November Favourites

Can't decided if this month went fast or slow. It seems like ages ago that it was the 1st of November or maybe the last few weeks have really dragged. The busy Christmas season has hit and it's mental with stock and orders everywhere. A lot of people have been saying the postal system has slowed down in Australia and parcels are backed up. But I've been getting my online orders rather quickly and we've only a had few instances at work hearing about parcels getting stuck at borders which are closed for COVID-19. Anyway onto some favourites for November!

Gaming

Mainly just playing New Horizons this month and my island is almost finished! My friends helped me out with getting certain items and I finally have the entire garden gnome set. Haven't even started on my house yet haha. It's always the last thing I do and might spend some time soon thinking about what I want to theme my rooms around. Speaking of Animal Crossing, my friend got me this Animal Crossing puzzle as a birthday gift. How amazing is this? I didn't know they existed until I received this! I cannot wait to do it as I quite enjoy puzzles and it's even better cause it's Animal Crossing!

When I built a new computer recently, it didn't come with a SD Card slot so I haven't been able to get new photos from any of my games. I looked at a few SD card readers but the reviews were awful so I didn't get them. Most readers now are USB-C so I'm going to most likely get one of those and an adapter for USB-A to connect to the PC. Then I finally get all my lovely screenshots from New Horizons and my 3DS again.

Music

Brought a bunch of new CD's on Black Friday as JB HiFi finally had their 20% off music sale. Picked up the standard album version of Blackpink's album but I haven't had a chance to listen to it just yet as I've been busy from Black Friday hilariously enough. Waiting on a bunch of CD's to come from Japan that I'm very excited to receive whenever they arrive. I feel like I've listened to a billion songs this month as November went on forever. I've been listening to a lot of AKB48 lately as well as Apink. The later is a group I never really listened to much and I quite like Apink's style of music. It reminds me of older Korean Pop music and stuff from the 2nd generation. It's been so busy lately I haven't been able to listen to any new songs from girl groups as there has been a fair few recently. One thing I have been doing is cranking Girls Generation's Into The New World loudly at work so hopefully everyone who has no clue about k-pop can appreciate that gem haha.

Stationery

Visited Daiso this month which resulted in a adorable haul of course. I wish they'd build a Daiso closer to my workplace so I can go all the time :( The two closest to me are in shopping places I rarely visited, I used to work in the same centre years ago before it opened. I picked up these cute stickers and some sticky notes as I wanted to get a few for my planner.

Style Boutique Styling Star - Scrapbook Outfits

In the Style Boutique games, we are tend to save our favourite outfits to the scrapbook. Either for quick access or due to that outfit being the perfect thing to wear all the time. I decided to take photos in all the outfits I had saved to my scrapbook in Styling Star. These outfits were added to the scrapbook over the course of a long time so I don't recall the exact reason I saved them. Most likely a combination of Shopdo outfits, looks from challenges or ones I just fell in love with. I haven't played the game for ages (mostly due to work commitments and New Horizons being the only game I've played this year) so it was lovely to see all these outfits again!

First up is a bunch of girly themed outfits as I have a billion of those. The girly style is the closest to how I'd like to dress in real life or I already have similar items in my closet. Wouldn't it be great to have a closet as large as the one in Style Boutique? These girly outfits were some of my favourite ones in the game and they feature quite a few of the new items to Styling Star. The brown toned outfit is super gorgeous and mixes items from different brands together.

Animal Crossing New Horizons Play Journal - Terrible Terraforming

Need to get through the backlog of Animal Crossing: New Horizons screenshots from earlier this year so here is another play journal for the game. First up is a lovely photo of my character's disappointment when the fishing rod broke during the fishing tourney. Yeah...not a fan of the whole tools breaking thing. Sometimes I like to just fish or catch bugs for ages which I did a lot in New Leaf. But it's just not the same in New Horizons and I wish they'd fix the breaking tools mechanic. They should have gone with a similar system to the golden tools in New Leaf. Bonus cute picture of Renee taking part in the fishing tourney which was the same time as Bunny Day so she's wearing one of those silly egg outfits!

I have the amiibo card for Maple so I decided to move her in as she is super adorable and one of the best normal personality villagers. I had her in New Leaf and got hold of her amiibo card sometime when the cards were released. Must have been through a trade or got lucky to find her in a pack. The cards are being re-released soon so I will pick up a few more packs for fun. Anyway isn't Maple just the cutest? The bear cub villagers are one of my favourite animal types in the series.

Just some everyday happenings in my island here with Flick visiting and some villagers chilling out. I didn't do much landscaping or decorating in my town for a while and the most effort was this low effort walkway to resident services. Includes an uneven placement of everything! The second picture is a funny picture I snapped weirding out my villagers :P

October Favourites

Another month done and dusted! We are only 2 months off the end of 2020 now and it couldn't come sooner. I'm all geared up and ready for 2021, right after I get through the craziness of Christmas time in logistics. Wish me luck! I feel like I did a billion things this month and it felt like the busiest month to me. Anyway here is a quick monthly favourites for October 2020.

