‘Tis the season, I guess? For a blog post, I mean (don’t know what you were all thinking).
Anyway, silliness aside, I thought I’d give a Christmas blog post a go. Not entirely sure how much of this will be interesting to anyone, but at least the title got your attention!
Advent calendars:
Every year, I end up a bit spoilt for choice when it comes to calendars. I always get one from my mum and one from my grandma, and there’s also a series on youtube that I watch every year. This year, in addition to those, I ended up getting a couple of calendars from work (although one didn’t really work). So, let’s go through them, shall we?
A calendar from mum:
This one is almost always a chocolate calendar – usually Lindt (because it’s my favourite). This year was no exception. The one this year actually had a lot of variety to it compared to the years before, including a few things that I didn’t know existed! One of the best chocolate calendars I’ve had so far.
The Jacqueline Lawson calendar from grandma:
The Jacqueline Lawson advent calendars are digital advent calendars that have games, puzzles, little animations, and a couple of pets you can interact with. Every year, my grandma gets on for herself, gets one for me, and sends some to her friends. She’s been doing this for a while, since they did their victorian calendar (although I’m not sure what year that was), and I enjoy them every year. I think this year has to have been my favourite so far, though. They really upped the games and interactive bits this year by bringing back old games, having a few new ones, and having a lot of customisation in the living space (a flat in Paris). I’m really looking forward to next year’s (I wonder what the theme will be).
Ashens’s and NerdCubed’s advent series:
This is a series on youtube that I watch every year. It’s essentially just 2 dudes reviewing things from mostly crap advent calendars and they compete to see who got the best thing. I was a fan of both of these creators independently before they started the series, so that’s probably why I enjoy it so much. Also, love the punishment calendars (the spice rub and cheese ones are particularly memorable).
A couple of calendars from work:
One of these was a little Cadbury advent calendar, and the other was a wellbeing calendar. The Cadbury one was nice and predictable and the wellbeing one just didn’t really work. That’s it, not much else to say…I quite enjoyed the extra chocolate.
Presents that I made:
For the past few years, I have been making an effort to make some of my Christmas presents. Two years ago I focused on embroidery, last year I focused mainly on chainmail, and this year I focused on resin! Big shocker, I know.
Anyway, here are the presents that I made this year.
Secret santa dice set:
I got a very easy secret santa at work this year and immediately knew what I was going to do with my £10 spending limit. For one, the person’s favourite pokémon is gengar (she has a mug with it on), and for two, she plays DnD (so she is, very likely, a bit of a dice gremlin). So I decided to get her a gengar pokémon card and to make a set of gengar-themed dice.
The pokémon card was the gengar from the Scarlet & Violet 151 set and was illustrated by Tomokazu Komiya. I chose this one because it was kinda goofy-looking (which she would probably appreciate) and a more recent card (meaning that it was within budget). I also decided to get her one that was both holographic and in Japanese, just because I thought that would be kinda cool.
As for the dice themselves, the only thing that I had to buy to make them was the red paint for the numbers. I already had the moulds, the resin, and the purple and black micas. Even if I factored in the consumables used to make the dice, I still would have been within the £10 budget. In order to make the dice, I started by mixing up some 2-part resin with some black mica. Once that was all mixed together, I used a new eyeshadow applicator to coat the moulds with a thin layer of the purple mica. After that, I poured the black resin into the moulds, put on and weighed down the lid, and waited for 18+ hours (had to sleep and go to work in between). I then unmoulded them while they were still a bit soft, trimmed them up, and got to painting on the numbers with a drawing pin. It took a couple of coats but, once they were finished, I ended up being really quite pleased with them.
Resin rabbit pairs:
For a few people this year, I decided to gift them some resin rabbit pairs. These ended up going to a couple of family friends and to my grandma (who also received something else from me as well as the rabbits).
