An elf at the craft store!
I can’t wait for our Buddy and Sarah to return. Christopher just rediscovered a forgotten elf at his office that has been through a LOT. I hope we can adopt him.
On my recent outfit I saw this SUPER awesome Yoshi! He is poseable and talks.
But $50! 😦 That’s… a lot. He’s big though.
Squeak helped me make some bandanas today! 🐊🌈✨
Very pretty fabric… ☄️🚀✨🌈⭐️
E.T. and Bluey both have bandanas now, but E.T. still needs his necklace.
Jello, Cookie and Dusty have their bandanas too! 🌈⭐️ They just need to be decorated maybe with a pin or such. 🤔
Of course, Squeak has one now too! He helped, after all.
Yoshi, too, finally has a bandana too. A lot of my stuffies have been waiting a while.
A little later, I also made necklaces for Bowser, my new Giga (Cilantro) and the T. rex I showed off during Mwako’s visit (Curry) and my little purple Trike that I’ve had for over half a year (Grape Jelly). And I did make one for E. T. too. It makes me really happy to make these accessories for my toys, once in a while. 😊
You see… I’m very lucky to have friends now, but when I was a kid, I was truly all alone in that regard for almost my entire childhood. My toys were my friends, to an unhealthy degree. I know I would have put myself in physical danger to protect my toy “friends” when I was a little girl.
They were all I had. As tangible stand-ins for imaginary friends, those toys were the way my young brain coped with deep ostracizing (the lovely result of neurodivergence) and the resulting years of solitude, at least when it came to my peers. That, and books.
These days, while I still have an unhealthy *amount* of toy friends, they thankfully are no longer a replacement for real, human ones. But they are still friends and they still make me so happy. I know it may seem cringy and dumb, but I’m grateful that I never outgrew this.
And, that I have partners and family who don’t care at all if I carry a toy around. Someday I’m going to die, and in the grand scheme of things, eventually over the course of time I’ll be completely forgotten. As will we all. So I will be myself, and be happy, while I’m here, and keep sharing my silly toy stuff with you. It’s more than a bit cringe but I hope it makes you smile.
Hello everyone! Well, this was a wild week to put it very mildly… I ended up not having time to blog at all, so everything is in a single post so I can catch up once and for all.
Starting with last Sunday, we spent the whole weekend actually working on the future room for our friend. This was supposed to be a small, simple job, but due to issues we found we had to strip the paint off the walls, plus we also found holes that need fixing, etc…
The three of us are doing all we can on our own, and our friend even removed all of the popcorn ceiling by himself which was hellish to do and took hours:
But as for the rest, ideally we need to hire someone –and fast. The first quote we got was stupidly high and out of eight leads no one else is getting back to us. We have just a few weeks to complete the room so it’s adding a bit of stress right now for sure, especially because even if we hire someone, we still have to paint it ourselves, install the closet system, etc… hopefully we won’t have to do the whole job ourselves. 😓
Monday was a great day that ended terrible. Like, the worst. 😅 But first, let me get a cute snail photo I took on this day out of the way:
That’s one of my Cuban snails. I’ve grown extremely fond of them. I love the little ridges on their shells, the way they get their bluish bodies so stubby or so long, and how they shake their shells to get things off of them. I also have a few hatchlings of my own now and they are even cuter.
Anyway, as planned over the weekend, Monday evening our friend came over and we left for Kura Sushi in Aventura. This restaurant has a conveyor belt system that we were all very excited to experience. I dressed up a bit and off we went.
Side note, but being in the back seat of the car with my two most special people in the world in front, is probably the Littlest I ever feel. I know I’m not alone in this (there’s so much art in the community of precisely this thing, lol) but being in the back seat just playing with your toys, coloring, or playing video games, while your caretaker/s discuss complicated things you can barely begin to understand so it all goes over your head, is something that gives me and many other Littles the safest, coziest, happiest feeling –bonus points if it’s raining. Even if I’m grouchy, this always makes me feel better.
