November Playlist

Hello!

Since I’ve been kind of turning these monthly playlists into mini wrap ups, I figured this was the perfect way to talk about October and why exactly I was staying at a nursing home for a bit.

So, let’s rewind back to around August as it was the month where everything went up a notch.

My dad has a lot of health issues, but at the end of summer, we started noticing he was losing the usage of his right arm. He has had many MRIs and X-Rays in the past few years and the majority of his trouble areas are in and around his neck and spine. He has broken several discs in the past, but now as he ages, he’s continued to add more arches and pains. He has been told to have surgery since I was a kid, but he’s always turned them down for risking his ability to take care of me. If you’ve ever met my dad, you know how stubborn he is, so you wouldn’t expect anything less from him, especially for something like this.

Four years ago, when my mom had her surgeries, I made the decision to staying in a nursing home while she was there in the hospital and recovering, and since she is a nurse at a really great residential home, and at the time where my nana was living, the idea was simple but most importantly practical for everyone involved. I would spend my week there, before going to stay at my sister’s on the weekend. I was having my mom’s co-workers and friends basically take care of me like the rest of the people there. I was even allowed to get my hair cut by the hairdresser there! Honestly, I had a lot of fun spending time with my nana and the other ladies, and of course playing bingo too!

Fast forward to now, the idea of dad having surgery and knowing how indeed stubborn he truly is, made my mom and I make that crucial decision of staying at the nursing home for two weeks. We had made this decision pretty quickly, because we knew if we had it planned out well enough, my parents could essentially forget about me, and focus on dad’s surgery and recovery. We figured it out within a month or maybe less than that, because we discussed it quite a bit beforehand, so it’s difficult to narrow down the timeline.

This time was completely different.

There were things that I expected like my tiny calf muscles screaming at me during the first week because I was rolling around in my wheelchair the entire building, and like my dad, I am also stubborn and rarely asked for help, because I actually liked it. It was when I was pushing my folded bed in breakfast table with some stuff I had I would need for that day, down the massive hall that I was actually allowing myself a break and had someone carry it to my destination, which was always the activity room.

What we didn’t intend on happening was the edge of my knees, all the way down to my ankles and toes would become very swollen. I have never experience this before, it actually freaked us out because my feet felt like balloons and looked like they were going to explode at any moment. After that, I was put on a water pill and gradually it helped with the swelling, but I would still have some issues around the ridge of my feet, especially on my left foot, which makes sense considering I was using that foot to push myself around, but yeah that was a fun little surprise.

I was only supposed to stay there for two weeks, but I kept having the date to go home pushed back… twice.

My nana had moved up north with my aunt and uncle a few months later, so I would be alone this time around, and I’ll be honest I was worried about being on my own, but I was in really good hands too, as the longer I was there, the more I was making friends with the other residents too. This was my first time having a roommate since 2002, and she was a lovely lady and we sat together for meals, and we would go to the different activities. The first I participated in were these weaving pumpkins. They gave us a wired outline of a pumpkin and there were two different types of yarn to us, i went with the skinnier and darker orange whle my roommate went for the Cheeto-like yarn as it was bright orange and very puffy!

Besides doing lots of crafts, they played a lot of games too!

The first full day, not only did I weave a pumpkin, but I played Screamo for the first time ever. What is Screamo you say? Well, like my dad said, it’s like Yahtzee and it is, you have two dices and a sheet with the numbers 1-12 including 12 chips or coins, and the group goes around and rolls the dice and whatever it lands on, like a four and five which adds up to a nine, so you can cover those numbers or eight and one, or just the nine, but it is smarter to get rid of the 1 first as it can be tricky to get it as you cover the others. Once you’ve covered the entire board, you scream it out and win. It is easy to follow and would be really great for kids who have trouble with math, and you could switch it up to subtraction and maybe even multiplication if you feel like getting really creative with it.

Three weeks after I came home, I introduced it to my four-year-old nephew, and he literally kicked my butt in three games. However, I will overlook the loses as he thoroughly enjoyed himself and to me that is even better than winning any game with him. Speaking of which, I will be doing a post about fun games to play during the holidays for Blogmas, so keep an eye out for that coming soon.