For one of the rabbits, I simply mixed in a bunch of blue/purple sparkly bits into some clear resin (like, so much that it was visibly clumpy), poured it into the rabbit moulds, and then coloured their eyes silver with a pen once set and unmoulded. For the other rabbits, I based them off of snow rabbits (yuki usagi, I think). I started off by mixing up some clear resin and adding some of my rainbow sparkle mix. I then used an eyeshadow applicator to coat the ears of the moulds with green mica. After that, I poured in the in the resin and, once set, unmoulded them and coloured their eyes in with a red metallic pen.
I’m not sure what the family friends thought of them (I have yet to hear anything), but my grandma was absolutely chuffed with her pair.
The dice that went wrong:
…This is probably why you’re here, isn’t it? Well, I’m sorry to say that it’s not an overly exciting story, but the results are quite funny.
I was making my brother a dice set as a part of his Christmas present and fucked up (big time). What I had intended to do was to make a red and green dice set with white numbers. However, when I was mixing up the green resin, I think that I used too much mica. This resulted in dice that, after over 24 hours (the resin’s cure time), had not set properly. I didn’t quite realise how malleable they actually were until I started unmoulding everything and the first dice came out completely misshapen. I ended up unmoulding and trimming everything even though I know there was no hope of saving the set. I also did not have enough time to try and make another set. So, I had to improvise a little bit. I ended up putting the D20 on a keyring (on a small full Persian chain made from steel) and gifting that to my brother, with an apology attached saying that a dragon melted it.
I know that I can make a decent dice set; I proved that earlier in this very post. And, you know what, I still want to make my brother a dice set. I think, next time, I will change up the design a little, though, but still keep the same colours. I may or may not keep you guys posted on that.
Oh, and for anyone curious, here is what the whole set ended up looking like. Please, enjoy my failure. I think that the D6 and D4 ended up being the most entertaining out of the lot.
Christmas eve, Christmas day, and boxing day (+plans for the week after):
24/12/2024:
The day started off with doing some washing up, packing my bags, and getting a lift from my dad to my mum’s. We stopped for lunch along the way and then my dad stopped for a cup of tea before going home.
Not long after he’d gone, my mum and her husband went back to her friend’s to help prep Christmas things with them and their kids. Meanwhile, myself and my brother stayed back at the house. We ended ordering a pizza (and a couple of sides) and having a chat about stuff. I showed him my plant cipher, which he seemed to find interesting, and he ended up making a couple of suggestions (one of which I may implement). We ended up talking mostly about languages. Turns out, my brother has started teaching himself Chinese and French and has started to relearn a bit of German too…this is on top of already having taught himself Welsh, to the point of being deemed fluent, and Japanese. I don’t know how he does it, I only just about have grasp on English.
Other than that, I’m happy to say that the cats remember me (and I got to cuddle them). However, I’m not so happy to report that I did receive my first ‘grandkids’ comment. Not from my parents, mind you. No, it was from my mum’s husband. Sorry, but I’m not going through literal agony for something that I have never wanted. Guess I can look forward to more of those comments in the future, huh?
25/12/2024:
I began the day by putting on my Christmas jumper and doing my hair – I chose to do a rope braid this year.
After that, I went downstairs, had a bit of toast (a luxury when you don’t own a toaster), and chilled in the living room for a bit. Late morning, my grandma arrived and we got to opening presents. I got some good stuff – a sewing machine, some chocolate, the yearly cat calendar. But by far the strangest present I received this year was some flamingo-shaped sprinkles from my mum.
Once all of the presents had been opened, and all of the wrapping paper had been thrown into the middle of the living room (as is tradition), we then moved onto Christmas dinner. It was, as always, very delicious and very filling. Other than the odd chocolate or two here and there, I ate nothing for the rest of the day. After that, I retired to the lounge with my grandma and we spent some time together. She was doing her knitting while we talked about the Jacqueline Lawson advent calendar and some craft stuff.
