The Mystery Blogger Award

Hey everyone!

I was recently nominated by Will from willandsandrine.com for the Mystery Blogger Award (thanks, Will!). The Mystery Blogger Award was invented by Okoto Enigma to give bloggers recognition in the community and allow their readers to learn a little bit more about the person behind the posts.

Three Things About Me

   ·   A big thing you’ll need to know about me is that when I get obsessed with something, I really get obsessed with that thing. So much so that it is pretty much the only thing I think about for months on end. My current obsession is with Harry Potter, in case you were wondering.

   ·   I have a strange kind of fascination with history. I have always found it interesting, finding out about the lives of those who’ve gone before us, but I would hate to do a course on it because research is not one of my strong suits and neither is remembering specific facts.

   ·   Another thing you should probably know about me is that I am a very disorganised person. Going to uni has sorted me out somewhat; I’ve got all my assignments in on time, but I am really bad at time management. This may or may not have something to do with my Intense Obsession Thing™.

Question Time!

Why did you decide to start a blog, and when did you do it?

I started a blog waaaayy back in 2013 when I was 14, so I’ve been at this for a while. I started a blog because I thought it would be a fun way to spend my time when I wasn’t working on school things. I was inspired by people like Zoella and Sprinkle of Glitter to make it focus on beauty, but nowadays I just write about whatever I want and hope you all like it!

What’s your best advice about blogging?

Spend time brainstorming blog post ideas and bulk write your posts if you know you won’t have time to write soon. Perhaps I should follow my own advice…

What do you do in your free time?

I spend a lot of my free time on the internet, scrolling through Instagram and sending my friends Snapchats. I also spend a lot of my non-free time doing this and I definitely need to change that.

What’s the last book you’ve read? What is it about?

The last book I read was The Selection by Kiera Cass. In a nutshell, imagine The Bachelor but the guy is a prince and you live in a dystopian world where you’re born into a class labelled with a number from one to eight. The lower the number, the better off you are. America, the main character, is a five and ends up being ‘selected’ to be one of the women the prince has to choose from.

What’s the weirdest thing about you?

I guess the weirdest thing about me is that I really hate getting things on my hands. Eating donuts is exceedingly difficult. Sure, I love them, but is having cinnamon sugar all over your fingers really worth it? Of course, it is, but I have to be careful to not get any of what is on my hands on anything else. I absolutely must wash my hands after eating donuts and not touch anything else until I do so.

My Best Posts

I have a lot of posts in my archive, which only came from years and years of persistence and determination. I reckon my favourite posts to write are definitely the short stories. Since I have to submit them for assessment, I spend a lot of time perfecting them and by the end, I’m really proud of them. In order of when I posted them, they are Night Terrors, Beginning Again, and Absolutely.

I nominate:

      ·         Megan

      ·         Angel

      ·         Jasmin

      ·         Amy

      ·         Sarah

      ·         Viola

      ·         Ariana

      ·         Becca

      ·         Cheryl

      ·         Victoria

I'd love it so much if you do it, and please let me know if you do! Of course, you don't have to do it, but where's the fun in that?

My Questions

      ·   What is your favourite thing about blogging?

      ·   Where is the place you most often sit to write your blog posts?

      ·   How do you incorporate blogging into your daily life?

      ·   What is one thing you’ve learned about yourself from blogging?

      ·   If you had to choose between having feet for hands or hands for feet, what would you choose and why? (funny)

The Rules

      ·   Add the award logo to your blog

      ·   List the rules

      ·   Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide their blog link

      ·   Mention the award creator and link to their blog as well

      ·   List three things about yourself

      ·   Answer the questions your nominator asked

      ·   Share a link to your best post or posts

      ·   Nominate 10 to 20 people and notify them

      ·   List your 5 questions for them to answer in their posts. Make sure one of them is weird or funny and specify which one that is

And that's it! Thank you so much to Will for nominating me! I had so much fun doing this and highly recommend doing it if I nominated you :)

Love, Nicky x

Uni's Back and I'm Slack

Hey everyone!

Since it’s been so long since I’ve done one, I thought I’d give you all a bit of a life update. Not much has happened since then, but a lot of things are about to happen soon.

I go back to uni this week and I could not be less ready if I tried. I mean, sure, I have notebooks, pens and things, but I am not ready for the early starts and the assignments. I’ve been on uni holidays since early November last year and I feel like it has gone by like the snap of my fingers. At the beginning of the holidays I was looking forward to my four months off, to all the time I’d spend with my friends, sleeping in, and staying up until the early hours of the morning not having to worry about alarms.

