my bin of half-finished hobbies

stuffed animal spa attendant

i picked up this webkinz duck at the thrift store for a dollar. when i got him, he smelled vaguely of pizza and garlic. luckily, small plush are pretty easy to wash with a little bit of dish soap in the kitchen sink, and i was able to get quacks here all cleaned up and pizza-free with minimal effort! i thrift a lot of stuffed animals and my process is pretty similar for all of them. bigger stuffed animals, like build a bears, are a bit trickier since you pretty much have to remove their stuffing to wash them thoroughly. it's worth it though, i've gotten a lot of good plush from thrifting!

pony restoration assistant

if you couldn't tell from the rest of my site, i do really enjoy collecting toys and other little trinkets. i only had a few my little ponies growing up (my old cat would always chew on their hair and drag them under my bed, god rest her soul) and for a couple weeks in early 2025 i made it my mission to collect the ponies i wanted to have as a kid. i succeeded! in an effort to save money, i ended up buying all the ponies second-hand at thrift shops, swap meets, and garage sales. finger paints here was an especially rough find, but with some elbow grease (and tutorials from the lovely folks at the my little pony trading post) she cleaned up really well. bonus pic of my collection below :-)

bracelet entrepreneur

okay i'll be honest - i've been into kandi for like, 10+ years now, but i never really had the money to invest in building my bead collection. but huzzah! employment! luckily, i had about a month of down time in November 2023 while i was recovering from surgery, so i ended up cranking out a ton of funny little bracelets to give out (see 1st pic!). peep my set up - we're real professionals around here (2nd pic).

kandi has always been a fun way for me to express my love for the media i enjoy. here's a couple things i made while i was huge into my porter robinson phase. as i write this, i'm wearing a king gizzard themed set. old habits die hard

i even got to host a class on making kandi with a local LGBT+ group near me! it was a ton of fun, and i taught folks how to make froggies, cuffs, stars, bows, and more. i might end up doing another craft night soon..... maybe for pride??

ikea desk builder

my room pre-desktop pc, i still miss my recliner...

so, up until may 2024, i was running vrc and other unoptimized powerhouse games on a dinky "gaming" laptop that regularly burnt my legs it was overheating so much. so, after some deliberation, i decided enough was enough! it was time to build my first PC! but first.... i needed somewhere to put the damn thing.

look, i'm not PROUD of the fact that it took me 4+ hours to assemble this desk, but by god i had a vision and i made it happen. this stupid fucking desk man. it's a fredde from ikea and it's AWESOME. turns out the metal frame of the desk allows for a lot of customization using magnets! it's just a shame that it sucks to put together and i almost cried like 6 times

the vision is coming together........ i ended up buying a bunch of charms and magnets to decorate my desk with, and it was a real treat to find random trinkets to stick magnets on! special shout out to the herman miller chair i got off facebook marketplace for $300. dude was really chill.

oh, fuck, the PC build! i knew i was forgetting something. i had a lot of help from my VR friends who just so happen to also be tech nerds, so i didn't fly solo on this adventure. i ended up buying all the parts seperately and building the pc myself based off of linus's evergreen pc build guide video. thank you mr. linus. i have a somethingsomething, 4070, something or other, doodad thingy, and a 7800 whatsit. i'm hoping i don't have to do any more real work on this thing for a couple of years at least....

and here's my desk today! i am super happy with how my space turned out. my plush comes from many sources, a lot of it is from my childhood, a few were purchased new, but the bulk of my recent additions come from thrifting or second-hand sources. i got a ton of cute figures from my trip to japan, so i end up rotating them out to keep things fresh! i'm really glad i finally decided to invest in a proper set up. i can finally run modern games now, which has been a dream of mine since i was a kid lol.