Meet my New Fur Friend!

This is Sharick. He moved into our house two days ago.

Our old cat Amy passed away over two years ago, and lately I've been starting to feel that I might be ready for a new feline companion. I didn't think it would happen quite so soon though! On Monday night a friend texted and said she wanted to talk to me about a cat. His owner wasn't able to look after him anymore, due to some personal troubles, and were we interested? On Tuesday we arranged to visit him. On Thursday we met him. He was unsettled due to everything going on in the owner's life, but otherwise seemed quite curious about us. We decided to take him. He was already in his carrier and all of his belongings were packed, so we took him home straight away.

It can take a while for cats to settle into a new home, so I was willing to wait up to a week to see if things worked out. At first he hid under the bed, but after about an hour, he came out and started exploring the house. An hour after that, he was rubbing up against Husband's leg as if they'd known each other for years. He also ate some dinner and was washing himself later on, both of which are good signs that a cat feels comfortable in its environment. We were both very pleased.

So now we are three again. It feels strange to have a cat again, but also natural at the same time. It'll take a while until we know his personality and habits well, and we're discovering new things constantly. It's an exciting time.

Hopefully I can take some better photos of him soon. I'm sure there will be many!

My Planners, and Etsy Sticker Purchase

It's taken me a long time to find a system of organising myself that works for me. I've tried to-do lists, spreadsheets and apps. I've tried dividing up tasks in various different ways. I've read articles and books on organisation and time management, and even been inspired by a dream.

For years I had a Filofax, but I started to find it increasingly tredious to find inserts for it. Plus it was boring having the same cover year after year. Having a whole new diary every year appeals to my sense of starting fresh. My diary this year is from Typo.

As a treat for myself, I purchased some stickers from Violet le Beaux's Etsy shop to decorate it with:

These sticker sheets were a huge amount of fun to work with! The high quality prints are made from Violet's watercolour illustrations. They're cut well with no white space around the edge, and come in lots of cute themes, like kitchen, craft and woodland animals. She also sent so many bonus mini sheets, I was overwhelmed! I would definitely purchase them again. Shopping local too, for the win!

Back to the planners. I use my diary (or perhaps more properly an alamanac?) to record events that happen every year, like birthdays and festival dates, as well as one-off things like lunches and appointments. I have it set up at work where I can easily see the current week's page and grab it to write in new appointments. Each day I cross out the previous day. I will only take it home with me if I'm having an extended break or a very busy weekend where I might not remember everything I'm doing.

The other book I have is my Ralph book. The name is a long story, but it comes from the dream I mentioned above. I'd much rather call it that, than something horridly sensible like an organiser. Ralph is just a normal hardback notebook from Daiso. It's basically my weekly to-do list. I take it with me wherever I go, and write down things I have to do in it as soon as I think of them.

At the top is a pre-printed insert that I glue in. I made this up in Excel and I print out copies in batches. It has everything that I want/need to do on a daily or weekly basis, to save me from having to re-write it all every week. It's evolved over time depending on my interests and habits.
Underneath is a free text section. On the left hand side I write the things I should/need to do. The right hand side is for fun or non-essential things, though I'm not hugely strict about the side things should go on. I do it this way because then I have a shorter list of things I have to do, and I feel less pressured.

Every Monday morning, I tear out the previous week's page and copy over anything still to be done. Sometimes if there's a lot, I just cut out that part of the page and glue it onto the next page! I write suggestions for blog posts on a sticky note to make it easy to transfer them to the next week. The inside of the front cover has sticky notes with other things I want to keep track of, like online orders that haven't arrived yet.

Supporting this, I have a master spreadsheet. I had this idea about a year ago. My Ralph book is designed to work week by week, but it was getting bogged down with activities and ideas to be done further in the future. My list was getting filled with more and items that I couldn't/didn't want to do yet. It was frustrating. So I moved them all to a spreadsheet which I check once a week as I'm making up my new Ralph book page. If I think of anything during the week to go on the master list, I write it on the back of the current weeks' page in Ralph and add it to the spreadsheet the next time I look at it.

