A Poke Around My Office

A Poke Around My Office

Although I spend a good amount of my day bed-desking it up in our almost completed guest bedroom, I do have an actual office I work in from time to time. It’s a great place away from the goings on of the house, tucked away upstairs as the only room. It’s definitely a favorite, although incomplete, space because it holds all of my memories. From childhood swim medals to my growing collection of planners, my office takes good care of all of them.
As for planners, I’m currently using one at the moment so don’t let the large collection in the photo alarm you. I keep a lot of different layouts on hand for work, as well as past planners and a few Erin Condren notebooks just in case. Sure it’s still kind of absurd, but I’m a planner gal without a doubt.
I’ve slowly started to collect wall art and pieces to make the space more complete and it’s really inspired me to spend more time in here. It’s a large open room with a decent sized window and a lot of wall space. A gallery wall feels like a must, but I also want to be able to showcase some of my favorite memories more prominently. All things a good Pinterest board can solve.
So take a little poke around and any help picking a theme would be fabulous. I recently purchased a few doodle drawings of plants and cacti, but beyond that it’s a blank slate. That’s kind of exciting now, isn’t it?
Getting into Knitting

Getting into Knitting

Since nearly all of my hobbies have magically turned into my job, I am on the hunt for new ones. I need something completely separate from my sticker, YouTube, blogging life to keep things interesting and to fill any (rare) downtime I may have. Enter knitting.
I learned how to knit on one very strange trip in middle school with my best friend/maid of honor Lauren. Her grandma got us supplies and we spent a good week knitting terrible-looking scarves we never actually finished. Fast forward to present day during a game night with a few new neighborhood friends. Amy showed me some of the stuffed animals she’s knitted for her two daughters and I about died from cuteness overload. I had to create them.
Amy was kind enough to bring over a few extra knitting supplies to practice with the next morning when I couldn’t get the knitting desire out of my head. I relearned everything I didn’t really know how to do in the first place and she and I talked about what pattern to start out with. I’ll be knitting an adorable hippo stuffed animal in no time.
So far I keep dropping stitches a little too often, but it’s been a great way to get to know one of my neighbors better while giving me a pointless project to work on. I’ve also joined a neighborhood book club to get me back into reading and Alex and I are having more fun preparing unique dinners. 
I never really knew how important hobbies were until I no longer had them. I’ve missed doing things just for the sake of doing them, not because they put food on the table. And who knows, maybe I’m a knitting savant and just haven’t uncovered my talents yet!

Summer Highlights

Summer Highlights

With the first day of fall come and gone I think it’s about time I officially said goodbye to summer. Although the weather is still holding on, I must admit I’m pretty excited for everything autumn has to over. Yet this summer has to be one for the history books and as I was gathering photos that I thought really captured the season, it became that much more apparent.
We moved into our new house in March so we had a summer filled with exploring our new city, flowers in are gardens, and lots of delicious baking. We made countless meals in our kitchen in sheer excitement over the fact that more than one person could easily be in it without being squished. We made candy sushi, way too many desserts, and started building new memories.
But above all this summer, we got married at the tail end of it. I’m still eagerly waiting for the arrival of all of the photos and videos, but our photographer kindly gave us a few teaser shots to tide us over until then. It was a fairy-tale wedding I never thought could be possible. I still can’t believe it and only when I finally see the video then I’ll be able to no longer deny that it really did happen.
There will be many, many photo heavy wedding posts to come, but I just knew I couldn’t say goodbye to this summer quietly as if it didn’t mean anything to me. This was the summer that started the rest of our lives together. A new home, a marriage, and many memories I won’t soon forget.
Korean Beauty Box by EsianMall

Korean Beauty Box by EsianMall

Korean Beauty Box by EsianMall
Korean Beauty Box by EsianMall
Asian beauty products have always fascinated me, so when I got the opportunity to try the EsianMall Korean Beauty Box, I was totally down.
At $25 a box, I had the bar set pretty high on product quantity and quality. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but am pleased with all the goodies that I got. Nothing seemed too out of the ordinary, which I must admit I was a little hesitant about finding some crazy themed product inside. Five full size products and one travel size facial wipes package is fantastic for the price. My favorite part of the entire un-boxing has to be the adorable packaging. Asian products set the cuteness quota to new heights and I still can’t get over how adorable the lotion packaging is. Not to mention the black head strips come in pig-themed packaging. I’m sold.
I’m most excited about the Botanic Farm Eyebrow Pencil, the Strawberry scented lotion, and the makeup sponges. They’re product categories I use a lot more often than the others so I tend to gravitate towards them subconsciously in beauty boxes and stores. I’ll be giving everything in the box an honest go though.
EsianMall is a pretty cool site that also offers snack boxes in various sizes, plus an entire store filled with unique Asian products as well. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to get my hands on one of those snack boxes next and see what crazy things I can convince Alex to try.
You can save $5 off your first box if you’re interested in checking out the subscription company. I’m definitely keeping this subscription box in mind when getting Christmas gifts this year. It’ll be perfect, unique gift for a beauty addict rather than trying to figure out what makeup they don’t have. 
Now I’m off to remove my little piggy black heads!
My Top Five Favorite Board Games

My Top Five Favorite Board Games

In the Benda household, we’re all about board games. We have quite a few and our collection is constantly growing (two new games just entered the mix this week!), but there are a handful that I keep finding myself coming back to. In today’s video I’m finally diving into my top five favorite board games. They’re all completely different from each other and a load of fun.
String Railway is all about making your string trains reach more stations than the other players. The Resistance has the good guys trying to figure out who are the spies in the group all the while doubting their allies. Sheriff of Nottingham has players lying and smuggling to another player and quickly finding themselves being lied to when the tables have turned. Takenoko puts players in a Japanese garden where you either focus on growing bamboo as the gardener, organizing the garden tiles into patterns, or eating up all the bamboo in sight as the panda. But my favorite of them all is Escape, the Curse of the Temple. I’ve gone into detail about this game in particular in a recent post about good collaboration board games, but nothing gets the heart racing like this fast-paced all-or-nothing game. 
I go into a lot more detail in the video and get way too excited. Sounds about right when I’m chatting about tabletop games…
Yours till the board games,
Kayla