Category: Notes

Reading Challenge: Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu Total pages read: 152/152 ­✔ 1st December Well, today was the busiest day of the year. I left home to go shopping at 9 a.m. Came back to edit, end any detail I had to do to be able to publish the first post of December and to “decorate” the blog. Oh… and decorate my own house. My plans to read the entire book on the first-day went flushing down the toilet. I spend about 1 hour and 30 minutes all thanks to the evenings. If I haven’t started in the first hours of the day, I would be much more worried to complete this challenge. Pages Read: 61 2nd December Just my luck! Every time I try to set a goal the universe is like “Nope!”. Today was hard. For moments, I really thought I was going to fail in my first …

I don’t even know where I should start. Maybe with putting up the decoration. I hate to miss the 1st of December since it’s a holiday in Portugal no matter if it lands on a weekday or weekend, people are home and free to put up the decorations. I’ve always had a fake tree my entire life, which is the most common. I never knew of a farm selling real Christmas trees and since shop, them is illegal you kind of only have one option. Although until I was about 10 years old my grandmother would chop a wild pine tree that was growing on her own farm. I would get so excited mostly because she would put up little chocolates as ornaments and I was dying to get my hands on them. It does give another feeling to have a real tree instead of a fake. Not only the …

Merry Christmas, Happy Blogmas!! We are back on the most wonderful time of the year! Christmas music blasting from the speakers, the shops are fully decorated, the fire is cracking and the TV only streams Christmas movies. It’s the best. I can’t even believe today is the first day of The 12 Crafty Days aka blogmas. As I said before in my announcement post, today won’t be a craft, instead of a little walk through what I have done to decorate my office for this special occasion. For the first time, I have a tree of my own to keep me company on the working days and keep my Christmas spirit up. I must say it matches my height. Also, I have two special DIYs to decorate it. The Snowed Ornaments, which are so cute and easy to do, and the Gifts. They might seem regular presents but in fact, …

* This post might contain affiliated links. To know more visit my Disclaimer page. Christmas is my favourite time of the year and, once you know it, you have flown by from the 1st of December to the 25th. So I’m always looking for ideas to make those 24 days the must magical. On the last two years, I’ve tried to post every day until Christmas (back on my old blog) but it takes a crazy amount of time, preparation and creativity to come up with 24 different ideas. I prefer quality over quantity so I decided to give it a twist. I’m still be going to post every day, but it will be different types of content. From the 1st to the 23rd (only the odd days) I’ll be posting DIYs and from the 2nd to the 24th (only the even days) it will be posting reading updates for …

We are more than halfway through November and the days are getting cosier each time. And although I’m up for a mystery at any time of the year, it somehow gets extra special in the cold months. So today I want to talk about different types of mysteries on books, movies/tv series, and games. By different types I mean ways to present the story regardless who’s the murderer or how strange was the crime. So I’m not looking to original crimes for example committed by aliens or the bigfoot – strange choices – what I do care about is how the story develops to the reader/view/gamer. Also, keep in mind that I haven’t read every single mystery book or saw every mystery film/series so I might be missing some. Books Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle are brilliant and timeless authors that bring unique features to the crime-solving department. Doyle …

It has been a while since I write a post like this. Although I love to chat about books, series, and craft, the posts I more enjoy reading are the ones about life. These are the kind of stories that get you to know the person on the other side of the screen and have a chance to connect with. Most people have their story starting when they were little kids or when they read the first Harry Potter book. Well, I never had that. I never read the HP books and only saw the first movie. So my story took more twist and turns than that. Since I can remember I always liked to read. Although I only committed to it when I was 20 years old. So two years ago! I know I’m such a newbie. I have two books that I associate with my childhood. One being …

This post is the first off (hopefully) much more to come about archiving happiness. And to help me with that, I’m going to travel throughout the world to find traditions and/or activities that make people happier. I’m taking this journey through books in order to learn new cultures and people. This time is Denmark, with The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking, the president of the Happiness Research Institute. Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life. Benjamin Franklin Meik ends the book with this quote which I believe sums up not just hygge but how you can conquer happiness in your own life. For me, every single human being as one dream in common, happiness. Although to archive it each one has a different …

Attention: Before starting reading this post is advised to grab something to drink or eat – or both -and get back since this is, without a doubt, the BIGGEST post I have ever done! On the end, I have some freshly baked news for you!! So don’t forget to check it out. I’m sorry in advance and hope I don’t bore you to death. Enjoy! It’s time for another Wrap-up!! The past week was the Spookathon from the 16th to the 22nd of October. I was dying to do another week-long readathon, and the spirits heard my pealing. Get it spirits? Because it’s Halloween?… Moving on, as you might or not know I attempt to participate in the Booktube-A-Thon back in July. But I’m not going to talk about it today, for more details go read this post. Bottom line, I wanted to participate in another one and see if …

After a solid two weeks without talking about books (pat on the back), I’m now doing a wrap-up of my first 24 hours readathon. So this year, I discovered that readathons were a thing and once I saw how people were coming together for it, got me excited. So I participated in the next readathon I heard about: the BookTube-a-thon. It was a complete fail. I had to cut short my experience and blah blah blah… I have an entire post dedicated to it if you want to read it. Bottom line, I enjoyed it but reading for a week is not that same as packing it in one day. So when Zoe Herdt from the YouTube channel Readbyzoe announced she was going to do a readathon in October, it was the perfect opportunity. I instantaneously signed up for it not minding on what day it was going to fall …

So this is great. My surface pen got out of battery, and I don’t have any AAAA batteries so I can’t use it. Therefore I can’t do a what I was planning for today. And this, kids, is why you shouldn’t procrastinate because one day you will be on top of the deadline and something isn’t going to work and time is ticking, so you have to improvise. And that’s what today’s post is going to be. IMPROVE! My point was to do a cute autumnal bookmark. I thought of using a leaf to mark your book is something I wish to do.But instead of going outside and pick up some leaves why not making them. I love making stuff and if they don’t take much time or don’t challenge too much my drawing ability – heads up not the best drawer over here – I can enjoy myself and …

I had the craziest idea ever! It isn’t the first time I see a pom-pom rug over on Pinterest, and they are so fluffy that I just want one for myself. Until here there is nothing crazy about making one from scratch except if it is supposed to have 1,2m for 2m!! It’s HUGE!! I mean is the size that I want my rug but imagine how many pom-poms I have to make to be able to cover the whole thing! I still can’t believe how much time it will take me to create this. So now I need to make pom-poms until my hands fell off – joking! But it’s a great opportunity to talk you through a few ways how you can make them. While DIYing the different methods some craft fails happened… And I’m going to share what went wrong for a change. Also, going to share …