I really want to apologize for saying back in September there would be two music playlists when I only uploaded the Summer Playlist. Honestly, I’m surprised I put it up at all because I wasn’t feeling like blogging, but I was basically finished with it, so it was a good call in the end.
I had plans to make it up like I had at the beginning of summer, but then I said “screw it” I’d do it later and I kept saying it. I really didn’t think I’d be on hiatus for three straight months! It just sort of happened, and I don’t regret it because I needed that break away to focus my attention on other things like family, books, hanging out with our cats and of course Rumer, plus kick my mom’s ass at Jeopardy! throughout the week. There were times I felt I was skipping school and I actually felt guilty about not going to class!
For this post, we were going to go back through playlists of September, October and November. I’m going to add my Top 10 for each month, so this post isn’t ridiculous long. The Spotify links are attached to each box or section. I’m not including the December playlist because I know it’s smarter to keep it, you’ll be getting soon though.
Yes We Can by Ruelle Kryptonite by Fame on Fire Sweet Curse by ReVamp Take Me Down by The Pretty Reckless Left and Right by Charlie Puth ft. Jung Kook Do It Like That (Pop R&B Remix) by TOMORROW X TOGETHER ft. Jonas Brothers I’ll Be Here by Colbie Caillat ft Sheryl Crow Between Wind and Water by Hael Muddy Feet by Miley Cyrus ft Sia Take Me to Church by MILCK
Monolith by PHIDEL Runnin’ by Adam Lambert Bright by Echosmith Dig The Crazy by Faith Marie GODS by League of Legends ft. NewJeans Your Devil Is A Ghost by Red Black Thunder by The Hu ft. Serj Tankian & Bad Wolves Rainy Day by Ice Nine Kills My Kingdom by Simon ft. IOLITE Lose Control by Teddy Swins
Praying by Kesha Express by Christina Aguilera Cyanide Love by Within Temptation Who Do You Want by Ex Habit Finish Line by Skillet ft. Adam Goniter Rozi by Eva B Come Around by M.I.A. ft. Timbaland Monster by Stitched Up Heart Toxic by Major Moment Hands To Myself by Selena Gomez
I hope you have enjoyed this (oddly satisfying!) playlist-plooza! It was actually fun to put together, but honestly, I love creating my monthly playlists though. Everyone out there is always searching for their next favorite song–it’s nonstop, especially for me! I always wonder what gem I will come across in the next month or sometimes hour…
What were you listening to at the end of the year?
I did not think I would ever write that sentence “becoming an aunt” because my sister was adamant about how she wasn’t going to have any more children after the birth of my nephew four years ago. It’s definitely been a long time since those days, and we need to discuss some things before we get too involved into this post.
Sadly, my sister and brother-in-law separated and eventually divorced in 2020, they just grew apart as some couples do and we wish nothing but the best for them. We still love Brandon and see him from time to time, the most recent was when Nolan was playing T-Ball back in mid-May, as he helped coach his team a little bit, I always felt bad for when he was out on the field with Nolan and his little teammate directing their next movements.
My sister had started dating last fall, and we got to meet her boyfriend Zach (who is now her husband!) on Christmas. They didn’t have the kids that day, so it was a bit awkward to see them hanging outside in like 75 degree weather! I say “kids” because Zach also has a four-year-old son, named Isaiah, and he is literally the splitting image of his daddy. It’s still weird that I have also gained a second nephew through this part. I am happy to say Nolan and Isaiah are the best of friends, Nolan considers him his “brother” which he proclaimed one afternoon sitting at the table with us, and we almost started crying because it was so adorable to say something like that!
SURPRISE!
And then, January came around, and everyone was thrown for a loop when my sister announced to us, she was pregnant. Since her pregnancy with Nolan and everything that happened afterwards went a little topsy-turvey, we just assumed she couldn’t get or even wanted to become pregnant again, so this was a surprise for some of us. I wasn’t too shocked by the news honestly, although I didn’t expect it at all! I had respected her thoughts on not adding a sibling for Nolan in the future. Although this is a totally different pregnancy, it hasn’t been an easy one either. She’s been having contractions since late February I think, which is what happened last time. She’s been put on bed rest, monitoring her heart rate, blood sugar, etc. all throughout the ordeal.
BOY OR GIRL?
