Stars Began To Fall

Interrupting the usual monthly or bi monthly or more monthly updates with a post explaining my weebcore room.

As you may recall (not that anyone is reading this) from my previous posts, I hesitated to find a place for all the anime merch that I bought back in my itabag days and my figure/doll collecting days and also from supporting small artists. For the longest time they were just stored in boxes and shelves, gathering dust not displayed to their prettiest and being eyesores instead of beautiful works of art. I didn't really want a weeb living room or guestroom since that's where my mom would be the most and didn't really want to give her a chance to criticize my taste (although there is videogame fanart in the guestroom and small figures and pokemon fanart in the living room.) My craft room is already completely full of sewing related wall art and I don't want a lot of distraction in the office side of my craft room. The dining room had space on the walls and the tiny corner shelf but it was already displaying regular paintings and souvenirs, I wanted to keep that same vibe. So that left my bedroom as the place to hold all my merch.

All this time, I didn't want to make my bedroom the weebroom because I wanted a calming zen spa-like space without a lot of visual clutter so I can get to sleep quickly. I have severe insomnia so every little bit helps. But with no other options, I said fuck it, and decided to go full maximalist in my bedroom. Life is short after all, and I feel the clammy hand of death on my shoulder.

I'm so glad I did. Even if it's a lot of visual clutter, I tried to make it look aesthetic and I think I succeeded (considering I messed up a few times with hammering holes in the wall lol). Does it distract me from sleep? Possibly, but not that much to take it down.

I included as many of my favorite decor features from influencers and celebrities and general vibes as I could while working on the redecorating. Here are some of them!

1. Anna Sui's apartment. A fashion designer I already admire whose Asian influence is also seen in her apartment which is full of bold colors and floral/animal patterns on the walls and museum-like furniture and favorite knick knacks on display.

2. Ghibli core. This is common with anime weebs and art school students, they are generally cottagecore aesthetics (natural cozy colors with handcrafted trinkets and plants scattered around) but with strong anime merch presence such as figures and blankets and plushies. Obviously I love Ghibli movies and they define my life and I also love the look of Howl's cluttered bedroom, therefore I like this style so much.

3. gallery wall in general. I want my bedroom to look like a salon room or h all at the Louvre with beautiful vibrant paintings and sculptures everywhere and a decorated ceiling and adorned windows. But all with anime merch lol. I've been to the Louvre so I need to refer to my photos for inspo.

4. Rachel Maksy and anyone like her. She is more specifically hobbitcore and retro, but I do also love Lord of the Rings. As far as I know, the social media influencers of her ilk are not that much into anime or Japanese games, so that is the main difference. They are all very natural and historically accurate; there is none of the bright, super saturated, rainbow/tropical colors that many anime series have in their home.

I watched a lot of youtube and looked at a lot of instagram and pinterest accounts for inspo, but what the Ghiblicore rooms lack is that they mostly focus on Ghibli, which I don't have a lot of merch for, and there isn't a lot of variety of anime or games on display, it's very curated and tasteful. Whereas full-on wall to wall anime merch or game rooms are very functional, sleek, minimalist and Ikea-like, with white and beige backgrounds and plain furniture so the various colorful merch pops.

I want a mix of the two - lots of color and nature and textures everywhere, all related to a bunch of different anime and game merch all at once, no taste or curation, all tackiness. My walls are white and my carpet is light cream so I can't avoid the greige curse, at least not without hours of work and the risk of falling from a ladder, but I really like the gallery wall and figure displays adding the color. I added as many fake flowers and vines as I could for the nature aspect, maybe even some live plants eventually. The room is still quite Ikea-like since I have a lot of Ikea furniture because I can't find anything better without costing thousands of dollars, but I incorporated soft feminine touches and accents in the textures. The main purchases I made were some prints and merch I was already going to buy before redecorating, picture frames and related gallery stuff from Michaels and Daiso, shelves from Ross and Ikea, flowers from Michaels, and that's it. No new furniture or appliances. I tried to use coupons and be thrifty if I did have to buy new stuff, but mostly used what I already had.