I brought Ramen Noodle along on that day:
As for the restaurant itself, it was an utterly lovely experience. I really thought this would be a place we would come to again and again. The conveyor belt was really cool:
The top belt (not visible here) brings specific orders to each table. The belt you see above is where food is always rotating and passes by all tables. I tried all sorts of things, both sweet and savory. This milk tart was one of my favorites:
I also tried takoyaki for the first time (didn’t like it very much) sesame balls, and these fried rice thingies which I liked so much, I ordered it twice:
And one of these wonderful things (who knows which?) made me, and only me, very brutally ill. And now none of us wants to go again to play food poisoning roulette with our bodies at this restaurant again. 😞 Even though we loved it so much otherwise. It was such a lovely experience until that happened.
Since now I will go into detail about being sick and it’s gross, you’ve been warned. Skip to Wednesday if you don’t want to read about that.
So actually this started Monday night. Around… 11:30pm. I started getting stomach cramps that felt like I was being simultaneously knifed and kicked in the stomach. This lasted a long time, until my body decided to empty its bowels spectacularly, to the point that there was a non-insignificant amount of blood mixed in.
Here Christopher began to do some research while I just lay on the bedroom floor trying to disassociate from my terrible situation. Since all of my symptoms to that point matched food poisoning that could be waited out at home (even the bit of blood) there was nothing to do but stay hydrated and wait.
In between the nausea, stomach cramps, fever and headache, I did not sleep much. When I did, sometimes it was on my floor futon, sometimes it was on the floor. Sometimes it was sitting on the toilet. At some point I could not hold things in anymore, and my body, quite done emptying out of one end, decided to switch gears and empty from the other. I vomited many times (lost count, really). When the sun started to rise I still felt atrocious. And right around then, my food poisoning cramps started to improve only for my period cramps to start. Bad ones.
Christopher stayed home from work, thankfully, as I would not have been able to look after myself. I was extremely weak (legs barely holding me if I went to the bathroom) and spent the entire day queasy and in pain. But I stayed hydrated, and in the evening I was finally able to eat a mild meal that he made for me:
After eating, I was able to shower, and spend time in the couch watching TV. I was so absolutely spent from being so very sick, that I had no problem sleeping heavily once it was bedtime despite having slept on and off all of Tuesday.
Wednesday I was on my own again. I was able to get out of bed and do a few things, including commission work. But I also had cramps all day from my period. It was still a slow, tiring day. I feel like I spent a lot of this week in some sort of pain or discomfort and a lot of exhaustion… still, compared to Tuesday, I felt pretty well.
Thursday was exciting because my long-wished-for T. rex came in the mail! It’s so cool and massive!
Dinosaurs make me so damn happy. I love them. It’s like with my Charlie Bears. Just utter joy when looking at my dinosaur toys, the bigger they are the happier they make me.
OH NO
Anyhow, I put him on a high shelf with my baby T. rexes and raptors. Now I just have one left that is a must have: the apatosaurus. Hopefully I can get it before it disappears from shelves.
Thursday was also date night. We had an AppleBee’s gift card, so we decided to go out. I had an appetizer plate for my meal.
Christopher had a sandwich… I think? I took this photo before his plate came.
We hadn’t been here in a very, very long time. It’s a bit of a shocker how much these prices have gone up. I know it’s not just here, it’s everywhere, but it’s bad. Still, we really enjoyed our meal. It’s nice to have a little outing like this once in a while.
After we got home, we played Smash for a while, and then watched Don’t Look Up. Really enjoyed the movie, and just cuddled throughout rather than working on my iPad as would usually be my habit. It was nice.
The weekend was wonderful. By this time, I had fully recovered from my food poisoning ordeal as well as from my period. And in the evening, the Yoshi Build-A-Bear plushie that I got as a Christmas present from my friend Island came in. He’s so cute!
Friday and Saturday our friend came to spend time with us. As always, it was lovely. We hung out for a bit on Friday; I watched the two of them play Smash (he wiped the floor with Christopher, repeatedly) and then we went out to Bento for dinner. Lately though, he’s been making an effort to spoil my blog photos… 😑
He went home soon after dinner, but Saturday we all spent even more time together.
