Virginia Garcia McShannock

Yes! Its basically treasure hunting!

Shopping second-hand in thrift, vintage, and charity shops is not only better on my wallet and better sustainability wise, but I tend to find much better quality items than what's new in store. Plus you get the thrill of the hunt. Now I just need some thrift loving friends to come with me...

Went to a vintage kilo sale today in the hopes of finding some trousers that aren't polyester at a reasonable price...
Came away with 3 pairs of 97-100% cotton and one 100% wool pair, all but one of the cotton pairs was designer. I paid £40. New, I'd have paid over £350 for it all.

I also have to show off my Christmas Eve picky tea charcuterie platters. First time doing these to make them look pretty rather than just everyone grabbing stuff out of packets, and I am *very* pleased about how good they ended up looking!

Remember me talking about these earrings? My husband is the best. He quietly remembered me showing them to him and he got them for me for Christmas because he knew I didn't around to getting them for myself.

Merry Christmas folks!

I've not had much of a chance to reach out individually to folks to say Merry Christmas as I've been hosting and running around after my one year old goblin, but I hope everyone is having a lovely day (however you choose to spend it!)

Happy Birthday! :)

At some point, I hope to reconnect with folks I've fallen out of contact with and miss dearly.

There's no real point to this thread, just getting it off my chest 'cos I miss my friends and hanging out, and I miss having the time and mental bandwidth to be present in all those places I was before.

I want to reconnect with folks but it's never been a thing I'm good at, and finding the time and the bandwidth to do that meaningfully is hard (and also very anxiety inducing).

Dragonmeet very much reminded me just how much I miss people and the spaces I used to be in both on and offline.

All of this is really to say that despite being 'away' I'm still here, doing all the things I do (mostly, just with added parenthood responsibilities). I'm rubbish at reaching out at the best of times, but especially this last year.

While it's been healthy in many ways to be less online and more present offline, it does mean that I've also been kina distant socially. Which was never my intention, but happens when all your time and energy is put to parenting and parenting-adjacent things. I haven't figured out the balance yet.

I have been super MIA and stepped back from a lot online spaces (and some IRL ones) over the last year.

This has been because parenthood has taken up most of my focus and time, and because I hit overwhelm and anxiety in ways that weren't healthy or sustainable for me.

This is the only convention this year I've been able to go to so I am so excited to see everyone and all the cool shit they've been making!

In the chaos of everything recently I forgot to say, I'll be at Dragonmeet today mooching around the Con doing my best to say hello to everyone. Please feel free to reach out if you wanna meet up to say hi! (assuming we actuallg know each other and aren't strangers, you know.)

We bought it on a whim. We discussed reselling it but we have no idea what it's worth and quite frankly we both think it's a fun coincidence that on the eve of our wedding anniversary, we'd be reminded of where our friendship first began.

This charity shop never really has any TTRPG, nerdy, or geeky things. It was purely by chance that I noticed the debossing on the cover. Aside from a tiny bit of spine damage, it's in good condition. It cost £30.

A black leather bound copy of Vampire the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition.

Tomorrow is my 2nd wedding anniversary. The first TTRPG my husband and I ever played together nearly a decade ago was Vampire the Masquerade. Today in our local charity shop, by chance we spotted in the window the leather bound 20th Anniversary limited edition of VtM.

May have just found the vintage statement door knocker earrings of my dreams. Keeping my fingers crossed they're still available whenever payday hits this month because I've been looking for a pair like this for forever (it's also an excuse to head to my favourite vintage/antiques area of London).

Oh this is so helpful, thanks Kienna!

Haha! That might be why I hadn't come across it, I'm actually looking with the plan of it being not-ttrpg related haha!

Oh I've never heard of this! I'll take a look into it, thank you!

So what platform are we using these days for posting blogs? Litterally anything but WordPress though. I don't wanna deal with making a website and managing all of that. WordPress and I do not get along.

US paper sizes are unholy

So what's your favourite The Life of A Showgirl song?
Because RN Fate of Ophelia, Father Figure, Cancelled!, and Opalite are just on repeat for me.

The Life of a Showgirl did not disappoint. Fun, unserious, pop-y, catchy. Gonna have this on repeat for a while.

Adobe: We've upgraded a key feature.

User: How will this improve things for me?

Abode: Now just hold on there buckaroo

Check in on your friends who are new(er) parents... we need it lol.

My 11 month old is teething and has only napped an hour since 6:30am. He wants to be picked up and cuddled AND be put down to toddle about at the same time. He is big mad at discovering that isn't possible but demands I try anyway.

*begins googling*....
That is a good idea!

I am eyeing up a pumpkin costume.
Also gotta find him something nerdy for Dragonmeet!

Spooky month is nearly here, which means the spooky season decor will soon be going up in the flat. It also means I can buy halloween themed clothing and a costume for the bub! He's going to be 1 in October, I can't believe how fast time flies!