Random|| Picture Update.

Posted on March 19, 2019 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

pictureupdate

Hey!

Thought I would do a picture update since I haven’t really done one since my birthday and I haven’t really been reading very much this last week to do full posts about that. I will put a little reading update at the end of this post though. 🙂

On the second Thursday of every month Munn Park has food trucks, so my younger sister Stephanie and I decided to go check it out. It got us out of the house, because we spend 98% of the time in the house during the week. The 2% being when we go outside to check mail, take out garbage, walk the pup, or grocery shop. Remember how I mentioned stir crazy? Yeahhh. So we decided to go check it out and it was a nice day. Here are a few pictures from around the park.

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Now onto the FOOD! We went to two food trucks to get something to eat. We decided to try Southern Munchies and The Naked Cupcake. I loved the design and colors on the food truck for Southern Munchies. Funny story: I took a picture of the truck and forgot about it. My sister and I started talking while we waited our turn to order. I looked into the truck and I seen a man and I’m like “he looks so familiar, I know I’ve seen him somewhere” and then I glanced at the side of the truck and there he was, haha. So they designed their little character on the truck after the actual owner/cook. I thought that was so cool. He even had the purple hair in real life!

At Southern Munchies we both got donut hole sliders & fries. They were so delicious, but I think it would have been even better if they put some cheese on the little burgers. At The Naked Cupcake we got cupcakes, duh. 😛 I got a vanilla cupcake with strawberry frosting and sprinkles. My sister got a dulce de leche cupcake with white chocolate sprinkles. What I loved about The Naked Cupcake was you could get their standard cupcakes or you could design your own to be whatever cake, frosting, and toppings you wanted.

We ate and walked around for a little bit. I took a few more pictures from downtown area. I really can’t wait until the hubby is living here so we can go explore the city even more. Here are a few other pictures I took.

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Above is a picture of the Polk Theatre! I looked at their website and they play a lot of films there or host events there. Below are a couple of art banners. I thought they were cute and pretty funny.

I decided to add a little Easter touch to my dining table recently, so I found these little Easter eggs and glass bowl from Walmart for super cheap. It was about $6 to make this and it’s so cute. I love that I can just put anything into the bowl too to have as a centerpiece throughout the year. I’m thinking skull heads for Halloween. 😛

Me reading in the hammock and the hubby chillin in the hammock. We really love this hammock swing. I sit in it at least once a day, haha.

Below are some random sunset pictures, because you already know that I am obsessed with taking pictures of the sky, sunsets, and sunrises. LOL.

The next pictures are just a bunch of pictures that I’ve been taking of my furbabies throughout the last few weeks. I can’t help but take a ton of pictures of them.

Above are a couple pictures of my pup, Dax. He loves walks and spending time outside. He’s definitely really happy with his new yard.

Little Leaf. She loves sunlight and windows. Every morning she’ll take a nap in this spot when the sun comes out. And speaking of Leaf, she spends a lot of her day in my office with me, which is so cute. She also is so cuddly too and I love it. She is either laying next to me or on me. Below two pictures are Leaf laying in my lap while I worked.

October, I forever have heart eyes for her. She’s so pretty. She’s out a lot more now that we have this bigger house. She seems more happy, which I love. She’s still pretty skittish though, but I think that’s just part of her personality.

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ColbyJack, I love this dude. He’s been a pain in the butt since moving here, but hopefully he starts to chill out more once Andy is living here. Which will be this weekend! After this weekend he will start working up here.

And Digby! He’s Andy’s parents dog, but I’m dogsitting him this week. So I currently have a house full of pets. Two dogs and three cats, haha. It’s fine though and they all get along. Leaf loves him. They are always playing with each other and chasing each other around the house. Digby also spends a lot of time with me. He’s pretty much attached to me, so wherever I go he follows. The picture on the right (with me in it) you can see him sleeping on the little pillow in my office. He spends all day in here with me.

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This past week I’ve been kind of in a reading slump and trying out a bunch of different books. I tried to read a couple of my ARCs, but I wasn’t in the mood to read them at the moment, so I put them aside for now. I’ll pick them up soon though. I don’t want to force myself to read them when I’m not in the mood and end up not enjoying them. I decided to try out Jackaby, which is a book for my Alphabet Challenge. I’m actually really enjoying it. I get hella Sherlock vibes and I love that. I am also listening to the audiobook of The Priory of the Orange Tree. I’m a little over 100 pages into it (it’s an 800+ page book). Honestly, it’s so detailed and so much to remember that I don’t really know exactly what is going on. I kind of just forgot everything that I heard/read. UGHHH. Hopefully that’s not the case for the entire book, because it seems interesting. I just don’t want to be confused the entire time! Anyway, so that’s all for this update.

In case you missed it;
WWW Wednesday #57.
Friday Finds #76.
Random|| Birthday & Other Things.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Hello, Central Florida.

Posted on February 25, 2019 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

lifeupdate

Hey!

Friday was moving day! We packed up the truck on Thursday night and Friday after work we packed up the kitties and the pup and hit the road to our new house. It’s a four hour drive from where we were living. I was so nervous about the cats in the car for four hours, because they hate the car! They cry non-stop in the car. Luckily the hubby took two of them and I only had to take one in my sister’s car. He took the two that are most scared, so I didn’t have to listen to them crying the whole time. It’s always so sad. Leaf (littlest and the one we took) didn’t make a peep! See took it like a champ. Andy said the other two cried 3 of the 4 hours. 😭

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We made it around 10pm and started to unload some of the truck before it started raining. We did the rest the next day (Saturday). On Saturday I unpacked a lot of things and tried to put as much away as I could. The kitchen is pretty much done and so are our clothes. There’s still so much more to do though, sigh. My right arm is killing me today from all the moving and unpacking. Hopefully I can get a lot more done today though. We’ll see what happens!

My younger sister came up with us, because she’ll be staying with me until Andy comes up and until she goes back on the road (she was a truck driver and may go back to that job). She slept a couple nights in the room that will be my office/library until we finished the floor & borders in the guest room (pictures later in the post). I can’t wait until my desk gets here (Wednesday) and eventually be able to buy some bookshelves so I can unpack my books.

The cats took the new house in different ways. October is the shy one that’s scared of everything. Never likes being pet or anything. Always hides. Well…she’s loving it here! She’s out and about and very happy. She even lays with us and wants attention, which was never a thing about her before! She was the one I was most worried about when it came to this move, but she seems so happy. She loves all the windows. She spends a lot of time laying or sitting in front of different windows around the house.

ColbyJack (oldest) was not a happy camper. He spent a lot of time growling and hissing and just being grumpy. He also hid 90% of the time. Little Leaf wasn’t really sure about the house either. She hid majority of the time too. I really thought they would be cool about it, haha. Totally the opposite than I thought! I’m so happy about October though. I really worried about her. They other two kitties seem to be getting used to the house now though, so that’s a plus. I think that now that it’s not as chaotic, they are coming around.

My pup Dax loves the house. He’s been here before this weekend. We brought him up last weekend and he was so happy. He was even rolling around in the backyard. He has his own yard now! We didn’t have one at the last place and he’s never really off a leash outside often. Now he can be. At first he wasn’t sure about it, but by the end of the weekend he was rolling around in the yard.