A lot of that day was spent watching our friend create a 3D render of our back porch. I was amazed by how fast he did this, even though it took a couple of hours, it was still incredible to me, and fun to watch. I worked on a commission while this was going on, and Christopher had fun playing some of the records he’d accumulated but not yet listened to. Once the render was finished, we went out to eat again. I will try to update this post with a few images of the render later, because it was so cool.
When we got back, we played Mario Golf Super Rush for the first time. It was pretty fun.
I took a break to make cookies, and then we played some more. Then we played Smash for a while, I even won once which was a complete fluke… Wish I got a screenshot because I’m sure it’s never happening again.
Also, I think by this point I’m gonna try to main Ludwig, I just like him a lot.
Playing Smash really hurts my drawing hand, so after a few rounds I just watched the two of them play. Unlike Friday, Christopher mostly wiped the floor with our friend. 😬
We might have all hung out today (Sunday) too, but our friend had a very early workday on Monday, like 4:00am early. So I spent today doing lots of chores while Christopher rested (but he did help me too, and drove me back from the grocery store, and made a really wonderful dinner for us).
Since soon I’m going to be looking after both of them, I really want to get back into taking care of the house properly and on a good schedule. So I washed all the sheets and towels, deep cleaned all three bathrooms and the kitchen, refilled the critter feeders and planted more grass for the cats, did the dishes, laundry, and grocery shopping, made the beds, took care of the animals… it was a lot of work, hours and hours, but I felt pretty satisfied with the results.
Tomorrow want to deep clean the snail tank, mow the lawn, and finish a couple of commissions. I also would like to go on my walks again since the holidays got in a way of them a lot.
Christopher should be home early since his booster appointment is in the afternoon… hopefully, we hear back from someone about the room work.
I’ll post at least one finished commission tomorrow but hopefully more. I’m so grateful to everyone for their patience! 🙇♀️
Today was a really, really, really special day. Just like part of the Tampa trip, it was too special to talk about here. I still wish I’d gotten more photos though, since we went to Aventura Mall which just gets fancier and prettier every year, and to the park where we saw all sorts of critters. We even ate out twice, and we watched two Christmas movies, it was a perfect day really but in the end all I got is this photo of the Yoshi RC car I have on my wish list:
I was so excited to see it in person at a toy store at the mall!
Today was overwhelming in some ways, I felt so happy, and at times so Little. I don’t know how many times in the last few months I thought “all I want for Christmas is to do X thing, or to hear X thing, be able to say X thing, or to have X thing happen” and… everything really just keeps happening like this, and it doesn’t feel real.
I guess I forget to take pictures because as much as possible I want to live in the moment, and I’m trying my best to do that. 🥰 I hope next year we can have many more days like today.
Hello everyone! I hope you had a Thanksgiving weekend as wonderful as mine was. I wore my new white boots for the first time on Thanksgiving Day. I was so happy with my entire outfit:
Grover was my travel companion. It turns out if I bring down the cup holder, it makes a perfect little seat for Grover to be strapped in, seatbelt and all.
Thanksgiving was a bit less hectic, more peaceful than other years. A baby was born in the family on Thanksgiving Day so several family members were missing. Plus, some were not there due to just, family drama… 😞 it was a really nice meal together though. This was our spread, behind the table where we actually ate:
The weather was absolutely lovely, cool and overcast. After the dishes were done, we left Grandma’s house in Port St Lucie for my mom in law’s house. We did a quick stop at Big Lots first since it was the only open store. Christopher let me take a little Yoshi but in the end my mom in law was the one who bought it for me:
Once at the house, we got comfortable and our friend started mixing drinks. It was really cute to see his reaction to my mom in law’s roommate’s pomeranian; I’d completely forgotten that it would be there, and Christopher didn’t say anything on purpose, since our friend has a little pom of his own that he adores. The resident pom, Panda, was very happy with all the extra attention:
My mom in law made all the cats say hello to him too so they would stop being scared of his voice (because he doesn’t usually visit so they weren’t used to him). It didn’t really work, but Momo sat on him for a polite 30 seconds:
This evening was the most fun I had. We played Mario Party and Pictionary (it was my first time playing that) and I had two Mojitos which kind of destroyed me. This picture was taken earlier in the night. I was so happy to see Christopher smiling and having fun.
