Life

  • Life,  Magpie Writes

    The One Where Magpie Turns 30.

    So it’s May. Can we all agree to not know how this happened? Because I really seriously feel like the last two months somehow flew by in the span of a week. I’m not sure how. But I swear it did. Because it’s May. More than halfway through May, actually. And I’m super-duper not ready for it. Because in just a few days, I turn the big 3-0. Thirty. Yeaaaaa I don’t know how this happened so fast… Thirty years have seemingly passed in a fraction of the time… but I guess here we go? I mean, realistically I know that the day of my birthday isn’t going to feel…

  • Baking and Cooking,  Life,  Magpie Writes,  Making Do

    The One Where Magpie Hates Healthy Eating

    So one of my biggest goals for this month is a total ban on take-out and fast food. Over the last couple years as I’ve added job after job, my eating habits have basically found themselves going right down the toilet. Whatever was quick, easy, and convenient was what was on the menu. I drive past Dunkin’ on this day, the Thai place is right around the corner from where I work this day, etc… etc… My location determined my meal. Which sucks for a variety of reasons. The biggest being, of course, that my wallet AND my waistline both take issue with the habit. My waistline has continued to…

  • Life,  Lists

    April Misses and May Goals

    So it’s time for my monthly wrap-up! Who knew it was going to be May so soon? It completely snuck up on me, and unfortunately I didn’t really meet all my goals for April as a result. To recap what I wanted to do, you can find the full post here. I was able to control my spending on take-out even better this month, but pretty much all the other goals were either misses, or near-misses. I wasn’t able to get anything done in terms of knitting, and while I read more this month, I stalled out about 75% of the way through my second book. And keeping up with…

  • Life,  Lists,  Making Do

    March: The Good, The Bad, And the Goals.

    As part of my plan for getting more consistent around here, I’ve decided to make it my goal to post a wrap-up of each month – this way I can sort of look at each month in review, identify what I accomplished and what needs improvement. I feel like it’s also going to be nice to have a handy list of what I’ve accomplished for myself (in addition to everything I know I’ve gotten done for work) over the last month. Hopefully it’ll be a handy guard against my anxiety creeping in and telling me I’m unproductive and lazy. Now the shape this post takes may change as the year…

  • Life,  Magpie Reviews,  Magpie Writes,  Video Games

    So… Horizon Zero Dawn Feels Really Important.

    So buckle up, birdies, because this post is going to be a little… all over the place. I don’t quite have my thoughts fully sorted on this matter, nor have I finished the game yet… but the bottom line is that Horizon Zero Dawn feels really important to me and I feel like I need to tell someone. As far as video games go, it’s pretty impressive for all the typical reasons games can be impressive. The visuals are beyond beautiful, the soundtrack is great, the battle mechanics are interesting and unique, the enemies are legitimately terror inducing, and even on the easiest difficultly level (because while I love video…

  • Life,  Magpie Writes,  Making Do

    Reassessing for 2017

    So any of you who have been around for a while know that my blogging over the last two years has been… sporadic at best. I’ll have a month or two where I’m really consistent, and then go on radio silence for three. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years trying to figure out why I can’t seem to break this cycle, and honestly there are like, a thousand reasons. I originally had a massively long post typed out listing them all, but I scrapped that because it all just sounded like I was making excuses. And that makes this feel like less of a hobby…

  • Book Love,  Life,  Nerdery,  Travel

    For the Last Week…

    If you follow my instagram you may have noticed that my last two photos have been a little… unseasonal looking? Considering I hail from Northeastern Pennsylvania and the place has been cold and grey and snowy for the last month or so, my photos definitely may have seemed a little out of place. Well, that’s because I spent the last week in Florida at Disney World! I’ve always had a soft spot for Disney, and had never gotten a chance to visit as a kid, as when we were saving as a family for a trip, in the end we decided that putting in a pool would be a better…

  • Life,  Making Do,  Purchases

    2017 Bullet Journal Setup

    I’ve done a detailed Bullet Journal Set-up post the last two years, but as I started to set up this year’s, I realized that over the course of those two posts, I’ve really sort of settled into the system that works for me. So this year, I’m not really changing much up from last year, and as a result this post will be a bit more brief than prior years. I’m using a different size notebook this time – last year I tried to stick with the standard Moleskein size, but without actually using a moleskein, and I ended up rather unhappy with my selection, and ultimate choice. It was…

  • Life,  Lists,  Making Do

    My 2017 Goals

    So it’s January, and of course, that means it’s resolution time. I’ve spent a lot of time these last two weeks really putting thought into what this year’s goals should be, because I feel like I’m very much at a crossroads of sorts. I’m turning the big 3-0 this May, and there’s a lot of things in my life that I feel like I need to address before I cross officially into the realm of “Thirty-something.” The resulting list is a lot more conceptual than my goals have been in the past. More overall lifestyle changes than specific, quantifiable goals. And while that made coming up with photos to break…

  • Life,  Lists

    2016 New Years Resolution Postmortem

    Another year, another set of goals not fully met. I know that sounds really pessimistic, but that’s just how these things go – I’m not a resolution maker who actually expects to fully complete each. Instead, I make resolutions with the goal of making progress, and using those goals, however unattainable, to improve myself or particular aspects of myself. So I never really expect to fully fulfill them. If I do? AWESOME. If not? Oh well – the real question is did I TRY? So let’s see how I did this year, shall we? 1) Learn Brush Calligraphy Success Level: High. I think I did pretty well on this one.…