Reading, Running, and Learning to Knit: an Update from Lockdown.

So I have currently been furloughed from work for a little over a week now. I’m not sure if being stuck at home with my parents it yet taking it’s toll, but I was definitely feeling the signs of boredom and the overwhelming sensation of a depressive episode at the beginning of this week.

In order to occupy my mind these days I am forcing myself to do a reasonable amount of reading, as I mentioned in my last post. This if vaguely going well. Since the beginning of April I haven’t yet finished a book, but I have started nine?!?!?!?!!!!

But I guess that’s fine. I’m reading each of them bit by bit. Three of the books I’m currently reading are less than 200 pages, so that makes it feel a little less daunting. But not much. However I do feel that I am having to force myself to read at the moment, because it does seem to require a heck of a lot of energy just to open a book.

Also, because I am finding the sedentary nature of this lockdown to be somewhat suffocating, I have decided that I should start exercising on a regular basis. For this I have chosen to start using the app Couch to 5K. I went for my first run yesterday, and today is a very much needed rest day. My legs ache quite a lot when walking down stairs or lowering myself into a chair. But I’m sure this will all benefit me in the end (hurhurhur).

On top of that, my mum has decided that she is going to teach me to knit. My mother is quite an ample knitter, she has been knitting consistently for about thirty years now, and is always making something, sometimes several things, most of which I tend to acquire.

Therefore she has taken it upon herself to teach me a new skill. SO far I am struggling with the basics. She taught me the motions when I was a child, but I never kept it up. Now she thought that she would just be able to teach me a couple of different techniques, and I’d get on fine. Turns out I don’t remember shit from when I’m a child, and can’t even keep a consistent number of stitches between rows.

Oh well, I guess it will all come together before I’m allowed back to work. Perhaps.

In any case, I’m fine, my family is fine, everyone I know seems to be fine. I’m actually quite enjoying this whole ‘not going to work, not having to socialise or have contact with anyone outside my house, yet still being paid’ thing. It’s just my cup of tea.

Speaking of, I might just go and get myself another one. 🙂

Until next time…

Love, Bobbi. Xx.

O.W.L.’s Magical Readathon TBR.

The O.W.L’s Magical readathon is a month long attempt to read as much as possible. This is the third year that it has been running, although this is only my first time partaking.

I don’t normally take part in readathons, because I am notoriously bad at them (by which I mean that I forget to read). However, considering current global circumstances, I feel that I have no excuse not to join in. And so I have chosen the following TBR.

A list of the challenges and everything can be found at magicalreadathon.com.

I have decided to work toward the Wandmaker career, as I feel this is something that would interest me if I lived in the magical world. I am also going to attempt the short courses for Legal Defence of Fantastic Beasts, and Animagus Training.

So, firstly, the courses for Wandmaker are Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Charms, and Herbology.

Secondly, the courses for Legal Defence of Magical Beasts are Care of Magical Creatures and History of Magic.

And lastly, the courses for Animagus Training are Arithmancy, Potions, and Transfigurations.

At this point I feel like I may as well be doing all twelve subjects, considering I’ve already chosen to do eight of them. Haha. As it is, I’m going to begin with the five for Wandmaker, and see where we go from there.

(Please be aware that normal I don’t read more than maybe three books per month. I think the most I’ve ever managed in a month is six. Still, this is going to be a big challenge. But there is currently nothing to stop me from reading the entire month. Lol.)

Wandmaker.

Ancient Runes – read a book with a heart on the cover or in the title.

For this book I have chosen Theatrical, by Maggie Harcourt. This is a YA contemporary set in a theatre. I don’t really know much about this story, but I picked hte book up as mostly a cover-buy a short while ago, and it looks cute and easy-going.

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Arithmancy – read a book outside of your favourite genre.

The book I have chosen for this is The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells. I don’t often read classics, and rarely read sci-fi. I also chose this because I recently realised this is set near where I live, which quite interested me. Haha.

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Care of Magical Creatures – read a book that has a creature with a beak on the front.