There’s still so much to do, but I have plenty of time to do it. Hopefully by the end of the week it’ll be mostly done. 🙂 Here are some other random pictures I’ve taken at the new house from last weekend and now.

We’ve been in the process of changing the floors in one of the bedrooms as I mentioned. We took the carpet out and put a dark brown wood laminate flooring. Next I need to paint the walls in the room. I’m unsure what color I want, but I think it’ll be some kind of shade of white. There’s so many shades of white!! We were going to do our bedroom with this same flooring, but I think we may use something else. I want to find a similar color though. We have other remodeling/updating that we want to do to the house, but that’ll come in time.

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Second bathroom (not the master bathroom). This room is currently probably the nicest/cleanest room in the house right now, haha. We currently have boxes EVERYWHERE. I’ll be taking recycle out for weeks before we finally get all of them out of the house.

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My boss gave us a ton of furniture. The dining table and barstools above are some of the pieces that he gave us. The dining table glass is supposed to have that shattered glass look/effect. Andy thought it was broken, but according to the description and my boss it’s supposed to be like that lol. The dining table also has a leaf and two more chairs that we didn’t put out yet. Four is more than enough for us right now. Colby loves that table. He’s been out more now that we have it up. I love the bar stools. They are all the same shade (more the middle stool color), but the lighting and shadow makes them look different.

I’ll have more pictures of the rest of the house another time once we get everything put away and cleaned up. So far this is what is done. So until then, below are some random pictures I’ve taken of the area and outside of my house.

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I seen the below banner hanging up on a window when we were driving through some of downtown Lakeland. A lot of the buildings have different banners of art like this hanging on their walls. We were driving or I would have taken a picture of them all.

Some random flowers and plants growing in my yard. I’m pretty sure the white ones and the orange ones only grew because the grass needs cut. I hate to see them go, but I love that I have this plant in my yard that grows these really pretty pink flowers.

These are all of the tree in my backyard. I take pictures of it every single time I am here, lmao. All different views at least. I got some close ups, some of the branches, and some through my lens ball.

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I took this picture of my tree when we got here on Friday night for my Instagram stories (heyyitsashley) and I was looking at the picture after I posted it and with the lights/shadows it looked like a face and made me think of Grandmother Willow from Pocahontas, haha. 😛

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The sky this morning from my front door. Forever heart eyes. It was actually 60 degrees outside too, which was so nice.

All week will most likely be spent cleaning and putting things away in the house during breaks at work and after work. I have so much to do. I also forgot that we have a ton of boxes that we put in the closet. I plan to go find the library and get a library card this week too. I’m hoping to finish one more book before the end of the month to include in my wrap up, which will be posted in the next few days as well as my book haul. I’ll also try to catch up with your posts at some point this week as well and reply to comments.

In case you missed it;
Random|| Life Update – New House!
Review|| Just for Clicks.
Friday Finds #75.
Review|| Comics Will Break Your Heart.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Random|| Life Update – New House!

Posted on February 11, 2019 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Hey!

Exciting news….the hubby and I did a thing…we bought a house on Friday (2/8)! We pretty much kept it secret and didn’t talk about it that much to anyone. I didn’t want to jinx things, because we really wanted this to work out! AND WELL….it did!

We are super stoked about it! We took a bunch of our stuff up there that we don’t use often. Funny story…so we brought an air mattress to sleep on, but forgot the air pump to blow it up. So I was like, okay, that’s okay. We have a big comforter we can lay on the the floor with….yeah, forgot that too. LMAO! So we had a ton of sheets and throw blankets to sleep on. Not the best sleep, but it is what it is. HAHA. We aren’t bringing our bed or other furniture until next weekend or the weekend after that.

My mom and aunt ended up coming on Saturday afternoon though and we went out to Walmart to get some stuff. She ended up buying us a couch/futon. It’s a futon, but when folded up it looks like a couch. It is really comfy and it’s really cute. She also bought a couple of air mattresses too, so next time we are good to go until we get all of our stuff up there! It’s currently about 3.5-4 hours from where we currently live. Don’t mind the mess, we are moving in HAHA. 😛 We spent pretty much all Saturday morning cleaning and doing other things around the house until my mom and aunt got there.

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I haven’t taken any inside pictures yet (besides the one above), but I will probably do that once we are settled in. The weekend was just just crazy busy doing a ton of different things and I guess just taking it all in, because it’s like a huge step in our lives. It’s super cool though! We have SO MUCH space. It’s three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and there’s a bonus room (which we will use like a second living room/family room). The “bonus room” is actually pictured above. We already have a list of things we want to do, haha. That’ll be fun. 😛 We ate lunch on a piece of cardboard Sunday hahah, so we wouldn’t get the floor messy and because we wanted to watch TV. My mom left her hot spot for us to watch TV until we got our own internet setup on Sunday.

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We’ll be going back up Friday night to do some more cleaning and hopefully more organizing of things. The living room when you walk into our house currently has so many boxes, so hopefully we get some things put away and more organized before we bring in the rest of our stuff in the next week or two.

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I took my smaller lens ball with me and got this pretty awesome picture of our house. I’m kind of obsessed with how great this picture turned out. We also have this HUGE tree in our backyard and I’m totally living for it. I already have plans to hang a hammock chair from it. Perfect reading spot while the pup runs around the yard, haha. The yard is fenced in, but we’ll be eventually getting a privacy fence, but for now it’s fine.

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Our house is more in the country side of town, which we actually like. Lots of good picture taking opportunities in the future, haha. Also, there are cows, goats, and horses and lots of woods too. One house across the street before turning into our neighborhood has three goats in their front yard, LOL. The next few pictures aren’t the best quality because we were driving and I didn’t have my zoom lens on my Nikon or the correct setting, but here is some of the area. I definitely plan to get more later this week.

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So we’re now homeowners which is pretty neat! This year is going to be pretty crazy for us. New house, new city, but we’re super stoked to see what happens. We have so much work to do with packing, moving, unpacking so I may not be around too much like I mentioned previously. I apologize in advance! I didn’t even get to read that much this week, which sucked! Hopefully I can finish at least one book this week. I’m halfway through Crooked Kingdom, so I would love to be able to finish that one this week. Guess we’ll see what happens!

In case you missed it;
WWW Wednesday #56.
Wrap Up|| January.
Book Haul|| January.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Dr. Von D Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park.

Posted on January 14, 2019 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

travel

Hey!

Andy and I decided to find another park in our area that we haven’t been to and check it out. We used to do this a lot, but haven’t in awhile. We want to go to as many places as we can in this area before we move, so we decided to start checking out parks again. Dr. Von D Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park (damn that name is a mouth full, LOL) is pretty much just a few minutes down the street from us and I can’t believe we haven’t known about this place, because it was so nice; especially the the beach area! Part of the park is ocean and the other part is woodsy.

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These are all the pictures that I took in the beach/ocean part of the park. It was really pretty there and I was obsessed with the view, especially the very first picture that I shared. I think this is more of the fishing area, because a lot of people had fishing poles and they were fishing off the rocks as you can see in the first set of pictures. The last four pictures is more of a sandy area where a lot of people were swimming and laying out. It’s a lot more secluded in this area of the beach than the typical touristy part, which is pretty neat. Nice to keep in mind if I want to ever go to the beach. Even the bathrooms looked nicer than the typical busy touristy beach.