I was able to spend my birthday there, it wasn’t planned as I was supposed to come home that weekend, but my gal pals really wanted to throw me a party and I thought it was too sweet to tell them no, so after playing Bingo, we had a party and my mom, sister, Nolan and Kimber came out to help celebrate it. I heard the “happy birthday” song three times and by the second time, where everyone in the dining room sang to me, absolutely terrified me, because I don’t like being the center of attention at all. I felt very loved, which was their intention of course, but again, totally out of my element.

The last day I was there was bittersweet as it was nice. I had a lot of people trying to keep me there, but I needed to go home too. While I was there for four weeks, I had missed my dad (he did come to visit me), Rumer, and the cats. My cat Stormy became fairly sick before I left, he’s been really snotty and his allergies really took hold of him, so while I was gone, I kept getting updates from my parents on him, and I enjoyed the pictures my mom would send me, but my ultimate favorite was this one. He felt good enough to climb up to the back deck, which wasn’t something he could do before I left. My mom was so proud of him she opened the patio door and allowed him to enjoy his lunch on the kitchen rug. He now has a bit of a head tilt, but he seems to be doing better. He has been coming up and meowing to us whenever we call him.

November was chaotic in those first two weeks. I had a really heavy time of the month and then on top of that, I either contracted food poisoning or stomach flu. We think it might’ve been the latter since my mom was also affected by it too, although, she wasn’t too bad, I definitely made up for her that’s for sure! Once I was through with both of them, the month started to perk up a bit. We had to have Thanksgiving two days earlier than usual; my mom tends to work on Thanksgiving, so we try to have it on Black Friday, but we had a conflict with other schedules, so we had it on Wednesday.

While I was in the nursing home, I ended up starting and finishing two books I found there. I read Murder on The Orient Express by Agatha Christie and The Duchess by Danielle Steel (the review will go out on Wednesday!) and I still have my third book which is, The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin. It is about Anne Morrow Lindburgh, who was the wife of Charles Lindburgh, but I actually haven’t been doing any reading lately, which is sad, but I read over 50 books this year so I’m not too mad about it honestly. I’m just not going to enjoy updating my stats on Wednesday because that is going to be a real bitch, but I think once I’m done with all of my blog work for the year, I will be able to get back into it again.

I have one more thing to say, since I wasn’t able to get everything done for my final installment of the “Garden Tour” I will be waiting until January to publish it. I am going into Blogmas content on Friday and will not have time to do anything with it for a while, so I just wanted to give you a heads up on it.

And now, I can finally give you the November playlist. If you would like to hear the rest of the playlist, click here

End Of The End by Blastoyz featuring Reality Test, UNSECRET and Krigare
Rise Up by 2WEI x Edda Hayes
Ghosts by Xandria
Hold Me, Help Me by Halocene
Vivien by Crosses
Wake The World by Epica featuring Phil Lanzon and Tommy Karevik
I Like It by Cardi B featuring Bad Bunny and J Balvin
Shut Down by BLACKPINK
Dark Sun by Ros Stephen x Power-Hus
Believer by Lea Michele
What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong
House On A Hill by Kamelot featuring Simone Simons

How was your November? What were you listening to?

Becoming An Aunt…. Again!

Hello there!

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.

Blogmas | 2020 Christmas Tree

Hello!

I decided to write this post on the day, we finally get my little tree out from the depths of my closet. It’s been in there for around six months or so, we never packed up back in January because I originally wanted to get a tote like we have for our family tree to neatly store everything, but as time went on, my hope for that to happen disappeared so I finally had my mom store it up on the rack above my clothes so it wouldn’t get too damaged.

As my mom and I were removing the silver ornaments, we quickly realized that it might’ve been a bad idea to just stuff them onto the edge of the limbs, because the tops will break off pretty easily! However, we had extra hooks for our other ornaments, and my mom left me to put them through the holes myself, which still surprises me, but this gave me more time to listen to traditional Christmas music, which I knew she wouldn’t like to hear while doing the tree together. I also stabbed myself only a handful of times so that was cool!

