July Favourites

Almost to the end of winter! It actually hasn't been a cold winter until the last week or two. It's been quite cold and everyone has been commenting on it. I feel like July was such a waste for myself as I was sick for most of it. I had a bad chest infection that knocked me out for a while and I'm still trying to get over it! Being sick is the worst and especially the worst when you cannot do anything.

Gaming

Many just some announcements for this section and first off is that I did buy that new Nintendo Switch game I was mentioning in last months favourites. I will be posting about it tomorrow so please come back to the blog to check out what I got (it's rather exciting!). Second is that I will be starting a new Style Boutique challenge! This one is going to be a rather long one and the first post will kick off later this week. Here is a sneak peak at one of the challenge outfits!

Stationery

Received an order from Aliexpress this month which contained some great items! The whole point of this order was to purchase one of those cutters for washi tape. I've been seeing them on Instagram and I thought that would be useful. Same with the tweezers which were another Instagram recommendation. Originally I thought there was no way tweezers would make using stickers easier but omg it actually does. Definitely worth the purchase! I got some cute bear stickers and another Sumkkio Gurashi sticker book. Almost have all four in the set now! The pins and card holder are for work and work great! No other exciting stationery as I didn't go into town this month as I was still sick!

Music

Got some new K-Pop albums this month and I will make a post about those soon. It was exciting to get some albums as it feels like forever since I brought new ones! Been listening to a lot of music but nothing too exciting. Mainly been listening to Stay Together from the Kaiser Chiefs which the song Press Rewind stuck in my head for ages. Another two I've been listening to is Hits To The Head from Franz Ferdinand and dream world from dream. So many good songs on the latter album and I love all the Eurobeat covers.

April Favourites

Cannot believe April has come to an end, that month just seemed to go on forever! I feel like I didn't do much and then I feel like I did too much. It was super busy at work and hopefully will die down now. Honestly I'm not sure what to write in this month's favourites as I didn't recall much I did outside of work. I haven't been playing any video games at all as I've just lost interest currently. Maybe if my local Nintendo club starts back up, it might inspire me a bit. We had to put meetings on hiatus due to the pandemic and it's never started back up again. I do miss going into town to them as it was fun to check out all the niche stores and the local book chain as re-opened in a larger heritage building and I'm dying to check it out! Someday this month I might make the trip into town as I thinking I might need some buttons from a sewing store that is only in town.

I've been super into journaling during April and trying to do it everyday. Last month I posted about the new bullet journal I brought from Aliexpress and it is amazing! The quality of the paper is outstanding and I love how there is no bleed through. Well worth it and if I fill this one up quick, I'll get another one. I'm thinking of maybe trying a Hobonichi next year as I want to get more serious with this hobby but they are so expensive to import here. This week a large order from Aliexpress arrived which is where I buy most of my craft supplies. I seriously need to cut back on the stickers as I cannot close the box I store some of them in currently! This lot was just too cute and will be put to good use.

Music

Only one new CD this month as I'm trying to cut back my collection. But I've been looking for Britney Spears' Blackout album for years and never had much luck. Well I was at Salvo's yesterday and guess what? It was there! I couldn't believe it as I've never seen it anywhere and I've been looking in Op Shops for a few years now. Super excited as I used to own the album and somehow lost it one day. Nice addition to the collection and I think that might be one of the last Britney albums I need. Anyway, I'll end this month's favourites with some songs I've been enjoying lately. See you in May!

March Favourites

This month's favourites is going to be a tad different as I haven't really done much this month. March was just all over the place and I didn't even play any games this month! Wasn't in the mood for playing anything and I was spending a lot of time on creative projects. Plus I was pretty busy at work with staff shortages and such. So I thought for this month's favourites, I would just share some things I brought this month!