Towards the start of spring, we were very anxious to learn the sex of the baby. Despite the similarities between each pregnancy, there has been some odd things happen with this one. She has a better appetite in the beginning, but she’s also had a lot of heartburn too. This was sign number one that we could expect a girl, and it didn’t really settle until she began hearing the heartbeat early on and it was very fast, which is another telling point for when mothers are expecting a little girl, so we all called it around 16 weeks it would be a girl and we were right. They will be welcoming a baby girl in the fall.
Now, let’s discuss what her name will be, but first we have to go back to February and March, because at this time we still didn’t know the gender so there were many name combinations passed back and forth between the early months. I think I might save her actual name until she is finally here and do a whole post about the labor, delivery, and bonding with the boys. However, I will tell you the boy names that were in the running though, because I seriously doubt they will ever be used with them; never say never though!
THE NAMING PROCESS
Anyways, they had a fairly large group of names in the beginning.
After the second or third doctor’s appointment, they started to think of certain names, and they had a boy combination from the start and it didn’t really change that much, the first name never really went away, they still enjoyed the full name but thought using part of it as a good nickname. They were very attached to Jaxon Emery, and honestly, I was thoroughly impressed with this. I mean, I’m the namer in the family and yet I wasn’t asked for assistance!
We were kind of surprised that my sister wouldn’t want to use our papaw’s name: David. She explained they weren’t going to honor anyone because both Nolan and Isaiah have their fathers’ middle names. I understood this but yet it was a bit of a bummer to leave him out of this child’s name. Well, obviously, I wasn’t the only one who agreed with me on this and within a few weeks later they switched everything to Jax Morgan. We actually approved of this! The name Morgan was our papaw’s middle and his mother’s maiden name, it was on the list while she was pregnant with Nolan too, but for a little girl instead.
Speaking of girl names, this was another pairing they had picked out in the early days. They had watched the show Euporia when the second season had begun back in late January, and they were thinking of using Rue, but they had only switched it when they decided it was too close to our dog name’s which is Rumer. Later on, they were talking about Remy Mae, and I was not a huge fan of it. I mainly thought of Remy’s popularity in general, and that’s why I enjoyed Nolan so much because it hadn’t exploded in the naming charts, of course it did surge a bit after he was born, but I hardly ever see it now! For a solid four months they were set with it and I just hated it. I was fine with “Mae” as that is one of my sister’s middle names and another name that is huge on both sides of our families too, so it just seemed likely to come up than any other name, and it’s the only one that had stuck throughout this pregnancy and it does fit well with her first, so I can’t wait to see how much she manages it in the future.
NOW WE WAIT…
As I said in the beginning of the post, Blondie has had contractions all throughout this pregnancy, but we are hoping for little miss sweet pea will keep inside the womb a bit longer. Once my sister makes it to around 32-36 weeks, her doctor will just let her go on with the early labor like she did with Nolan. I was also an early bird, but I was born three months in advance. We still don’t know why I wanted to break out so eagerly–hell, even I don’t know the answer to that question! We just hope she will be content, just a tad bit longer..
I do really want to meet this little babe and teach her the same things I taught her big brother, but I know the longer she keeps in the den the stronger she will be out here. Since she will have a pair of brothers going into preschool this year, she’s going to need all of the good fortune around her and mommy too. The boys are very excited to meet her, Nolan has been really curious of her while in Blondie’s belly. He’s already said he won’t change any dirty diapers though! Apparently, Zach will be in charge of that department! It’s going to be interesting to see how they react when she gets her first poopy diaper too…
I think I will wait until she is finally here to give you another update and tell you her name as well once she’s born and we’ve adjusted to the chaos of having a baby around again. Now if you’re on my Instagram, you might get a little treat as I may announce her welcome to the world on there. If you can, please send my sister and the baby some positive thoughts and prayers starting in early September to help ease the labor and delivery process for everyone involved.
Do you have any guesses as to what her name will be? Also, if you know, please don’t ruin the surprise of others commenting on this post.
Now that I can watch YouTube on my TV, I’ve been finding different channels to amuse myself, and one day I stumbled on an audiobook. I don’t know why I was so stunned at this, because I’ve seen crazier things! This ultimately made me remember what I had discovered on Spotify a few days beforehand. I’ve been enjoying the various podcasts, mostly the sleep ones and I found one called “The Sleepy Bookshelf” and they have a few of famous books like Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Braun to listen to until you fall asleep. As much as I thought this was a great idea, some of these books are actually on my TBR so I don’t exactly want to drift off into dreamland while trying to remember the events going on; and the fact that the person reading the books has the perfect monotone voice so falling asleep is somewhat easier than you’d think. Once I saw this pop up om YouTube, I thought I would try it out again and found one that had the full book of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
If you would like to try listening to the book via YouTube, here’s the one I used but there are others out there that include the words just in case you want to read along on the screen.
