The last live performance I went to was a Goo Goo Dolls’ concert in August 2023. I had always wanted to see them live in the 90’s but I was a poor college student and couldn’t afford it. Plus, I was too busy with school and work, and I also had no one to go with. I went to this concert with my husband.
There were quite a lot of people. It was a nice, beautiful day with beautiful weather. Everything just felt perfect. We sat pretty close, but it was still pretty far away. There were large screens to either side of the stage for close-ups.
O.A.R. opened for them. They sing the popular song, “Shattered.” When our kids were young, we would sing the chorus, “Turn this car around!” The kids also sang along. It was the only song we remember from them. I think it was also the only song that made it big by them.
I like a lot of Goo Goo Dolls’ songs, but my all time favorite will always be, “Black Balloon.”
I’ve been trying to spend more time in my bujo (bullet journal). I don’t often complete a journal thoroughly, but this year, I plan to. However, I did make that one mistake of using gesso on my weekly pages and that slowed down my process.
These pages I’m sharing are only of the fun stuff, or my hobbies. The calendar and weekly pages aren’t shown because they’re a bit personal. The top photo is April’s intro-page to April’s month. I’m always trying new ways to make my intro-page exciting. You’ll see below that I was covering two pages with one image. I enjoyed that for a short time, but I also love storytelling, so I decided to use one page for the art and the other page for a short (micro) fiction.
Since I’ve been learning how to generate AI art, I’ve been using the art pieces for my intros. It takes a lot less time, but it still takes time. Once I generate the art, I will often take the art into Photoshop to enhance or correct any issues. I also upscale and resize if necessary. Currently, I’m learning how to create better photo composites, but in the meantime, instead of a boring planner, I’ll be using AI art.
January intro-page:
January movies watched:
January TV shows and books read:
January photo snapshots:
February intro-page:
February movies watched:
February TV shows and books read:
February photo snapshots:
I normally would work on the previous month while in the current month. Let’s hope I can catch up!
I am using an A5 notebook from Archer & Olive. The leather notebook cover is an A5 Austen in the Darcy color from Chic Sparrow.
The other day, husband and I went to get waffle chicken at Slim Chickens (they have the best chicken!) and we were met with a thick, eerie, yet captivating fog. It was hard to see beyond 50 ft. The images are beautiful, but they don’t really capture the true feeling of actually being “in the clouds.” The elevation here is over 6,200 ft. above sea level, thus I call it, “in the clouds.” I’ve hiked mountains that were lower in elevation than where I live.
The intersection was pretty scary. It was hard to see the lights, plus, we had to be super careful in case other cars couldn’t see either (which I’m sure they couldn’t, if we couldn’t) and decide to just drive through.
It’s April, and it’s normal to have snow in early spring in Colorado.
Because it was so foggy, the camera couldn’t focus on anything so a lot of my photos were blurry. These last two photos were grayscaled because I wanted to capture the eeriness of it.
I thought this was a good idea to watercolor and gesso my weekly bujo (bullet journal) pages, but it’s been about three weeks and I’m so far behind with bullet journaling because I have to wait for the pages to dry and then writing over them ruins my nice pens I use for bullet journaling. Lesson learned: only do mix media in mix media journals. Not in my bullet journal notebook.
In the last image, I’m using nail polish to keep the pages separate to dry. Otherwise, they stick together. I do have a craft dryer to speed things up but I didn’t want to pull it out and I don’t really like the look and feel of using it, especially on gesso.
The orchids bloom every year around this time. They’re always so pretty. I need to take care of them better, but I haven’t. Yet, they still bloom. They are one of the strongest flowering plants out there.
Today I want to share with you how I track the books I read. This little weeks notebook cover holds two notebooks. One is a Hobonichi Weeks and the other is a Kinbor from Ali Express. Initially, I avoided the Weeks because I thought it was too small. I needed the space, especially in the monthly calendar, to write down books that have come in either through a purchase, a book request, or from the library. I didn’t want a big notebook because I didn’t need all that space and I didn’t want something too small that it would be hard to write in. I was using a Traveler’s monthly notebook and weekly notebook before, but the problem I had with that was that it was difficult to find those inserts and the monthly and weekly notebooks were separate. I wanted both in one notebook.
Earlier this year, I decided to give the Hobonichi Weeks a try. I bought a weeks cover from Chic Sparrow. This green one is a Carroll Hatta. It’s the prettiest green ever (to me). It makes me happy every time I pick it up. This was a limited edition color and I regret not getting it in the other notebook cover sizes. I also have a Weeks cover in the Austen Darcy leather, but it doesn’t get me all excited like the Hatta.
The Weeks notebook I’m using is this soft pink color with a cover-on-cover. I believe the design on the cover-on-over is from the year before (2022). I had wanted it back then but didn’t have any use for it so never got it. I was happy they still had a few left when I finally found a use for it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve suddenly got this urge for really cute things. I was never like this before. I mean, I’ve always liked anything Hello Kitty because I always found Sanrio products so adorable, but that was back then. Now, if I see anything cute, I just want it or least stare at it for ages.
Okay, enough on the cuteness and pretty things. Let’s get into the serious stuff. I’ve been tracking the books I’ve read since 2013 in a generic notebook and then starting in 2014, I joined Goodreads and began tracking there. I didn’t have a calendar or weekly tracker yet at that time because I thought all I needed was Goodreads. I was also reading mainly for leisure so didn’t feel I needed a monthly or weekly tracker. A couple of Goodreads author had sent me books but I was still able to keep track of all the books I was reading. It was around 2016 that I was getting more authors requesting reviews and that’s when things began to get a bit hectic. I was also writing my own stories for publishing so I needed a notebook to keep everything together.