Naturally, he won at Mario Party, he usually does.
Christopher took this photo of me a bit later; I think I was well into my second drink by then and every time it was my turn to draw I basically dragged myself across the floor to the board. I half-slept between turns (pictured) and by the time I had to get up the next morning (at 4am!) for Black Friday, I was still kinda drunk.
It was the first time I went to sleep drunk and woke up drunk, but I didn’t have a bad hangover and I didn’t throw up. So… all in all, not too bad. 😅
As mentioned above, we were all up at around 4:00am. Black Friday in Sebastian is very chill… no lines, no stress, pretty relaxed employees too. Sometimes they even give out free hot chocolate and things like that. We went to Walmart, to Best Buy, to Petsmart, where I got a few presents for the cats…
…then to breakfast (McDonald’s) and to Home Depot. We then went to a few furniture stores, and by this point, while I’d fully sobered up from the night prior, everyone was starting to feel sleepy, myself included. Christopher passed out in one of the stores:
Ultimately a couch was purchased, and we went back to the house for a pizza lunch and nap. Later that day, a TV was purchased too, and a new Switch. Then we went to Makoto’s for dinner, a long-awaited highlight of this trip.
Once everything was set up, we played Pictionary and Mario Kart (well… I played Pictionary… by the time Mario Kart was underway I was passed out on the floor. I didn’t even make it fully through my second Mojito this time), but it’s okay, Grover can finish it for me…
Saturday was a little more relaxed. Christopher and I cuddled for a while before I got up, and then I went to get bread so my mom in law could make French toast. We had a nice relaxing breakfast. At some point we went out one more time, and my mom in law got me the new walking shoes I so desperately needed. Also, Grandma and I went to Michaels, and I got Mandalorian advent calendars for me and my sis in law. Here’s mine on the wall:
We left around four in the afternoon, and got home a little past six. After that, the three of us still hung out a few hours, had dinner, and watched Cowboy Bebop. Then we dropped our friend off and Thanksgiving weekend was truly over, since I’ll be spending all of tomorrow unpacking and catching up on chores.
On the drive back, I completed Saint Germain’s story in Wintertide Miracles.
Below are some spoilers for Code: Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~ so… don’t read any more if you plan to play it!!
I don’t know why, but I didn’t like it so much. He was all whiny and full of feelings the entire route. I don’t mind that with other LIs, and he’s certainly that way at times in the original game too, but I always enjoyed how he could be a little scary, even playfully during Future Blessings, and you never really knew what he was thinking. I don’t know, I found him a bit “much”. Regardless, here’s a couple of screenshots of parts I liked:
Finis is always fun, though. I think he will end up being the best part of the fandisc for me.
Something I forgot to share in my “before leaving” post is this Sesame Street Christmas Treasury I got. I meant to read it during the trip, just as I meant to play more of Wintertide Miracles, but in the end I was just too entertained enjoying my time with family.
This book is lovely, with illustrations from multiple eras. The vintage ones are my favorites.
I guess I’ll wrap it up here, tomorrow and Monday are going to be really busy for me. Plus, I’ll be releasing a new YCH, so please look forward to that. Talk to you all later!
Hi hi, everyone! Before I leave for the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s time to do a big ol’ wrap-up of the last week or so. It’s been busy!
I wanted to share the collector’s edition goodies of my copy of Code: Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~. I didn’t get to look at those until after the Tampa trip, even though that’s when I started playing the game.
The collector’s edition came with several pins and a keychain:
Over the last day or so I already played one of the stories. Of course, I started with Van. As always, it was adorable, especially his interactions with Delly. You can read my impressions on that playthrough in my previous post.