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.
Dodgson’s tale was published in 1865 as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by “Lewis Carroll” with illustrations by John Tenniel. The first print run of 2,000 was held back because Tenniel objected to the print quality. A new edition was quickly printed, released in December of the same year but carrying an 1866 date.
The entire print run sold out quickly. Alice was a publishing sensation, beloved by children and adults alike. Among its first avid readers were Queen Victoria and the young Oscar Wilde. The book has never been out of print. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been translated into at least 174 languages. There have now been over a hundred English-language editions of the book, as well as countless adaptations in other media, especially theatre and film.
taken from Amazon.
Since I have watched the original Disney adaption of Alice In Wonderland throughout my life, I really tried to turn off what I knew from the film to what I was hearing – unfortunately I wasn’t that successful but then again it happens whenever I read the Harry Potter books too. I can’t change what I know but it is a nice lesson to other book to screen adaptions in the future!
For the most part, the experience was great!
I really enjoyed myself throughout most of the story, but like how I feel about the movie, my interest basically disappears as we get to the ending. I thought it was funny how much the Queen of Hearts is actually a mild character in the book whereas her husband, the King, has a bigger role. The same goes with other characters we are used to be commanding like The DoDo and Mad Hatter. In a way it was strange or I guess in this case “curious” that it doesn’t matter what age we are, but we could be swayed just as easily as Alice figuring out how tall she wanted to be throughout the entire book.
Do bats eat cats? Do cats eat bats?
Alice in general was very sure of herself but had a posh or snub personality to me. Despite not really understanding what was going on at the start of her journey, she never let go of that almost cocky attitude. The author wrote the book in the 1800’s, so children who were born and raised in the middle or higher in their social class, would have that kind of personality, well most of them! So, it was rough to get over my judgement towards her. and frankly I just didn’t care for her at all…Is there anyone out there who does not find the book interesting at all? I am curious about what made you think this wasn’t as thrilling as you thought it would be? Honestly, a part of me wishes I had fallen asleep to it when I found it on Spotify.
If you are a fan of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, what were the elements that pulled you down the rabbit hole? Do you think I should check out “Through the Looking Glass” next? Do you believe I might like this one better?
If you are from the States, I hope you were able to enjoy Thanksgiving yesterday! I know a lot of people were debating whether or not to travel to be with their families for the holidays, so whatever you came to conclusion I still want to wish you a great time anyways!
For this post, I am discussing pretty much everything that happened this fall, including everyone’s favorite: our cats!
The year was somewhat weird, as the transition from summer to fall, was actually smooth compared to the previous years. Here in the Midwest, we tend to go through seasons very quickly! For us, the switch to autumn was fairly nice. I was able to go outside on our deck a lot in August through October, but once the cold finally arrived, it came like a roaring train and I wasn’t prepared for the aches and pain in my body.
While I was in high school, I would go to football games covered with two layers of pants and socks, plus a blanket tucked around the seat of my wheelchair to keep me warm but also lessen the chilling temperature going into my joints and making me feel horrible for the rest of the night. As of gotten older, the pain has been getting worse of course, but at least I’m not sitting outside for two-three hours at a time in the freezing cold and depending on my muscle relaxers earlier than we usually take them.
This fall has been an interesting one, the temperature would go back and forth between in the low 50 degrees to 65-70 degrees in a matter of days! Everytime we would think I would have to stop going out, it would change and the cats and I would enjoy the love and apparently, my comfortable bench to take a little nap on.
I was able to finish five books in the last two months, and in the beginning, the cats didn’t really mess with me or books, but towards the middle of November, they became a little bold and Bear-Bear would just plop down on the pages I was reading, and recently he did it again but this time of just wanting to find a place to sleep, he let me pet him on his side, and considering all of his fur, he is really soft! He and Oscar are the softest cats in our pride – I call them this, because they’re not really “domestic” instead they are more wild as they still eat, birds, mice, frogs, and the occasional bug too.
