Tag Archives: resolutions

Mid year catch-up

Photo by Colton Duke on Unsplash

Hey!
Welcome back to the blog, I know that it has been a while since you have actually heard from me , but I thought that I would pop in and give you some thoughts, well actually as you can see from the title this is my official mid-year resolutions catch up posts. If you just found me welcome, if you have been here a while, thanks for sticking around.

Like so many people at the beginning of the year, I am full of hope, anticipation, and excitement for what the new year brings and yet sometimes after the first week it is hard to get my feet under me and really get going on those goals. Well, it is just about the middle of the year when this post is going up, so I’m going to update you on my goals for 2019, how I’ve been working on and how we are going to proceed going forward.

The first goal I had planned on is reading 52 books this year. Well, as of writing this I’m not quite halfway to my goal, but I’m hoping that with a little luck and some good motivation I will be able to catch up very soon and hopefully even be a little bit ahead.

The next goal I had was to get a bit more healthy. Well in January, Matt & I did sign up for Planet Fitness since that is the new hot gym in our town that is conveniently located near a mall. I was going pretty consistently until April when I got a second job but since then haven’t been to the gym since. It’s been saddening, but hopefully when my life and finances calm down a bit more I can get back to the gym and hopefully that will be sooner than later.

My last goal that I talked about on the blog was to get this space into better shape and while I have spruced up certain areas and done a few things here and there it most certainly isn’t where I want it to be and where I hope it to be to get better traction on the web. I am still hoping to do that, but I am slowly drowning in other projects at the moment that I can’t even keep up with that.

Privately some of my goals are going a bit better than I had hoped and others are not going so well. There’s still 6 months left in 2019 what are you hoping to accomplish before the end of the year. I know that I will definitely be working a bit harder toward my goals to see if I can get a bit more done before the new year’s rings in. Let me know if you set any goals at the beginning of the year and how you are doing on them?

Family Affair

Hey!
I’m back with yet another book review, I know that it has been a bit since you have heard from me on here, but if you follow me on instagram you will know that I am slowly working my way through the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. I have a rather large post coming up featuring the rest of the series, but if you want to read about the first book you can do so here.

In January, I like so many others throughout the world went through a huge moment reading Marie Kondo’s book and watching her Netflix series. After going through my paper products the first time I was left with things that I couldn’t part with because of sentimental reason and yet wasn’t sure if I really wanted to keep. I decided that this year in addition to reading 52 books I would reread some of the books that I am on the fence about that have been on my shelf for years. This is the start of that series.

When Caprice Crane first came into the publishing world with her book Stupid and Contagious, I was hooked onto every word. I bought nearly every book from her which is about a book a year for a while. I even went deep diving on the internet and found out that she was also a screen writer for several tv shows. After a bit I finally slowed down, but still love her as a writer. I read Family Affair back in 2011 or so and found the book cute and charming in a quirky off beat way.

In the story, you meet Layla and Brett a couple that has been married for several years and has been together even longer. Both halves of the couple, while they are still in love with each other are finding nitpick problems that are driving the other crazy. The book is told from both Layla and Brett’s perspectives alternating and occasionally other people’s point of view. If you are into meet cute romance and some sweet family involvement this is the novel for you. Sadly though, while I loved the book as a whole and I still do love Caprice Crane as a writer I won’t be keeping this book in my collection long term though I would say if you can grab this book for a read at the library do so.

2019 goals and thoughts

Happy New Year!
Like so many people around the world as we turn the page to start a new year we begin it with so many hopes and dreams. A dream for all the possibilities that could come in the days ahead and all that could be. I like many of them have so many hopes and yet there are a few things that I need to wrap up from 2018 before I can fully embrace 2019. I can’t wait to share more about these projects with you.

A few goals and resolutions that I have for the coming year are much like last year.
1. To read 52 books as that as is what I set as my Goodreads goal, but I would also like to complete at least one book challenge this year. I’m planning on being involved in several this year. I also would like to clear more of my unread shelf and get those books out of my life.
2. To get back to being healthy, the past year and half or so I have really slacked on my health and while I’m not super unhealthy I don’t feel healthy enough to do things in some ways. I have a plan to work on that and hopefully there will even be a few posts on that this year.
3. To turn this space into more of what I want. While I have several projects that I would like to complete for the year working on this specific space is definitely high on the list. I definitely would like to see more people come here and enjoy it, as well as give feedback.

I have a few more goals and resolutions that I ‘m still working out, but I’ll definitely let you know when the time comes. I can’t wait to journey through 2019 with you. Are you making goals or resolutions for this year? I hope to see you soon!

Museum of Aloha

Hey!
Welcome to another real life post. This is kind of great that this is happening again though I will admit that I was supposed to post this last week instead of the mid year chat, but things happen.

