did a load of laundry, took out the recyling, folded dry clothes. I even spent an hour or so on my quilt, but ended up getting a bit frustrated at the binding and 'rage quit' (calmy turning off my sewing machine and walking away).

My sisters birthday is today and unfortunately I think her parcel was stolen from her front door, or delivered to the wrong address. So I'm gonna see how I can go about getting a redelivery/refund... why is it so hard to get a hold of a contact email or number these days on major websites? The 'help' bot on this website gave me nothing, infact congratulated on my parcel being 'delivered' after I inputted the correct details. Just a bot with a series of messages precoded in. Useless. I did eventually find a form to send an email to, and rated the delivery on both the shop and the delivery courier as low as possible in hopes that this will set something in motion to get it fixed. This is a major online beauty retailer btw, not a local/small business owner.

I have spent the majority of the evening knitting away, doing a lot of decreases and cables, so I'm currently transferring my knitting onto some smaller circular needles, which I think will stop my stitches from being so stretched out. I do need to drink some more water today, I am feeling quite headachey

My self imposed plan to join 100 fanlistings hasn't gone to plan so far. Maybe I'll sit down and join some later this week. Maybe two a day? that would mean in 50 days I will have completed my challenge, hehe.
Also want to work on an about me/credits page tomorrow, probably the latter as I think that is more important. Good night!

11th January 2025

10:25pm

It's a beautiful clear night outside, my belly is full of dumpling soup, and my electric blanket is warming up as we speak.
Thought I'd do a quick blog before I head for bed. This week at work was productive, tiring but productive! Not necessarily busy (at least for me anyway) but tiring. I'm looking forward to my lie in tomorrow morning, gonna spend my day studying MySQL, quilting, and painting. Maybe baking too! I'll see how I feel.
My tea is brewed... my knitting is calling me... my electric blanket has DM'd me....... see you tomorrow!

7th January 2025

8:42pm | Mood: Exhausted

God I am so tired. Didn't sleep until about 4am last night and had to get up for work the following morning, which is exhausting enough after having two weeks off. It was okay at work - wasn't a 'push into the deep end' like I was worried about, but the next month or so is going to be verryyy busy. I think half the battle today was remembering where I left off with certain tasks - and making notes of tasks I need to get completed sooner rather than later. I'm pretty sure I could figure out a way to plan this all on my personal calendar system I use, but would really like to keep work and personal stuff as seperated as possible.

In other news, I sent off the most recent issue of Queen Beat for printing! Which reminds me; I need to tweak the cost of postage that our website offers, so that it will cover international postage. *scribbles down on post it note* WHat else did i do today? Oh yeah, I finally took down our Christmas decorations! After having them up since December 1st, ha.

ho hum, I'm so tired. I think I'll pack my lunch for work tomorrow (and my gym bag for after work), do the dishes, and then mayybee if I have time, read and knit before sleep. I want to be unconcious before 11 tonight...... peace out

5th January 2025

11:10pm | Mood: Content

I'm back at my own place and the weather is cold! We haven't had any snow yet (*sigh* ... I love the snow, I not-so-secretly want it to snow) but pretty much the whole of the UK has a weather warning for snow and ice for the next couple of days so that might change next week.

I cleaned my washing machine today with some dettol washing machine cleaner now the whole kitchen smells like lemons. :) I also spent some time folding the what-seems-to-be-never-ending pile of clean laundry and worked on recovering and repackaging some resources for Salvaged.nu. And (hopefully!) fixed a MySQL error on Nostalgia MB... it hasn't really been a busy day, I did spend most of it in my PJs after all.

I didn't blog yesterday, but I did move my webrings to the sidebar. They were quite cluttered and unorganised on the old links page, so I've turned that into a 'listings' page where fanlistings will be dislpayed. I have over 100 fanlistings that I want to join to fill up the now very empty looking page.
I'm gonna head to bed now, have a great evening/morning wherever you are!

3rd January 2025

11:08pm | Mood: Motivated?

today is my last day visiting my parents before heading off back home to my partner and cat. ♥ I've had a lovely few days here, it's nice to spend a few days hanging out with my parents, birds, and sister. It gives me the opportunity to reflect, unwind, and escape from responsibilites (or at least for a little while!).

had a nice chill day today. spent the afternoon watching The Golden Girls - every new years period i rewatch The Golden Girls. I think it started when I was spending a New Years period alone when my partner was away visiting family, and I began watching it after Betty White died. I kept it on throughout the night to help me sleep as sleeping alone in the house was daunting - and I guess it has become a ritual ever since. :P

I also studied a bit more of my PHP/MySQL book today - I'm enjoying it, which is surprising! Learning how to study again is part of the fun. I'm going to try and finish Chapter 7 before heading to bed. I also finished reading volume 2 of Komi Can't Communicate - I love me a cozy slice of life manga, and this one seems to be my cup of tea! !!!

Not sure if I will get a chance to blog tomorrow, but I sure will try. At least I reached this week's goal of blogging three times a week, woo hooo!

2nd January 2025

7:36pm | Mood: relaxed

today was a good day - woke up late again, but didn't have any sylvanian family dreams... instead i've just been watching collection tours on YouTube

bit of a more laid back day today. did some knitting, went out and bought some shampoo & conditioner, and spent a little time brushing up on my PHP knowledge. i bought a book a couple years ago by Robin Nixon about learning PHP & MySQL - I know there are countless tutorials and courses online, but for now I am enjoying the 'traditional' way. gonna see if i can finish revising chapter 5 before the evening is out! afterwards, if there is time left, i'll spend the rest of the evening with my parents knitting. see you tomorrow!

1st January 2025

7:14pm | Mood: uncomfortable, my back hurts!

Happy New Year! Every year I try to blog on the first of January, every year I have to double check how to spell janruaryJanuary...
As well as being my first post of 2025, this is my first post of Bloganuary - attempting to blog as much as I can for January! My goal is to blog at least 3x a week~

Today was a nice day. Stayed up til about 2am, listened to the fireworks outside the bedroom window, and fixed a few bugs on here.
Woke up late at around 12pm, after having a really vivid dream about sylvanian families... in particular the hedgehog family and the badger family?! I owned both families as a child, maybe it's a sign that now i have Adult Money I can buy and build the perfect dream home for them in a display case, away from dust and sticky fingers. But I don't have the space or patience for that! maybe I'll stick to viewing collectors videos on YouTube instead.

What did I do today?? Hmmm... I did a couple rows of knitting. I'm currently working on a dog sweater (Botanical Yoke Dog Sweater pattern available here!) and I'm excited to be at a point where it looks like a sweater instead of a snood - the sleeves are on and I'm currently working on the cable stitches around the chest/neck area. I'm excited to get it finished!
I've also been working on editing a video for a @00sbloglayouts post. It's a timelapse of me in Photoshop, making a website layout in the iconic 2006/2007 celebrity layout style. I've never done video editing before, but I've been using the VLLO app and it seems to be a good app for beginners. I've never made a video before, nevermind one that would be suitable for Instagram's short video lengths. And don't even get me started on reels and tiktoks...
I think I'll spend the rest of the evening editing more of the video whilst watching/listening to YouTube videos.