I love it when the trees change into various colors, but the one person who absolutely hates this season is my dad, he does not care for the leaves in his yard and my mom would reflect this whenever she would sweep away the leaves that would land on our deck. A couple of weeks ago, we had a big collection of leaves in the right corner of the porch and we were just going to leave them there for Nolan, but as we found out this autumn, was our cats loved sleeping on top of them! We have caught Stormy in the leaves the most, but on a day I was out reading and taking photos of everybody for this post, Tavis, who is quickly becoming my sister and brother-in-law’s cat, decided to clean himself and take a little snooze on the pile and well, I just couldn’t help myself…
I’m not really sure what Nolan thinks about the trees shedding their leaves, but I know he is having the same joint problems as his papaw and Aunt Meg though. In the beginning of the new season, he would come over bearing the newly acorns that have dropped from the tree by their house. We have a mug full of like seven acorns and I doubt we’ll ever get rid of them because it was such a sweet thing he did one evening and continued for like two weeks until he started bringing toys over instead.
Since with the COVID-19 mess, he didn’t dress up and go trick-or-treating for Halloween this year. Honestly, he’s still too young to have a lot of candy, especially with his gag reflex still causing him issues here and there. He has been getting better about it though, but we are still very cautious with him on candy in general. Here’s a fun fact for you, he actually doesn’t like chocolate! I think the main reason why he enjoys M&M’s is because they have a color coat around them and he can’t figure it out. Trust me, the day he refused chocolate swirled ice cream freaked me out! My sister was obsessed with anything milk chocolate when we were growing up but her son isn’t a fan out of it! It’s so crazy!
Okay, I think it’s time for the rest of the pictures. Hope you enjoyed our pretty babies!
Okay, we are finally at the end of this post. Unfortunately, it will also be the last until spring comes back around in mid-April. I will try to persuade my mom into bringing one cat into the house while dad is in his mancave this winter, but I might just pay attention to the cat(s) and be less concerned about taking their picture for my blog. I hope to continue these types of posts in the new year!
What did you do this fall? How do you deal with various aches and pains in your body with the changing of the seasons? If you are a cat owner, do your cat(s) respect your space? What is the one thing that they hate the most if you’re not paying enough attention to them?
I bet you’re confused–it’s Monday but I’m not publishing a music playlist! I still think you’ll enjoy the change though, especially if you love decorating as much as me.
Let’s start with my door, because I have the only thing that has never changed places since it arrived to our house, and it is the pumpkin styled wreath that has faux berries, flowers, and leaves placed in the middle of the structure. It gives you a little sneak peek into what you will surely see once you go into the room.
I have really enjoyed seeing this wreath every day, and will probably be really sad to see it go once we get our Christmas decorations out sometime this week. As of now, I do not have a Christmas wreath and I don’t know if I will have one at the moment, but if I do find the perfect one, I’ll be posting it on my social media for you all to see of course!
One of my favorite things about my room is that I have a space in between two of my large treasures that allows me to not only have a Christmas tree but a good size autumnal display as well.
My mom purchased this absolutely beautiful sunflower rug when we first moved in two years ago, because the rug next to my bed blends into the floor but when we transferred from the bed to the wheelchair or commode–because we tried both!–my feet were slipping and sliding all over the place! What was really funny about this, is that on the tag it says, “non-slip” and although the rug never moved, we knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep it there! The material is like velvet, so really fuzzy and soft but apparently not great for what we do in front of the bed, so it was moved by the window and would be used for decoration for all holidays.
I have loved only having one window, in my room,. In our old house, I actually had two windows, but I only used one because the other was covered with plastic to keep out the cold in the colder months.
I have a translucent curtain with orange-y sunflowers all throughout; once I found it, I thought it would be different from having the normal thicker and darker shades of fabric and the latest addition are white cord lights all around the sides and front of it, which makes you feel cozy like instantly. I cannot tell you how happy I am when it’s nighttime and see the whole room illuminate in this warm glow and I feel so safe inside compared to how I felt in our old house.
Anyways, I have always wanted to decorate that area for the holidays. Christmas is easy because it is the perfect width to support a tree that’s both small and tall as you’ve probably seen in my posts last year. However, for autumn, I wanted to create a little oasis, that would blend in with the curtain, lights, and rug and thankfully I found some stuff that was perfect to showcase my love of fall.
When the stacked pumpkins arrived at our door, I knew that they would be perfect in the space in front of the window, but finding something that would separate them a little was somewhat difficult. I have another faux flower arrangement in a basket, and I’ve had this for years and have used it as props for blog posts but never had a place where they looked like that on purpose so I thought of putting it in between the pumpkins and placing other autumnal things around them. It took me a bit to arrange everything together, but I did get it all together where I thought I was happy with, but then within a week after taking my pictures of the finished project, I was given even more stuff to spruce up the piece again.