If you remember, my tree is black – it’s definitely not the traditional tree like our big one in the living room, but that was the point. I saw the black trees the year before and I was like, “I need one!” because I thought I could find some Halloween-y type of ornaments to put on there and lucky for me, they were selling them really cheap at Menards so I really didn’t have to beg to my mom, because she thought they were kind of neat too! It’s like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, it’s not too high or too small for me to reach around the sides or the very top to arrange something later on. I think it’s the perfect tree for me at this stage of my life.

While we were opening up the totes for the family tree, we found something slightly weird and it was a blanket, that we all thought was at my sister’s place. It is a white fuzzy throw with dressed up penguins! Last Christmas, our old sheet that was with us for decades, finally gave away and we finally had to throw it out; and that is why we started using a blanket as “snow” underneath the tree. Once we finished decorating it, my mom wrapped the blanket around the cracking stand and from there, I thought I wanted to do something similar under my tree. We have a few Christmassy blankets in our house and I have one that my nana gave me, and I think it looks fancy so I thought if we fold the blanket in half to fit that section where I decorated for fall. We moved all of the autumnal stuff out of the way and even removed the sunflower rug so that the tree was only sitting on top of the blanket and it was seriously the best decision, because it made that whole space look bigger.

Besides keeping the black beauty, there was another thing I thought belonged on this tree from the very beginning, and it was the gold glitter king’s crown. My mom managed to find at our local Dollar Store last year. It was a lot bigger than what I imagined it to be, but I loved it so much that I knew there was no way in hell I was going to get rid of it. What we ended doing with it since it clearly doesn’t fit on the branches, we use it like your angel or star at the top of your tree, and I just thought it made sense to put it there every year! My nephew’s face when he asked why it was like that, was priceless! Thankfully, he and his parents put up their tree that same afternoon and we didn’t know about the other, so I thought it was a little cool. Oh, and he told me that their pets, one dog named Chipper and four cats: Samuel, Toni, Otis and Tavis helped too!

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Out of the 16 bulbs that came in the pack, I choose to use the glittery and matte bulbs but there was one glitter ball that was definitely effected by what I explained above but the cute thing about it was my nephew went into my room and snatched it off my table and my dad was suppose to fix it that evening, and so when Nolan came back into the living room with it, papaw told him to put it on the big tree since he was redecorating it all of a sudden. It’s still there on the tree I think! Anyways, I did have to use a couple of the shine-y bulbs too, but thankfully the overall design doesn’t look too chaotic and I’m happy with that!

I had decided on before I started hooking away on my silver balls, I wanted to keep things very minimalist, and I have to say, I am not about that lifestyle because mainly I’m too sentimental to do that. I barely got through packing all of my stuff to move into this house a couple of years ago. Since I am probably going to have this tree out passed New Year’s Day, I just want that area to look clean and welcoming and I think the way I decorated that space in the fall showed me that I should think about it.

As I continued my search for new decorative pieces for my room, I found a set of ornaments in mini, and as soon as I saw that you could buy a pack of them and still be dirt cheap was the best thing for this low maintenance girl. My silver bulbs are in face mini, and I am always looking for others like them. What I didn’t expect was finding these mini farm animal ornaments. Oh my gosh! They were so cute online, but once they arrived to the house, I wasn’t prepared for how adorable they would be in real life! So, I was only able to find a pack of six in the likeness of a cow, pig, and sheep! What I really love about them is that instead of using hooks, it has a little string attached to their backs and I am forever grateful for that.

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I have literally told everyone that have come to the house that all I need now are chickens, roosters, and ducks! However, I started to think about it some more later in the evening and honestly, I need a horse and goats in there too. Maybe I’ll get lucky next year and find others like them!

There was a sincere meaning for me to get these ornaments though. My mom is obsessed with cows. She has a section on her way to work and back home that have a fairly medium sized amount of black cows; and she has this thing that if there are any cows in a pond or even a good size puddle, it means her day will be good! And before anybody asks, she makes us very worried whenever she is driving and trying to find her cows at the same time! Now my nana is a lover of pigs. She told me once that she use to have a piglet as a pet when she lived in Arizona on a farm. I can’t remember the actual name of it, but ever since I keep sending her pictures of pigs on Facebook. Thankfully, she’s like her daughter and adores animals just as much. As far as I know, nobody in my family loves sheep but this was the animal that came in the pack.