Ideally, I will have a wallpaper or paint accent wall, or a diy mural even. I want colorful curtains (the only ones I have right now are cream/gold) and a vibrant fluffy moss rug although I do love my white shag rug so much. One day I will hang that pothos plant on the ceiling, but if I can squeeze in another houseplant and keep it alive, that would be awesome. I might need to get a bolder color of bedding as well. These all require big purchases (as well as effort) which I didn't want to do so that's why I listed them here so I can remember. Also the mannequin needs a cool outfit at all times, which is free to do and I will do that now. All in all, without having to invest a lot of money and effort, my weebcore room is basically finished!

Lol, I keep forgetting to post my accountability posts each month, but no worries, I also forgot to draw 1 drawing each month or do my fashion posts. I wish I had an excuse but I don't. I'm just lazy and avoidant. However, I did make some progress with decor and I'm excited to share!

1. Guestroom/bathroom/front entryway: still a hot mess of random stuff moved in from other rooms

2. Dining room: still got random stuff and decor that needs to be moved into their forever homes, plus a lot of shipping boxes that need to be recycled or tossed.

5. Mudroom and laundry room: in my defense, I did organize some shipping stuff that was in the closet there... but otherwise no changes. Need to donate/toss these shoes and move the ladder back out into the garage.

6. Office/craft room: inspired by office/studio renovation videos on youtube, I bought more storage containers on sale at the craft store or from Daiso but have yet to come up with the perfect solution since I have to maneuver around the futon. I thiiiink I will clean up the huge mess made from working on my genshin cosplay and start reorganizing/konmari from there. I just have so many small craft supplies that a huge shelving unit is silly but the small shelves I already aren't being used to their max either.

7. Kitchen: I replaced more shelf liners and bought metal shelf dividers to stack more items. It looks a little better but the pantry is still overflowing and disorganized, I really just need a bigger pantry. I also took out the bottom fridge shelves for a much needed deep cleaning. I still need to deep clean the stove and oven, take out the recycling and junk mail and work on my plant setup that is still burdened with dying plants and seeds that never sprouted. Despite cleaning other spots in the kitchen, I deliberately skip the most difficult areas lol.

8. Home office: I actually redecorated my PC setup for summer... in August lol. I didn't add much functionality besides a stand for my tablet and a new My Melody container for electronics, but I cleaned the upper cabinets so to make space for shipping envelopes (not that I work on my online shop that much). Left to do: organize my shop merch better, clean out my projects cart, find a way to use the filing cabinets to store paperwork or just give up and put everything back on the desk like before.

9. Living Room: The old loveseat has been relocated so now there's a free area that is filled with junk lol. I want to buy an accent chair or recliner someday but that's not urgent since that would force me to clean up the living room to make space and I don't wanna. I'm actually trying to propagate my monstera and it seems to be working. I do have one more print to frame, that's the Castlevania family portrait of Dracula, although I guess I should hang that somewhere else in my house other than the living room.

10. Master bedroom/closet: I did finish the bed canopy! It's quite lovely decorated with flowers, gold foil sheer curtains and fairy (christmas) lights and hasn't fallen on my head yet lol. I also bought new bedding, a duvet cover and pillow cases from my fave Japanese fashion brand Liz Lisa. The fabric is actually not very comfortable, kinda scratchy compared to my higher end stuff, but it's soooo cute. I finally vacuumed the carpet which really needed it and bought a new laundry sorter, a shelving unit and one of those closet rod organizer thingies to replace/add to the storage. Everything looks so fresh and organized now even though I technically didn't do that much, so I really want to keep up that energy. My biggest task is trying to find a way to store purses and folded clothes that keeps them free of dust but easy to view.

So the biggest problem with my house is all the stuff in places that they aren't supposed to be in - storage boxes, junk containers, empty shipping boxes, papers and craft materials that were moved during my projects and then never moved back. After that, I need to hang some art and do some deep-cleaning/sanitizing of key areas in my kitchen and bathrooms. One day I will get around to painting the walls, but I need to organize/clean and maybe get some pest control in first!

