Hello everyone! Welcome to my January recap on my life.

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For this post I’ll be going over my hobbies, things like movies I’ve seen, and life events I’ve had. Disclaimer on this one though, this is a weird December/first half of January mash up. I posted my last Life post during Blogmas so that was a tad early and since my work has a holiday closure for the last week of the year, I consumed a lot of content during that time to update you on. Also, I’m currently in Mexico when you’re reading this so I don’t have good internet access to be able to update before it goes live. I’ll add anything from Mexico to my February post. Let’s get into it!

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Lively

This section is all about my hobbies!

Library Fun

DIY Night

We did a sort of embroidery hoop woven art. I didn’t really like how mine ended up so I might undo it and try again. I liked it a lot though as it was so relaxing! That was the only one I did this month (photo on insta!) as the next one was during when I was in Mexico.

Entertainment

Movies

I “watched” Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. I say watched in quotation marks because it was on the plane and played automatically on the screens while I listened to a podcast. I was able to follow along the plot just fine with just watching the screen and honestly I don’t think I missed anything? I feel like I would normally like these movies but I’m just not that interested for some reason.

TV Shows

During the closure I started watching Interior Design Masters on Netflix. It’s designers or amateur designers that compete on changing teams. So they always get different teammates and then they have to meet different job requirements in their designs. I really only barely started it so I’m excited to keep watching it.

I also continued watching Designated Survivor and I’m about halfway through season 2 finally! I do like the subplots a ton with the characters and seeing them interact and evolve although the main plot is actually annoying me. I’d rather see that initial conflict finally fully resolved instead of them saying “we got the bad guy” all the time and then it turns out they either didn’t or the bad guy left something else for them to fix. Can we just move on already?

I watched a few episodes of The Office while I was in Houston. Specifically, one of the episodes I watched was when Michael drove into a lake. Classic!

YouTube

I have really been enjoying The Morning Toast on YouTube. I can’t quite remember if I mentioned this on here before but my friend Erin got me hooked on the show! It’s a livestream every day by two sisters, Jackie and Claudia, on current events, mostly on pop culture. It is super fun and we love to chat about it together!

Podcasts

I’ve really enjoyed the podcast Hey Bitch! on YouTube (and other traditional podcast apps) with some of my favorite YouTubers. They’ve rebranded recently because apparently YouTube made it too hard for them to monetize as they were opening their podcast by swearing too early in the video, even though they were just saying the podcast name. Now they’re Big Mood which is also really cool of a rebrand! I like the rebrand a ton and love that it’s still the same great podcast!

Video Games

Starting off with, as always, Hogwarts Mystery. Ava Samwise Quagmire has been busy! She’s currently worried about Skye being injured after Rath hit her with a bludger in the sports side quests, she was working with Penny to train her crup puppy and won the contest after Queenie the crup puppy learned to roll over, and she is making her way through the latest chapter. She also won the Quidditch Cup for Ravenclaw! That was quite an achievement so I’m super happy I was able to move the marker into the circle well enough to win haha! I’m sure she’ll have a ton to catch up on once I get back from Mexico though!

A game I played during the holidays was an old PS3 game I had bought years ago, called Wonderbook: Book of Spells which is a Harry Potter inspired game. Basically there’s a book you’re studying from to learn spells but I’ve never been able to play it because I didn’t have the PS3 Eye camera, although I did have the Move controller. I eventually got both and my sister and I played after years of waiting. It was meant more for “families” (aka small children) so it was super simple and repetitive. We had a good time except the camera kept randomly disconnecting and the controller would un-sync frequently. But attempting to learn spells was fun! I should probably stop saying so much about it to do a review but honestly it’s so simple that’s basically the review too! Well, I mean, we only played one and a half of five chapters but I don’t imagine it’ll be much different once we get through it all.

I also played Assassin’s Creed Black Flag. I’d started this game before but never really got into it. This time I wanted to play a longer game so I started this one again. I’m doing pretty good, getting used to my ship as well as the character. I have a lot of thoughts on it so far and basically all I really have a problem with is that unlike Enzio, Edward isn’t really an assassin so some of the functions I was used to in Brotherhood really isn’t there. The ship is pretty fun but it is getting pretty repetitive. I just started “hunting” with my ship and really attacking other ships so it’s a lot of new stuff to get used to!