The final additions to that corner are my finished “bird” project. I have been working on this statue of a cardinal for years! At one time, it belonged to my nana and papaw, but once the house had to go on sale, we got the second one. A few years ago, my dad sprayed the whole thing with gray paint and I just wanted to restore it to its former glory and repaint it in red with orange legs and make the stand into a moss-y look. I recently just finished the whole thing and I’m pretty proud of myself to finally have it look like a cardinal again. The next one is a beloved dancing Santa Claus that my papaw loved to play for all of us. He had a wide range of singing and dancing kid toys and for a couple of years in a row, he would end up receiving a different one for Christmas. Unfortunately, the one I have closest to my TV, doesn’t have batteries in it and I’m taking that as a positive because then we might lose it to Nolan too.

So, that is it with my Christmas tree décor. I hope you have enjoyed hearing of this holiday tale. Now you get to see what everything looks like as I took quite a bit of pictures afterwards.

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What do you think of my Christmas tree this year? Are you the type of person to plaster every ornament you have on your tree or do you like a little clean looking with the minimalist outlook?

Blogmas | Things That Make Me Feel Christmassy!

Hello!

As I went looking through other blogs in late October into early November, I was trying to find new ideas for Blogmas and this one seemed fun to do, but my only worry is, I’ve probably done this in the past… If I have, I’ll just link it at the bottom for a bonus post. If not, whoohoo for me!

I was going to list 16 things, but with my luck I wouldn’t even make it passed 10, so I thought it would be better to go safe and do a little free write, so I hope you enjoy what makes me happy during this time of the year.

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My sister and I are polar opposites when it comes to Christmas. She certainly enjoyed it growing up, as she was the loudest one of the bunch while opening gifts at our house and nana and papaw’s, but as she’s gotten older, her joy for the holiday is basically gone. She’ll still put up the tree, makes cookies with us and watch Christmas films, but she doesn’t feel very Christmassy inside, which is really but I’m not writing this to make her feel even more depressed about it by the way, there’s a reason for this I promise because I understand a lot of people out there do not like it, and I am trying to be respectable, including my sister, because I’ve been there. It is possible to absolutely despise holidays such as Christmas. I mean, you should see me going into the month of February, and Valentine’s Day. I am not one to be bothered with the lovey dovey stuff and I’ve been like this since probably middle school, and I definitely know I’m not alone with my thinking too, so if you don’t feel the love for a certain time of the year, that’s fine! You shouldn’t force yourself to feel something you don’t; the same goes for our guilt too!

For the last few years though, I’ve been increasingly obsessed with Christmas. I like almost everything about it, whereas when I was younger, I felt lost and it just seems like we switched our views about it somewhere going into high school and it’s honestly strange to explain, especially on a blog post. Anyways, with this year, my nephew Nolan is another year older and even though COVID-19 wants to crush everyone’s plans for the holidays, I don’t want to act like it already has, so I think that’s the other part of my intense feelings to want to celebrate Christmas like we always have in our family.

He really loved helping put up the family tree and usually, we wait until like the week of, to put it together so the fact that we did it the day after celebrating our Thanksgiving was interesting! Nolan helped me rearrange the limbs of the branches and gave them back to mimi (my mom) and Blondie who were storing each one on the stand. Once we got that done, he walked around in many circles with them to wrap the lights and tinsel from top to bottom. We even had a couple of short pieces that he would place inside and around the front end of the tree. He was utterly excited about his little addition!

Once we got to the ornaments, he literally saw each one and said, “BALL!” and we just hoped to sweet baby Jesus that he wouldn’t throw it! Thankfully, he didn’t but he would show each one to his parents, and was very cute about it! He loved putting them on the branches, and we were sure that he stayed safe on the ones with the hooks and pretty much gave him the ones that I tend to use, as they have string and ribbons around them. The final thing was when we got the nativity pieces and village out of the tote, Nolan was absolutely obsessed with them! He loves to arrange things in his own way and for the most part, the little houses my mom has always had under our tree, were standing on the windowsill in the living room for the better part of the visit. If the window is cracked open, he will actually leave a row of cars in that little section and we have many, many pictures of them. See below.

