Random Objects Haul

Do people do these, like are random item hauls a thing? I don’t know, but these past couple weeks I’ve gotten a few things, more than I normally do as most of our free money goes to exploring Korea. Well, let's be honest, it goes to eating in Seoul haha. I’m excited about some of this so I wanted to share the stuff that I’ve gotten.

Fashion 

When I was in the states, I found this style of dress that I LOVE at H&M; it is my all-time FAVORITE dress, ever. I got the few colors that the H&M’s closest to me had: light gray, dark gray stripes, maroon, and forest green. I have a really hard time finding dresses because most dresses that are in my price range and are styles I like are super short. Or at least super short to me. My butt is quite a bit bigger than normal for someone of my size, so it makes dresses considerably shorter in the back and I’m a pretty modest person, so I am always anxious that my dress is showing stuff that I don’t want to show. These dresses are PERFECT! They are long enough that I feel comfortable wearing them and I don’t check that they are covering every five minutes, but they’re are also short enough that it’s still cute. Now that I’m in Seoul, I went out with some girlfriends one night and saw this super cute light pink version, but they only had a large.

Ever since I’ve been on the hunt for these dresses.I finally found some and I got the white and black stripes

and the navy blue.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t found the light pink one anywhere. They’ve also been sold out online for weeks so I don’t know if they’re even still making them. But I am still looking! Every H&M I come across I look for it.

Books

I was able to order the second book in the Shadow and Bone series, Siege and Storm, and I’m super excited. I won’t be reading it for a couple weeks most likely, but I’m super happy to have it in my library for when I am ready to read it. I’m a little sad that it’s a trilogy so once I buy the third book there won’t be any more :(.

I also got The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living by Meik Wiking. If you follow the online community I’m sure you’ve heard of this book. I’ve seen it EVERYWHERE! After hearing and reading about it, I thought that the idea of Hygge resonated with me. The hype about minimalism is wonderful and probably something I should hop on board with, but it just doesn’t sit with me; I wouldn’t say I hoard too much. Books maybe, but I tend to be pretty good about going through my stuff and throwing stuff out. This idea of cozy living that Hygge represents just resonates with me. It’s the kind of life I want. I’ve read some of the book and it’s just a nice happy book about how to live a cozy life.

Board Games

Recently, I’ve been into playing board games. I feel like my husband and I spend so much time in front of the TV. Whether I’m watching youtube videos, we’re watching Netflix, or playing a video game, I feel like we live in front of the TV. Which is fine sometimes, but I wanted to get something that we could do that we didn’t have to go out to do and wasn’t electronic. We already had a couple board games: Monopoly and Eragon, but I wanted more. So after a lot of research, I ordered two from Amazon and then we ended up buying two more from the PX.

I’ve heard wonderful things about Settlers of Catan, but it’s a 4+ player game so we can’t play it just being two of us. I found that Catan makes a two-player card game called Rivals for Catan. It’s currently sitting at the post office because we haven’t been able to get to the post office, but I’m hoping it’ll be fun!

We also got Mage Wars. I wanted another more “adult” board game but I didn’t want one that was like adventuring through a certain area and that’s what a lot of two player games are. It felt too similar to Catan to get another adventuring game like that. After a lot of research, I found Mage Wars Academy which is, what the title suggests, a game where two mages battle. I thought a fantasy style game would be fun and give some variety.

From the PX we got two classics: Yahtzee and Battleship. Mark loves Yahtzee and I’m finding that I don’t mind it and we used to have a lot of fun playing Battleship at this cafe that used to be in our hometown so I thought it would be fun to own it and bring back those memories from our first year together.

So that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed reading about the random stuff we've accumulated the past couple weeks!

February Reads

This month I read the same amount of books that I read last month; if you missed that recap you can check it out here. I’m still working on getting back into reading for fun. Hopefully, in the next few months I’ll get back to reading the way I did before I became an English Literature Major. Let’s hop in!

1) Invincible: Sherrilyn Kenyon //

This is book two in the Chronicles of Nick series. I’m trying to read these slow because I’m waiting on my mom to mail me the rest of the series that we currently own. Book two was better that the first! I loved how the book picked up literally right where the first went off. A lot of series pick-up either quite some time later or a little while after the last book ended. Not this one. Book two of this series just continues the scene that book one left off. It was wonderful. Nick is growing up throughout these books and it’s fun to see him grow in his powers and I still love his humor. His humor is definitely one of my favorite parts of the books. I really recommend this series.

2) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: J.K. Rowling //

I LOVE THIS BOOK! Of course I do, I absolutely love Harry Potter so of course I would love this. I saw the movie twice when it was in theaters and loved it both times. I loved the Harry Potter films of course, but I felt like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was more magical in a way. I loved seeing the use of magic and the creatures, it really deepened the world. This book was also my first pre-order EVER. I’ve never felt the need to pre-order books. However, I was at Books-a-Million to buy a birthday gift and just had to pre-order when they asked me about it. I’m so glad I did. I finally picked up the book and read it; I hesitated because I didn’t know if I wanted to read a screenplay. It was much easier to read that I thought…too easy in fact. I would have read it in a day if I didn’t force myself to slow down. I loved that the book is exactly the movie, which makes sense. A lot of the scenes that made me laugh in the film made me laugh in the book. I also cried at the end like I did in the movie :P. If you’re a Harry Potter lover and haven’t read this, read it. Also, can we talk about the cute Niffler under the dust cover :).

3) The Trouble with Magic: Madelyn Alt //

This was one of my first little mystery novels and is part of the Bewitching Mystery novels. It’s most definitely not one of those more realistic, leaning toward true crime mysteries. It was a super fun little novel to read and I’m so happy to have finally read it after carrying it with me on the plane as I traveled back and forth from Korea to the US. Basically, this woman feels unsatisfied in her job and is compelled to go to this certain area of town instead of heading straight to work. Here she stumbles upon and enchantments shop where she is offered a job. She then gets put in the middle of a murder that happened and she spends the rest of the novel trying to figure out who really committed the murder. I recommend this for sure. I thought it was a fun and quick read, especially if you just read a couple larger books it’s nice to read something small and light.

I hope you guys enjoyed this. Did you read any good books this past month?

See you next time, Kylie <3