I've moved!

There is a myriad of reasons as to why I'm moving blogspaces. The main one being I want to reinvent myself in my blogs. Be more myself with my text and just enjoy posts, be able to post whatever I want without having to compartmentalise it. Don't stress, I wont be deleting this site as it has all my Euro Adventure posts on here and I don't want to lose that. But for new posts, updates, and a more relaxed style of blogging, come visit over at Cate-Marie.blogspot.com.au

Hey Guys!

It has been a VERY long time since I have blogged anything but I am back with some new things coming up! But first I would like to apologise for my absence, I don't really have an excuse for it I just got side tracked. Anyhow, back to the new stuff.

So firstly, I have some new posts all planned out for you guys. Little live updates if you will. I was considering doing youtube videos and posting them there but as I am lacking in a good vlogging camera I am still undecided. 

As for travelling I have gone on a trip to Melbourne recently and didn't think to even take photo's let alone write posts on that. Whoops. Next time perhaps.

University for myself has just started up again so I am quite slow with reading books for leisure, mostly literature (shakespeare and all that) just to get myself in the right mind frame for uni work, plus I really like some of his plays, and I think reviews on that would be plain old boring for most people as there are so many of them out there. Maybe summaries would be better...hmmm... 

And gaming season has just settled down again. There were quite a few tournaments recently that I have missed out on for blogging but have somewhat kept up to date with those via Twitter.

That's mostly it for now! If anyone would like any specific updates or posts or recommend any books let me know via comments, emails as I believe I have that linked up, or twitter.

Cate 

xx

Book Review: Insurgent

ISBN 9780007536740

Insurgent - Veronica Roth

It took me two sittings to read Veronica Roth's second installment of the Divergent series and I must say that I was both impressed and unimpressed by the book. After the excitement and adventure you take with Tris and Four/Tobias in the first novel, I was expecting something with more personal hurtles involved instead of everything being done as if for a chess game. The portrayal of Tris' frustration with Four was delivered perfectly, throughout my readings I was getting quite frustrated myself by his stupid reactions to certain situations. The emotions Tris was feeling was however poorly done in my opinion, the scenes felt rushed and any indepth information was skipped over. Whilst becoming enthralled in the build up of the storyline the importance of the main characters became quite transparent which is something I'm not a fan of when I read a series - I'm there to read about this characters journey and decisions and what they do about certain situations, not everyone elses. In the significance Insurgent plays in the series I would say it is both significant if you wish to know why certain characters have changed and died off, and insignificant as you could (if you wanted) skip this novel and piece together the events whilst reading the third installment. I am glad however to have read it as it means I can move onto the third and final installment Allegiant, with an indepth background of the characters and the storyline. Hopefully the ending to the series wont be a giant cliffhanger...

The Problem I Have

I'm the type of person who wants to learn new things and master them in a respectively short time frame, or spend a large amount of time doing so. I also want to learn new things at the same time and perfect those. Even if I wasn't going for mastery or perfection, I still feel the need to become confident and good at doing it. This has led me to become time inefficient.

I want to be an academic. With high grades, a broad spectrum of knowledge, and smarter than my old self by a long shot. At the same time, I want to be a gamer. To be able to immerse myself in a game and be good at it and enjoy myself. I also want to be fit, which requires regular exercise. I wish to be creative with drawing and sewing and be able to do marvellous things with this skill.

I wish to do all these things, but to do these things all at once. In my own perfect little world, I would have time to study for hours, play games with friends for an unreasonable amount of time, be able to go to a dance class or do some yoga at night time with some running or swimming in the morning. To be able to take some time out after dinner to shower and bathe and be a girl with the face masks and moisturisers and all that stuff. Also to spend time in the kitchen making food without worrying how early or late it has to be ready. 

In my perfect little world, an entire day would probably be about 36 hours long if not more.

Something I need to figure out is balance. For now I have not managed to find that. The things I need to do like work, study, remain somewhat healthy, I have been lacking on. The things that are (really) unnecessary like playing games, reading for leisure when I have other things that I need to read, they become my priorities.

New tasks for the next 6 weeks;

• Get my studying up to date and done
• Fit some exercise in somewhere, anywhere, as long as it exists at least twice a week.
• Reduce gaming time to night times with an introduced self curfew (lame)
• Try to have some fun that doesn't involve technology.