Gaming

Just been playing New Horizons occasionally as I only have my Nintendo Switch set up currently for gaming and can't do anything PC wise until I reinstall everything on my new PC. Been working on setting up my island layout and quite a few sections are finished now. Can't wait to be over so I can finally clear out all those flowers stored on all the beaches. Flowers drive me crazy in this game as there's just so many of them and I haven't even kept anything besides hybrids. Enjoy this cute picture of Pudge who everyone seems to point out when they visit my town. They always ask why he looks so sad :( Poor Pudge

Music

First up I picked up some gems at the Op-Shop a few weeks ago. Now I had been searching for this Bardot album for quite some time in various Op-Shops. I decided to venture out to some mega store style Op-Shops on the other side of town one day and guess what, one of them had the CD! They even had three copies of it! Plus that Op-Shop was much cheaper than the same company one I usually visit near me. Also picked up the single of Me, Myself & I which I was ecstatic to find. There was four copies of that one! This one store had the best selection of 2000's singles for $0.50! Might have to make another trip out there soon to pick up some more CD's.

Music wise I've been listening to a lot of stuff this month and it was difficult to even remember what I was jamming to this month because there was so much! I've been enjoying listening to old AKB48 songs and going to get my first AKB48 single for my collection soon. Can't believe a few years ago I joked about not getting too invested in the group's music so I wouldn't have to collect all those CD's but here we are haha. Also been into Son Dam Bi and Gugudan this month which are artists I haven't payed much attention to, so it's nice to discover their music. One thing I have been watching on Youtube a fair bit was variety performances of Celeb Five and they are just too funny. I always re-watch the one from Weekly Idol with the credit card game and the members go crazy. Never fails to make me laugh that one.

TWICE - Breakthrough Review (Regular CD Edition)

It's been forever and an eternity, but I have finally got a new computer! My old one completely died on me to the point where it couldn't open pictures anymore. I've got a nice new one now so I can post a bit more now. Luckily I had all my blog pictures back up on a hard drive so they were easy to move over. I thought today I would post a music review as it has been a while since my last one. If only I had more hours in the day to post endless music reviews as I'd love to do that. However with work and being tired after work, it's not that easy. Anyway today's post is about TWICE's Japanese single Breakthrough!

Breakthrough is TWICE's fifth Japanese single and was released in July 2019. The single was released in four editions: Limited Edition A CD+DVD, Limited Edition CD+DVD, Regular CD Edition and ONCE JAPAN CD Edition. I brought the Regular CD Edition from Yahoo Auctions direct from Japan. The Regular CD Edition includes the following contents:

• CD- 4 track single
• Lyrics booklet
• Jewel case
• OBI Strip
• 1 of 10 Photocards

I brought this single in a set along with their other Japanese single HAPPY HAPPY and I love the contrasting concepts for these two singles. Breakthrough has that classic girl crush that everyone is so hot on in K-Pop in recent years whereas HAPPY HAPPY is more on the cute and summer concept. All four editions of the single have the same concept and there is a beautiful 80's inspired aesthetic as the background for the single designs. This was the first physical Japanese single I brought of the group and honestly the design of the single was the main draw point for me. The front of the Regular Edition has a group shot and the back contains an image of the palm tree which is featured as the backdrop in the group image. The track listing and credit information are listed on the back as well.

Inside the jewel case, there is more gorgeous flora inspired 80's aesthetic to admire. I love the design of this CD as it matches the concept of the single and goes outside the standard box of just having the group or song title. I'm so over boring CD artwork and if you've read my other reviews, you'd get why I go crazy for interesting designs. I know some people are over 80's inspired stuff in K-Pop and J-Pop but I'm all for it! Those songs are often my favourite and the concepts are a breath of fresh air compared to the same cargo pants and crop top look I see a lot with some groups.

Colour Outfits Collection - Grey

Another set of colour outfits in Style Boutique for today's post. It seems I actually did two sets of grey themed outfits which is weird. I guess I made one set and completely forgot I did it and made another set. So I'll post one set today and the other set in a future post.

Grey themed outfits are quite easy to create in Styling Star as each style has a good selection of items in the colour tone. This collection contains a variety of looks ranging from party, casual to elegant. The colour grey is one of those tones I want to wear more but it's just hard to find nice pieces in this nice darker grey tone. Grey trackies are a must though for winter, I reckon I've had a pair every winter for like forever. 