I’ve sorted out my timetable and since I was two minutes late to the registration page, I have managed to get at least one class every single day. Pro-tip: get to the registration website at least half an hour early. I did have it all set out in a spreadsheet and it was going to be great. I’d get Mondays and Fridays off, but then I forgot about my pro-tip and landed all of the worst class times. I suppose it could be worse, though. At least I have all of my classes during daylight hours. Having classes at night would be awful, to say the least.

This semester I have elected to do tons of reading again. Unlike last semester, which was all children’s and teen’s books, nice and easy, this semester is all of the classics like Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and some Shakespeare thrown in for good measure. Let’s just say I’m looking forward to being able to say that I’ve read them, but not so much looking forward to the hard slog that it will be actually reading them what with all of their olden day's language and confusing turns of phrase. And if the books themselves are a challenge, I can’t even begin to imagine what the assignments will be like. I was lucky last semester to not have any exams, but I don’t think I’ll be as lucky this time around.

Another thing about the books; they are expensive as bloody heck! All up, they come to around $200 (note to self: pay Mum back at some point). Sure, I already have Jane Eyre, but that was one of the cheaper ones so isn’t really that great of a saving in the first place. Maybe I should get onto reading Jane Eyre before I get bombarded with a whole lot more books, at least that’ll be a little bit of a head start…

My sleeping schedule has been completely messed up since about Christmas with me often falling asleep well past midnight and waking up well past what is deemed acceptable. To be fair, Mum’s definition of acceptable is 6 or 7 am. The fact that I wake up most days at 8 doesn’t seem like much of an issue to me, but to her, it’s a problem. One day in January I didn’t wake up until after midday and that was a shock and disappointment even to me. I didn’t tell Mum about that day; what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Anyway, what was my point? I had a point. Oh! I have to wake up at 6:30am most days and I have no idea how I’m going to do that. The first few weeks are going to be absolute hell on earth. Alarms will simultaneously be my best friend and worst enemy. I’ll cope though, I have done it before and I can do it now.

Other than that, that’s all that I have going on in my life right now (thank God) so this is where I leave you. Until next week, adios!

Love, Nicky x

The Harry Potter Tag

Hey everyone!

Today I thought I’d do the Harry Potter Tag. I saw this on a blog a while ago and unfortunately, I don’t remember whose it was! I wasn’t tagged, but I’ve been a HP fan for as long as I can remember so I thought I’d do it anyway. So why not?

   1.   What house are you in?

I have done the Pottermore test a few times and I’ve gotten Hufflepuff most of the time and Gryffindor once. I do consider myself a Hufflepuff at heart (and a proud one at that) since the time I got Gryffindor I did the “Gryffindor” answers. I think Hufflepuff fits me quite well; I am very loyal, a great friend, hard-working (when I get around to it), and do believe in justice for all.

I also have done the Ilvermorny version of the test and got Thunderbird, but I don’t really know what that means. It means less to me than the Hogwarts house; I guess it’s because I’ve grown up with the Hogwarts houses and not Ilvermorny.

   2.   What is your Patronus?

My Patronus is a hedgehog. I don’t really know what this means, but hedgehogs are my favourite animal, so there’s that. Unfortunately, hedgehogs aren’t allowed as pets in Australia (something about spreading diseases) but that won’t stop me from loving them.

   3.   What is your wand?

My wand is 10 inches, elm wood, phoenix feather core, and has a hard flexibility. 

The wood type means that I'm present, have magical dexterity and a certain native dignity. Elmwood wands produce the least amount of accidents and are capable of highly advanced magic in the right hands. 

Phoenix feather cores are capable of the biggest range of magic, and act of their own accord sometimes. They also are the hardest to tame, apparently. I don't know what that says about me, but it's interesting.

The hard flexibility of my wand indicates that I am not very adaptable or willing to change if necessary. That doesn't sound very nice, but maybe it just means that I am stubborn and not willing to budge on the things I really want.

   4.   What would your boggart be?

I reckon my boggart is snakes, spiders, or losing my friends and family. As much as I hate snakes and spiders, I can think of nothing worse than being left without anyone who loves me. I don't know what that boggart would look like, but it would definitely be the worst thing ever.

   5.   What position would you play in Quidditch?

Since I have the hand-eye coordination of something with neither hands nor eyes, I reckon I would be best suited to sitting in the stands supporting my less uncoordinated friends on their brooms.

   6.   Would you be a pure-blood, half-blood or muggle born?

I reckon I’m a half-blood. My mum has read Harry Potter, Dad hasn’t, so I’m a half-blood.

