I've been talking about the 3DS with some friends recently and it reminded me of Style Boutique 2. So I thought it was the perfect excuse to post some more fashion show pictures from Fashion Forward! The first set of pictures makes me remember fond memories of the game. I remember these were some of the first photos I took in the game for the fashion shows. The first picture is honestly a smashing looking psychedelic themed outfit and how on earth did I make something look so good?!? The second picture is one of my favourite game screenshots ever and I use it quite often still! All the lively themed outfits look just like the typical April Bonbon styled outfits I would always make. I was so obsessed with these star cardigans from April Bonbon in Fashion Forward and I can't believe I used the same headband in multiple outfits. Guess I really liked it!
Can you believe August is finally here? July seemed to be a really long month for me. I guess it was because we had a lockdown and I lost track of the days. I kept working the entire time due to working in online logistics and it was nice to hang out with my co-workers on a casual basis. Luckily the lockdown was only short and everything was able to reopen but with restrictions. It feels like I did a lot of things this month so I'll get right to it!
Gaming
I brought a bunch of Sims 4 expansion packs early this month as I felt like getting back into the game. I've actually been enjoying it a lot and I don't mind Sims 4. A lot of people complain about it, but I find it fun and it's nice to see something different to the previous games. It gets boring with the same thing over and over again and it's interesting to see the unique packs the developers are bringing out. I've been playing the Eco Lifestyle pack the most and been working on different careers. My sim kept getting set on fire by their toilet though which was silly. I think I upgraded it too much so it kept causing fires every time someone used it. Sold it straight away after the third fire!
Reading
This month I've been obsessed with reading and it's all I think about! When I was at school, I wasn't much of a reader and usually avoided it outside of reading sessions in class. After year 12, a friend got my into the Janet Evanovich books which were the only thing I really read for years. But since I got my Kindle, I've been really into it! Like I search for free kindle books and read those. All the ones I've read so far have been great and I even brought more in some series! I quite enjoyed the Bennet Brothers series from Staci Hart and I'm starting the second book in the series soon! Other than the Kindle, I use the Overdrive App with my local library so I can read at work or on the go. The app has a decent selection and I've read some good comic books on there especially Sarah Scribbles who I actually have the first book from.
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.
Found a backlog of CD's photos on my computer so it's the perfect excuse for another music review. This time it's another classic from the quirky Korean Pop group Pungdeng-E! This is their 1st Album - 풍뎅이 풍뎅이 Go! Pungdeng-E Pungdeng-E Go! Well it's got the word album title but it's more like a single or mini album if we look at the track listing. Let's get straight into it with this fun cover image and CD!
풍뎅이 풍뎅이 Go! Pungdeng-E Pungdeng-E Go! was released in 2013 and is the group's debut physical release. It only came in one version and I'm not sure if it came with photocards as I got mine second hand from Yahoo Auctions. I was excited to find this as it's quite rare and it was in a set with their 2nd album 액션 풍뎅이 Action Pungdeng-E Go! What a steal! 풍뎅이 풍뎅이 Go! Pungdeng-E Pungdeng-E Go! comes with the following:
CD- 6 track album
Photobook
I do enjoy the album design of Pungdeng-E's Korean releases as they have consistency and all four of their releases are the same size. The front cover has a photo of the three members in an outfit from the MV for 솜사탕 Cotton Candy. This cover is quite nice as it has a photo of the members that matches the concept of the album and I'm a big fan of covers like this. So over the boring plain colour or logo trend. The back cover contains the tracking listing and sponsorship information for the release. The group's releases are always like this and I assume the group had a ton of sponsors to help fund releases.
Turns out I still have a large amount of Animal Crossing New Horizons screenshots to post on the blog, so I'm going to get through some more today. Plus it will be fun looking back on my island and how it used to look! I haven't played much of the game lately and I wish Nintendo would update the game with some new features and content. It gets pretty stale once you've done most things and I'd love to collect all the furniture but the whole colour variant thing puts me off it. Anyway here is Isabelle with her usual nothing interesting speech. One of the main things they need to improve is this, I always just button mash through it.
I've seen a lot of players in the community debating about whether the snowmen are good or bad in New Horizons. Honestly I like the new system as I wasn't a fan of how frustrating it was to create the entire family to get all the items. I found it rather easy to make snowboys in the new game and it was pretty easy to get all the items pretty fast. The snowballs also spammed in good spots for me and I purposely left my island unfinished with large open spaces so it would be easy to roll snowballs. The dialogue of the snowboys was dramatic and amusing.
Here are some photos of my villagers being weird as usual. Caught a bunch hanging out at the Resident Services and Lopez had a fun greeting for me. Then later on Pudge was holding a concert for a rather small audience. Pudge is just the cutest thing and I don't understand how people can hate his design :( The next few photos are of Spike tending to the garden behind his house. He used to always be in this spot and was helpful in watering flowers. Maybe he had a secret gardening hobby he didn't want to admit as he is the jock type of villager.
I have another brand collection from the ガールズモード 3 キラキラ☆コーデ book (Girls Mode 3 Glitter ☆ Coordination in English) for today's post! This time we will take a look at the elegant and stylish eastern inspired brand Kanokoi. This brand is home to the games selection of kimonos and yukatas as well as a good selection of traditional Japanese & Chinese inspired clothing items. The main style of Kanokoi is the eastern style of course but is also features other styles such as basic, girly, boho-chic, bold and chic. Here is a simple introduction of the brand in the book and features some example outfits you can make with items from Kanokoi.
The clothing selection for Kanokoi is smaller than brands such as Marzipan Sky or Chorale. It focuses more on seasonal items and features a number of lovely prints and designs. I found when I used Kanokoi in the game, I tended to stick to the same items from the brand and always thought the brand had a lot of matching items. Like the design on a top matched the design on some pants and shoes. So I tended to make outfits with that mindset and I guess that's why I never used most of the items from the brand. The kimonos and yukata's are the real gem of this brand! The pastel toned and flower print ones were my favourites. I wonder if Kanokoi was someone's favourite brand in the game? It's a gorgeous brand but I feel it needs expanding on as there are so many beautiful Japanese and Chinese clothing styles/items that would be great for the brand!
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.
