Tag: themes

Reading Journal 2024 | Theme, Plans & Creativity!

Published on by gotmeghanLeave a comment

Hi 🙂

Last year I tried my hardest to publish my second year of doing a reading journal, and I had everything ready for it, I just could not finish the actual post. I don’t really understand why I never felt comfortable with it; although the photos might’ve been a factor early on. I was just disappointed in myself because I was fairly proud of what I had created in those twelve months.

Now that we’re started anew, I knew one of the posts I desperately wanted to do was my Reading Journal and I’m thoroughly. excited to share it with you. Although, I will mention two pages are saved back for my next post which will discuss my Goodreads Challenge for 2024.

Cover Page

I was tempted to go with Little Women by Louisa May Alcott this year. I had truly enjoyed that story and honestly, it would have played well with the number of vintage supplies I have at my arsenal, but I became inspired to do something with Winnie–the–Pooh after we got a package of wipes with Pooh’s upper face with stripes of green behind him. I loved this so much that I just went with it. I even added a few snowflakes on top to symbolize the end of one theme to beginning a brave new world.

Towards my birthday I had started looking into Winnie-the-Pooh stickers, and I was literally coming up with nothing on Amazon. I was shocked! However, I knew I wanted to do something with a honeycomb design and so I switched my searches and found a stencil of hexagons shapes, but I couldn’t buy it on its own, it came with a few other designs, and one of them was this tulip wreath and I’ve always wanted to do a circle design at the start of the new year and thankfully, it was fairly easy to hold down with my toes. I also used my pencil to draw up some faint lines in between as a banner saying “Reading Journal 2024” in my best cursive ever!

The Bumblebee Bookshelves

After those pages, I went to create my bookshelves. Many people who keep a reading journal usually create these very elaborate designs and yes, I always want to do one for my journals but anytime I attempt to make a shelf it turns out to be too small and oddly enough so do the spines of the books I draw out.

My inspiration for this was totally out of the box, as I just pictured the inside of a beehive of dripping honey stuck in my head and I completely fell in love with it. And luckily for me, in the pack of stencils, they had array of thick honey drips that were set with a straight line on top, and once I got going, apparently, I couldn’t stop…. I had made as many as I could on those two pages, I went with my black pen and quickly realized I had made WAYY too many spines. It is definitely over my goal for the year, but that’s what happens with me sometimes.

Daily Reads & Quote

The first of the next two spreads was my daily reads. Last year, I went with a different design, I actually got it from Cassandra Lynn’s layout, but it was super difficult to create on my own; my dad had to help me in the end. So, when I was ready to do this year’s, I knew I’d go back to my pixel grid I had for the year before, but this was in no way a walk in the park for me either.

I had to create this design FOUR times before I was finally over it. The whole thing was a fucking disaster to say the least! The funny part about it was, I ended up doing the whole thing for Eeyore, because he is always so depressed and I was just a mixed bag of emotions throughout the process, that Eeyore spoke to me early on. And yes. I do know I spelled he’s name wrong, and the words are running off the paper, but I keep telling myself that’s just part of Eeyore’s charm.

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“It never helps to keep looking for sunshine.”

When I began to look for the stencils, I also thought it would be interesting to see if I could work with scrapbook paper. I previously got a plastic cutter, I truly hate asking for help, especially when it’s for stuff like this and when I saw other people using this device, I thought this could change my whole outlook on cutting things for the first time. I may work with my feet, but I do have my limits! 

Anyways, I had two packages of scrapbook paper in similar colors, and I cut out a medium square of a black and yellow plaid design and I have another page with little quotes, but there was one that was blank so you could write on it yourself. It even had lines on it, so I didn’t have to measure anything else that day. It’s a simple quote page and I think it’s so sweet.

Series Trackers, Lovely Names and Words & Reading Log

There were two spreads I desperately wanted to do and the first was a series tracker. As many of other bookworms out there, we can start a lot of various trilogies and series, but have a difficult time to finish them, at least I have in the past. In my hope to conqueror this, I decided to create some trackers for seven different series. They are: The Plantagenet and Tudor novels by Philippa Gregory, Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake, Circle B Ranch by Kennedy Fox, and finally the Twilight books.

I really tried my best to go easy on myself when I started to do these and. I was fairly impressed with how I got the background paper cut and glued down (had LOTS of issues with glue!) but when it came time to figure out how to create the boxes and banners for each section, I guess I didn’t do enough homework beforehand because it all went to hell in a matter of ten minutes, but I allowed myself to laugh at my struggles and honestly, that happened my self-esteem a lot.