First up is this beautiful bullet journal I brought! I have been on the hunt for a while now for the perfect notebook and boy was a challenge. I went to every stationery store here and the range wasn't what I was looking for. Whilst I did find beautiful notebooks, the paper wasn't up to the standard I was after and nothing jumped out as the perfect one. I didn't want to get a 80 GSM book as I thought my supplies would leak through or show on the back page. Ended up finding this one of trusty old Aliexpress! It is from a store called Buke Notebook and the quality is amazing. The cover feels rather elegant and the paper is on high quality. Price was reasonable around $24AUD for me including tax & shipping. The seller packed the item perfectly and even included some goodies! Love the bookmark as I actually needed another bookmark! I also got some stamps and an ink pad from Aliexpress and it shows up great on the paper. Definitely looing forward to using this over the next few months.

Daiso Trip & Sticker Haul!

A miracle happened and Daiso finally got stock in!!! I've been visiting the store over the past year and it seems the company got a big shipment of stock in. The store I visited was packed full of stock and I even saw some items I've haven't seen for ages. I could've spent ages just going through everything but I restrained myself and didn't buy too much. The main purpose of the visit was to stock up on stickers and Daiso did not disappoint in the sticker department! There was even some I'd never seen before! I shall share my haul in this post along with all the other stickers I've acquired lately. First let's take a look at what Daiso has on offer! 

Gotta check out the snacks of course! I wish there was a Daiso closed to my workplace so I could eat the cookies & cream and choc banana flavours all the time. Once I tried the hundreds and thousands flavour and it was too die for! Never been able to find it again as I believe it's limited edition. The snack sections at Daiso have shrunk over time and you need to go to the city store to get the better range. I tend to stick to the Pocky or biscuits however Daiso does stock the Poppin' Cookin' sets which are fun. When I made my purchase today, the sales assistance didn't ask if I wanted Koala cookies. They must've run through their supply as they always ask you to buy them.

So many snacks!

Next up was the check out the stationery section for washi tape. I couldn't locate any so maybe they didn't get any in this shipment. I brought a nice set from the store once that had 10 different styles in the pack and I've been searching for it since! No luck so far but hopefully they will get it back one day as there was a green version of the set I want to get. Daiso did have these amusing animal notebooks on display and I've never seen anything like this. It was like a weird squishy cover and everything about them is just so weird. I don't buy any notebooks from Daiso as I'm not a fan of the paper in most of them. I used to buy all my stationery from the Morning Glory stores which stocked Korean brands but they all closed ages ago (still sad about it). Nowadays I get all my notebooks cheap from work as I go through so many and you know, staff discount is a huge selling point haha.

Over in the craft section, there isn't anything too exciting. I usually check out this section to see if Daiso has anything unique or crafty hack things. The pom pom maker looked interesting but I have no use for it. There wasn't any new needle felting stuff either, just the same old stuff I already have. The knitting markers looked cute due to the pastel colour. Mine are fluorescent colours and are super easy to use compared to these. The Disney stamp sets aren't new besides the Zootopia one. I hadn't seen that design yet so it must be a recent release. I have the pink cat one on the right already and a Winnie the Pooh one that is an old style. Stamps are something that are fun to collect, but I find myself not using them too much now. I really should try to incorporate them into my notebooks more.

TWICE Haul!

Received a rather exciting package this week full of K-Pop goodies! Finally caved in and brought a photo album for my photocards. I got bored of them just sitting in a box so I picked up one off Aliexpress. Whilst I was purchasing it, I decided to grab a some other items from the seller and they are all TWICE themed! Here's a quick look at all the items!

The main part of this order was the photo album and I went with the standard sized album which holds 240 cards. It's designed for the normal Korean sized photo cards and only a few of Japanese ones fitted. So I shall have to get a bigger album for all my Japanese cards which is mostly Afterschool as I have heaps of those. When I put my photocards into the album, I left gaps so I could see the back artwork of the cards. It looks lovely and looks great when I have a few cards from a set! I'm not a photocard collector and I've manage to acquire quite a few over the years. Here are some photos of some random pages in my album with the Dreamnote and Momoland pages being my favourites.