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These are the few pictures that I took in the woodsy area of the park. I didn’t take too many, because I was freaking out because of all the mosquitoes LOL! We made it through though and this was the view when we came out of the woodsy area. IT’S SO PRETTY! Heart eyes for days! We ended up on a bridge and when you cross over the bridge then you’re at the beach (the more sandy part)!

Below are just some random pictures that I took over the last week. I haven’t taken very many, so I figured I would include them in this post as well.

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It wouldn’t be a proper post if I didn’t include pictures of the sky. You all probably know by now that I am obsessed with the sky, so I take a lot of pictures of it. These are my first 2019 pictures of the sky LOL with probably a million more to come. 😛

It also wouldn’t be typical Ashley post without pictures of my furbabies. So the left picture of my kitties, this is the first time I almost got the perfect picture of them all three together. BUT of course the littlest one (Leaf – white calico at the top) ruined it. She was in the middle of smacking October (black calico), so I called her name and she looked up but October was still like “WTF” at Leaf and didn’t look up when I called. You can see little Leaf’s paw being held up slightly, lol. UGHHH. I just want one good picture of them all looking at the camera at the same time, is that too much to ask for? 😛 And then my pup Dax on the right.

That’s all for this post. I can’t wait to figure out which park we want to check out next. I have a few bookmarked and there’s a couple museums that I want to go to as well. So we’ll see what happens!

In case you missed it;
4 Star Reads of 2018.
5 Star Reads of 2018.
Thoughts|| The Wicked King.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Christmas 2018.

Posted on December 27, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

pictureupdate

Hey!

For Christmas this year were were able to go visit Andy’s parents. It had been a very long time since we’ve been able to have a Christmas with them. They live about 2-2.5 hours away from us. We left on Saturday morning and stayed until the afternoon of Christmas Day. We both had to work the next day, so we had to come home on Christmas.

On Saturday we went downtown to look at some Christmas decorations. Above are a couple of pictures that I took on the way to downtown. You have to drive over a bridge and the sun was starting to set, which was nice.

There are two houses downtown that put up a ton of Christmas decorations. Top two pictures are of one of the houses. For $5 you can go inside and see them all. I didn’t take a ton of pictures inside, because there was so just so much to see and I was pretty much living for everything. I did get a few though.

There were Christmas trees in every single room, it was pretty crazy and totally awesome! These above are some of the Christmas tree pictures that I was able to take and a few of my favorites.

These above are just some other random pictures that I took inside and out side of the houses. After we looked at the Christmas decorations, we went to get some food at 3 Pepper. It’s a Mexican restaurant. It was pretty good. No pictures though. I was starving and dived into my food right away.

After seeing the Christmas decorations and eating, we went back to the house and watched TV for awhile. I think I went to sleep pretty early every night we were there. I had a list of Christmas movies that I like to watch every Christmas, so we worked our way through my list of Christmas movies all weekend/Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had dinner and then Christmas Day we opened presents, had breakfast, and then ate Christmas “dinner” for lunch since we had to leave shortly after that. It was so a lot of fun and I’m glad we were able to spend Christmas with Andy’s family. Dax had a lot of fun being able to hangout with their pup Digby too.

Below are just a bunch of miscellaneous pictures that I took throughout the time we were there.

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We (Andy, his mom, and I) took the dogs on a walk around the neighborhood and the park that’s down the street from their house. These are all the pictures that I took on that walk. It was a really nice day out.

I seen a squirrel in the tree in Andy’s parents backyard and got pretty excited about that, because it was the perfect opportunity to try out my new zoom lens that Andy got me for Christmas. The squirrel was pretty vocal and basically screaming at my dog. HAHA. I think the pictures came out pretty great.

Andy’s parents have an orange tree in their back yard, which is always cool. We were able to pick some oranges to bring home with us. I had fun taking pictures of the tree. Left the orange picking to Andy, haha.

First picture is of Andy and I after we ate dinner of Christmas Eve. Second picture is just a random selfie of myself.

These last set of pictures are from a couple of weekends ago when we went to Lakeland to visit my friend. I figured I would include them as well.

Random view from her guest bedroom window on that Sunday morning. I’m a sucker for a pretty view, haha.

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We seen a house that had SO MANY Christmas lights and decorations, so I had to snap a picture. We also drove down another street and every single house on the street went ALL OUT with their decorations. I didn’t get any pictures, but I wish I had.

And these are just a couple pictures of her cat Bruce. He’s so cute, but he’s still unsure about me. HAHA. Once we are living in Lakeland, I am determined to make him love me. 😛 Although we did make some progress after I gave him some treats. Treats = friend?

Anyway, that’s my picture update for today. I had a great Christmas and we got so many wonderful presents (including an Instant Pot and an iPad Mini) from both our families. I ate a TON of food and candy, which was good and bad (because I totally over did it) haha. How was your holiday or weekend? I have five other blog posts that I am working on that will slowly be making there way onto the blog. Wrap up and book haul coming soon. I’ll have a 2019 reading goals post and a reading challenge I am hoping to tackle in 2019 coming as well. I still need to work on my end of the year book survey too. Be on the look out for a bunch of posts soon. 😀

In case you missed it;
TBB Asks: Holiday Edition.
Random|| Picture Update.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleychristmas

Random|| Picture Update.

Posted on December 11, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

pictureupdate

Hey!

I haven’t done one of these updates in quite awhile, so I have a TON of pictures to share with you guys. It’s almost 50 pictures, so be prepared. 😛 I’m just going to jump right into it!

My sister (Stephanie), Andy, and I went to this Renaissance festival called Camelot Days that we have here two weekends in November. It was an okay time. I felt like other years were a lot better than this year was. I didn’t take a ton of pictures while I was there, but these above are the ones that I did take.

My mom making homemade noodles for Thanksgiving! 😀 She made SO MUCH food! Thanksgiving was really great. Lots of food and some family friends came to our Thanksgiving too.

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My younger sister Stephanie and I made Christmas cookies for Thanksgiving too. We started off really good with them, but then we were just over it from spending so long making them that you can tell with the cookies when it started to go downhill for us HAH. They all tasted good though. 😛

A bunch of us sitting on my mom’s sofa waiting for all the food to be done. We were watching the dog show that they have on every Thanksgiving. We were also switching between that and the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. Right picture is DINNER! That was only one of my plates. There was so much food and I couldn’t fit everything on one plate, haha.

Speaking of Christmas, I got some pretty awesome wrapping paper from Target this year. SHARKS! SKULLS! YETIS! FLAMINGOS! SANTA BEARDS! 😛 I also go Home Alone 2 (my favorite one) for only $9 at Target on Black Friday. I can’t wait to watch that this week.

I’m not having a full size Christmas tree this year, but this is my mini Christmas tree that I have on my dining table. The cats already messed it up though, lol. But it was good for about a couple days.

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Stockings hung! I moved my desk to the living room, so it was right under this wall, so it was kind of hard to reach over my computer to get to the wall (LOL), so they all kind of went crooked and downhill. My sister is moving back here and going to be living with us, so I didn’t want to forget her and got her stocking up too. She’s the top. My stocking is Santa, Andy’s is the reindeer, and then of course the other stockings are for our furbabies (three cats & a dog).