My top outfits in this collection would be psychedelic, rock and preppy. I went with the psychedelic look which is the first picture in this collection as it perfectly describes the Retrobeat brand - crazy prints that don't match but look great when combined. The rock look is a favourite as all the different grey tones go well together and it reminds me of rock themed outfits I would always make in previous games of Style Boutique. Lastly is the preppy look which I picked because it was a bit different from my usual uniform look for the preppy style. Another great look that combines different shades of grey like the rock one and it's the perfect attire for a casual study day! A runner-up outfit was the boho-chic one as I rarely choose this look as a favourite but I feel the outfit looked wonderful and was something I usually wouldn't make.

Psychedelic

Sporty

Boho-Chic

Animal Crossing New Horizons Play Journal - Adventures With Friends

Got a bunch more screenshots from Animal Crossing New Horizons to share! These were back from the early days of the game so the layout of my island is pretty bare and villagers are just starting to be introduced. First off is this picture of Alice who had just moved into my town during the last play journal. I love the koala villagers as they are so adorable and have lovely designs. I just can't pick my favourite and I currently have two koalas in my town at the moment who are awesome.

Visited a few of my friend's islands and it was neat to see the different island layouts. Love this placement of Nook's near the waterfall and cliff edges. During the early days of the game, we all had such silly and basic looking outfits on. The second I got the QR Code scan feature with online I scanned in the dress I used to wear in New Leaf. It still looks lovely in New Horizons but the backpack part seems a bit useless now that you can have actual bags. This outfit will always have a special place in my heart as it's been with me for so long and I rarely took it off in New Leaf.

Isabelle started working at Resident Services and by working, I mean not doing much at all. Her character is kinda pointless in New Horizons honestly and I do such an eye roll when she says that there is nothing to report today. Like at least tell me if there are special visitors because sometimes I don't have time to play hide and seek looking for them everywhere.

August Favourites

It has been forever since I last did a monthly favourites and I'm trying to get back into blogging after a hectic few months. I'm going to try to post at least two times a month not including favourites or update posts), hopefully three being ambitious. So to get back into the groove of things, a month favourites post is an easily starting point.

Gaming

Been playing Animal Crossing New Horizons on and off. I tend to play more on my days off when I have more time and only quickly some days just to search for DIYs. The snow finally melted thank heavens cause I was way over it. I've also decided to redo my town as I wasn't the biggest fan of it's layout in recent days. My town wasn't entirely finished luckily so it wasn't hard to tear everything down. Still thinking about what to do so it's a mess currently of large open spaces and billions of flower. Here's a cute picture of Eugene hanging out at the town plaza!

Beauty

Gotten back into nail polish in recent months and found some new favourites. Years ago when I used to do my nails all the time, my go to was Complete Salon Manicure from Sally Hansen but it seems they don't really do that line anymore. I only use Sally Hansen nail products so I decided to try out the Insta-Dri as it seems to be the closest replacement to Complete Salon. I picked up these Jelly Belly collection ones on sale and I actually really like the formula! It does dry very quickly and has good coverage on the nails with only two coats. The two glitter polishes are nice when you figured out how to apply it properly, I've got the Tutti Fruitti glitter polish (second from the left) on currently and I was able to set it in the glitter flakes quite well with the Insta-Dri top coat. Looks great so far after two days but the test will be once I go back to work this week and see if it holds up against manual work all day.

Music

Geez I feel I could write an entire post on my music favourites this month because there are so many! I haven't been buying many CD's this year as shipping is difficult currently with COVID restrictions. I did however get BLACKPINK's How You Like That single from JB Hi-Fi so that was exciting to get a new K-Pop release. Don't have any photos of that one on hand but I can tell you that it is a large single and the tallest one in my collection so it was tricky to fit into my shelf.

Here's a quick rundown of some of favourite songs this month which has mainly been J-Pop ones. Been on a bit of a old school J-Pop binge lately and discovered some great new songs to listen to. I really shouldn't do this to myself because it only adds more CD's to my wishlist that I'd love to own one day haha.

Colour Outfits Collection - Silver

Somehow getting a post up today after a long hiatus on this blog. The last few months have just been so hectic with everything going on as my state isn't under any lockdown and my work never shut down and has been busier than ever. Plus my computer has been slowly dying so it was harder to get posts up. I'm half way at getting a new one so I thought that in the meantime whilst I had a spare moment I'd post a new Colour Outfits Collection for Style Boutique! This one has been saved on my hard drive for a little while so enough talk, let's get to the outfits!

Silver was a tough colour to use for outfits as there wasn't the widest selection of items within each style. Like I enjoy having a wide range of items to pick from to help create unique outfits for each style. Managed to put together a bunch of looks with some having lots of silver items and others with only one or two silver toned items usually jewellery. I think this is the only time I ended up using the most Purple Moon branded items in a collection post. I usually only save those for Purple Moon themed looks but many of the brands items came under the silver search term and was sometimes the only choice for certain styles.