Japanese Crayon Pop photocards

Back artwork of Nature & Dreamnote photocards

Dreamnote photocards from Dream:like & Dream:us

i.o.i & Nature photocards

June Favourites

All I can say about the end of June if I had a dollar for the amount of times I heard the phrase 'Happy End of Financial Year', I could fund my sticker addiction for a while. June is a crazy month work wise as people go crazy buying items for their businesses and to claim on tax. The last few days of the month were pretty insane but it's all over now thankfully. Other than that, this month was pretty uneventful as it was very cold and wet so nothing much goes on. It is nice to have rainy days and there has only been a few times where I've felt uncomfortably cold. 

There isn't much to cover for this month's favourites as I haven't been up to much besides work and a bit of shopping which is pretty boring. I still wanted to post a monthly favourites so it shall be a quick one. I haven't been playing games very much as I've kind of lost interest at the moment. The Sims is something I've been thinking about lately but just haven't had the time to sit down and play it. Isn't that how it is for everyone when it comes to The Sims haha? You think about playing it, play it for hours straight and then never touch it again for years! Honestly I've been spending more time reading on my Kindle than playing video games. I'm obsessed with that thing and it's got me back into reading. It's always been something I've wanted to do more and the Kindle has made it so much easier to find books to read and carry around.

My last blog post was about my sticker haul and I've actually gotten a few since that post! I just go through so many that I'm always picking up new ones. It's getting hard to find small schedule sized ones for my small journal. Heading to the shopping centre this weekend that has Daiso so hopefully they've updated their sticker section. Ordered a bunch of stickers online the other day and I cannot wait to get them! In my last post, I showed some cute girl image stickers I got off Aliexpress and at first I didn't like them and wasn't sure where to use them. But I started two new notebooks for things this month and they were perfect for that! I like the tracing/masking sticker feel they have to them and you get a good variety of images in each pack. I ordered two more sets in my recent Aliexpress haul and one of them is this adorable space themed set!

Music

Now I have actually have something to post here as I've found a few new favourite songs this month. My new music recommendation is clicking on random suggestions on Spotify and it's been great so far! I wanted to get into more J-Pop songs and I've found stacks of new idol groups to listen to. I'm not fussed about hardcore following them and at the moment I'm just into finding new songs to listen to. I'll post a few here that I've been into this month. A few groups I've been into are MAX, Girls2, NMB48 and no3b.

Sticker Haul!

If there is one thing that brightens my day is stickers! And today's post is all about the sticker's I've collected recently. I've kind of got a bit obsessed with stickers this year and place them all over my journals, work stationery and electronics. All of the stickers shown in this post were purchase from Daiso, Aliexpress or Spotlight. Let's take a look shall we?

First up are all the Daiso items I got! Glad I picked these up last month as I went to two Daiso stores recently and both were pretty lacklustre sticker wise. One store didn't have any! The second store had shrunk it's section down which made me sad as I love going to that store to stock up and it was the whole reason for my trip. Anyway I was happy with all of these cuties! I love the Daiso stickers as they are small in size and ideal for my journal. They also come in many fun styles and images. I think I have every style of the schedule sticker available here. The hedgehog stickers in the top left corner are adorable and this was actually the second pack of this I've brought. I really like these ones as you get two sheets in one packet. I rarely see these two packs anymore :(

I just had to get these adorable cat stickers as a few of the kitties reminded me of cats I watch on Youtube. The tall standing up white and back cat reminded me of cat_urgry on Instagram and they are also on youtube! This cat is like the best suggestion I've ever had on Youtube. I'll post my favourite video on theirs at the end of this post. Some of the cats also reminded me of Mejoo Cats which is my favourite youtube channel. Hyuji is my bias then Monji is a close runner up. But I love all the cats honestly ❤❤

At first I wasn't sold on these shell stickers but they are gorgeous and feel lovely to use. They are a masking sticker so they feel different to plastic ones. Excuse my bad terminology, I'm not a sticker expert just a hoarder! I actually brought a second pack of these yesterday as I had almost used up my first lot.