Hey everyone! It’s been awhile, I know! I’ve had a busy year and the last couple of months have been pretty hectic and stressful (but also exciting) so my blog has taken the backseat for awhile. I’ll still be dealing with some craziness for the rest of the year but I’m hoping to be a little more active than I have been seeing as how my last post was almost a month ago. So I just wanted to take the time to fill you in a little bit on why I’ve been MIA and what I’ve been up to lately on the reading front and other areas.
So I may have mentioned before that my husband and I listed our townhouse for sale back in August… Well, here we are now with a buyer a little less than a month from our closing date! It’s a little bittersweet because while it wasn’t the first place we lived together in, it was the first place we owned. But we are moving on to bigger and better things. We are actually purchasing the house I grew up in from 7th grade on from my parents who are starting to transition towards retirement. Since I have lived in that house for most of my life, I have a lot of memories there so I’m really looking forward to continuing my life there and making many more memories there. If all goes according to plan, we will be the new owners of the house a few days after we close on our townhouse.
One thing I always loved about this house was my room in the basement. When they bought the house, the basement was unfinished so I was originally in a bedroom upstairs but as they gradually started finishing the basement, I moved to the basement. I lived down there when the walls were just studs and a big black tarp haha. But I loved it down there. I had to briefly move back upstairs during my junior year of high school while my dad worked to get the drywall put up. Once the drywall was up and I could move back down, they let me choose my paint colors. I couldn’t choose just one color so my mom and I came up with a fun plan to fit in the 4 colors I had chosen – blue, green, orange, and yellow. The interior of my closet was a bright sunshine yellow, and the walls of my room were blue in the center with zig-zagged corners that alternated orange and lime green. What can I say, I loved bright colors! 🙂 I also quickly filled up my walls with posters from Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and even Seth Cohen from The OC. My mom wanted to make me a special quilt where I got to choose the colors… and I think she may have regretted that because I asked for the full spectrum of colors! She enlisted my aunt, a master quilter, for help and the resulting product is one of my favorite things ever. I filled my room with hand-me-down bookshelves, a giant filing cabinet I used to store my plethora of movies and TV seasons, a comfy orange hand-me-down chair, etc. I took that room and made it 1000% my own. Anyways, this room is going to be mine once more and I couldn’t be happier! Currently it has a bunch of my parents’ stuff still in it but the hubs and I have each claimed a corner of the room for our computer setups and eventually after my parents move out, his setup will be moving into the next room over which is currently our jam packed bedroom while we are co-habitating with my parents. So I will once again get to make that room my own. I may not go as far as I did as a teenager, but I’m really looking forward to getting some new bookshelves to fulfill my dream of having a wall of books and put up some of the bookish art and other things I have accumulated over the years. It’s going to be a really cozy setup and I can’t wait to get it more in order. (And yes, my door was a Spongebob Squarepants bedsheet turned into a curtain haha!)
This past weekend I was finally able to get my desktop computer all set up. I’ve missed it so much as I haven’t been able to use it since July. I’ve moved three of my several bookshelves in there so far but that’s all I will be able to fit until the transition is complete. And then I want to start replacing my mismatched hand-me-downs with some better shelves. As you can see in this next photo, my parents had painted over my bright colors with a boring beige. So that will be one of the first things to go lol. 
On the reading front, I’ve actually been in a bit of a slump lately so I haven’t been doing much reading at all. Also doesn’t help that with everything going on I haven’t been in the mood to concentrate on anything so I’ve been watching a lot of TV in my spare time. I binge watched all available episodes of Nashville over the past month. I think I have also burned myself out on review copies which is why I am slightly behind on mine. I also think that was part of the reason why I ended up DNFing All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater. I could not get into that one at all but I don’t know if it was because of my burn out or because I didn’t like the story so I may try it again later on down the road. I listened to the audiobook for A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I read it in print two years ago and haven’t finished the trilogy so I wanted a refresher before continuing on with the books. I also wanted to re-read it since they are currently filming the tv adaptation starring Matthew Goode and Teresa Palmer. I’m really excited to see how that turns out. I started reading the second book, Shadow of Night, but haven’t gotten very far yet. I’ve also been carrying around an ARC of Otherworld by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller in the hopes that I would get in the mood to read again. On the way home from work yesterday I was hit with the desire to open the book and give it a shot. I’m a little under 30 pages into it and so far I am really intrigued. This one has gotten some mixed reviews so I’ll be interested to see how the rest of it goes.
I did plan on discussing my future plans for the blog but this post is already longer than I had anticipated so I will end it here and you can look forward to another post down the road about my plans.
The Worn Bookmark 