While I was busy with everything, I also managed to listen to four episodes of LuAnna: The Podcast on Spotify and that kept me from losing my mind in those two hours. In the end, everything worked out well and I improvised when lids didn’t want to come off and I messed up the ripping of my banners/trackers. They always say “laughter is the best medicine” and I truly believe it, because there were a few times where I just wanted to throw it all away.

In between this spread, I created my notable Lovely Names & Words sections. Since I started working on my reading journal in 2022, I wanted to collect my favorite and/or odd words I’d never heard of before. Every page has a light pencil or sometimes a pen, that create the spaces in between so that my words don’t go sliding off the page like it did in the Eeyore layout, I did a bees’ dashes like its flying in and out of the top of the opening page in green, However, the ‘Lovely Names’ part had to be fixed up and I used some scraps of an previous layout and that worked out very well for me and in a way, I hope I can recreate it in a future spread because I keep all of my bigger sections.

And finally, we have the reading log. I have been dying for a proper place to all of my books, but mainly because I feel like Goodreads, doesn’t allow you to half stars; I used the colors of T-I-Double G-GER. And one of the things I really wanted to get this year was one of those white pens and I got a pack of three separate sizes, and they arrive at the same time as my new colored pens and so my dad swatches every single one and he was thoroughly impressed with the white pens the most!

So, here is my final addition. The start of Reading Log pages has a thick orange lined to separate each book I read, and I have a small section for the dates and finally an even smaller section for my rating five “stars” (I can’t do a star that small – never have actually!) so, I switch them with circles instead, and I find this way to be easier for me and my feet.

I didn’t exactly know where to put this, but here are all of the supplies I could find that were similar to what I’ve used with my journal. The supplies I used were from Amazon.

It took me forever to edit everything, but I’m glad I am finished. I hope you have enjoyed this post, and maybe it will inspire you to create a reading journal for yourself. If you decide to actually do one over spring break or the start of summer, please keep me informed because I would love to see what you were able to do with yours.

snowflake

Blogmas: Festive and Winter-y Baby Names!

Published on by gotmeghan1 Comment

Hello!

Last year I did a HUGE thing and made up over 100 name combinations for my second Instagram account. It was kind of hectic but really fun and I was pretty proud of myself afterwards. The page itself is centered around my love of names. I’ve never been interested on how the name(s) mean or sound really, I just share what I think looks cute and different and it allows me to learn more about other cultures too! I am a big learner and obsessed with various holidays and nationalities, and I’ve figured out I can multitask when it comes to creating these posts on my profile.

I had plans to do something similar during the month of October, because I also love fall and Halloween-eques type of names but I wasn’t motivated to do anything, and I was only able to release three girl pairings out of the entire thing. I was so bummed about it, but then I thought about creating a whole post about the names that I feel are perfect for Christmas.

This is one of the largest lists I’ve ever made, and I apologize for its size, but the original list was actually much bigger–I had the hardest time figuring out what to add. (This statement shouldn’t surprise you too much!) What I will do to make this somewhat easier for you is, I will talk about four names from each sex and discuss why I picked them out of the rest in their group, plus give you a fun middle name so it gives you some ideas later on.

Ambrose Gray

One thing you will notice in the list is that I chose some classic names like Ambrose, Benedict, and Emmanuel mainly because they are “warm” names to me. I feel like they are perfect names for boys (or girls) born in the colder months. They are snuggle-y and sophisticated. And despite using the middle as “Gray” I can see a lot of reds, navy blues, and beige colors that could illuminate the essence of the name. Yes, in a way your child will have a grandfather type of name but as they get older, you could adopt a nickname that could work with their full name!

Douglas Wolf

I have seen Douglas making a slow comeback and I seriously am here for it!

If you are interested in boho or nature, I think Douglas is an underdog to both of these styles. I love trees but I always forget to add them in my ultimate list. Douglas firs (or Evergreen trees) are unbelievably gorgeous! Once you see them out in their habitat, you instantly feel Christmas-y and want to do a full-on Griswold move and watch it explode in your living room with its huge limbs. Oddily enough, newborn babies can have a similar effect, but maybe not break any windows with their incredible wails though, but who knows, maybe they can…

Fairbanks Roland

Back in January, I actually began to collect names that were out of the Scandinavian range as that was one country, I talked about in the previous Christmas name posts on my Instagram. I also adore the Frozen franchise, so it wasn’t really a surprise when I just unleashed every week of different ones. However, I decided to change it up a bit and started searching for interesting names based around Alaska, which is how I found Fairbanks.