Which brings me to now. I’ve finally found a process that works for me as far as tracking books coming in.
Some months, there aren’t a lot of books coming so there’s not a lot written down, but this just means I get to read books I’ve purchased before that were noted on a calendar in the past. The monthly calendar only shows books that I’ve received that day.
I track books I’m currently reading in the weekly section. I also write down notes on the right side with more information on books that have come in or in process of coming in, like ebooks being emailed, physical books being mailed out, and additional information on the books such as price, type of book, etc.
Here’s another view of the weeks. Sometimes I just don’t have any written on the right side.
I’ve made a section for library holds and leisure books.
This section (the library holds and leisure) looks messy but it’s just something I added this year. Hopefully I’ll find a method that’ll work much better.
Going forward, I’ll need to add a section for books I’ve won in Goodreads giveaways and a section for book clubs I’m in. Currently, I’m in two book clubs. One is on Facebook and one is on Goodreads. I was on two on Goodreads a couple of years back, but I just couldn’t keep up, so it’s back to juts one there for now. In 2019, I went to the Barnes & Noble book club, but after COVID, I stopped going because it was switched from onsite to Zoom and I’m not a huge fan of Zoom…not right now anyway.
In 2021, I started keeping track of books read and reviewed in the Traveler’s Notebook. Before that, I kept track of the books in the same generic notebook I used to jot down notes, rough drafts, and completed reviews. When I switched to the weeks, I transferred those books from 2021 to the Kindbor plan notebook just so I could have all the books reviewed all in one book.
Initially, they were just listed and strangely, it was difficult to keep track. I decided to add the book cover, star-ratings, genre, dated started reading/date finished, and where the books were reviewed and this has helped so much in staying on top of things. I’ve had instances in the past when I’d only list a books I’ve read and not remember what that book was about or what I thought of it. This way, I can see the cover, which to me, helps me remember what the book was about, and with the additional information, I can see how I rated the book and when I finished the book. I also have a bigger notebook where I write out the reviews, the same reviews I share on here, but handwritten. I’ll talk about that another day.
If you want to see a video of me talking about my new Weeks lineup for 2024, you can watch it below. I also talk a little bit about the cute A6 notebook cover (the gray and yellow one). I don’t need it for anything but it was just too cute so I got it. I’m using a generic A6 graph notebook for it for the time being, but will probably get an A6 Stalogy for it in the future.
Are you a notebook user and do you track all the books you read? Let me know what your favorite notebooks are.
I went to a library book sale yesterday and bought three books. I had heard about the book sale last week and forgot about it until a couple of days ago when I was running errands. The official start date was yesterday and it’ll go until this coming Sunday. I think I got the books I needed though. I’ll be using these books to make some Christmas junk journals for a craft sale.
This was a small library and the parking wasn’t too big either. I drove around a few times to find a parking and was afraid I wouldn’t find one. I only had about twenty minutes to look around because I had to make it back to pick up my daughter from school for lunch. This library was about twenty to twenty-fives minutes away.
After looking at old vintage books and finding a few that I wanted, I got in line to check out. It was a pretty long line so I was getting worried. One lady in front of me left the line because there were more books she wanted to look at, so that helped moved the line up a little.
I bought two vintage music books and a children’s book. One music book was so torn and tattered it was nearly falling apart.
I spent more than I’d expected but I felt like I found treasures and I think that was worth it.
Do you like library book sales, estate sales, and yard sales?
It’s been a while since I’ve made bitter melon soup. I can’t even remember the last time I made it but it was probably over a decade ago. This time I decided to follow this recipe on Youtube. I’m not a huge fan of the super bitterness of the bitter melon so to draw some of that bitterness out, after I removed the seeds, I soaked the melon in salt water for about ten minutes.
I didn’t have all the ingredients from the recipe so I used what I had on hand: lemongrass, garlic, scallions, cilantro, and mint. I had some Thai peppers on hand so I used a few of them for a touch of heat.
Everything was chopped up and mixed with ground beef before stuffing the melons which I’d cut into thirds. Whatever was leftover from the pork mix, I made into little meatballs. With the peppers, I simply cooked it with the soup.
The soup turned out pretty good. My high-schooler really liked the meatballs but didn’t care for the bitter melon. My husband and my other daughter didn’t care for the soup. I guess this is why I rarely made this dish.
There are many ways to cook bitter melon but I grew up eating it as a soup so it’s what I’m familiar with. Mom would also make it stir-fry, I believe. I’ll have to try stir-frying next time. Have you had bitter melon soup or stir-fried? What did you think?
I got this little watercolor sketchbook from Amazon. It was free item I received to review. What drew me to this sketchbook at first was the cute little bunnies with floral artwork, but then when I got a closer look at the paper quality, I was hooked. The paper is thick cold press watercolor paper and takes water well. I was impressed a the quality.
I used the paint pan I made last year. I ordered the paint pan from Ali Express and filled it up with mostly Daniel Smith watercolor. There’s also some W&N Cotman and Art Philosophy Guache. I don’t have a photo of the outside of the pan but it’s got an outer space artwork that’s just too cute.
I used a reference photo to draw and then paint the tulip. It didn’t take very long to paint because the paper was excellent. I had a lot of fun painting this flower. I think I’ll use this little book to paint flowers and landscapes.
Do you love to paint? If so, what’s your favorite things to paint?
From My Corner of the Universe 