Speaking of cats, here they are! Leaf (left picture), October (top right), ColbyJack (bottom right).

I can’t forget my boy, Dax! We took him to the groomer a couple weeks ago to get his haircut. His hair was getting out of control.

A couple weeks ago my sister Stephanie, my nephew, and I went to the park to go Pokemon hunting. I took my camera with and got a few pictures. Middle two are pictures of my nephew. The bottom left is a picture of my sister.

A couple different sunset pictures from the nights I went to the gym. You guys already know how obsessed I am with taking pictures of the sky. It’s the first thing I do whenever I step outside. See if the sky is picture worthy, it usually always is. 😛

Some random pictures I took at the park over the weekend. It was Andy’s work holiday party (HOLY ANXIETY) and I went with him. It was kind of awkward, because well..I’m socially awkward and I don’t do good with small talk or social gatherings, lol. It was okay though. It wasn’t a horrible time and the food was good. There was also a ton of cookies and I love cookies. First picture is when we first got there. That’s Andy walking in the first picture. Second picture is when we were leaving the party and the sun was starting to set.

Some random pictures. Left one is of little Leaf laying on me. She was totally hugging me and it was the cutest. Right picture is just a random picture I took because I really loved my cacti shirt, lol.

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Another random sky picture that I am obsessed with.

So Andy and I kind of sucked with Christmas this year by deciding to give each other our big presents (the expensive ones) that we got each other, lol. He got me a new zoom lens for my Nikon D3400, which I was so stoked about. Check out the size difference! The zoom lens is on my camera and the lens that is next to it is the original lens that it comes with.

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I’m so used to my original lens being able to auto-focus, but this zoom lens that I got doesn’t auto-focus, so it’s going to take me some time to get used to focusing the shots myself. It’ll be fun though. I haven’t had the chance to use it very much yet, but I did take this picture that I thought came out really nice.

We all decorated the tree outside of the house a few nights ago. Totally looks a mess, haha. 😛 Very Charlie Brown-ish. It’s still cute in it’s own way. First picture is the three. Top right is one of the ornaments on the tree, and the bottom right is just an out of focus picture of the lights (bokeh). I like taking out of focus pictures of Christmas lights.

That’s all the pictures that I have. Feel free to follow me on Instagram (heyyitsashley) if you want to. Some of these have been posted there already in the last month or two. Others haven’t made it there yet. The next couple of weeks I’ll be pretty busy, so not sure how active I will be on here. Seems to always happen around the holidays though.

In case you missed it;
December TBR.
Wrap Up|| November.
Book Haul|| November.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleychristmas

Posted on November 23, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

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“maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” ♡

Random|| Reading & Life Update.

Posted on November 9, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Hey!

It’s been a week since my last update, I guess I just haven’t really had anything to write about. My last post was my November TBR, which I will link at the end of this post. Surprisingly, I’ve been really sticking to that TBR and was able to read three books from it and now on my fourth book. I believe there was seven books on my list, so I think I might actually be able to read them all this month! I flew three books in one weekend. I’ll start with my reading update first and move on to some pictures.

What did I read?

I read The Poet X, And the Ocean Was Our Sky, and Speak: The Graphic Novel. It was actually pretty easy to fly through these in one weekend since one is written in verse (The Poet X), one is only about 150 pages and has illustrations (And the Ocean Was Our Sky) and one was a graphic novel (Speak). Overall, I enjoyed all three of these books.

What am I currently reading?

I am currently reading People Kill People and The Perfect Friend. I’m about halfway through People Kill People and it’s okay. I’m not really that blown away with it and sometimes it’s a bit boring. I hope it picks up. It’s half told in verse. I am also reading The Perfect Friend, which I should be finished with it today. I don’t have very much left of it. It’s pretty interesting, but it’s also probably going to end up being three stars. I like it, but it’s also kind of boring at times too.

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Now onto some pictures that I’ve taken recently and a little about whatever is going on in my life. Some of these haven’t been posted to Instagram yet, but will eventually make there way there. 😛 Feel free to follow me on Instagram (Instagram: heyyitsashley)!

A random selfie from Halloween. I wore my Harry Potter style glasses that day to work and also my Hogwarts/Harry Potter Halloween shirt. On Halloween I mentioned how I was taking my niece and nephew trick-or-treating with my sister. I sadly didn’t get any pictures of them in their costumes, but I took a few videos. They both had light up masks, which I felt would come off better in video than picture haha. They had fun and got a lot of candy. They didn’t want to stay out long, but I was fine with that because I didn’t really want to be out, to be honest. We walked by one house and they had this big lighthouse in their backyard and it lit up! I told Andy (he was with us) that when we get a house I want one in my yard, haha. I love lighthouses and this was so neat!

There was another night (the weekend before Halloween) where our city was having a little Halloween block party type event, so we all went walking around there too. I got a few nice pictures. It was really crowded and I don’t like crowded events anymore (not with all of these random shootings happening so often now). So I was glad we didn’t have to stay too long. My niece didn’t really feel like being there that long. We probably stayed like an hour. Anyway, here are the pictures that I took.

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First picture is a picture of the cat ears my sister was wearing. I thought it would be a cool picture with all the tall buildings behind her. The second picture is of the sun setting in the car. My mom was driving and my sister in the passenger seat. I think it came out really cool. Third picture is the sunset once we got out of the car. Fourth picture is a building and I like the reflection on the building since they are glass/mirrored windows. Fifth picture is stringed lights they had up at the event. Sixth picture is of some candy apples I seen in the window of the bakery we walked by. They look so good!

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I went to Five Below over the weekend and they had some Christmas decor out, so I picked up this throw blanket and pillow for $5 each. I was so stoked when I seen them! I really need to go through all our packed boxes and see if I can find the rest of my Christmas decorations. I don’t care that it’s only November and it hasn’t been Thanksgiving yet. I like to decorate for Christmas early, judge all you want. 😛

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I also got a mini Christmas tree for my dining room table and some little ornaments to go with it at Five Below. I haven’t put the ornaments on yet and not sure when I will. I don’t see this tree lasting long with three cats, lol. ColbyJack is already curious about it, so just wait until those ornaments go up. And speaking of cats…

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The weather actually got a little cooler during the morning last weekend, so we opened up our windows. The cats loved it and spent most of the time sitting on the windowsill in my bedroom. I love these three so much. Left is October, middle is Leaf, and right is ColbyJack.

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And a few other pictures of the furbabies. First picture is Dax. He was super stoked about playing with this Christmas toy, lol. I think he’s ready for Christmas too? He needs a haircut, haha. Middle is October and I love that she was with the Halloween decorations. The picture gives up hella spooky vibes with her coloring. She fits in perfectly. This was before she decided to knock over all of my decorations. UGH. And the last picture is of Leaf. I’ve been working at home on Fridays and sometimes she jumps up on my desk and decides it’s fun to take a nap when I’m trying to work, lol. It’s not always easy to work around her. Last week she decided she would use my mouse as a pillow.

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Another sunset picture from the other day. I take a lot of pictures of the sky. It’s one of my favorite things. It is always changing, which I love. Every day it can be something different, which is really cool.