Why I thought Fairbanks could be a hit is because of two reasons: 1) it is both a city and word name, and these are really in nowadays! So, if you are tired of hearing about Aspen, Boston, and Denver, this could be your ticket! 2) as far as I can tell, Fairbanks is fairly low on the popularity charts. Technically, this combination is pretty low on their significant lists so you could be safe to having you child use an unique type of name that could rise later on.

Lysander Matthew

Personally, I have always had an uneasy relationship with Lysander. I like it, I think it’s interesting and could work around Halloween and winter, so in a way it’s like Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, where it works around both of their celebrations.

I am very impressed with the amount of regal looking the boy names are in the banner. I tend to enjoy hearing bold and masculine names around this time anyways. As I said about “Ambrose” there is something about these classic names that seem to radiant a sense of warmth and wholesome in the next few months. This being said though, I tend to go on a different route with the girls. I like shorter but Christmas like type of styles, thus the many vibes of the festive season.

I paired it with a very beloved name of mine and that’s “Matthew” as I feel like it adds a subtle sweet flair to how sharp Lysander looks and sounds. I don’t usually add other names that could work as possibly sibling sets in these types of posts, but I think Leander and Lior would be cool as they each have a mysterious and regal appeal to them.

Faith Sydney

As with Lysander above, Faith is another one that hasn’t had an easy time with me. I normally to go back and forth with it, but since so many faiths are celebrated during this month, I thought it could stand to make a comeback amongst the charts again. There is another reason to list it here is because Faith is one syllable. People are really enjoying naming their children with one to three syllables and this was the reason why I included Sydney as the middle as it is kind of easygoing and plays well overall.

Honor Madeleine

Since 2008, I have been a huge fan of Honor, thanks in part to actress Jessica Alba and her husband Cash Warren’s first daughter being named Honor Marie. It was during that year that my actual love of collecting names officially started; I’d been storing a lot of them throughout my life, but this was the first time where I saw so many good names at once and my mom and I were just having a field day of sharing our thoughts on each one that was announced. This was the same year that Nicole Ritchie and her husband Joel Madden had their daughter Harlow Winter Kate, which is another beloved favorite of mine too! Honor and Harlow could be a great set as well!

Josepha Claire

This one is for those who would like to get out of using Josephine, now there’s nothing wrong with that variation, I’m actually a really big fan of that style, but I thought Josepha or maybe Josephe could be an interesting royal switch up.

Lately I’ve been doing royal family trees in my spear time, and I just finished doing Marie Antoinette’s maternal family line and Josepha is a HUGE name among her family. The majority of her mother, aunts, sisters, and nieces had it in their fairly large names, so if you are a fan of Marie Antoinette in any way, you could use Josepha as a nice way to represent her or the old Asturian-Hungarian royal family.

Neve Alexandra

One name that I just enjoyed last winter was Neve. I had heard about it prior to using it in my theme, but I never knew it meant “snow” in Italian. As much as I like the word “snow” having it as a name for a human, always makes me cringe a little, so whenever I can find names that mean it, I will definitely go with the alternative immediately. I also really enjoyed putting Alexandra with it as the middle since that’s another way I enjoy creating combinations too, starting small and continue with a longer and strong type of name can make it look almost regal.

Okay, well, that is it for this post. I really hope you enjoyed my selection of names, and the few I gave you with some ideas for middle candidates too. Now I would really like for you to comment below with your favorites from the banner or what you like to see throughout the season.

Blogmas: Why I Decided on 8 Days

Published on by gotmeghan1 Comment

Hello everyone and welcome back to Blogmas!

I absolutely adore this theme and it’s one I continue to do every year, even if I’m not feeling very festive. I was first introduced to Blogmas back in 2014 when I found the blogging community on Twitter. I still look back on that memory quite a bit and wish we were all doing the fun chats and checking out everybody’s newest posts without any drama going on behind the scenes.

For those of you who do not know what blogmas is, it’s a concept based around Christmas, you create a series of different posts talking about the festive holiday. Some people will do every day leading up until the 25th, or sometimes they will shrink it down and release 8 or 12 days instead. I’ve always done whatever I could get done and it’s been a hit and miss throughout the years, so that was one of the reasons I decided to only publish for eight days for 2021.

Before I go, one thing I try to do is give people, especially new bloggers a collection of previous blogmas posts, I’ve included what I wrote in 2020. So, I really hope you enjoy what I have in store for you in the next couple of weeks on Got Meghan’s Blog!

How Do I Read?

