A look back at my month with photos, blog posts, plans & goals progress, links and more.
What I’ve been up to
August went by really fast and it feels ominously like Autumn is imminent. Despite having some bad times this year with sunlight-induced migraines and heatwaves, I am nowhere near ready for summer to be over. The month started with five days in London with my mum and sister, sadly not for fun reasons but to help clear out a flat. We managed to be there during a heatwave and our hotel had no aircon so that was fun!
We did take the DLR to Greenwich for a little adventure and had some good meals out too, but mostly we were just searching out cold drinks and ice as often as possible. I found some Japanese Mikan (mandarin) Fanta, which was pretty good and violently orange. I had to bring it home as it would have been a waste to drink it warm.
Back in Helensburgh, the most exciting event was the annual Flower & Vegetable Show. It’s usually earlier in the year and I don’t know if it was the summer holidays or the weather but it had way less entries than usual. It was actually pretty sad to see. Some categories had no entries at all, while others were mostly the same 3 people. At this rate, I will have to join and enter the arts & crafts competition next year. We did visit the tea room for the first time and had some lovely cake, and alsso failed miserably at the tombola, despite being the first people there.
Otherwise, I have mostly been juggling a couple of freelance jobs and doing my usual stuff – see below. Here’s a photo of a recent packaged order that I took for something and didn’t need in the end. Buy something and you too will get some cute mail – probably looking exactly like this! My Summer Sale is also ending ‘soon’ (in the next few days, whenever I get around to it).
Purchases & Gifts
I forgot to include this last month! Nicolette found some pretty vintage glasses at the charity shop and gave me this orange one with a flower pattern. If there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s more drinkware or dishes (my cupboards are full of towering stacks) but I do really like this glass and have been using it a lot. This photo is of the mikan Fanta, which is almost exactly the same colour. I couldn’t resist the Rilakkuma socks in Primark and already wore a pair before taking a photo. I also saved a few things from the house clearout including a pile of 1990s cycling magazines and a book you’ll see below.
Things I Wrote
- July 2026 Recap
- TokyoTreat & Sakuraco Snack Box Highlights
- More Pusheen Box Favourites
- Kawaii Artist Notepads & Sticky Memos
- Stars and Moons Crafts & DIYs
- Studio Ghibli Buys & DIYs
- Introducing Pembe the Pink Cat
- Kawaii Links & Videos Roundup
- New Kawaii & Craft Books To Buy & Preorder
- New Kawaii Character Collabs
Plans & Goals Progress
Books: I finished The Count of Monte Cristo at last! What a book. Despite how long it took, I am still 1 book ahead on my reading challenge. You can see them all in Books, Comics & Zines I Read in 2026. Very pleased with my new-to-me copy of Moby Dick with a great cover – books are a nice way to remember people.
Decluttering: Clearing out someone’s possessions made me take a long hard look at my own and I have finally started thinking about donating some of my massive zine collection so others can enjoy it. Of course, I am taking the opportunity to read every zine (or at least have a flick through before putting it on the donate pile), which has been fun. So many good zines and amazing people. I will try to write something longer about the whole experience. This is also inspiring to me to make more zines, and I have actually started one so let’s hope I actually finish it.
Crafts: Behold! My Oxygen Oasis miniature glasshouse! I finished this ages ago but the release date got moved so I could only share the review recently. It looks super-impressive and everyone visiting has been totally wowed by it. It was satisfying to finish but not exactly fun, as it was extremely difficult and took forever.
Look at all the tiny complicated things! I haven’t worked on my felt flower wreath so I don’t think I actually did any crafting this month.
Cycling: I am now heartily sick of the Paris map on Zwift after completing the Tour Fever challenge, taking part in a group ride to celebrate the end of the women’s TdF and some weird ride challenge with PSG (the football club) with a prize draw. Let’s hope I win a trip to IRL Paris, even if I have to go and watch football. The group ride was hilarious fun as it was rubber-banded and all the fast people dragged me up Montmartre at double my usual speed. We also got a really nice kit to keep, matching Canyon//SRAM’s TdF kit – one I would definitely wear myself. I still have not taken my bike outside though – feels like it’s either super windy or super hot, and taking it off the trainer feels like a massive effort (it would take 5 minutes). 2026km goal update: currently 1417km completed, 69km ahead of schedule.
Other stuff: I finished the whole Dutch course on Duolingo! What am I supposed to do now? RIP my 2705 day streak and 55,000 gems, I guess. At least I never caved and paid for the app. I don’t feel like I know Dutch as well as German as the course was way shorter and just exercises, so I will have to continue with something else. I’ve set a week long streak freeze until I decide what to do so more news next month.
Generally Good Stuff
Nic and I played a bit more LEGO Star Wars and we are a little better but still fairly clueless. I completely failed to catch up with House of the Dragon before the new season but managed to avoid spoilers and finish the lot a few days ago. So many gut-wrenching moments. It really feels like what Game of Thrones should have been – the bigger budget, casting diversity and closer attention to details makes it far stronger, even if you ignore the nonsense in the last seasons of GoT.
My Belgium & London trips have got me right back into listening to music and I’ve started taking my headphones out more often, and using them at home when I have work that doesn’t require full concentration. I might even get a cheap MP3 player so I can have my whole music collection and not just whatever I can squeeze onto my overstuffed phone. I’m mostly being super-nostalgic, partly because I am too poor to buy new music or subscribe to streaming, and partly because it’s been so long.
That was a very long one!