This weekend I think the whole family is going to go see the new Grinch movie. My mom really wants to go and the previews look good. If my younger sister comes down to visit again this weekend, I might see if she wants to go to the Renaissance festival (Camelot Days). They have it two weekends in November every year, so it’s this weekend and next. I want to go, but also I’m so paranoid about events with big crowds now, UGHH. I guess we’ll see what happens.

What are you currently reading? What have you recently finished reading? Do you have any plans for the weekend?

In case you missed it;
Unofficial November TBR.
Wrap Up|| October.
Book Haul|| October.

I hope you have a great day and weekend!

ashleyblack

Travel|| Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse & Museum.

Posted on October 24, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

travel

Hey!

Andy and I decided to go check out the lighthouse in Jupiter on Saturday, which was a really fun time. Continue reading to see some of the pictures that I took while we were there.

I didn’t really get any pictures of the museum/inside the museum. I wasn’t sure if you were allowed to take pictures in there or not, so I decided not to. The museum was actually a World War II naval housing building that they turned into a museum. It had different things in the museum from World War II and information about the area. It was really neat and interesting.

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This is the Tindall Pioneer house. It was built in 1892! Again, I didn’t take pictures inside the house because I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to or not. It was really neat inside though. They recreated the rooms.

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This was the outhouse next to the Tindall House. I really liked the moon carved into the door, which is why I took a picture. LOL. We also came across this bell while we continued on the path to the lighthouse. I wish I would have gotten more pictures of things along the way to the lighthouse, but I was more enjoying everything I was seeing than taking pictures. Once the lighthouse came into view though, that was an entirely different story. HAHA. I couldn’t help but take so many pictures of it.

Above is a sign in front of the lighthouse with a little information about it. I thought it was really neat.

And here’s part of the lighthouse! I’ll have a few other pictures of the lighthouse below, but this is a small glimpse of it as we are walking up.

and almost died. 😛 They weren’t lying when they said the climb was strenuous. My legs were killing me the next day and still are. I am glad that I did though, because the views were pretty amazing around the lighthouse.

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Here are some more pictures of the lighthouse! I read online that it wasn’t originally painted red. It was seriously so beautiful though and pretty tall. It was 34 stairs to the base of the lighthouse and then 105 stairs to climb inside of the lighthouse.

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These last two are hands down my favorite pictures that I took. I wanted a picture of the plants, but also with the lighthouse in the background. I think they came out pretty perfect.

Here’s a picture of Andy with the lighthouse in the background. The red brick path was neat too. I wish I took a picture of it. You can donate to them/buy a brick and get your name or any message written on one of the bricks. So the entire walk up to the lighthouse were different names and messages.

This is a random picture I took on the stairs of the lighthouse. First picture is looking up and the second picture is looking down. I really love how these pictures came out.

Next weekend we are hoping to go check out the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach. I am so stoked for that! I seen a few pictures of it and it looks amazing. I feel like it might be an all day thing, because it looked like there were a ton of things to see and do there.

In case you missed it;
Thoughts|| Dear Evan Hansen.
Photo A Day|| October 11-17.
Random|| Picture Update.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyhalloween

Photo A Day|| October 11-17.

Posted on October 19, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

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Hey!

I’ve been taking part in monthly photo a day challenges on my Instagram account (heyyitsashley) and I’ve been having a lot of fun with them (when I don’t fall behind on pictures). I figured I would also cross post them to my blog as well. I think for the purpose of blogging, I will post 3-6 per blog post that I do throughout the month. That way I am not spamming my blog with a photo a day post every single day. You can follow me on Instagram (linked above) if you want to see them daily though! Some of these pictures will be taken with my Nikon cameras (CoolPix & D3400). There will also be some taken with my iPhone X.

October 11th-17th

There’s only five pictures, because I actually skipped a couple days this week. I skipped “baby blue” and “chocolate”. I didn’t have any old pictures that fit the category and I didn’t have any inspiration or things to take pictures of that fit them either for new pictures.

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Instagram Caption: i am obsessed with the way the grass is growing through the cracks of the cement.🖤 || photo a day • black.
Camera: iPhone X

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Instagram Caption: “appreciate this moment. stop and look around you. be thankful for all you have and where you are because this time next year, nothing will be the same.” ♡ || photo a day • fave colour.
Camera: Nikon D3400

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Instagram Caption: 🍄🍄🍄 || photo a day • natural.
Camera: Nikon D3400

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Instagram Caption: throwback from when i was in lake placid in july. i was obsessed with how pretty these were. 🌾💕 || photo a day • baby pink.
Camera: Nikon D3400

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Instagram Caption: “don’t leave my light on, you’ll burn out the bulb and then i’ll have to buy another; it’s not like we can’t talk to each other.” 🎵🖤 || photo a day • light.
Camera: iPhone X

In case you missed it;
Random|| Picture Update.
Photo A Day|| October 6-10.
Blog Tour/Thoughts|| The No-Good Nine.

I hope you have a great day and weekend!

ashleyhalloween

Photo A Day|| October 6-10.

Posted on October 12, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

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Hey!

October 6th-10th

Instagram Caption: best buds ♡ || photo a day • purple.
Camera: iPhone

We went to visit Andy’s parents over the weekend and we took our pup Dax with us. His favorite thing was looking out the window. He’s in the back of the picture looking out the window and Digby (his parents’ dog) is in front looking out the window too.

Instagram Caption: b u t t e r f l y 🦋🧡 || photo a day • orange.
Camera: Nikon CoolPix

Instagram Caption: whatever forever ♡ || photo a day • aqua.
Camera: Nikon D3400

I love this bracelet so much. I am happy that I had it made. “whatever forever” is from one of my favorite songs. It’s from a song called Rock Bottom by Modern Baseball, which I am obsessed with. “I’ve got so much to do, but it’s okay cause whatever, forever.” I live my life by this a lot, lol.

Instagram Caption: ⛵️🏢🌊🖤 || photo a day • grey.
Camera: Nikon D3400

Instagram Caption: 👻💀 || photo a day • white.
Camera: Nikon D3400

In case you missed it;
Blog Tour/Thoughts|| The No-Good Nine.
WWW Wednesday #55.
Thoughts|| I Will Find You.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyhalloween

Photo A Day|| October 1-5.

Posted on October 5, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

photoaday1

Hey!

I haven’t done this post in awhile, because I took a break from the photo challenges on Instagram for a few months. I decided to attempt the October challenge, because the topics are mostly colors. In case you forgot what my photo a day challenge posts are; I’ve been taking part in monthly photo a day challenges on my Instagram account (heyyitsashley) and I’ve been having a lot of fun with them (when I don’t fall behind on pictures). I figured I would also cross post them to my blog as well. I think for the purpose of blogging, I will post 3-6 per blog post that I do throughout the month. That way I am not spamming my blog with a photo a day post every single day. You can follow me on Instagram (linked above) if you want to see them daily though! Some of these pictures will be taken with my Nikon cameras (CoolPix & D3400). There will also be some taken with my iPhone X.