This post is all about how I read my books. Last year, I had the chance to work with an awesome company called Tilisma. They create a variety of bookish products. I saw them while watching one of my favorite YouTubers and she showed her viewers these really cool things; it is in the shape of an eye made out of wood with a nice hole carved out in the middle, this is where your thumb (or in my case big toe!) and it is supposed to allow you to hold any type of book and of course make reading easier!

I was given four different products and the nice people of the company, customized every item to my size! The little one is definitely my favorite because it is just perfect for my toes and it has made reading outside or just in the house a whole lot easier for me! Click here if you want to read the whole post on Tilisma. I definitely recommend anyone checking out their stuff on Amazon and/or their Instagram as they share photos of various people using the holders a lot so you could see what you could use for yourself.

Things That Make Me Feel Christmas-y!

In this one, I basically talk about the things that make me feel very festive, and I share quite a bit of photos of putting up our family Christmas tree and baking and decorating the sugar cookies. 2020 was the year we could finally do things with Nolan. My mom and I decorated cookies the year before but we all agreed that Nolan was just a little too young to be around that many cookies and frosting–this was a very good call considering how many he did eat last year! I think it was three and a half cookies and I don’t remember how many times he licked icing off his fingers…

The 12 Days of Christmas Book Tag

Here’s the thing, I had a sticky note with array of blogmas topics saved on my laptop, and when I was getting ready to figure out my schedule for this year, I guess I forgot to strike both “Things That Make Me Feel Christmas-y” and this tag. I’m not going to lie; I am pretty proud of myself for looking back just in case or else I would repeat these posts again and I would be really upset with myself.

This post is a survey discussing two loves of mine: books and Christmas. I always enjoy doing these types of posts at the start of blogmas because it is easy, fun and I’m not stressing myself out too much to make it look so perfect. However, now I’m wondering what I will be doing for Friday…

DIY: Christmas Tree Projects

For the longest time, my nana and I would do a bunch of seasonal crafts and despite the fact we loved our pumpkin related projects, the largest job were Christmas things. The final project we did was making everyone their own goody bag full of cookies, lotions, socks, and chocolate bark. And yes, I did a post about it and you can click here to check it out now.

A lot has happened since then, and she lives up north and I am up to no good coming up with ideas to continue the tradition a little, although I wouldn’t say this one wasn’t for family, this was my personal job to see if I could bring back that spark again. I was fairly proud of myself on the work I did on these but now there is only one still on the back wall of the hallway, there is another hanging up in the playroom and Nolan took home the final canvas!

I am doing something similar to what nana and I did with those brown bags, but that’s all I can say about it at the moment. You might see some things on my Facebook and Instagram pages here and there. Once I finish everything, I will have a post up before the 25th.

2020 Christmas Tree

This post is exactly what the title says, it is all about my black Christmas tree for 2020. I’m not entirely sure if I will discuss what I do with my tree this year, but we’ll just have to see what happens later on in the month!

Ultimate Christmas Playlist

As for the final post of the day, you get to know about my favorite Christmas songs. There are a lot of beloved jazz artists like Frank Sinatra, Stan Kenton, Ray Charles, and Michael Bublé, but there is a bunch of different people and songs that inspire that feeling of the holidays as well like, Home Alone soundtrack, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Frozen soundtracks, Lindsey Stirling, and even Celtic Woman.

Well, that’s it for this post. These are all of the topics I talked about one year ago to hopefully spark the joy of the beautiful season. As I’ve mentioned above, I’ve done this for a pretty long time, so I have a huge selection of Christmas-y posts you can search in the box on the top right corner of the home page.

What is your favorite thing about Christmas?

October Playlist 👻🖤

Published on by gotmeghanLeave a comment

Hello!

It is FINALLY the week of Halloween!

I’ve been looking forward to the holiday since July but you would never know it if you saw my room right now. I only put out my plaid pumpkins around my window like last year, and mom managed to hang up the wreath that Rumer did nothing but bark at throughout the month of August. Thankfully Rumer doesn’t have a glue about it so we’ve been enjoying the quiet there. I’d still like to get another one for Christmas/winter with lights on it but I fear that’ll just provoke her so I’ll have to find something else…

Since we’re discussing festive music, I thought I’d let you know that I have updated my ultimate Halloween playlist I created about two years ago. It still has all of the classics but I have also tried to save anything I share on my Insta too, just in case you can’t check those out because you don’t have an account. If you’d like to take a listen to my favorites lately, click here I would also like to add that I did not forget about my promise about including my September playlist too! .

Here are my Top 25 songs for October, and if you are curious to see what else I got into, here is your final link of the post.

