My Captured Moment #2

How is your weekend treating you, people of the internet? This past week has flown by pretty quickly, but that didn't stop me from taking a photo pretty much every day, and I have the perfect arrangement to share with you for this week's captured moment. Again, this is a picture link-up created by Running in Lavender, and you're welcome to join in with your captured moment on your blog and social media accounts each week :)

I lucked out this week, because I got to visit one incredibly important man in my life on 3 different days. That little an is Charlie Terence Cruise, my adorable nephew, who will be 4 months old in early December.

Review: The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet

Not sure if I say this very often about a book, but this story came into my life at the absolute perfect time. I'm sure that others have experienced this same thing, but this book hit so close to home at a time where I needed this exact brand of encouragement in my life, I feel like I'll burst if I didn't share this with all of you.

Ever since the end of this summer, when I finished with my post-grad program in Creative Book Publishing, I've been struggling with a lot of personal issues, along with having to answer a lot of hard questions. What do I want to do with my life? Am I a failure for picking the wrong path to take with my schooling? What sort of job am I qualified to do now? The biggest question of all for me, out of all of them, turned out to be the shortest one: What's next?

In this book that takes place after the events of the Emmy award-winning web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and after the events of the novelization, The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, Lydia faces many of the same issues and struggles with what to do with her life when she isn't feeling as solid about who she is, what she wants to do, and what she is capable of achieving in her life. She's on the verge of a big change in her life: Finish a couple summer credits at her community college to receive her associate's degree, finish the application for the "real" college in San Francisco, and then move out there with her cousin Mary to go to school as a psych major, to spend time closer to her middle sister and her cousin, and to finally get past the events of George Wickham and the sex tape and everything that being famous on the internet brought into her life.

My Captured Moments #1

How's everybody enjoying their weekend? I'm bringing you something completely new titled My Captured Moments, a weekly photo link-up created by Running In Lavender. Some weeks I will include multiple photos, other times I'll only be sharing one, but each week I'm going to try to share a captured moment with all of you. Anybody else is welcome to join in with this link-up as well and there's a lot of flexibility on when you feel like sharing your own post, whether you want to include words or just photos, and about how many pictures you'd like to share. Enjoy my very first Captured Moment post :)

This week's captured moment is from early this week, where I had both a productive and an incredibly fun Monday. I managed to finish up one project that I have been putting off for a long time, and that is to send a package to my very first IGGPPC pen pal, Diana. I had been collecting a few odds and ends in order to send her a cool little package full of fun things. I had things like scented erasers, a pack of Snow White stickers, and even a cool pen included in there, all of this along with a letter I had written for her. I also sent her a little something I made that should help out with a project the two of us are working on, which I can't tell you about yet ;) Stay tuned for more details on that!

Review: Girl Online On Tour

I've been eagerly awaiting the day I completely finished this book, solely so I could post a review of it for you guys! Is it a little sad that I felt almost more excitement for writing this post then for the end of the book itself? Regardless of my weird sense of priorities, it doesn't change the fact that this book was fantastic from beginning to end, and reading it made me feel like I was curled up on the couch with my best friend after a hard day, where we're eating sugar cookies and drinking hot apple cider and watching fun things on TV that make us feel comforted and happy.

I did both read and review Zoella's first young adult book in this series, titled Girl Online, and one of the main reasons that I appreciated it so much was not because of the book's author, and that I would blindly love anything created by her (which hopefully is not completely true XP). The reason that it resonated with me so well was because it dealt with anxiety in a realistic and understanding manner. Because the author herself suffers from social anxiety and panic attacks, she made sure that the main character, Penny Porter, managed and experienced her anxiety and panic in a believable way - nothing melodramatic or idiotic to be had. That realistic portrayal continues with the newest installment of the series, Girl Online On Tour. The premise for this book is that time has shifted from January to June and Penny is getting ready to join her rock-God boyfriend on his European tour - Italy, Paris, Berlin, the works! - playing with his band as the opening act for this bigger rock group called The Sketch.

Wednesday Wish Lists #28

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Hope November is treating you well, and that this week is off to a good start. Lately I've had to start making a Christmas list for my family, so there's even more reason now to be looking around for things on the internet to lust after XD

#1: "Jolliest Bunch of Assholes" Christmas Sweater! Now, admittedly, I may have already ordered this sweater for myself after I saw an ad pop up on Facebook - I just couldn't resist, it's both cute and hilarious XD I guess what I want more than anything is for A) for it to arrive as quickly as possible, and B) for it to actually fit me XP This'll be really fun to wear around my family, that's for sure XD

5 Favorite Seasonal "Treats"

Hi all! The theme for this week is supposed to be "5 Favorite Seasonal Foods", and as I started to compile my list I realized that some of my favorite seasonal things happened to be sweets, so I was going to list Treats instead of Food. And then, I realized that there weren't as many things I liked to eat as much as there were things I liked to treat myself to around this time of year, so that's what I've decided to write about! You should be able to treat yourself any time of the year, but when it comes to this time of year when you're trying to finish your Christmas shopping and all of you American folks are getting ready for Thanksgiving, it's always good to take a little time to "treat yo temple", as Liz Locksley would say :) Here are 5 things I like to treat myself to around this time of year.