October 1st-5th

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Instagram Caption: 💛🖤 || photo a day • yellow.
Camera: Nikon D3400

Instagram Caption: 🍍💕 || photo a day • pink.
Camera: iPhone X

Instagram Caption: 💙💙 || photo a day • blue.
Camera: Nikon D3400

Instagram Caption: 🌵🌵💚 || photo a day • green.
Camera: Nikon D3400

Instagram Caption: ❤️❤️ || photo a day • red.
Camera: Nikon D3400

It’s also been awhile since I’ve done a regular picture/life update post, so I will be doing one of those at some point next week (hopefully), so be on the look out for that. I also hope to have a couple reviews coming next week as well. The hubby and I are off to visit his parents for the weekend after work, so that should be fun. Since they live about 2.5-3 hours away, it’ll hopefully give me a little bit of time to catch up on reading. I am currently in the middle of four books….UGHH, I hate doing this. My main focus is on two of them though, The No-Good Nine and Baby Teeth. The other two I will finish after these two.

In case you missed it;
Book Haul|| September.
Unofficial Halloweenie TBR.
Wrap Up || September.

I hope you have a great day and weekend!

ashleyhalloween

Travel || Road Trip to Illinois.

Posted on September 12, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

travel

Hey!

Over the weekend I went on a weekend road trip to Illinois for my one of cousin’s wedding. It was my mom, my niece, my cousin Scotty, his wife, their daughter, and me. Scotty’s brother was getting married. The drive is about eighteen hours. I live in Florida and Illinois is a ways away! The drive there wasn’t too bad and seemed to go pretty quickly. I think we only had to stop a few times to get gas and some food. A lot of the family on my mom’s side lives in Illinois and it’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen most of them. Years and years!

Top left picture is Atlanta, GA at 3am. That’s when we drove through. Top right is sunrise in Kentucky. Bottom is the start of the sunrise in Tennessee. Tennessee sunrise came first and Kentucky a little while later. We drove through all three places. We started the trip at 5pm Thursday, so we drove through most of the states at night, so I couldn’t get a lot of cool pictures (especially of Tennessee) until on the way home, which I will be posting later in this post because I took so many cool mountain pictures!

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Another sunset picture below from either Tennessee or Kentucky. I don’t remember exactly where I took it, but it was one of those places on the way there. I love this picture.

On Friday when we got to Illinois, we went to another cousin’s house to change clothes and then head out to my aunt’s house to visit with them for a little while. It was nice seeing them, because it’s been years since I’ve seen them.

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This is a grain elevator right next to her house. It stores crops for farmers.

After hanging out there for a little bit, we decided to go to my cousin’s house that is getting married to help decorate for their wedding the next day (Saturday). He lives on a farm, so we got to check out some animals (cows, pigs, chickens, ducks). I didn’t take any pictures of the chickens or ducks, but I did get some pictures of the pigs and cows! First though, here is some of the wedding decorations that they had. My cousin built the arch, which was really neat.

Now onto all the animals! There were some baby pigs too, which they were all hiding so we couldn’t see them all. My cousin did get into the pig pen and get one out though. It was a little difficult since the mom pig was chasing him around, lol. There were so many cows on the farm. All different sizes and colors. There were some pigs that were sharing space with some of the cows too.

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This is probably my favorite picture that I took of the cows. I just really like the way that it looks. There were also tons and tons of corn and other crops on the farm as well, so I took pictures of those too.

After helping out there and taking a ton of pictures, my cousin/bestie Tammy, my mom, niece, and I went to get something to eat before heading to my brother’s house where we were staying. Tammy and I went to Walmart, so I could get some new shoes since my other ones got so muddy with all the rain/mud on the farm. I ended up not even bothering with wearing my new shoes, because I knew they would end up getting muddy too. But I had them for the ride home at least. Saturday, my mom, niece, and I got up early and dressed for the day then went to get breakfast.

Left picture is Tammy and I messing around with all the masks at Walmart. Right picture is what I wore to the wedding. I was originally not going to wear my black tights, but it was raining and cold so I ended up going into the Denny’s bathroom and putting them on. I’m glad I decided to at least carry them in my purse with me, lol! The wedding turned out nice even though it rained. I got super muddy (my shoes and some of my tights) when we went to the barn early to help setup and fix things up since the barn got a little bit of rain in it, so we had to come up with a new idea. But it turned out nice. I didn’t get a ton of pictures besides a few that I took of the ceremony for my cousin and his new wife. Below is just a picture of my niece, me, and Tammy. We decided to take a picture of our muddy shoes, lol.

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On Saturday night after the wedding, I went out to eat with Tammy and her boyfriend. That was a good time. I never met her boyfriend before and he seemed pretty cool and nice. After dinner I went back to my brother’s house and went straight to sleep. Had to get up early Sunday to get ready to leave. So we went to pickup my cousin Scotty and his family and then went to say bye to everyone. After that we headed for home!

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Now for all the awesome pictures I took of the mountains in Tennessee. You have to actually drive up mountains to get to where we needed to go. On the way to Illinois we went through the mountains at night, so we couldn’t really see anything. On the way home though, it was daytime, so we got to see everything. We even decided to go to Lookout Mountain and drive to the top of that. Lookout Mountain is kind of a touristy type place, because it has Ruby Falls and Rock City, but we didn’t do those tours. We just drove to the top ourselves and looked around. It’s really cool though, because it’s like it’s own little community up there. They have parks, stores, even a Starbucks (LOL), etc. I guess it’s helpful for the people that live on the mountain, so they don’t have to drive up and down it every single day. Some of the street names were neat too, like Cinderella and Red Riding Hood. Even their pharmacy was called Fairyland Pharmacy.

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The next set of pictures are of some flowers that I seen around Lookout Mountain when we were walking around the mountain.

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The ride home felt like forever, but I think that was just because we were all anxious to get home after being in a car for so long. All in all, the trip ended up being pretty fun and I got to take so many awesome pictures. See some cool things that I haven’t seen in years and visit with family that I haven’t seen in years. 😀

I brought with me a ton of reading material (two physical books and my Kindle filled with 100+ books downloaded), but I couldn’t focus on reading while in the car on the way there or back. It’s usually easy for me to read in the car, but for some reason not this time. I was hoping to at least read two books, but I ended up only reading 40% of one book the entire trip. Hopefully I can catch up on some reading this week. I’ll also catch up with your posts tomorrow or Friday and reply to comments.

In case you missed it;
Wrap Up|| August.
Book Haul|| August.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Random|| Picture & Reading Update.

Posted on August 15, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Hey!

This won’t have a ton of pictures like usual, because I haven’t really been taking very many pictures these days. But I do have a few of neat ones from the weekend and some pictures that I found on my old camera. Also a desk tour, because why not? lol. I am skipping my usual WWW Wednesday post, so I can post this instead. I’ll put a little reading update at the end of this post though. First though….food, as always. 😛

The hubby finished school last week and to celebrate we went out for pizza and fried ravioli at our new favorite Italian restaurant. I usually always get the BBQ chicken pizza and he usually always gets the buffalo chicken pizza. It’s so good and it passes the cold pizza test. Their fried ravioli is so freaking good, so we have to get it every single time we go. I’m already craving them again and it’s only been six days since I had them. 😛

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The Umbrella Sky Project was happening in Miami, so the hubby and I decided to go check it out. It original started in Portugal for an art festival, but then other cities around the world started to do it. Basically during the hot summer months they’ll string a bunch of umbrellas up as shade for people. They’ll be taking them down in September, so I wanted to go see it before that happens. It was really neat and pretty. A guy that lives over there told us that when they first put the umbrellas up they were a lot more colorful and brighter, but the colors started to fade. I still think they look really neat though. Below are some more pictures of it.