I actually made less progress than expected but I made some progress considering how terrible this month has been.

1. I'm grouping the guestroom, guest bathroom and closet and front entry way. As mentioned, I still have some cleaning and fixing to do within the bedroom, and I just can't make myself work on the gallery wall since command strips don't work on my walls apparently. The donatables remain undonated after 2 years... I keep rummaging through the boxes for items to reuse but never reuse them!

2. Dining room: curtains and tools are still unfixed/left out, as well as the xmas tree and curtain backdrop, but I did break down the box of anime merch and brought the merch to display in my bedroom for now. As previously mentioned, I don't really want to keep my merch in my bedroom but I don't want to display them in my living room either. I'm still thinking about this, but so far the setup I have is sufficient for now.

5. Mudroom and laundry room: Umm... there's a ladder there now because smoke alarm battery needed replacing lol. But I managed to get through a stack of mail from last summer!

6. Office/craft room: I've been sorting through craft supplies every now and then but I still want to work on a better use of my space, possibly with shelves on the wall or over the door storage. I have old shelves I can use


Hmm... I seemed to have copied the previous month's entries for the next few sections and never updated them. Then I realized I didn't finish the entry and saved as a draft lol. Well, I'm publishing now for all of us to read!

All right, I'm having serious problems staying on track these days on everything, from work to my hobbies to cleaning and self-care, but here is the latest monthly update. I was inspired after reading a few more chapters in Marie Kondo's second book about tidying up.

1. Guest bedroom: still need to put the last few things away and fix the curtain but at least everything is clean and vacuumed and laundered. We do not speak of the closet.

2. The front entry way: I am going to make an appointment regarding the ants someday soon, but I have to finish cleaning the inside of my house before then, doh. Still haven't donated stuff although I have listed a lot on ebay (instead of depop). I have yet to finish printing and framing photos although I was very tempted looking at new frames recently. I just don't have the self-discipline anymore.

4. Dining room: still haven't fixed the curtains or put away the tools/merch, but at least I put away the Halloween decorations. Time to pull out the Christmas decorations come December.

5. Mudroom and laundry room: Ok, I didn't use my staycation wisely because I did not work on these two rooms, but in my defense, I did work on the yard and garage, so it's sort of related. I promise by the end of this year, I will konmari the front of the house which is all 5 of these spaces.

In the meantime, I have been collecting a lot of photos on Pinterest, and I think my next big decoration goal after general tidying up is making a little sunroom/conservatory area in my kitchen for my plants to overwinter. The problem is I do eat in my breakfast nook (the sunniest area of my kitchen) and the rest of my house is carpeted outside of the bathrooms and front hallway, so I would have to scoot my table over if I am going to commit to a sunroom. I predict a lack of space will slow me down here.

If the sunroom idea looks like it won't work, then my next plan is to paint a mural in my bathroom/watercloset. I am planning on a landscape with forests and what not (to replace the sunroom), but that's for future me to figure out after the plant shelves come in.

I made a tiny bit of progress! Here's what I did since the last entry, and now I am adding another two rooms after declaring the guest bathroom as finished as it will ever be.

1. Thanks to my bffs staying for the weekend to see friends and family before the pandemic takes that away again, I turbo-cleaned my house because they were also bringing their small dogs. The guestroom is now home to only decoration/souvenirs storage and old clothes/mementoes in the closet, the trash was uhh... moved to my office lol. The only thing left is moving the cat painting out somewhere else and fixing the curtains. I bought a ladder so I have no excuse anymore!

2. Guest bathroom is more or less done after I took out the trash.

3. The front entry way has no changes, except that I decided to buy a new expensive rose bush this week, instead of planting the mediocre lowest price point one that's on its last legs. I still need to rework the soil and take out the rest of the monkeygrass that used to be planted there. I hate monkeygrass so I'm glad I got most of it out. I also consolidated the donation/selling items in the front hall that still haven't been sold or donated, yikes.

