Memo Pad: February Book Wrap-up

Another month down and another lot of books read. 5 this month, to be precise. I set myself the goal last month of finishing the Starship’s Mage series this month which was the final three books. And I’m happy to say I managed it and they were amazing! Seriously, one of the best series I’ve ever read, i enjoyed it so much. I also read two eArcs. I was planning on reading three but I forgot February was short so that didn’t happen, but I enjoyed them both.

My kindle unlimited trial is officially over so next month I’ll be getting back to the backlog of books that I’ve been buying over the last three months (current count on my kindle is now over 60 unread books!). I’m also going to be taking part in indieathon at the start of next month so keep your eyes peeled for my post about that in a couple of days.

But for now my reviews, as always, links go to their goodread pages and all reviews are spoiler free.

Read: 5

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Giveaway Winner & Mini Blog Redesign

First off I want to say thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway I hosted and also hello to all my new followers.

But without further ado, the winner, picked at random using an online generator is:

Abbie at Sparkle On!!!

Congrats!! I’ve contacted you and if you go to my etsy shop and pick a listing and a book of your choice from my top twenty (listed on the original post here), I’ll get your prizes sorted for you.

Once again thank you all for entering and joining me along this blogging ride.

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I’d also like to take the chance to point out some minor changes on my blog. I haven’t done a whole new redesign but I have changed the menu and sections of the blog to better reflect where my blog is nowadays. It’s now split into 3 main sections:

JJ Reads, JJ Crafts, and JJ Writes, along with a section to keep all my older posts about crafting with chronic illness so that they stay available to anyone who needs them.

I’ve also updated my about page to reflect this.

Hopefully this just makes everything easier to see, especially if you’re hanging around for one particular category. It means you’ll be able to browse through all the posts on the subject your interested in by clicking on the header you want. Of course, all the posts will still show up on the main section too.

Bloglovin / Twitter / Etsy / Goodreads

Custom Vinyl Notebooks

My brother and his girlfriend both had their birthdays in January. With everything going on I was mega late with their presents but they have them now so I can show you all.

I bought plain blue and black notebooks a while ago from Hema, planning on customising them with some vinyl. This was the perfect opportunity. Both of them are going on a round the world trip in September so I went with a travel quote and decided to do them with reversible colours so they were linked.

Here’s the design that I made and cut in the vinyl after weeding and before being applied (I didn’t design the compass, just googled and picked one I knew would cut well):

Baby Leopards, Pretty Stationery and Finished 1st Drafts

I finished writing the first draft of my fantasy story! Happy Dance time! I celebrated with the age old – lets eat lots of yummy food – method. Chinese takeaway, ice cream and, okay, I had other desserts too!

This post is literally just me patting myself on the back and explaining this is why I’ve been less crafty on the blog lately. I was a little busy!

I started writing at the start of November for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where I managed to write 11 chapters/45k of my book. I had planned to only do about one chapter a month after that, which would have me finishing around about July but…. Well, I got carried away and I ended up finishing the whole thing on February 3rd.

Why does the exact date matter?

SAL Update #1561315

I have a crafty update for you all! It’s been three weeks since I last shared my cross stitch with you so here’s is my progress for the stitch a long.

Here’s where I was upto up until this point:

Book Haul + Love Papercut

This blog has been leaning heavily towards the Bookish side lately and that’s purely because I really hadn’t been doing much crafty stuff. Between Christmas, being ill for the first two weeks of the year and stuffing as much writing time in as possible I just haven’t been crafting. That is changing though and I’ll mention it more over the next couple of weeks.

The only real crafty things I’ve been doing so far this year have been cross stitch (which you’ll get an update on this weekend) and making my card orders for my etsy shop. The only new card I have to show you is this valentines day one.

Which you can buy here (shameless self promo). I say valentines day card but I mean you could use it for anything, maybe mothers day coming up to?

But anyway, in all this non crafty time I have still been buying books. Obviously. Even though I’ve only been reading arcs and free books on my kindle unlimited trial. Which means the books on my kindle are growing at an alarming rate. I am going on holiday at the end of next month though so at least I’ll have enough books for that!

Literally every single one of these ebooks were on sale (okay no, Truthwitch was free from the Tor newsletter) and when a book on my tbr goes on sale I just can’t resist.

So onto the book haul; (As always, where I’ve used a blurb, it’s from goodreads)

500 Followers + Giveaway!!

The other week I reached 500 followers on this blog and I was mega excited. And then i realised the last half a dozen were spam email folloqwers and WordPress blocked them so I was under 500 again. BUT now I am actually over 500, for real this time, which means it’s time to celebrate with a giveaway! WOOOOO!!! Stay tuned.

Last year was an amazing year for me and my blog, I put a lot more energy into it than I had previously. I started posting a bit more regularly. I made sure I was spending a good deal of time commenting and reading and liking other peoples blogs as well. After all, interacting with all of you is the whole purpose of blogging. And I’ve enjoyed it all so much. Thank you to all my new followers for joining in.

My blog is pretty much split 50/50 between books and crafts now which is a pretty good representation of my life! And based on that, here is the giveaway. It has two parts and the winner gets both.

 GIVEAWAY!!!