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I set up my desk area our apartment. I really like how it came out. I’ve been neglecting finishing up my school stuff (sigh), but I am hoping now that I have my desk all setup, it’ll motivate me to finally finish it. I’m kind of close to being finished with all the work. I am hoping to have it finish by the end of next month.

On the left I have some notebooks and school book, one basket with post-its and page flags, one with sharpie markers, desk organizer that just has random things in it that I need to clean out. A box that has note cards in it, because I have an obsession with buying all of Target’s dollar bin note cards. A cork board (and dry erase board behind it) that I need to hang up, a stack of books that I hope to read soon. A cat mug, some candles, a Stranger Things coaster, my butterbeer mug from Harry Potter World that is being used as a pencil/pen holder. Some paper clips (I have some others that are currently MIA right now and I am annoyed that I can’t find them), armadillo lamp, my laptop, my desktop computer, some random faux succulent plants, and my TARDIS Funko Pop. Hanging on the wall I have a Sherlock print, Supernatural print, and a Doctor Who print. At the time of this picture the hubby hung them up crooked but I have since fixed them because it was bugging me LOL. Under my desk I have some baskets with a bunch of miscellaneous things in them.

A couple random pictures. I took this picture the bird on the power lines awhile ago when I first got my Nikon D3400. I actually didn’t like that picture, but then I was going through my memory card again to delete pictures and I decided to transfer it to my phone anyway and I ended up really loving it, lol. I found my “whatever forever” bracelet and perfect timing, because I need to live this like I used to. I’m letting stresses of life affect me way too much lately and I hate it because I was never like this. I started to wear it every day again as I reminder.

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The sunset from Friday night. It was storming really bad, but once the storm was over the sky looked like this. I love the shades of orange. It was really pretty and I of course had to get a picture of it. I’ve said it a million times, I am sucker for the sunset.

I found my old digital camera that I bought back in 2016 for our California trip and there were still pictures from California on it. These four a pictures that I took when we went to Monterey Bay, California. Such a pretty town! I definitely want to go back to California again.

Random selfie from Friday. The picture on the right is Leaf and I watching Pocahontas. Funny story, so I was talking to Leaf (because I always talk to my furbabies, lol) and I was listing all the shows on Netflix that we should watch. Secretly hoping she would answer back and pick one, because you know…maybe cats can truly talk? 😛 Eventually she got bored with me and ran off, so I chose Pocahontas. Then she comes back and I say to her “oh, you came to watch Pocahontas with me! You’re in for a real treat.”, haha. Crazy cat lady….for damn sure.

Here is my mini reading update. I usually do a WWW Wednesday post on most Wednesdays, but I really wanted to post this little picture update, so I am including a mini WWW Wednesday down below.

Currently Reading: Ghosted by Rosie Walsh. So far it’s pretty interesting. I’m not too far into it, but I like it so far. It’s one of my most anticipated reads of the year, so I am hoping it’s amazing.

Recently Finished: #MurderTrending and Florida. #MurderTrending was so good! You can check out my review linked below. Florida was just okay. It wasn’t anything too exciting. It wasn’t what I expected it to be.

Reading Next: I am hoping to read All Your Perfects next! I am so stoked to read the new Colleen Hoover book. Hopefully I can start that at some point this week or definitely next week if not. I am EXCITED!

In case you missed it;
Thoughts|| #MurderTrending.
Travel|| Lake Placid, FL.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Travel|| Lake Placid, FL.

Posted on August 3, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

travel

Hey!

Over the weekend my mom and I went to Lake Placid to help my cousin move into her new house. We went on a Friday and stayed until Sunday morning. I was able to leave early from work Friday, which was nice. My mom picked me up from work and we hit the road.

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Scary rain clouds! It rained almost the entire time on the way there. It was off and on. It was kind of amusing, because we would be driving it crazy rain and then a few minutes later it was gone. It did that the entire 1.5 hours to Moore Haven (where her old house is and where we were meeting up with her and her husband). That’s Florida for you! It’s always like that. It can be pouring rain on one side of the street and the other it can be sunny af. While waiting for my cousin to get there, I swung on the swings across the street from their house. It helped to past the time and I love swings.

When they got there we loaded up my mom’s car and their car. We only did one trip since it’s 30-40 minutes from their new house and because it was about to rain again. The next day (Saturday) was going to be the big moving day where we filled up the cars and the U-Haul. Once we got back to her house she gave us a tour of her house and we just ate and helped unpack the boxes we brought. When it stopped raining I went outside to take some pictures. There was a rainbow over the top of her house, which was awesome.

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Below: I’m not entire sure what these plants are, but they were really pretty so I got a couple different pictures of them.

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And you know me, I had to take a picture of the pretty sunset. I wish the weather wasn’t so crappy, because I would have went down to the lake to take pictures of the sunset there and same with the sunrise. I wish I would have went down to the lake for that, but I did get a few good pictures of the sunrise from their balcony on Saturday morning.

We spent the entire morning packing up the U-Haul in Moore Haven and then we spent the rest of the day unpacking the U-Haul and getting the boxes and furniture inside the house. We also took breaks to set up her son’s playroom. We were all tired, so we didn’t even attempt to unpack any of their boxes. Instead we ordered massive amounts of Chinese food, which was even better than unpacking boxes. Haha. My mom and I got up early to go back home. Before we left we stopped off at the lake to take pictures. Then we also stopped at the grocery store and walked across the street to another area of the huge lake to take more pictures. Here are all the lake pictures that I took and more of those plants that I loved, lol.

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Funny story about this mushroom. So we were walking around the grass and I spotted it and I got so excited about taking a picture of it. You can see in the first picture that there was grass in front of it. I went to move the grass to get a picture of it without the grass in front and I accidentally touched it and I start freaking out.

Me: oh my god!
Mom: what?
Me: i accidentally touched it. am i going to die?
Mom: *laughing* no, you’re not going to die.
Me: some mushrooms are poisonous.

And then the entire two hour car ride back home I kept saying “I can’t believe I touched the mushroom.” and kept asking my mom if she was sure I wasn’t going to die, LOL. Clearly I didn’t die. HEYYYY! 😛

Oh, and here is a picture of their new dog Stella. I’ve met her before, but never longer than an hour. She LOVED me though. She was always laying next to me or wanting me to pet her. I swear, all animals love me. So strange, but I am not complaining. Haha.

And that pretty much concludes my post about Lake Placid. We didn’t get to do a whole lot while actually there since we were just there to help my cousin move. Now that she lives there though, I will definitely need to go take a weekend and stay with her and actually roam around Lake Placid and do things. From what I did get to see, it seems like a really nice and pretty town. Feel free to follow me on Instagram (heyyitsashley)! A lot of these haven’t been posted on my Instagram yet, so you’re seeing them first! 🙂

In case you missed it;
Book Tag|| Meme Book Tag.
Top Ten Tuesday|| Popular Books that Lived Up to the Hype.
Wrap Up|| July.

