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| Example pages of a bullet journal |
I’ve recently decided that I have an obsessive nature. Well, it’s not exactly recently that I’ve discovered this, but I’m finding more and more craft and creative things to occupy my time. And when something clicks, I tend to become a bit obsessive about it. My most recent example is my obsession with my “bullet journal”. If you’ve not heard about these wonderful creations, you’ll find millions of examples on the Internet. A bullet journal is a combination of "to do" lists (multiple ones all in one place), calendar, journal, diary, and anything else that you might want it to be.
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| Weekly spread example |
Pinterest sends me emails occasionally but I’ve never really been able to get into it. A couple of weeks ago, I came across examples of bullet journals while looking through some pins in one of these emails and it kind of intrigued me because I’ve always been a list maker for everything. Mostly I’ve been using post-it notes – different colors and sizes. My research started with a Google search and I ended up spending almost the whole day just looking at various samples and reading through blogs. By dinner time, I had my shopping list for my book, colored pens, and markers, etc. The following day, I planned out and created my pages and again, spent the whole day just figuring out my formats. I’ve been using my bullet journal for a week and I’m loving it! I feel even more organized and energized.
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| One of my first |
My more recent interests, although I wouldn’t call these obsessions, include Kumihimo, coloring, aqua aerobics, flower arranging and crowd funding. Kumihimo is Japanese braiding for which I’m using silk cords. The patterns seem to be almost limitless with different numbers and colors of cords. I’ve made several bracelets so far and none of them have been the same. My next step will be adding beads to the cords. My coloring obsession began when I was in the US in June. There are adult coloring books displayed everywhere so of course I had to try it and came home with two books. I'm almost done with my first book but I’ve since found some coloring books here in PV. It’s so relaxing and zen-like and I'm able to listen to an audio book while I’m coloring. This means that I’m doing two things I love at the same time.
The aqua aerobics class that I organize here at my condo has grown in size and we now meet two mornings a week. We work hard for an hour, sometimes even more, and then we lounge in the pool for a while and just talk and catch up. It’s such a great group of people and it’s also a good resource for ideas, contacts and where to find things here in PV.
A flower store not far away has just recently expanded and they carry all kinds of flowers and they are so inexpensive so I know this is going to quickly become another obsession. Here's the flowers that we bought last week for $6 USD.
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| Inspecting the building process |
The crowd-funding site that I set up was officially launched on the 11th of July and we were completely blown away by the number of responses. I worked with a couple of the board members of the PuRR Project to determine our target goal. The cost of a building to house senior cats was going to be $6,000 USD but they were thinking only in terms of the older cats that are currently at the shelter. Because it’s a no-kill shelter, and it’s harder to get older cats adopted, I suggested they should consider a bigger building. They agreed so we set our target at $8,000. When the donations started pouring in, I became obsessed with logging on to see if there were any new donations. It’s amazing how addicting that can be! The publicity that we generated also helped to raise donations that were sent by checks. Within 1 month, we’d raised $12,000 and we were able to start on the building almost immediately. As of today, it’s nearly finished. When I went out to see the progress, I was so excited to see something that was just a “wish” a couple of months ago and to know that with all the money we received there’s some left over for medicines and care for the older cats.
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| Ready for an afternoon of fun |
Life is still continuing at a fast pace with lots of social activities while dodging the monsoon-like thunderstorms. Last week we nearly had to swim home from a dinner downtown. We hosted a pool party a couple of weeks ago and it was a huge hit! About 20 friends came on a Sunday afternoon and everyone spent the whole afternoon in the pool. We have a pool bar so there wasn’t any need to get out for food or drinks. We had way too much food and drink and loads of photos ended up on FaceBook. We were incredibly lucky with a bright sunny afternoon. There was another pool party at a friend’s last night and we had a tremendous thunder and lightning storm. We were under a cover so we still had a great time.
This week we are gearing up for Independence Day which is a really big deal here. All of the town’s parks are decorated with green, white and red banners. There are lots of parties, dancing, parades and fireworks. Friday, we are going to a Taco Festival in the center of town before meeting up with our regular Friday Foodie group for dinner in a traditional taco restaurant. The restaurant will have a live band so it’s definitely going to be a loud evening.
Once Independence Day is over, everyone here will be starting to decorate for the day of the dead. Those celebrations are as big as Halloween in the US. And yes - there are already Christmas decorations up in some stores.