Out of all the looks, my top favourites would be preppy, chic and gothic. The first look in the collection is the preppy style which is always a favourite of mine and I love the grey tones in this outfit and the mixture of pattern styles. Enid Chen was just made for the silver colour tone and had a number of items to choose from which made it hard to narrow down! I went with a formal look as I wanted to use this stunning sequined ball gown and tiara. Gothic was a favourite as it's a gothic look I don't normally use and has a casual elegance to it.

Preppy

Feminine

One Item Challenge - Stage Dive

It has been forever since I last posted a Style Boutique post. This one took a while to get up as Blogger has moved to a new format and it took me ages to figure out how to upload photos. Still can't work it out properly just yet but I managed to get all the photos for this One Item Challenge up! This time it's a challenge for the brand Stage Dive and I decided to use one of my top items from the brand which is one of the new Big Check Jacket. Huge fan of this peplum style jacket and I've got a few in real life now! I tried to use an item that would look nice with other styles since the rock image is the opposite of some styles in the game such as girly or boho-chic. 

First off here is the rock themed outfit featuring the  jacket with other Stage Dive branded items. Purple is one of the nicer colours the brand uses in my opinion and there a some great items that match it perfectly. I went with one of the stage themed photo locations for the photoshoot as it's the ideal spot for the Stage Dive brand!

There are a few favourites from this One Item Challenge and my top picks would be gothic, sporty and basic. I quite liked the gothic outfit as it looked rather well put together and the jacket matches well with gothic themed items. Haven't used this skirt or inner for age (or even ever!) so it was nice to try something new and I didn't want to do the pannier skirt look as I've done that enough with gothic outfits. The sporty and basic outfits were a favourite as I liked how simple they looked and the shoes turned out super cute. The jacket brings a pop of pattern to the outfit and you can't go wrong with a bit of purple in an outfit. Honorable mention to the craziness of the psychedelic outfit! I love it and it's just all over the place but still stylish.

Gothic

Psychedelic

Animal Crossing New Horizons Play Journal - Starting From The Beginning

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd be well aware that Animal Crossing New Horizons came out in March and it has been super popular. I picked it up day 1 and have been playing the game a fair bit since launch. I've amassed quite a collection of screenshots from my adventures in game so I thought I'd share them all in a new play journal series. I've kept them in the order I've taken them so there you can notice the growth in the island development. To start off the play journal, here's a snap of my character arriving on the island only to be greeted by the Nooklings. Honestly I like these guys over Tom Nook, especially Tommy who I always make sure to talk to at the shop. Plus they looked super cute early on in the game with their little flags!

Finally got a fruit that wasn't apples as my native fruit! I've always had apples in previous games so it was great to get cherries as my native fruit! I do have an orchard set up now with all the different types but I really miss lemons as I loved how they looked on the trees and was my favourite tree to plant in the town besides the cedar.

My starter villagers are Renee and Sparro who still live in my town today. Renee seemed to be a popular starter villager as a number of people I know had her as well. Sparro is pretty cool and is always happy to talk. He reminds me of Bill who I loved in New Leaf and is one of the best Jock villagers. The second picture is from when I donated the Sea Bass to Blathers and completly ignored his request to learn fascinating facts about the sea bass. Like the only thing you need to know about the sea bass is that there is a billion of them. Seriously why is there no Nook Miles achievement for how many sea bass you catch?

The new camera feature is pretty cool in the game and I like how you can pan the camera to take photos from different angles. Here's my character chilling on a weedy area of my island and I quite like how the weeds look in the new game. Much nicer than previous games and it's easier to get the weed achievement now. I'm actually not far off getting the top one and you do get quite a few weeds each day to pick up for the achievement.

Colour Outfits Collection - Brown

Thought it was about time for another Colour Outfits Collection post after a brief hiatus. Apologies for the delay in posting new content, my work didn't close for the COVID-19 lockdown and we were busier than ever. So I didn't have much time to write up new posts and check on the blog. But I'm back now and will try to work through the backlog of posts I had planned starting with the collection of brown toned themed outfits in Styling Star!

Style Boutique has always had a great selection of brown toned items as the colour is pretty neutral and suits all style types in the game. I tend to use it a lot more in girly or preppy outfits but other styles like bold and chic have some excellent brown toned items as well. My top outfits for this set would be chic, boho, gothic and sporty. I picked chic as I've always loved this geometric outer since Fashion Forward and this was the perfect time to use it! The gothic outfit was a favourite as it's a bit different from the usual dress or skirt looks I usually do with that style. Not the biggest fan of the boho-chic style in general, but this brown and purple toned outfit came together really well. I quite like these outer jackets from Soy and they match perfectly with these boots. Lastly I picked sporty as it looked cute and simple.

Baby-Doll

Bold

Rock