For this one I have chosen Nevernight, by Jay Kristoff. I started trying to read this a while ago, but only managed the first chapter. I felt encouraged to read it because one of my favourite BookTubers, PeruseProject, read it recently and said she enjoyed it.

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Charms – read a book with a white cover.

This was fairly difficult for me to choose as I have so many books with white covers that I haven’t read yet. But I ended up choosing One of Us is Lying, by Karen M. McManus. I have been putting off reading this book for a long time because I found out what happens at the end. But I still feel like reading this book, especially because I own the sequel, and think it would be a waste not to read both books.

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Herbology – read a book that starts with the letter M.

I didn’t have many books to choose for this, but ended up choosing another book that I’ve owned for a long time, and feel somewhat obliged to read. And that book is My Name is Victoria, by Lucy Worsley. I don’t really know much about this book, but I believe it is historical fiction about Queen Victoria.

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If a subject is included in more than one course then you only need to read one book for that subject. Therefore I only need to read three extra books for my chosen short courses.

Extra Courses

History of Magic – books featuring witches / wizards.

I found it quite difficult to choose a book for this challenge, especially as most books I own with magical characters don’t specify them as witches or wizards, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include them. In any case, I ended up choosing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This is the next book in my current reread of the series which I think I started at the beginning of last year. This is fairly unfortunate as it usually takes me months to read this books as it is so long.

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Potions – read a book that is less that 150 pages.

For this book I decided to choose a graphic novel as it would be really easy to get through quickly, and I acquired a reasonable amount of graphic novels as presents last Christmas. The one I have chosen is Postal, by Matt Hawkins, Bryan Hill, Isaac Goodhart, and Besty Golden. I honestly don’t know anything about this story. I added it to my wishlist months ago, and since then have forgotten everything about it. But hopefully it will be a quick and enjoyable read.

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And finally:

Transfiguration – read a book which includes shapeshifting.

For this book i have chosen a book in a series that I started a while ago, and haven’t continued in a long time. That book is The Trials of Apollo: the Dark Prophecy, by Rick Riordan. This is a book set in the Percy Jackson universe, about the god Apollo who gets turned into a human.. I feel that counts as shapeshifting. Haha. Not sure if that might be cheating, but there is a lot of magic, and I’m sure there are other characters in the series who shapeshift.

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Anyway, after that rather long post, hopefully I will be able to read a lot of these books. I worked out that if I read all of them then I would reach a total page count of 3205. And that seems like a lot!

I will try to keep you updated on how my reading is going, but if you are interested, my GoodReads is here.

Until next time…

Love, Bobbi. Xx.

Photo of me in my new Weasley sweater that my mum made me!

Life Update… And Becoming a Student Again.

I can’t believe I missed out on writing a blog post for the last two weeks. Admittedly it has been a busy couple of weeks, and I’ve had other things to do. But now I’m back, and quite a lot has happened since I was last on this blog.

So work is starting to get busy again. I work in a nursery, and we’re getting quite a few new children starting at the moment. One of them is only four months old, and they are so cute!!! But having new children start is always kind of stressful because they miss their parents, so they’re quite upset. Screaming children creates a lot of tension in the classroom.

Then last weekend I didn’t get much rest because I went to my friend’s hen-do (AKA bachelorette party). The wedding is net weekend, so I’m not going to have much free time next weekend either, but it will e totally worth it.

But possibly more important than any of that (for me personally at least) is that on Friday I finally signed my application for my childcare level three course!!! I’m so excited!! I haven’t done study in about five years, and I don’t think I was ever a particularly studious student (the depression didn’t help with that). I just want to prove to myself that I am actually capable of studying really hard and doing well. I just want to be proud of myself for doing well.

So that is going to take up a lot of my time for the next year. I’m beginning to get anxious that I’m not going to have enough time to study around working 40 hours a week, and commuting about 2 hours each day. I’m just going to end up with no free time. Although I have decided that I’m going to give myself one day each week where I don’t do any studying, otherwise I will feel like I don’t get any free time at all, and that will make me miserable.