   7.   What job would you want to have after leaving Hogwarts?

I think I’d want to be a writer for the Daily Prophet or The Quibbler. They’re both essentially creative writing if you think about it!

   8.   Which of the Deathly Hallows would you choose?

I would choose the wand. Why would you choose anything else? The cloak? No, use the wand to make yourself invisible. The stone? There are theories that the visions are just death drawing you to him. Wand all the way. I wouldn’t use it, but if I had to have one that’s what I’d choose.

   9.   Favourite book?

My favourite of the books is the Prisoner of Azkaban. I love the storyline the most of all of them.

   10.   Least favourite book?

I reckon my least favourite book is the Deathly Hallows, just because then its over. There's no more. Ever.

   11.   Favourite film?

I think it’s the Philosophers Stone because of all the nostalgia. I also love the Prisoner of Azkaban because of how much I love the book.

   12.   Least favourite film?

Probably the Half-Blood Prince. The book was so great, with all the Voldy backstory and romantic undertones that aren’t the main focus of the story. The movie turned that brilliance into a teen drama with very limited Voldy backstory. And they burned The Burrow down for absolutely no reason. Just why?

   13.   Favourite character?

Sirius Black. Which is another reason the Prisoner of Azkaban is my favourite book. He meant so much to Harry and was one of the only connections to his parents. I also love Remus for these reasons, but Sirius is my favourite.

   14.   Least favourite/ most hated character?

Umbridge. ‘Nuff said.

   15.   Favourite teacher at Hogwarts?

Its either McGonagall or Lupin. McGonagall is the strict but loving mother to all of her Gryffindors, and Lupin is the best Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Harry ever had.

   16.   Least favourite teacher at Hogwarts?

I would say Umbridge again, but she didn’t really teach anything, did she? So by that logic, I’ll say Snape. I also just don’t like him as a person, but that’s a whole other story.

   17.   Do you have any unpopular opinions about the series?

I don’t really have any. A lot of my opinions are widely shared in the Harry Potter community, like not accepting the Cursed Child as canon, not liking (or even hating) Snape, and not hating Malfoy.

And that's the Harry Potter Tag! I encourage you to do it if you haven't already. Please let me know if you end up doing it on your blog, or leave your answers in the comments!

Love, Nicky x

An Open Letter to Procrastination

Procrastination, you and I have a sort of love-hate relationship going on. To be honest, its been going on for far too long You are great at making me happy and doing fun stuff all the time like checking social media and listening to music. You are also great at distracting me with these things to the point where I don’t do the things I need to do with the day. Believe it or not, I do actually have things to do and can’t just waste all my time listening to your every command! In case you were wondering (which I highly doubt you were), I have a few ideas of how to combat your incessant nature.

You are the main reason for all my stress at the moment, which will exponentially increase once I’m back at uni with a mountain of assignments and books to read and study. You divert attention away from things that are actually important like housework or writing blog posts. Honestly, I would have written this a lot sooner if I didn’t have you encouraging me to check my phone or watch a 3-hour Markiplier live stream I’ve already watched. Furthermore, I have a schedule for my housework and you do not do me any favours when I still haven’t done any of those chores 3 whole days (sometimes more) later. I get paid to do chores, in case you didn’t realise, so I really don’t appreciate your antics! Also, keeping on telling me that I’ll have plenty of time to do it later isn’t good either. There will always be a spanner thrown in the works when you use this little trick, making it take longer than you promised me it would. The fact that I believed you in the first place – bah!

There are a few things I’ve thought of to reign you in a bit. And God knows I need to reign you in a bit. Or maybe a little bit more than a bit.

First off, writing a to-do list every morning so that I know exactly what has to be done that day. I’ve done that today, actually, and it’s worked quite well. I’ve done all my chores for the day and I’m kinda proud of that. Sure, I left writing this for last (which is another kind of you that I can’t deal with), procrastinating “non-fun” stuff with easier “non-fun” stuff, but at least I’m doing it and not putting it off further!

Another thing I have done today and plan to continue to do is to add a little reward at the bottom of my to do list which can only be done after I’ve done everything else on that list, no matter how many things there are. Today, my reward is unlimited time on my phone until the end of the day. Therefore, the sooner I finish my work, the more time I can spend doing fun stuff.

One more thing I want to implement is kind of cheating in a way, but I’m gonna go with it. I’m going to put music on while I do my chores, to tide you over a bit while doing “non-fun” stuff. It makes all those “non-fun” but very necessary things less mind-numbing. In a way it makes you procrastinate from making me procrastinate, so it’s a win-win situation in my book!

Also, no one seems to like you. I’ve heard people say that you’ve ruined their lives. So, cheers!

Love, Nicky x