A couple of days ago, I re-did my whole master list. I now have the 9 life aspects from the square I mentioned in my last post as headings. Although I'm not completely sure that this is the best way to categorise my to-dos, I'm glad I overhauled it because it gave me a chance to re-think about old ones and add new.

So that's how I organise my life. I hope this post wasn't too boring, but I've spent over 5 years working on it, so I thought there might be some useful ideas in it for someone out there.

My 2016 Goals, or Lack of

Tada! I'm back already! I hesitated at purchasing a new laptop so soon after Christmas, but then I remembered that I need it for serious things like looking for a job and keeping my tax records, not just playing games and blogging. My new laptop is is basically the same as the old one, same brand and capacity, though it does have a larger screen and built-in keypad, which I love. My first Lenovo was called Leni, so I guess this one will be Leni 2 unless I think of something more creative.

RIP Leni!
(Unless Husband can re-image you and turn you
into a gaming machine, like he's planning to...)
This year I've been really hesitant to make any New Year's goals or resolutions. I've done that in the past and always failed in some way or another. Though, looking back on my beginning-of-year post for 2015, I did a lot more than I thought I had.

A new blog that I discovered the other day by accident inspired me, however. One of the suggested goal planning methods in this post was based on the Wheel of the Year. The Wheel is divided up into 8 sections, each with an aspect of life to focus on, e.g. Home, Career, Family. I relate much more to the number 9 than 8, so I drew up a grid with 9 squares, and added in 9 life aspects, like this:

I started trying to think up some goals for each category, but then I realised that most of them were either: double-ups from my 101 Things list, or things I just wanted to do in the next few weeks. Considering that I don't even know where I'll be at the end of this month, let alone the end of the year, I think perhaps it's best to just take things as they come and do what I can in the short term, rather than setting overarching goals for the whole year. At the very least, the square might be useful for thinking about what's important in my life.

Having said that, I'm inspired by Bunny Mummy's completion of her 2015 goal, which was a 1,000 mile walking challenge. I'm sure that I don't have either the time or fitness level to walk that far, so I've decided on a much more manageable 500km. That averages out at approximately 1.3km per day. I walk about half that from the train station to work and back again every weekday, so I think it's definitely manageable. I have the most trouble with exercising on the weekends, so hopefully having this challenge will motivate me to change that. I'll think of a nice big reward for myself later.

Other things I'm thinking of:
* work on increasing confidence and reducing anxiety
* KonMari my house
* rune/crystal studies
* go on at least one outing every month

Or I could just follow this plan:

Goodbye 2015

2015 was a tough year. I'm glad to say goodbye to it. I've said goodbye to a few things in my life this year, and welcomed in some different things, practices and attitudes. I think it will be for the better. One big change in particular is going to make things very different next year. I'm sorry to be so annoyingly vague, but I think it would be wiser not to say what it is, until it happens.

In some ways, I feel like I've achieved very little this year. I've only finished a handful of craft projects and didn't work much in my art journals. I went out very little, except for trips to the Cat Café. On the other hand, there were a few firsts. I did my first painting on canvas, and my first attempt at NaNoWriMo. I wrote several stories and other pieces, including reviews of games on the blog. I discovered many new blogs and became more outgoing in leaving comments and interacting with people.

Unfortunately my laptop died earlier today, so I'm writing to you from my iPad while sitting at my art desk. Brushes are sticking out of glass jars all around me, waiting to be used. I can look out over the fruit trees in my backyard and I can see birds flitting amongst the branches.

But I'm getting off track. Because I don't have access to the spreadsheets on my laptop, I can't pull all of the statistics that I normally do at the end of the year, but I managed to scrounge a few. I haven't figured out whether I can post photos yet either, so sorry for the lack of visuals.

Books finished:
full-length: 14 (11)
short & manga: 38 (4)
Currently reading as of today: 13 (9)

Blog posts:
69 (17)

I'm very pleased to see that I posted more in my blog this year. My aim was to post 1 to 2 times a week, so I'm happy with that. I also read a little more and I'm hoping to spend even more time reading next year. As well as crafting, painting, gaming and other generally fun things!