But despite all that, I really am looking forward to studying and finally getting my childcare qualification. This time next year I’ll have my level three, I’ll be able to look for better paying jobs that are nearer to where I live. I honestly can’t wait for the day when I get to walk to work. Haha.

I can’t wait to get started on my studying. This is going to be so good, and so worthwhile. Bring it on!!

Love Bobbi. Xx.

So far this year…

This post is just a quick summary of how things are going so far this year. We’re nearly three weeks into 2020, and things are pretty good so far.

This week I’ve had a fairly bad cold after only just getting over my previous cold. The joys of working with small children is when they sneeze in your face, and then you have to suffer a cold for ages. I wasn’t impressed. Haha. On Monday this week TWO children sneezed on me, and five days later I still feel like crap.

But mostly things have been positive so far. Most week days I have been getting up at 0530 and putting on make up before leaving the house (I didn’t wear make up to work at all last year). I go lots of positive comments for my make up, but this week what with not feeling my best I stayed in bed a little bit longer instead of doing my make up. But I think I needed the rest.

I am rather pleased with myself for getting up earlier though. I’m going to try moving my wake up time a little bit earlier over the next month or so I think, once I have my full energy back. Then I might be able to get more done in the mornings, maybe drink coffee and read a book. But I’m not too fussy about that at the moment, so long as I’m not running late all the time like I had been for a while before Christmas.

I am also doing much better at staying up to date with my Bullet Journal. In the past I had updated it maybe once per week. When I first started using my bujo I was somewhat obsessed with it, and HAD to do it every night before bed. Maybe I can start introducing it again as part of my night routine (which I haven’t started working on just yet).

On the other hand, I haven’t been doing so well with my reading progress as I had hoped. Today I finished my first book of the year (which I had started before Christmas). The book was The Well of Ascension, which is the second book in the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. I really enjoyed that book, but it was about 760 pages. But I still don’t think it should have taken me almost a month to read. I found it kind of slow going at the beginning, but after a couple of hundred pages into it, the action and drama got more intense. So the past week I have been reading at least fifty pages every day.

I want to be able to read fifty to a hundred pages every day, and having a long commute to work every day does help with that, but when I’m tired or if the book isn’t holding my attention too well then I really struggle to focus. So that is something I want to work on for a while.

I’m also going to try reading some graphic novels and listening to some audiobooks as much as I can to try to catch up. If I want to reach my reading goal for this year then I’m going to have to complete about eight or nine books each month. That’s going to be really difficult considering I mostly don’t even complete three to five books each month. But I can work on it, and in time I will improve. I just need a strategy and consistency. 🙂

Also, I haven’t done any sewing yet this year. Honestly, I’d like to have time at home alone to do sewing, but that’s not something that’s likely to happen for a while. So I’m either going to have to get on with it with my parents around, or just keep putting it off for a while, which is more likely. Haha.

However I have been writing in my journal a few times so far. I probably haven’t been writing in it as much as I had wanted to at the beginning of the month, but I can solve that quite easily.

There are still plenty of my 2020 goals that I want to work on (see my 2020 goals post for the full list). But there is plenty of time for all of that. If I can get on well with a few of my goals at the beginning of the year then it will be easier for me to pick up the others in time. Things haven’t gone too badly so far, and I’m quite please with how positive I feel at the moment.

I want to continue working towards getting up early, and getting more reading done. I think those are my two main focuses at the moment. I have also been keeping better track of my finances this year. I’m even keeping within my budget for January. Haha. I have spent far less money on coffees from cafes, and have had packed lunches nearly every day at work, and that does so much good for my bank account. Lol.

Anyways, I think that’s all I have to say for now.

Love Bobbi. Xx.

Goals For 2020.

Every year I give myself a selection of goals that I want to achieve by the end of the year. And, to be honest, I usually only achieve one or two of those goals. This year I’ve chosen sixteen goals. It does sound like a lot, but I want to achieve quite a lot of things this year. Not all of them are necessarily important, some are just for fun. But half the fun is the challenge anyway. These goals range through, personal, health, reading, and work.

I am going to run through all of the goals, and give you a brief explanations for each of them.