This Fire Inside by NerdOur featuring Halocene
Invincible by Saysh x Anderson Rocio
Legend by Holy Wars
Get Better by Leslie Mosier
This Town by ELLA EX
Queen by Hidden Citizens featuring Ranya
Ain’t My Fault by Zara Larsson
Let Me Love You by Love and Death featuring Lacey Sturm
Whose Side Are You On by Tommee Profitt featuring Ruelle
Parachaute by Saint Chaos
Rebel by Pep Squad
God Only Knowns by for KING & COUNTRY featuring Echosmith
Show Yourself by Idina Menzel and Evan Rachel Wood
Down by The Birthday Massacre
Wicked Game by Violet Orlandi
Crawl Back In by Dead By Sunrise
Everybody Hurts by Avril Lavigne
Somebody Else by VERITE
Does He Love You by Reba McEntire featuring Dolly Parton
Dead Inside by Nita Struass featuring David Draiman
Emily by James Arthur
Friday by Jeris Johnson featuring Trippie Redd
No Rest For The Wicked by Lykke Li
How Soon Is Noe by AG x Dressage
Gravedigger by MXMS

One thing I have been really enjoying is sharing my “Halloween Inspired” theme of ‘Song of the Day’ on Instagram’s stories in the evenings. It is the only thing I was able to keep up with throughout the entire month as the others failed fairly quickly!

I try to change it up every other day with various backgrounds and of course the music too. We started off with Ice Nine Kills’ new track featuring Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach “Hip To Be Scared” as I felt like it was a great way to start off the spooky season. The band itself is really interesting, they are definitely a metalcore type of band but like to muddle with other subgenres like my ultimate favorite: symphonic metal. I love anyone who is different from the rest and what I love about this band is that, they focus on horror films. All of the elements of those amazing, cult-like, movies like American Psycho, Halloween, etc. They recently released their newest album: “Welcome to Horrorwood: The Silver Scream 2” which is totally awesome, you should definitely check it out before the month is over.

What were your listening to this month?

November Moodboard

Published on by gotmeghanLeave a comment

Howdy!

It is time for another monthly moodboard!

By the time it turns into November, the leaves on the trees are turning various colors and falling to the ground. One of my favorite colors the leaves change into is actually red. To me, this symbolizes autumn. There is so much orange to embrace in October that I feel like any shade of red is a welcoming surprise. So, I knew what kind of theme I wanted to go for this time, and since I would look around the house for the previous ideas, I have stopped several items for this board.

The items used in this moodboard

Something that was a little shocking to me, was the fact that I had so many things at my disposable! If I had more room, I probably would have added them all!

The biggest difference with this one was the fact that I didn’t have a big enough bandanna to use for my backdrop. I asked my dad if he had any and even though he has tons of them, they’re all cut in half in order to fit around his head the right way. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use it in the way I have been, which sucked in a way, but all was not lost because my mom was helping me too, and while she was doing laundry, she let me use her Christmas kitty shirt she’s had for years! One thing you’ll notice with the pictures is that I didn’t use the front of it, because I thought it would overshadow the rest of the stuff on top of it.

The three largest next to the shirt were the Ritz cracker box, that was so unbelievably heavy for my toes, that as it was nearing the edge of my bookshelf that I just let it fall to ground. Since it was also brand new, I know not to be surprised for the many broken pieces in the packages! The second thing was actually a little present from my nephew the last time he came over. He walked into my room with the Hoosier back scratcher. When I finally got around to doing this, it had been on my floor for about three to four days.

As for the smaller items, I also had a package of UNO cards on top of my mini bookshelf that I grabbed, thankfully these were a lot easier for me to get ahold of with my toes and move to the space on the floor. The final piece that I used that came from my room was my little Spider-Man figurine.

At the same time, I was searching for stuff to use for this board, I was also rearranging my nephew Nolan’s bookshelf with several of my books. I literally had two projects going on at the same time! So, you can easily imagine by the time I got around to doing the photos for the moodboard that I couldn’t grip much of anything after the hell I went through with my books! Anyways, while I was already in Nolan’s playroom, I went and grabbed a couple of Hot Wheels cars, knob that belongs on his work bench and a single red ball (that you swear was orange in the pictures!) and placed them in my trusty bucket so I could just drag it back and forth between rooms!

And like that, I am done with this post! I feel like I should mention before I get asked whether or not I got any sleep the night after, I did! My mom and I worked so hard that we actually slept like babies. It was crazy! We hardly ever do this, but it was a big day for us that literally the next day, we both vowed not to work on anything. You ever get like this?

How do you like the color theme for this November? What should we do for next month? Blue? Festive colors of green and red? Let me know!