Finally, without further ado, we come to the second annual:

Apartmentcat Favourites Awards
This year it was very tough to choose, in every category, so I've chosen a top three in books and movies (in no particular order, of course). As for blogs, I've enjoyed reading so many this year, both new and old, that I just couldn't choose, and I've decided to leave that for a separate blog post.

Books:
The Pillow book of Sei Shōnagon. Although it took me a long time to read this book, I adored it and found it very inspirational. I wrote about it here..
✽ The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins. I found this book on a tram one night. I started reading it immediately and couldn't put it down. It has the clearest explanations (to me) of scientific principles that I've ever read. Weirdly, it also inspired several paintings.
✽The Life-changing Magic of Tidying by Kondo Mari. This is turning out to be a very strange selection of books. Oddly, it was another page-turner. I wanted to know more about this woman who inspired millions of people and changed the way they think about their possessions. She changed the way I think about my possessions. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say: confirmed and refined it.

Movies:
✽What We Do in the Shadows. This hilarious movie from New Zealand is a spoof mockumenary about a group of vampire flatmates.
✽ Fist of Fury. It's true. I'd never seen a Bruce Lee movie before this year. Shameful! His skill was incredible and I finally know what everyone was talking about.
✽ Summer Wars. This cute anime is about a student who has problems in both the real-life and online world when he accidentally releases a virus that threatens to create global chaos.

That's it from me for 2015! I hope to get another laptop very soon so that I can keep working on my stories, not to mention blogging! I have so many ideas lately that I want to share.

Have a happy and safe new year everyone!
xx

If I Were....

Thanks to Tiny Adventures for the inspiration...

a month, i would be: April
a day of the week, i would be: Thursday
a time of day, i would be: about 10am
a planet, i would be: Neptune
a sea animal, i would be: a seahorse
a direction, i would be: North
a piece of furniture, i would be: a bookcase
a sin, i would be: gluttony
a liquid, i would be: tingly spring water collected directly from the source
a stone, i would be: an amethyst
a tree, i would be: a Monkey Puzzle Tree
a bird, i would be: a kākāpō
a tool, i would be: hedge trimmer
a flower/plant, i would be: the rose
a kind of weather, i would be: cold and clear
a mythical creature, i would be: a unicorn
a musical instrument, i would be: a theremin
an animal, i would be: a giant Galapagos tortoise
a colour, i would be: pine green
a vegetable, i would be: corn
a sound, i would be: ducks landing on water
an element, i would be: earth
a car, i would be: a Goggomobil
a song, i would be: Dream Girl by SHINee
a movie, i would be directed by: Miyazaki Hayao
a book, i would be written by: Tom Cho
a food, i would be: Scotch eggs
a place, i would be: home
a material, i would be: paua shell
a taste, i would be: melted cheese
a scent, i would be: Dutch 4-spice mix
a religion, i would be: the Old Custom
a word, i would be: flâneur
an object, i would be: a snuggly crocheted blanket
a body part, i would be: nape of the neck
a facial expression, i would be: wonder
a subject in school, i would be: Ceramics
a cartoon character, i would be: Aang (though I've only seen the first season so far...)
a shape, i would be: curved
a number, i would be: 17

Kids' Beauty Advent Calendar

For the 2015 festive season, I couldn't resist procuring for myself this Kids' Beauty Advent Calendar from the local supermarket. I love the idea of advent calendars (I'm very much a calendar nerd) but it seems too much effort to make and fill one every year, so I always end up buying one.

This post isn't a review, just a showing of my treasures, as it seems a bit pointless to do a review of an advent calendar that this point in the year. Unless you saw it on sale and wanted to scavenge the contents, I guess....

I forgot to take a photo of it at the beginning, and I can't find any photos of it online, but here's a photo of it with most of the doors ripped off. I should probably point out that the hairy arm propping it up is Husband's, not mine!

It contained:
❦ flower-shaped mirror
❦ purple sparkly comb
❦ clear sparkly nail polish -- vanilla scent
❦ pink sparkly nail polish -- cherry scent
❦ toe separator
❦ nail file

The nail polish rubs off at the slightest touch, and washes off in water, so it's pretty much useless. I like the comb and mirror, and I've been using the comb a bit. The nail file is the thing I've used most so far!

