I can’t decide whether to include my book reviews as part of my blog or not so I’m going 
to try it this time and see how it goes. You can tell I’ve gone back to work as I’ve only managed to finish one book this week so far. This week I finished Wicked Like a Wildfire by Lana Popović. This book came to me in my second Fairyloot crate and I’ve been particularly lax to date in reading them when they arrive, something I’m trying to remedy this year. The story centres around twins Iris and Melina and their life in Montenegro. It contains magic, a terrible crime and a search for answers. This is not a standalone book, it’s the first part of a duology, the second part, Fierce Like a Firestorm, is due to be released this summer. The cover art for the duology is amazing, I know they say never to judge a book by its cover but the art on these books screams ‘READ ME!’. I now have choice paralysis, I have 50 more books to read from my ‘read what I own’ shelves and I can’t decide which to pick up next. I think I’ll let Hubby pick at random when he gets up!
On Sunday I abandoned my Hubby and set off to Elphaba’s house to take part in our friends’ group Secret Santa. Believe it or not, January was the only time all of us could get together without schedule conflict. We all take part in a massive group chat and we all have nicknames centred around our pets. Except I don’t have any pets so mine is the name of my travelling teddy bear. Elphaba did a wonderful job of decorating and we all brought part of the meal with us. She even bought individual pins for us and put them in the crackers. Mine is the one pictured on the left and is basically me in pin form. I’m either saying ‘just one more chapter’ or ‘just one more row’. The group used Elfster to set the Secret Santa giftees and I got Loki (again, I’m using nicknames from the group chat). She, very nicely, shared her Amazon
wishlist with the group so I got her some fox related things. I opened mine and received a Hogwarts clutch bag, a Hogwarts makeup bag, Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine, some bookmarks and some sparkly eyeliner. As every good bookworm knows, almost everything can be a bookmark but real bookmarks make my heart go pitter-patter so I’m really pleased. After we’d all opened our gifts we had to guess who got us and I guessed right on the first go and guessed it was Thorin. The only reason I knew who it was is that she had one of the clutch bags at Elphaba’s NYE party and I had admired it and asked where she’d got it. It turned out to be a Primark find and she said she’d grab me one the next time she was in town. So, when it turned up in my Secret Santa gift bag, I knew it was from her. The food was great, the company was great and the whole day, in general, was a lot of fun!
This was my first full week back at work and it felt like a month! For 2018, I’m trying to cultivate a mental attitude of positivity. It’s not always easy but if I never try then I’ll never succeed. This week has been a bit of a disaster for my Daily Greatness journal, I’ve been tired, grouchy and struggled to get back into the daily routine of getting up for work. On Tuesday I woke up after maybe 2 hours of sleep and was not in a fit state to drive, so Hubby had to drop me off at work rather than me drive myself there after dropping him off. We also haven’t made it back to the gym this week and the diet is right out of the window. Oh well, we can start again on Monday! On Tuesday, Hubby went out to his first meeting with an indie film group. He was asked by his friend Danger if this was something he’d be interested in joining and Hubby jumped at the chance. Danger is an actor for the group and Hubby has been given the job of continuity photographer for now. He seems to be quite pleased. For now, he’ll be using my cameras, rather than 
buying more equipment which I’m okay with. On Wednesday, Hubby opened his last ever Marvel Loot Crate. We both had LootCrate subscriptions, Hubby’s was Marvel and mine was The Wizarding World of Harry Potter but, in the interests of economy, we have decided to reduce our box subscriptions to one each. Hubby has kept on his My Geekbox subscription and I have kept my FairyLoot subscription. We have big holiday plans in the next couple of years which we need to save hard for, furniture to buy for the house to organise the study, furnish my library and other pieces to organise other parts of the house and a computer to build for Hubbys’ editing purposes. The combined cost of the boxes we have cancelled comes to just over £600 for the year so it was a no-brainer. Thursday, I had a video chat with a very old friend. It’s really strange, we have mostly communicated via Facebook for the last couple of years due to geographical distance and also our lives taking different paths, but we chatted for an hour on Thursday like we’d spoken very recently instead of years ago. Friday passed without much over anything exciting happening.
This weekend will be a bit of a strange one. Hubby is heading out later on today to watch the new Star Wars film for the second time with Danger and I’m going to have an afternoon alone in the house, reading and maybe getting some chores done. I’ve got the grocery shopping arriving this afternoon too. Tomorrow Hubby might be heading out with his film group to do some filming setup but that’s not confirmed. I’ll hopefully be heading to church before Hubby disappears out.