1 – read 50-70 books

Every year I set myself a reading goal. In 2018 I read 50 books, this year I’ve only read about 30 books. I really want to push myself in 2020, and I really need to get in the habit of making better use of my time.

2 – complete level 3 childcare qualification

As I mentioned in my introduction, I am an unqualified nursery practitioner. In 2020 I am going to start studying for my qualification, and I’d really like to complete it before the end of the year.

3 – maintain blog all year

This is a new blog, and I’d really like to keep it running all year. I am aiming to publish at least one post per week.

4 – write in my diary twice a week or more

I think writing about my emotions and life and on a regular basis will be really good for my mental health.

5 – write in sewing journal for projects

I am quite intent on getting into sewing and I think if I write about it in journal form each time I work on my project it will help me to develop my skills, and keep track of what I learn each time I work on a project.

6 – work on sewing projects once per week

I know that this is going to be difficult because setting up all my sewing things takes time, and then I still have to tidy it up afterwards. It’s also inconvenient because the space I use is the family dining table and it bothers me to do things like this around other people.

However, I have been meaning to get into this hobby for the past two years, but I have never put in the time to properly learn what I’m doing. Once I am comfortable with the basics (and with reading and interpreting patterns) then I will be able to find it more relaxing and enjoyable.

7 – write in reading journal for each book I read

This is just a fun and active way for me to keep track of what I read and how I feel about it.

8 – move into my brother’s bedroom

At the beginning of last year my brother left home and I’ve been meaning to move into his room as it is bigger than mine. This will require a lot of decluttering, as well as planning out what furniture I want, and where I’ll put it. This is definitely a long-term project, but I am super excited about this.

9 – quit wasting time on my phone

I have a really bad habit of spending too much time on my phone. I really like the idea of being productive and making good use of my time. But I also get easily distracted by pointless games on my phone, or scrolling through social media. Recently I deleted all the games on my phone, and that has really helped me to spend less time on my phone.

However, I think I also need to choose to schedule specific time to relax, during which I’ll allow myself to spend time on my phone. Intentional time-wasting is fine. 🙂

10 – tidy bedroom each night

This is just a little habit to keep my bedroom more organised. I will dedicate ten minutes before I start getting ready for bed each night. But it will make my room a much nicer and more comfortable environment to live in. This will make it easier for me to relax, but also to focus when I’m trying to complete tasks.

11 – impliment evening routine

This will help me to fall asleep more easily if I do the same set of things every single night. I will end up being ready for bed at the same time every night, so I ought to be falling asleep around the same time every night. This should make it easier for me to wake up at the same time each morning. I plan to start getting ready for bed half an hour before I want to be in bed, if this is not enough time for me then I will start getting ready earlier.

12 – impliment morning routine

In much the same vain, this will help me to get up in the morning, and allow me to feel more relaxed in the mornings so I’m not rushing to get ready before I have to leave the house.

13 – wear light make-up every day

This can be part of my morning routine, and might make me feel more positive about my appearance.

14 – 12,000 steps per day

I walk quite a lot on work days both as part of my job and as part of my commute, but I want to encourage myself to move around more on other days. This is just an easy way to stay active whilst not feeling like I’m really doing any exercise.

15 – listen to one audiobook per month

This will help me to achieve my reading goal, and make better use of my Audible account. It is also a good way to read whilst I’m doing other things like sewing, writing my journal, falling alseep, or walking.

16 – read one e-book per month

Similarly this is an easy way for me to carry books. I’ve had a Kindle for about five years, and I haven;t read many books on it yet. So I want to make better use of my Kindle. Also, Kindle books are sometimes cheaper, or released earlier than paperback editions. They also save space in my bedroom, which is already full of books.


So that is my list of goals for the coming year. Some of them are habits that will take time for me to pick up, others are targets that I want to reach each month or by the end of the year.

All of them, however, are things that I can work on each and every day. This will help me to build positive habits that will encourage me to become the person I want to be at the end of this year.

I will let you know how this progresses over time.

Love Bobbi. Xx.