❦ clear sparkly vanilla-flavoured lip gloss
❦ pink strawberry-flavoured lip gloss
❦ pink sparkly cherry-flavoured lip gloss (I've used this one the most so far)
❦ dark pink cherry-flavoured lip gloss

The lip glosses perform about as you'd expect for a cheap lip gloss. The scent/flavour is not very strong. They all have a little loop on them so they can be hung as a pendant.

❦ hair ties, pink and purple -- they're not big enough to tie up my thick hair, but I use them to decorate the end of my braid
❦ claw-grip hair clips in pink, purple and blue -- these don't really fit in with the way I style my hair, but they make cute decorations at my beauty station
❦ heart-shaped rings in pink and purple -- they go about half-way down my little finger! One day I might wear them if I'm going full Fairy Kei, but for now they make a cute decoration.
❦ star bracelet -- this is way too small for my wrist, so I'm using it as a hair deco.

❦ creme eyeshadow in sparkly pink -- fairly light coverage but adds sparkle to other shadows
❦ eyeshadow in blue -- so 80s!
❦ makeup brush and sponge applicator -- very poor quality, but would be fun for a kid to practice with
❦ salmon orange cherry-scented lipstick
❦ dark pink strawberry-scented lipstick -- the two lipsticks have surprisingly strong coverage and I've used them quite a bit.

I hope you're having a lovely time, whatever you're celebrating!

My Day in the City

AKA Christmas in Melbourne AKA The Heatwave AKA I Went to the Cat Cafe Again ??! AKA Severe Photospam

It was more like a half-day really, and it was very hot (it reached 39oC / 102oF), but it was one of the most enjoyable days I'd had in a long time.

I had a coffee at Melbourne Central and picked up a book from the Little Library before heading out to the Cat Cafe. (The book was The Stone Menagerie by Ann Fine.) There were several of these neon Christmas trees throughout the shopping centre. It wasn't as dark in there as it looks in the photo!

A sign of things to come ...

This lovely pastel wreath in the window of a bar caught my eye on the way there:

The cats were all sleepy and sluggish in the heat -- who can blame them! I spent the time sitting with them, researching a few things on the internet and writing a few poems.

The Cafe has a big Christmas Tree with cat-toy ornaments. So cute!

HOT.

Next I took the tram out to the Alexandra Gardens and went for a walk around.

This is the first time I've seen the floral clock up close in years! That's parsley all around the edge. The colours of the flowers were stunning in the bright sunlight.

I sat in a shady spot for a while and read, and wrote some haiku. There were a family of ducks that were just adorable! But they climbed out of the water and went to nap under some bushes before I thought to take a photo of them.

This Japanese maple looked incredible against the bright green background.

It was lunchtime, and I decided to walk back into the city proper instead of taking the tram. It's only 3 blocks, but it was 39oC after all!

I'm glad I did walk, because I got to see the lego Christmas Tree at Federation Square.

One boy of about 12 ran up to it, had a quick glance and said, "hmph, it's made out of pieces that are larger than normal!" and walked off again. I was impressed, though. And it was cool seeing it on the big screen in the square.

Really hot.

All of the trees along the City Square had Christmas-themed yarn bombing on them! I've seen a lot of yarn-bombing on the trees around the Town Hall lately, so I can only assume it's council-approved. It was particularly delightful to see the red and green colours with snowflake motifs, etc.

One man saw me taking a photo of the trees. He turned around to see what I was taking a picture of, and did a double-take with a WTF look on his face. I couldn't help laughing.

For lunch I went to Go Go Sushi on Swanston Street. It's been a couple of years since I've had sushi train, and I have to admit that I ate way too much. But it was so fun. They even had plates with mochi balls and dorayaki on them.

There were several families with children in, and it was fun watching the way they reacted to the platesful of various exotic items. Afterwards I met up with some friends I normally only see once a year, at Christmas. We always talk about our past year and what might be in store for us next year. One thing is sure, I'd like to have more days like this!