Going back to last week (last Thursday to be precise) here is a cute squirrel I came upon during my morning walk:
After my walk, I had my coffee with Bowser Jr…
It was actually a pretty eventful day, but not much about it to share here. I did take a photo of another snack of that day, though. 😅
That’s all I’ve got for Thursday, I got basically nothing done but went to bed very happy. 🥰
This photo is from Friday. I was running around trying to get chores done, and Rosie decided to unmake my bed. 😒 She was still hiding under there. This has since become a new habit.
Later that day, I continued working on a Christmas wallpaper for Christopher, which you’ve likely already seen me post, along with a matching icon:
After that, I went on yet another walk. I went to Target too, to pick up these two things. A Yoshi plushie and a Mario Kart Daisy figure:
I put Daisy in my studio. I wanted a Yoshi plushie because Yoshi is Christopher’s pick in all the Mario games and it reminds me of him.
On Friday and Saturday I continued and mostly finished decorating the house for Christmas. Grover helped!
Reading Christmas stories with my morning coffee as the house starts to get festive around me is a lovely feeling…
Saturday was wonderful. I finished decorating the tree, though I still had some minor details left to do around the house. Our friend came to spend time with us, we played Mario Kart and Mario Party. He won Mario Party but the three of us won Mario Kart rounds.
I tend to do poorly at many mini-games but I love this one.
We also watched Cowboy Bebop (the new Netflix show). I know it’s not perfect and if I’d just watched the anime I’d probably hate it but, it’s been quite a while so I’m enjoying this new version a lot. I’ll probably revisit the anime afterwards.
It was a nice surprise that my problem with Mario Kart really was the Wii U controller. Playing on the Switch with a full controller, I even managed first place once, a rarity for me! And I came in second or third other times.
We went to Nami Sushi for dinner:
It was one in a string of fun, happy, comforting Saturdays recently, and I made even more memories that I’ll treasure.
On Sunday I completed the decorating for good. The tree looks very festive!
Here is Grandpa’s corner, with the candy I can no longer sneak into his hand when Grandma isn’t looking. But still, I make sure he has it.
This area is on the way to the movie/living room:
Here is the movie room with the Christmas village. I like to find different Christmasy streams to broadcast on the projector:
And here is the Christmas village in all its glory!
I got my Yoshi looking all merry, too:
I also put Christmas lights on my bunk bed. I forgot to turn on the fairy lights on this photo for extra effect, but Grover’s outfit still makes it all look extra Christmasy:
Outside, other than the wreath, I put up a new flag:
On Monday I did all of my packing for Thanksgiving and then Christopher dropped me off at my mom’s. Instead of dinner, we had a little “picada” and margaritas. It was delicious! But the alcohol made me very sleepy and I went to bed early. 😴
The next morning I got to work on two commission slots for Nero and Bluu. Grover kept me company. I really love this toy, I’ve slept holding it tight almost every night since our Tampa trip. 🥺💕
When my mom got home from work we went to the Youth Fair. The weather was amazing! Sunny, but cool. We started by sharing an arepa and walking around. Then we had corn with parmesan, garlic, butter and mayo:
Here are some random pretty photos I took around the fair:
A Christmas tree! The fair normally happens in April. It didn’t happen last year. Christmas stuff isn’t the norm, but it was nice to see.
Have one more photo of it because I couldn’t decide which one to use:
We rode a two story carousel. It was so pretty!
I was able to get photos of me and my mom. We were really happy.
I got a little video while I was riding:
At the end of the night, we had freshly squeezed lemonade and pinchos. The alligator in the photo is one my mom won for me in a crane machine!
Here’s one last photo I took of my mom, her hair was a little messy because it was so windy:
We had a really good time. By the time we went home we really were completely beat.
And that brings us to today –Wednesday! I had a lot of prep to do still once Christopher picked me up and we got home. I took care of the snails, the cats, more packing, and I made two banana walnut loaves for Thanksgiving. Christopher made me mac ‘n cheese and fried eggs for dinner! 😁 Definitely a meal that gives me lots of kiddy feels.
That’s it from me… I will be gone until Saturday. Hope you all have a very, very Happy Thanksgiving!