As it neared 18:00, my grandma went home and I watched the Doctor Who Christmas special, which was…fine, and the new Wallace and Gromit film, which was really good. I then fled upstairs.
All in all, not a bad Christmas.
26/12/2024:
Boxing day, I am happy to say, I did pretty much nothing. I chilled out in slobby clothes, had some cheese and crackers and a bit of pork pie for lunch, and purposefully avoided going to the yearly family reunion on my dad’s side (I never enjoyed going as a kid, there’s always some sort of drama simmering on in the background, and someone is usually pregnant. Seriously, the family is so big that they have to rent a hall every year for this gathering). I also spent about three hours on the phone with my best friend while I worked on a plant cipher piece and her and her boyfriend played ‘Uno no mercy’.
A nice and chill boxing day. The weather was a bit crap though – there was a thick and unrelenting fog all day (just glad I didn’t have to go anywhere).
The following week:
The following week is actually kind of busy for me:
- 27/12/2024 – Shopping with mum and brother, looking through sales, getting a new pair of trainers (because my current pair has a hole in and the sole is coming off in three different places…on just the one shoe).
- 28/12/2024 – Heading back up to Norwich and doing a top-up shop.
- 29/12/2024 – Work (from 7:00 – 17:30), try and catch the last talk of the mini AceCon (the research panel), and then joining the hangout for a bit to see what that’s like.
- 30/12/2024 – Work again (7:00 – 17:30) and then packing again.
- 31/12/2024 – Heading back to mum’s, going to grandma’s for new years eve, and toasting in the new year.
- 01/01/2025 – Hopefully meeting up with my best friend (either at my mum’s or in Birmingham or something).
- 02/01/2025 – And finally, heading back to Norwich so that I can be back for work the next day.
Rough plans for 2025:
Some big things should be happening next year, and I’m quite excited for the year to come (for a change)! There are two things that are almost guaranteed to happen next year – reaching the two year mark at my current job and buying my first house. These are two very big milestones for me.
I should reach two years at my current job at the end of June next year, and that will be the first time that I will have ever managed to that at any of the jobs I’ve had (with all the redundancies and all). This would be a fantastic thing to have on my CV and I genuinely can’t wait to add it on, as sad as that may sound.
As for buying a house, this both a very exciting and quite daunting thing for me. I’m really looking forward to having a property that I can do whatever the fuck I want with, but I’m also kinda dreading all of the admin side of things and getting all of the white goods and furniture together. Luckily, my dad has a van (so that helps), but then there’s getting everything else to get sorted. I have a rough idea of my deposit, price range, and what kind of property I want/will be able to afford and maintain, but I will also be getting a mortgage advisor in the new year so that I can actually talk through things with someone who knows what they’re doing. I cannot wait to have more space and to start decorating (although I suspect that I may miss the convenience of have my kitchen in my bedroom).
There is something else that could also happen next year. If it does happen that would be great, but if it doesn’t I can just keep trying into the next year (or even the year after that). And that thing is getting another job – specifically as a full time science writer. This is something that I wanted to go in to before I was made redundant from my last job almost two years ago, and I still find myself wanting to try and pursue this career. I understand that I am relatively underqualified compared to most people going for these kinds of jobs (as most like or require you to have a Master’s degree or better), and that is why I am trying to build up a small portfolio of work to show off what I can do. You may have noticed that my last post was a little bit different to normal, and that’s because I wanted it to be a more professional piece for this portfolio. I will be trying to write these portfolio pieces alongside my normal blog posts and I am hoping to do a bit of freelancing for it in the new year, too. We’ll see how this all goes. Wish me luck, my friends.
And finally, for those who stayed – some cat pictures:
So, there you have it – the last post of the year. Hopefully it wasn’t too boring for you and I hope that everyone ends up having a fab new year!
This song may be a little bit late, as Christmas this year has already come and gone, but I thought you could use a Christmas song that you might not have heard before – Christmas truce by Sabaton
Natalie's notebook 