Random|| Life Update.

Posted on September 18, 2020 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

Hey!

This is just a random little life update, because I don’t have any book related posts that I want to write right now and it’s been a while since I’ve done a post like this. Sorry in advance if this post is all over the place and completely random.

So, for the last two or three years I haven’t been counting audiobooks toward my Goodreads challenge goal, because I wanted to challenge myself to see how many books that I could read on my own. I had that goal at the start of 2020 too, BUT…you guys already know this has been a crazy damn year! With that being said, I decided that I would start counting audiobooks toward my reading challenge for this year. The thought of not completing my Goodreads challenge would have just brought me down even more than I am already feeling. Since I decided to do that, I am only 1 or 2 books behind schedule and I’m sure I’ll be caught up soon! I’ve been listening to books while I do my diamond paintings and it’s been nice! Below is the most recent diamond painting I completed. Also, check out this new blood spatter bookmark I got from The Bookables on Etsy! It gives me so many Dexter vibes.

I got back into playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons more. Currently, I have been working on redoing the interior of my house and making it more homey. I’ve focused a lot of my main room and my basement. Next up will probably be the bathroom. And then I need to do some serious work on my island itself. I have way too many flowers and they just need to go. I’m not seeing the real potential for my island, because it’s buried under hundreds of dang flowers! It’s a long process getting rid of so many flowers though, which is why I haven’t touched them. But that needs to change A.S.A.P. lol. 😛 Do you play Animal Crossing? Let’s be friends!

The husband and I watched both seasons of Cobra Kai on Netflix and OMG….the feels! We both love The Karate Kid sooo much, especially me. Cobra Kai was AMAZING and I am dying for the third season. I can’t even count how many times I cried or got goosebumps. The episode that made me cry the most was episode five of season one though. I’m talking tears streaming down my face and me yelling that I can’t take this show anymore, LOL. We got so obsessed with Cobra Kai that for the last week we’ve been going around the house pretending to do karate moves on each other when we pass by each other.

I put up some Halloween decorations around my house! I still need like A LOT more, but I am happy with the little bit of Halloween touch I’ve been adding around the house. I also put out a jar of my favorite Halloween candy, because I love them so much and also because it makes for a good Halloween decoration as well….as long as I don’t eat them all lol. 😛

Speaking of Halloween, I’m in the process of creating my Halloweenie TBR that I do every year. I like to try to read as many spooky/Halloween vibe books throughout October. I’m not entirely sure what books I will be adding to the list yet, but we’ll see how that goes. I am excited to go through my bookshelves and my Kindle shelf to see what books I may want to read in October! As long as I can actually read, still battling a reading slump. I have been reading the same book for 18 days and only on page 120, UGH. I guess that’s where audiobooks come in. If I can’t read myself, at least I have them.

I’ve been struggling a lot with anxiety as you already know and maybe even some depression (or sadness if it’s not depression). My sleep schedule has been really bad, which I think I’ve also talked about here. Sometimes I don’t go to sleep until 5 or 6am. I function day to day on only 3-5 hours of sleep a day. This week I’ve been challenging myself to go to sleep by 1am every night and so far I’ve done that. There was one day I even went to sleep at 10pm, so that’s been a good thing. I still can’t seem to get myself out of bed in the mornings, but it’s progress.

Andy and I went on a day trip a couple weekends ago to visit my younger sister, because my mom, older sister, niece, and nephew were going to. We went to this place called the “Shell Factory”. I’ve been there many times in the past since I used to live near there, but haven’t gone in years and years. Some things were okay and other things weren’t that great. I did take some pictures, so here are a few. For the small ones, you can click the image to see a full size version.

These next pictures will just be a bunch of random pictures, furbabies, sunsets, etc. 🙂

Some banana bread and cheesecake that I made recently. 🙂

And with that, I think that’s all I have for this update. I still want to do a picture update from when I went to Illinois for a month in June, so hopefully I’ll finally get around to doing that post. I’ll catch up with your posts and comments over the weekend. 🙂

In case you missed it;
Release Day|| September Releases

I hope you have a great day and weekend!

Posted on April 19, 2020 by ashley @ socially awkward bookworm

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“i’m destined for better things and i’m trying to better me. i’ve been finding better days but i’m finding everything changes.” ♡

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

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|| 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

socially awkward bookworm.

Tag Archives: sunset

Random|| Life Update.

Hey!

“i’m destined for better things and i’m trying to better me. i’ve been finding better days but i’m finding everything changes.” ♡

Random|| Picture Update.

Hey!

Random|| Reading & Life Update.

Hey!

What did I read?

What am I currently reading?

Travel|| Lake Placid, FL.

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Random|| Picture Update.

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