Not too sure how I'll go but we'll definitely find out by the end of August (come on will-power, be strong).

Note #12

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

♡ Becoming more Healthy ♡

I'm unhealthy. I'll admit it. I don't try to be overly healthy, it seems too hard to me. Having to put a whole lot of money and time into making food that's good for you. Especially the money side. Fresh fruit is expensive and doesn't keep. And then there's the exercise. I struggle with exercise. Running is such a bore and so strenuous that I cannot bring myself to do it. I've contemplated joining netball teams, horse riding lesson, dance lessons, yoga classes, pilates classes, rock climbing groups on weekends. I think of all these things that would be so much fun so participate in, and then realise, each one of these things requires me to pay a lump sum of money that I don't really have any room for in any kind of budget I can draw up.

So both eating healthy, and exercise, in my mind has been ruled out as too expensive. 

I've thought long and hard about what I want to do to get in better shape and eat better without spending a huge amount of money that I don't necessarily have. 

I've decided to start off with a yoga mat. My next task, as soon as I have money to spare, will be to purchase a yoga mat. Not to go out and take yoga lessons or anything, or to do yoga only at home. I've found muscle exercises and stretches I want to do. Little things that would require very little movement compared to running, and yet use my entire body. I am excited to start this. As soon as I have my yoga mat so I don't destroy my hands and knees and joints on the wooden floors (and I tried using a blanket or something similar, it slips). 

As for eating healthy, I'm still a little stumped on that one. I like the idea of going out and getting a whole bundle of fruit and having fruit for lunch, maybe some toast or something for breakfast if I'm hungry. Dinners I don't  have much control over as it's cooking for an entire family and everyones tastes are completely different (and in our household, you cook for everyone only, not yourself as thats considered wasteful and rude). But like I said before, fruit can be quite expensive. Maybe I'll have a look into frozen fruit bags and smoothies. As for other lunch ideas, I hate cooking. Anything that requires a stove or oven I hate doing. Using a stove means using a pot or pan which means more dishes and the chance of burning yourself. Using the oven just seems cheap and over the top and unhealthy. I'm not saying it is, that's just how I feel about it. 

We'll have to see what happens in the next month or so. I'm hoping that once I've drawn up a budget that includes fresh fruit, things will get along quite smoothly.

♡ Rearranging My Bedroom ♡

Last week I decided to move all the furniture in my room around. No real reason. Just felt like changing things up! Once I finished moving things around and tidying up, I realised I was missing something and my bedroom didn't quite look finished. So I headed on down to Kmart and picked up three 4 Cube storage pieces for $19 each (bargain considering I was thinking about getting them from ikea for $59ea.) in white, as well as some little, what I think would be called "accents", for the cubes! 

I started off with the basic 3 cubes of course which costed me $57AUD in total which is brilliant. As I had moved my shorter bookcase into my closet, I didn't have anywhere to put my jewellery stand or candles so ontop of the cubes became the perfect spot for those. I already had the jewellery stand and most the candles, but I found a Vanilla & Fig candle in Kmart for $6 and it smells amazing. I've been trying to find a nice vanilla scent for a while, I wasn't too sure about the fig but once I had smelt the candle there was no going back. I also got the fake plant from Kmart for about $5. I have a lot of fake plants in my room as I think that every room needs to have some kind of greenery either in it or visible from the window and being on the second story I don't really get a huge window view of any plants. I also got two plastic containers for $2 each and the white ceramic glass for $7. Previously I was storing my makeup in a giant pile on my drawers so I figured this was a cleaner, more organised way to store everything. The ceramic owl was only $7 which isn't too bad. It's quite large and doesn't really have much purpose other than decorative so I was happy enough to pay the $7. As there are now 12 cubes for me to fill and I don't have any idea what each of them will contain, I figured it'd be nice to have one or two with something decorative in them. LASTLY, I got the owl doorstop. This one was $3 on clearance. For months now I've been hammering my Mum to install a door stopper on the skirting board behind my door (as I'm terrified of using a drill) and I saw this whilst I was browsing around and thought it would suit my room perfectly and now my door can remain open without slamming shut. 

For now I have quite a few empty cubes. I do plan to fill a few with some more little bits and pieces. One cube in particular I am working on with a collection of things which I will reveal eventually (probably as a haul of sorts or monthly favourites).