I heard about the Museum of Aloha from a friend and had no idea that it had already been up a month and that it was about to be taken down. I believe that it’s supposed to be model a bit after the Museum of Ice Cream in Los Angeles. Has anyone been to that? How is it? All the instagram pictures look amazing and make me want to go.

Matt and I paid for our tickets , it was $10 a piece for an hour or so. There are two rooms that are timed, but you could wander through the gated area for longer just taking pictures.

The tickets looked cute, too bad we didn’t get to keep them. 🙁
The first room you were able to go into was the lei room. There were thousands of fake flower leis hung up. I can’t remember how many the guy said were hung.

 

It was supposed to be a maze, but you could hear where the next room was so it wasn’t challenging. Matt finally got to do his Hobby Lobby challenge picture properly, so that was a bonus for him. It was kind of cool to see the color coordination of some of the leis and how they tried to do a gradient or rainbow in some areas.
The next room was the confetti volcano room. There was a ton of confetti on the floor and you were able to stuff the volcano or the cannon and take pictures as it went off. It went off 3 or 4 times. It was pretty cool!
  
I tried hard to look cute in all these photos, but honestly I look like a weirdo here.
 
And a weird cat here. I’m seriously not annoyed at the confetti.
They usher you out of the room after that and give you stickers to put on an oversized statute of a bear and that was incredibly anti climatic.
Around the outside there were several sets of angel wings, so of course more pictures
There’s also a cute picture on my instagram profile of me with angel wings. Matt says I’m the worst photographer of trying to get him with angel wings, but perhaps it just means that it’s time for me to get a new phone.
In a booth before you exit there was a place giving nitrogen filled ice cream balls, so it looked like you were smoking. The frozen ice cream reminded me of food they give to astronauts in space. They also sell that stuff at the Air & Space museum in Washington D.C. if you want to try some. I heard there’s another place that does nitrogen infused food, so perhaps we’ll have to go and try that sometime.

The last thing was a mirror photo booth with crepe paper, which you could also take pictures in. The reflective crepe paper made it really hard to take pictures.

I’m really glad that I found out about this and that Matt and I were able to go. I can’t wait to show you more fun things that we get up to in Hawaii. Let me know if there’s anything specific that you would like us to check out. I’ll see you soon with another post.

Mid-year chat

Hey!
It’s been a while since I actually sat down to chat with you and considering this is an actual chat and not a Currently post this is rather different for me. I’m so grateful if you have been reading the blog since I started. Heck, if you have been reading since the last year I’m still super grateful.

If you are new to these parts, welcome! I’m Jamie, the voice behind GreySkySaturday. There’s a rather short introduction on my about me page, so I’ll keep it short and sweet here. I mainly do book reviews as of lately, occasionally I’ll do movie reviews, posts about my life in Hawaii and on a rare occasions the sponsored posts. Today’s post is a rather new one for me because I’m doing a mid-year check in for the my 2018 resolutions post.

The last year has been full of changes which probably explains why I have tried to keep posts on here as regular as possible. Last Summer, I finally got around to buying my own domain name and doing a little bit of an overhaul on what was here before. I started getting back to posting content fairly regularly bringing back my Scaretober feature in October. I also started making time to read more, so I’ve definitely stepped up those posts. In a half unexpected way, I changed real life jobs in  mid-February. While, I enjoyed my old job and it gave me many freedoms such as running this blog and helping them create a social media presence, I thought it was time for more stability and new challenges. My new job gives me a regular 8-5pm hours, technically more work/life balance all the for costs of union dues and regular paychecks. All that aside, I’ve finally feel like I’m really getting my feet under me and feel less like I’m drowning in my life.

For my 2018 resolutions, I can definitely tell you and you have probably noticed that I’ve been reading like crazy. I’ve finally set my goal for reading on Goodreads at 52, I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to achieve that goal, but since we are halfway through the year I definitely think that goal is doable. I can also tell you that I while I’ve only finished 3 shadows so far, I’ve also seen some incredible progress including hitting pan on eye shadows that I hadn’t planned on. I’ve also been on a rather large no spend/budgeting this year and trying to knock out my debt as much as possible. It’s been weighing on me lately and sometimes when I look at home much I have that weighs on me also. I can only say that I’m trying and working slowly through it and I’m not perfect by any mean. As for the trips, you may have seen that Matt & I did end up taking a trip to Maui for his friends wedding , I’m not sure if we are going to do anymore. We are hoping to get another trip in the fall, but money and moving in together has been a big draw this year also.

I hope that this post hasn’t been too long or too boring. I know that I would usually leave this for a Sunday Confessions posts, but  I wanted to take a minute and let you know what has happened in the past year. I’m definitely looking forward to the rest of the year and what I can bring for you. I hope that you’ll continue to stay with me and look forward to the new content that is coming in the coming months. I’ll see you soon!