Cooking/Baking

I don’t think I’m going to make a full post on these, but I made Chocolate Chip cookies! They were really good, and my parents were so impressed by them! They both were really surprised at how much they liked them which was just funny. I think cookies have really raised my self-esteem about baking because they have gone so well. Maybe I’ll try something harder when I’m home from Mexico!

Active Life

Yoga

I didn’t see a yoga class at my library this time, which was unfortunate. But I did try some yoga videos on YouTube! I did a really good lower back one that really helped and I really enjoyed it. I also did some of Yoga With Adriene’s “Home” series. I’m trying to do yoga a few nights a week and it’s really fun to challenge myself during this time.

Stretch

I’m not sure if this counts? I decided it does though. I have been trying to stretch more throughout the day and at the end of the day too. I just like being more flexible and it really helps my muscles at the ripe old age of 28 LOLS.

Walk

During the closure the weather was SO NICE for two days! So my family and I went for walks at a local bike path. Unfortunately it got cold again quickly so we weren’t able to go again but we did really enjoy those two days when we could. Otherwise I walked around the city of Houston, so does that count?

ballet

I didn’t sign up for the winter session of the ballet class because I was going to be gone for at least half of it just due to travel. I would basically miss the first lesson for Houston, then two more for Mexico, and that would only leave three. If I missed any because of weather, sickness, or other conflicts then it would be even more that I was missing. I just couldn’t justify it that way. I have tried to keep doing ballet barre exercises from YouTube in an effort to not lose the strength I did build up. Unfortunately, I don’t have a proper barre so I’ve just been using the back of a chair. It’s not great doing it on carpet but I figured it was better than nothing!

Favorites

Beauty – Make Up & Skin Care

I really only have one make up favorite, the Almay Smart Shade in Straight Up Medium. Well I’m not 100% sure that’s the name of the foundation or shade to be honest because the packaging is kind of confusing but it’s a weird foundation. It is a shade of white, but it changes color to match your skin tone as you blend it. I thought it was going to be terrible to be honest, but I actually really liked it. It also has SPF20, which is great!

Style

I’ve really loved my new glasses! I got new glasses in December and forgot to share them then but I did want to share them too. I really love how they look on me! I know I mentioned them in my If We Were Having Coffee this month so I won’t go on too much about them but I’ll have to remember to take a photo with them on to share here.

Other

So I decided to start a bullet journal! I got really into bullet journal videos during the closure so I went to Michael’s, got my self a dotted notebook, and started a bullet journal. It’s definitely cute on the outside, not so much on the inside as I have terrible handwriting and drawing skills but it’s fun so far! I hope to be able to keep it up for the entire year.

I also thought I’d mention the Starbucks Columbian ground coffee. I really love the taste of it and the packaging said it’s ethically sourced so I’m happy about that! I have switched to ground coffee instead of k-cups for my Keurig now because of the plastic that’s wasted each time I use it. Now I put the ground coffee in the reusable k-cup and it’s so much better!

Life

Holiday Closure

It seems soooo long ago but I did start the year with the holiday closure! It was so nice that we got the holidays off. It makes such a great difference and gives such a good rest after the holidays.

Houston

So I posted last week about my trip to Houston! I wanted to keep that post mostly positive, but honestly it was rough leading to this trip. One of my coworkers is extremely lazy so she kept messing stuff up and I think she was annoying the client a lot by it, in addition to the internal team so it was so stressful. It was dumb things too like her email to all the hotel contacts clearly stated there were TWO attachments and when a hotel replied saying there had only been ONE the lazy coworker said there was only supposed to be one. I’m guessing she just copied the text from somewhere without reading it and didn’t bother to make the other form until I called her out on it. Then she suddenly remembered that there were two forms and she finally created it and sent it out. Ugh! Anyway, the trip itself was great, so that was really nice! And really the only reason I got to go is because she refuses to travel (even though it’s literally part of her job and we work for a TRAVEL company???) so I guess her laziness works in my favor sometimes! But to focus on the good now, the trip was a really great time and I am so grateful I was able to go to Houston again and see it in a different way. I know I’ve been talking about moving to Texas for some time and I think moving to Houston for a year or so is something I’d love to do, because I do enjoy the city a lot.

Mexico!

Well I’m writing this before I leave so I can’t quite say what it’s like yet but I’m there now so look forward to my post on my trip next month! I’m sure whatever I’m doing I’m having fun though!

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And that’s what I’ve been up to this month! I was really busy with the travel, which is cool, but hopefully next year I can space the trips out a little better? Eh, this is fun too!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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