This is what it originally looked like for a good week and half until I changed most of the layout.
So….
My mom went to work one day and sometimes, they do little games and she had won this beautiful plump black and white plaid throw pillow that is somewhat heavy to lift but has a nice design on the front: it reads, “Pumpkin Patch” in between a dark grayish truck full of pumpkins (my nephew is in love with the truck by the way!) and at the bottom of it, has the words “pumpkins, apples, and hay rides” and it is just the cutest thing ever! It doesn’t match anything in our living room, so mom instantly just gave it to me and I had it for one day before I came up with a brand new plan.
The day I worked on this, I was committed to take on the challenge of moving this pillow around and switching out various things by my window to make my vision happen. I kept my pumpkins the way they were, but moved out the flower arrangement and put the pillow in its spot. Now here was the tricky part. The pillow did not want to stay still once I got it in the right place. Thanks to the silky rug underneath it, all it wanted to do was slide down as I was moving everything around! It was annoying but I got through it in one piece! I ended up having to squeeze everybody together to make sure it stayed upright, and that’s why you’ll the pumpkins sitting very close to it.
The flowers I moved to the right side because on the other side I had another project that has taken me ages to finish, but it is very heavy and takes up quite a bit of room on that left corner so the only thing I had that could fit on that side was a witch figurine that my nana gave me a few years ago that has never had the best luck at finding the right home either, so it was amazing luck that everything worked great together and made the display even better than I had dreamed the night before!
And now I can show you the final result that is in front of my lone window.
During the week my mom received the pillow, we went up north to visit with family for a couple of days, and my cousin Amy, her wife Danielle and their kids came over on the second day we were there and they brought these cute wood cravings in different Halloween-y designs for everyone to do together. Nolan painted the cutest pumpkins ever and my nana and I worked on my witch, I did the sides in brown while I painted the front in this purple-blueish hue and added a lot of white dots everywhere! Inside each craving are lights that are battery operated and mine flicker with multiple colors at once and even though I was slightly angry I added so many dots, it actually worked out great with the lights in the background. We placed it in front of the TV because I don’t have a bigger space for it, maybe I can come up with a better solution next year.
The final item to arrive and put up was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever encountered while decorating and DIYing!
As I mentioned in my haul, I absolutely adore the moon. I have always wanted something that was moon related in my room, whether it was a poster or banner, I didn’t care. However, I found out through this, that it pays to look at reviews before buying because it was a disaster!
When it arrived, we opened the package and it didn’t come with instructions so we relied on YouTube for help, which was fine! The next part was getting them attached to their pedant and this was really irritating both of my parents and what made things worse was we had three that broke upon clipping together and then on top of that, you have one side that is very shiny gold and the back is grey and dull which at first, it was okay, until you went to put them on the wall and they were facing the wrong direction.
We were going to put it underneath my TV, because the base and we were hoping that the gold line would be able to fit across the mantle. We had made that decision after my mom lost the long cord, and after finding it back in the box it came in, we were back to my idea that was having it hang above my bed and it does fit between the long section of the wall and thanks to the Command hooks, it was easy to arrange it like a theater stage curtain with a rounded effect. You could easily have the two markers but I saw an image on Pinterest that had a third hook in the middle so it makes that loop design on each side and I really loved it that way so that’s what we agreed on!
Once we got it hung up on the wall, we kept it there for a bit before deciding on how to fix our next problem. The worst part of the whole thing, was ours had some type of red markings on at least four pieces! Since we were still painting pumpkins during this time, I was allowed to do a little experiment and use purple paint to hopefully solve our issue; and it happened to be the greatest thing because it didn’t matter if they were facing each other or not, at least they were one color. I painted 10 moon phases with two coats of a royal purple on both sides – while the middle moon was left out of the family day of painting and was only covered with one coat with the same paint. This one is more purple-y because of this decision but everybody is in agreement, it makes it look more unique because its the full moon.
Here was the before and after pictures of the moon banner!
In my mini haul, I said I had bought a throw blanket and a T-Shirt but I don’t have any photos of those things. I am hoping I will maybe do a OOTD for you but we’ll have to see what happens because December is coming and I have a lot of Blogmas and New Year posts to get up soon so I might have to do it on Instagram or something.
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