4. As for the dining room, I did a quick repair of the curtain rod and tied the curtains with cheap Daiso cords. I may want to nail them to the side like how curtains normally look. I also hung up the peacock painting and set out my antique glass bottles on the decorative shelf. I still need to find a place for is the dried roses, maybe just put them in a bowl for now like potpourri. Also need to move the box of anime merch and all of my tools somewhere out of the way but still accessible. It might be a good idea to set up a tools area in my garage, but I like having my tools in the house instead of rummaging in a dimly lit garage and cutting myself.

5. New additions to my to-do list- mudroom and laundry room. Those rooms currently house some old clothes, donation/selling items, paperwork, boots and old shoes, a box of old toys, some outdated technology? I have a hard time letting go of stuff, because even though I haven't used these donatables for years, what if I need them for other purposes like for cleaning or cosplay??? This is the result of growing up poor and not having a lot of material goods to your name because they were shared with your sibling. I have to keep telling myself I have an income now and it would stress me out to have to move all this stuff with me, so I need to konmari them asap.

One month after my first style transformation post, I have pinned down some concepts that I want to use. I was really inspired by Rachel Maksy's youtube channel, in which she makes over her sunroom and her basement and mentioned that she had ideas or themes for each room, as if her house was a museum with each room having a different era or concept. And that helped me in my dilemma of having too many interests going on at once, I don't have to necessarily give up any item this way, it just will go into each separate room where it fits in better. (Although I should still clean out the junk and make donations if needed.)

So here are the possible ideas I have for each room of my house so far. My house is a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with a dining room, living room and breakfast area. (I've given up on decorating the outside since I'm terrible with plants (unless they're weeds lol.)

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1. Guestroom that's an actual guestroom: this one does have a theme already, it's Assassin's Creed, specifically Assassin's Creed 2 but some of the others, too. I place my Assassin's Creed merch and my own souvenirs from the locales each game takes place in there lol. Right now, it has dark grey curtains and grey/white bedding with some weird beige/yellow accents. The ACIII flag I hung up has fallen down, but I can hang it up over the bed and have a reason to put red and blue accents back into the room, like the American flag pillow.

I want to build on the international aspect of the decor, like in the guest bathroom (see point 2). I would like to mount the painting of Venezia and finally hang it up over the table. Clean up the junk I have stored there, redrill the curtains. Maybe add a chair or stool? If I find another good Assassin's Creed artwork, I want to include that, or some other international game (Overwatch, etcetera.)

So far I did hang up (in a much stabler way) the ACIII flag over the bed and terribly stapled the Venice painting my mom gave me, but I haven't hung up the painting because I didn't have anything to use to mount it. Still need to find a few more prints or paintings that are on theme, redo the curtain rods and clean out the junk. I also want to arrange some fake flowers but not sure what will fit with the theme just yet, maybe just white and red flowers for simplicity.

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2. Guest bathroom: this room has grey and white geometric patterns in the bathmats and shower curtain, and a tiny worldwide souvenir corner on the counter, which has damp-proof souvenirs from Assassin's Creed locales and related decor, like a glass apple and a Halloweeny candle that smells like "poison" or something similar. My favorite part are the apothecary "poison" glass bathroom accessories like soap dish and tumbler, which I found at Marshall's and they look so sleek and subtly threatening while being relevant to my profession.

I want to get new wall art to replace the cheapo wood plaque from Joann's (which I painted gold for some reason but it doesn't match the silver color scheme, not even sure why I did that lol), which has to be waterproof obviously, and maybe some fake plants since I can't keep real plants alive. Maybe a new tray to organize the bath supplies for guests. (I don't use this area much even before the pandemic, but my mom stays over sometimes.)

I did take out the plaque, but have nothing to replace it with at this time. I bought a grey/white embroidered hoop from Etsy to hang somewhere though I'm not sure if it's mold-proof, so it's not in the bathroom yet. Still left to buy - fake plants, a tray or organizer. Then clean up whatever I stashed in the linen closet.

And that's all for now!