Recently, we baked our sugar cookies a week earlier than usual because my mom had the weekend off, and thankfully I said something or we might not had been able to do them this year.

It was a bit strange to add someone so little in our tradition. Last Christmas, Nolan was still at an age where he liked to put everything in his mouth and we just didn’t think he was ready for it. So, being able to include this year was exciting because it is something brand new to do. We’re all in agreement that he definitely enjoyed the cookies, the decorating part, not so much! Although, he did like the sprinkles. We even had to put some on his fourth cookie that he was holding tightly in between his hands. After finishing with the cookies, we switched tactics and was really glad he didn’t become confuse with it, because since I have finished with my projects, I have extra canvases left and we basically made him paint assortment of robots, snakes and various shaped cows. While he worked on his painting, the amount of focus on his face was so amazing to watch because his mommy was trying to get him to smile for pictures and he wasn’t paying her any attention at all. It was so cool and his painting turned out very beautiful!

Since the arrival of Nolan, he’s definitely been a factor to my festive side. Whenever he comes over and if I am not in my wheelchair at the moment, he will explore my room and point out certain things like my purple moon garland, he’ll say what they are and he knows his colors very well now, so anytime he spots anything purple, he’ll shout it out to anyone willing to hear him and he will sit up against the wall on my bed and chat with me a little.

He has so much energy radiating out of him that it is sort of easy to pull out a slice and hope you can get to that level with him enough so he keeps going with it. I am so excited to see him experience the snow, baking cookies, unwrapping presents from Santa, and enjoying papaw’s big breakfast he does every year. I am so thrilled to see the tinkle in his eyes for everything new and old, because obviously he is experiencing the holiday with new eyes! As this post was suppose to be about multiple things, I think I mainly love seeing the holiday like Christmas through his eyes. His innocence and the fact that he can talk more has really made a difference. He definitely has the same expressions that his mommy wear on her face when we were little, so that has been a little mind blowing for me!

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What makes you feel Christmassy? You can make me a little list or write a gigantic story like this through my comments or DM. Whatever you decide, I’ll enjoy either way.

Blogmas | How Do I Read? w/ TILISMA

Hello!

I had meant for this post to go out a lot sooner than this, but I never felt it was right to publish until Christmas was around the corner, so, this is a two-in-one kind of blog post as I answer a question you’ve probably had on your mind since the start of the year, how do I read? The other is going to be about a brilliant company that makes these cute and smart gift ideas for readers and students!

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Back in August, I published a new installment of “Photo Diary” based around on how life was going and of course, I included lots of pictures of our nine cats. I mentioned that I was loving to read outside with them, but most importantly it gave you an insight of how I actually read where the book is propped on top of something, for me to use comfortably. The interesting part is, this is just one way, I actually have a total of four different positions to read in my spare time. Besides the use of the bench I take outside, I find myself using any flat surface to help me do things mainly because its easier to control when everything is at an even ground.

I’ve been known to surprise many people when they come around while I am enjoying a book, because of the distance between the pages and my eyes, it has never been an issue for me because honestly I’ve learned to make it work; like with everything else, I adapt to my surroundings! However, the thing that is harder to master is keeping the pages open easily. It wasn’t until July that I might’ve found a solution to this insecurity.

I follow and love a great deal of BookTubers (people on YouTube who mostly discuss bookish things.) and I was on Chelsea Palmer’s channel, watching yet another haul but she started off the video with introducing her audience to these neat products, by the name of TILISMA and the only description worth explaining on how they look is imagine Batman’s bat knifes he throws at crooks on the run and the sharp edges would pin the person up against the wall. If you have no idea of what I am talking about, this is what they generally look like.

Chelsea was gifted with all of their products, and in the video she showed everyone how to use them. The objective was simple: the holders would be placed in one hand and one hand only. They were designed this way, so that the reader inserts their thumb inside a hole that is measured to the average size and while your thumb is there, you could hold down the pages with as much pressure as you want to keep them separate while the rest of your hand on the other side basically holds the book to your desired advantage point.

I thought these were super cool! I do struggle with holding a book open on my own, and apparently it doesn’t matter what kind of idea I attempt to help conquer this, I haven’t been able to find the perfect way to enjoy a book without worrying I am going to lose my spot or worse tear a page because I can’t move fast enough! The thing that stood out in my mind was that I didn’t just think an average person could benefit from this kind of product, but I thought people with disabilities could enjoy them as well!