I hope you have a great day and weekend!

ashleyblack

Random|| Picture Update.

Posted on July 26, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

pictureupdate

Hey!

I haven’t updated since last Friday, ahhh. I’ve been meaning to, but have just been really busy and pretty stressed about things. My sister was in the hospital for a week and that ended up being such a disaster (hospital’s fault). She’s finally home though and recovering, so that’s good. We’ve also been busy packing, but another post on this another time.

These are some random hospital views from my sister’s hospital room and from another room in the hospital. Hospital food is gross, by the way. We had to eat dinner there once. I will say though, they had some pretty amazing french fries. The other food I got wasn’t the greatest.

Pictures of my niece (Grace) and my nephew (Jackson). I spent a lot of time keeping an eye on them while their mom was in the hospital. One night I cooked them dinner; grilled cheese, simple, right? WRONG. It’s not surprise that I don’t know how to cook, but apparently I can’t even cook a grilled cheese. By time I got to making the third and forth one, they were burning. I even burnt the pan so bad and burned the shape of the bread into the pan LMAO. The burn still won’t come out of the pan. Haha. They still tasted good though. That’s all the matters? 😛

We have a bird feeder (left) hanging over an empty pot that has some dirt in it. Well thanks to all the little birdies that eat from the feeder, we now have this random sunflower growing. It actually already bloomed, but I haven’t had the chance to take a picture yet. Pretty neat! It also looks like we might have some wheat growing in the pot too, lol!

Random things with the hubby. We went to Target to get some containers for my books and they put in a new Harry Potter section at the store. We were walking through the store and also seen a random Sorting Hat photo prop. I made him take a picture, lol. He’s taken the test on Pottermore a couple years ago and got sorted into Hufflepuff. We also got shaved ice from that new place that opened up near us. I talked about it in my last picture update. It’s so good!

Random pictures of Leaf and Dax. I don’t have any new pictures of October and Colby right now. Actually quite a surprise, because I am forever taking pictures of my furbabies, haha.

Shark Week started last Sunday, so it was fitting I wear my shark shirt. I LOVE sharks and I LOVE Shark Week. I’ve been so busy this week though and haven’t had the chance to watch all the new Shark Week shows. I am hoping I get some time soon, because I have A LOT of them. They usually do like 2-3 new shows a night and it’s for six nights I believe. So that’s a lot of shows I need to catch up on. I’ve recorded them all to my DVR though, so that’s good. And a random selfie.

La luna y la estrella ♡ I got this really neat picture on my iPhone of the moon and a star right next to it! I thought it was really cool. I tried with my camera, but it just wasn’t working out for me, so I decided to just get this shot with my phone.

A new BBQ restaurant opened up down the street from our house. Like it’s literally at the end of our street. So my mom and I finally decided to check it out. Since it’s right down the street, we decided to walk there. On the way home I seen this bush with these little yellow flowers and thought it was really pretty. Yesterday after work I seen this spiked caterpillar on a plant as I was leaving.

A random sunset picture. I was also trying to mess around with the manual mode on my D3400 again. I still have yet to master it. I just haven’t had the time to really do much with it. Hopefully that changes soon. Anyway, I got these really pretty pictures of the sky and silhouetted trees.

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Another sunset picture, because you guys know I live for taking pictures of the sky/sunsets/sunrises. This was on our way from having dinner with the hubby’s parents when they flew back in from vacation. It was raining, but it made this picture pretty amazing. I focused on the raindrops instead of the sky and I love how it turned out. I used my phone for this one.

I created a page on my blog arcs/review books. It’s going to be home to all of the books that I have been sent by publishers and authors. I mentioned how I wanted to create a blog post for it, but I decided to do it as a page instead. That way I can update it throughout the year and then when a new year rolls around, I can clear it and start again with a new year of review books. It’s linked above, so feel free to check it out! Hopefully it’ll also keep me on top of my reviews and books. I have been really busy this year though, so I fell a bit behind. I am still hoping to read them all this year if I can. If not, I will still get to them ASAP!

Tomorrow I am going to Lake Placid to help my cousin move. Her and her husband just bought a house and they finally closed on it earlier this week. My mom and I are going after I get off work and staying until at least Saturday night, possibly even until Sunday. I am excited to go, because a new place to take pictures, lol. Anyway, that’s all for this post! I will hopefully catch up with your posts later today or tomorrow. 🙂

In case you missed it;
Friday Finds #74.
Book Tag||My Blog’s Name in Books.

I hope you have a great day!

ashleyblack

Random|| Picture Update.

Posted on July 9, 2018 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Hey!

It’s been almost three months since I’ve done one of these posts and I don’t even know where to begin with it. I don’t remember what I have and haven’t posted already. So there may be a few repeats. I love posting these type of posts and my pictures, but when I go so long without doing one then I have no clue where to begin again, ahhh. 😛 Warning this is probably going to be REALLY picture heavy, because there’s probably 60+ pictures.

Feel free to follow me on Instagram (heyyitsashley)! A lot of these haven’t been posted on my Instagram yet, so you’re seeing them first! Eventually they’ll make their way on there. I take so many pictures and don’t want to post a million at one time, so I hoard pictures to post later, lol. Anyway, onto my pictures!

Let’s start with FOOD, because food is amazing. 😛

I stumbled upon this restaurant called “I Heart Mac & Cheese” and holy crap I was in heaven. I needed to go their, ASAP! Last week the hubby’s parents came down to visit and they took us there and it was great. I got the pulled pork mac & cheese. SO MUCH CHEEEEESE!

Recently the hubby and I tried a new pizza place (it’s amazing and we’ve already gone twice in like a week and a half) and we also tried a new burger place that was really great too. The burger place is called BurgerFi and the pizza place was called D’Salvos.

This new shaved ice place opened up down the street so we tried it out for my aunt’s birthday. It was really good. They sell alcoholic drinks in kind of shaved ice form and they were good. No picture of the drink, but I do got a picture of the shaved ice we got too. Also, their interior decor is amazing. One wall is painted like the ocean/sky. The ceiling has lights that are printed with clouds on them. The floor is like the ocean. And the table is sea glass. I accidentally deleted my picture of the floor. They also have a chalkboard wall so you can write/draw on it.

The shaved ice is blueberry. It’s sitting on the shaved ice table. The ocean/sky scene in the background is one of their walls. Below is my mom writing on their chalkboard wall and the top right corner is their sky/cloud lighting. SO COOL! 🙂

Alright, moving right along. Onto, furbabies!

A year ago yesterday my little Leaf turned one (well technically she turned one in June, but I got her in July so that’s her new birthday). I tried so hard for days to get pictures of her in the birthday hat, but she just wasn’t having it. So I got pictures of her eating the birthday hat instead? They are all still pretty cute pictures though. I am so stoked we decided to keep her. We love her so much.

We’ve been dogsitting the hubby’s parents’ dog and Leaf and Digby love each other so much. It’s cute. They’ve been playing so much together to. 😀 Here is another picture of Digby, because I have a problem with taking pictures of animals. 😛

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My four! Dax, Leaf, October, ColbyJack.

And some pictures of them loving each other.