#1: Bath Bombs from Lush! It was originally Zoella that taught be about the glory of enjoying your favorite bath bombs during the cooler months, and this is the perfect kind of item that's out there for a person to buy in order to treat themselves. They smell great, some include nourishing properties for your skin, and a few even include glitter for those cold days that you want to feel a little more sparkly XDD The perfect seasonal treat!

Writer Support #2 - Find Your Writing Spots

How are all you amazing writers out there doing? I hope those participating in NaNoWriMo 2015 are hitting it off - and hitting their word counts - with great ease! Figured it was time to drop another one of these helpful posts for you to enjoy, and I wanted to thank everyone for the great feedback I received over Twitter regarding my first Writer Support post :) I hope you all enjoy this next topic just as much as the first, and let me know if you have any suggestions for me or any writing topics you'd like me to post about, and I'd be happy to oblige!

In his amazing writing guide, No Plot? No Problem!, Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, lists a series of tips and suggestions about finding the best place to write, keeping in mind that everybody's different and some people will make progress in one type of environment over another. His suggestions are simple and easy to understand: Keep your writing area neat; Don't write in view of a bed; A place with expensive WiFi is a place where you'll be less likely to surf the internet and slack on your novel. All of his suggestions are top notch, and for my post I am going to expand on his suggestions with my own advice, as well as add a few suggestions for writing spots of my own. One thing I do recommend is that you always have more than one place where you can get a lot of good writing done, and if you're in need of one/two/several places to pen your novel, look no further!

Fallfessional 2015

For a couple of days last week we had gorgeous warm weather, like summer was making a comeback, but now we're officially into the depths of fall - which means its time for another Fallfessional post! This link-up was created by the lovely KrystelleMT, and if you'd like to check out my Fallfessional post from last year, you can click here. Without further ado, here are my fall-styled confessions for 2015 :)

Fall is the Perfect Time for Crafting! Unfortunately, fall also happens to be the time where the house is a complete mess, so I have the least amount of time or space to do any real crafting XP Lately I've been walking around stores like Wal-Mart or Zehrs that have their fall decor up, or I've just been walking around outside and taking in all the autumnal colours, and I've just been feeling a lot more of that creative energy coursing through my mind lately. I have snail mail things I want to make prettier, I have a memory planner I want to keep on decorating, and I have Christmas gifts that I want to start making. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll be able to work in my very own crafting space and be able to make some pretty things :)

Wednesday Wish Lists #27

Happy Wednesday, folks! I hope everybody is enjoying their November so far. While this autumn weather is nice, and Christmas being right around the corner is certainly something to look forward to, this can be a month that might be a little lacking in excitement. But that leaves plenty of time to get some things done that I've been putting off - perhaps getting a job so I can work on affording some of these things on my list XD But first thing's first, save up to buy Christmas presents! :P

#1: "Don't Dream It" Rocky Horror T-Shirt Design from Emilie_B on TeeFury! I adore this t-shirt design so much! It comes in a few different colours, but I think the purple looks best. Not only does it feature all of the amazing Rocky Horror Picture Show characters at their best, but it also displays one of the best messages that the story has to convey: Don't Dream It - Be It!

Writer Support #1 - Top 3 Writing Guides

It's that time of year, where Nerdfighters and iggles everywhere are dusting off their favorite notebooks (or picking up new ones), opening up Microsoft Word on their computers, and digging deep for the beginning of National Novel Writing Month! This year, I regret to inform you all that I won't be participating in the incredibly fun and chaotic tradition known as NaNoWriMo, but that is not because I didn't enjoy my experience with it last year. I reached over 26,000 words during the very first time I attempted NaNo, and I am extremely proud of that accomplishment, and I absolutely plan on joining in with the insanity another time. But for now, I have to focus on things like getting a job and organizing the clutter that I'm constantly surrounded by. And, not to mention, I put on quite a bit of weight from all the snacking at my laptop last year XP

But that doesn't mean that I won't be focused on writing this month either! Not only do I plan on trying to flex my creative writing muscles on a few personal projects I'd like to get off the ground, but I'm hoping to be able to write some more posts here for all of you :) Which leads me to introducing this new series of posts that I plan on writing for the month of November, which is currently named Writer Support. I want to act as a sort of NaNoWriMo cheerleader this year, even though I myself am not participating, and try to help in any way that I can. In order to do that, I'm going to be writing a variety of posts that are in some way related to writing, reading, and/or the writing process for your enjoyment. If there's anything in particular you'd like me to address in these posts, let me know in the comments below.