I ended up spending a greater part of my summer trying to get in touch with the company to explain how much this would help others with physical disabilities, who have limited movement in their hands (or in my case, feet), but we continue to depend on somebody else or find heavy but small objects to keep the pages open. So, after explaining my thoughts about their revolutionary products (or “hooks” as I like to call them) to the TILISMA team, I was asked to have a member of my family measure out the size of my toe to see if they could figure something out for me.

Unfortunately, it took forever to them to come in, thanks to the drama about the mailing system! It wasn’t until early September that I received three medium sized packages; I had array of holders in their individual packages at my disposal and they were even cuter up close and personal as they did in Chelsea’s video three months earlier!

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So, I was gifted with the standard Hazelnut holder that has little curves that make a slight “S” shape and it is gorgeous! Every item is unique in their own ways, but mine has both a darker brown color but it also has this thick stripe of beige like when you cut into a piece of wood and you see the white flesh of the inside, the difference here is that the product is completely smooth. You can’t tell that it was homemade or real for that matter either!

Recently, my cousin gave me all seven books of the Harry Potter series and at the time I wrote this post, I was using this hook to help me keep the pages open. The one thing I had an issue was not necessarily the hook because I had grown to enjoy the width of the actual hook-like wings on the sides, for they made the opening more stable for me. I didn’t feel like I was giving it too much pressure, but since the books had belonged to someone else, the spine’s collapsing on itself and you really have to be careful with how you handle each one, so I’m glad I had something like this to keep reading easy on me. 

The next one is again a standard holder, but could be work easier with heavy, thick books as the design itself is without dips unlike the one above. For me, I think of it like an eye, the circular shape of a cat’s eye is actually the perfect way to describe it because where the hole is would be where the iris sits. I like the fact that it is this deep and rich brown, almost like a brownie hue, and it is pretty sturdy as well. I don’t feel like it could snap whenever I apply a strong act of pressure in the spine of the book.

One of their cuter items is this heard shaped holder. This was my mom’s favorite because it was a nice surprise to the whole thing! By the way, my mom was the only one I had shown what their products looked like, in order to gain advice on my idea several months ago, but I left this one out of the talk, because I wasn’t sure if I would receive one or not.

It is basically an outline of a heart in the wood with a hole in the middle to insert your finger through to keep your place. As much as I loved the design of this, I cannot use it myself because for me it’s too bulky, which I found to be odd, but so far I haven’t found a book where I can sit it comfortably so that part sucks; for now though, it is part of my decoration on my bookshelf.

Do you remember when I said in the beginning about how I had to have someone measure my toe? Well, there was a smaller version of the first standard hook stuffed inside a little box – but the big difference to the others is that it fits over my toe!!

I must have a really small toe considering how big the hole they carved out takes up a lot space of the design. I am still shocked on two things: the first is being the material being strong enough to withstand the large gap in the middle, and next, is it was as soft as the others and slides off so nicely! I love it so much that I tend to forget to put it away after I’ve stopped reading, and I literally just wear it around my family. Don’t worry, I try to hide it from my nephew because we don’t want him damaging it nor getting his fingers stuck either!

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I wanted to say something special for the team of TILISMA before I go. Thank you so much for creating these little things. They are clever and so easy to use! I know you probably never thought someone such as myself would message you out of the blue like I did, but thank you for not only being patient but also working with me to (hopefully) reach a even bigger audience for you in the future!

If you would like to purchase any of the products featured above, click here to be redirected to their Amazon page. The reason why I did not link each one with the holder is because you might need a different size so I figured it would be much easier for you, to search through the various hooks and find the size you need on your own.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and I think if you are buying these for someone else, they will feel very appreciated that you thought of them. Here are some of my other photos I (and my dad too!) took of them so you can have a better idea of what they look like in real life.

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If you decide to try out any of their products, please let me know because I would love to hear your thoughts about them as well. And if you have used any of the products, what were some of your first impression of them? Do you believe others that stuffer with limitations in their hands/fingers, could use them with ease? Why or why not?