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