I am addicted to chips. And I am not even making it more dramatic then it is. Okay, maybe just a little...

In the beginning of November I swore off chips for the month. But I was weak. I ended up eating chips on November 1st. (To be fair, my boyfriend was making dinner that night and changed his mind at last minute. We ate nachos.) Then a few days later I bought a bag of chips, and my resolution was definitely over.

And after that, I've been REALLY unreasonable. I've been binge eating chips like no other and a few days ago, I realized I was an addict.

When my boyfriend came back home from work with a bag of chips for himself and none for me, I spotted the blue Ruffle bag right away. But he did not open that bag until later that night.

I spent the night thinking about that bag of delicious salty goodness just a few steps away, waiting for me in the kitchen. Every time he would stand up I would think “he is finally going to open the bag of chips!!!”.

Obviously, trying to completely cut chips off my life was a fail and I need to find solutions to manage this. I am currently surfing the web in search of chips alternatives and I might share my favourites with you after trying some of them.

Do you have any food addiction or am I just a weirdo? Also, what is your favourite chips flavor?

Wow, I feel like I haven't been blogging for such a long time. That's sad because this blog as become such a big part of my life in the last year and I feel like I'm just letting it down. I don't want to make excuses, but to be fair, so much has happened in the last month or two that my head was just not into it.

Here's what happened

In the beginning of august I got a small cold, really nothing major, but it still took some energy out of me. Then at the same time Augustus, one of my cats, started to pee everywhere. I know that a cat doing that might be a sign that something's off, so I called the vet and after a few tests they told me he had stones in his bladder and would need to have surgery.

So they kept him for the night and he had surgery the next day. They've let me see him for a few hours after his surgery, which was really nice. The day after, we could take him home. But he had quite a lot of medication to take. And having a cat taking his medication is not easy, at all.

Basically, I was really worried, stressed out and tired.

Fast forward two weeks, his convalescence was over and he was finally doing better. Like, way better than he has been for months actually. And he is still doing really great, which I am extremely grateful about!

Then, our landlord had promised to have our bathroom redone over the summer. It ended up starting just a couple of days after Augustus had finished his medications. Obviously, we couldn't use our bathroom while it was being redone, so we were staying with Joey's uncle (Joey's my boyfriend by the way). But we couldn't take the cats with us. At first I went back to our apartment every morning and nights to feed the cats. Then our neighbour was nice enough to offer to take care of that. But I still went to the apartment every day to see them and make sure they were okay. The renovations took a long time too. 10 days for a really small bathroom and lots of people was telling us it would normally take something like 6 days.

They eventually finished it. Buuuuuut there was dust everywhere. I had to clean the whole apartment. All of our dishes were dirty. The kitchen floor I washed twice, but you can still see dust on there.

And I started working just a few days after they were done. Yes, I finally found an actual fulltime, permanent job. I can't even believe it. But I knew once I had a job I wouldn't be able to blog as much as I wanted, so I was thinking I would take a bunch of pictures before starting and write in my spare time. But I had no time for pictures.

August was crazy. September is busy, but good. I know I'll be able to get back to a normal blogging schedule, but I think I just need some time to adjust. I'm thinking of moving my uploading day to Friday, it might work best for me now.

So I'll see you on Friday!

Today I am happy to introduce you to the new Gendots design! Yay! I've been working on it for a while now and I'm happy it's finally out!

Technically, it's the same layout, but I changed the colors, the logo and I think the general feel of the blog. I don't have enough coding abilities to do a whole theme from the ground up, so I worked with what I had.

I think it works better with me and my vision of this website. It's really clean and let the pictures shine.

I also changed the picture of me on the side bar. I'm not 100% pleased with it, so it might end up re-changing soon. But the last one was there for over a year and I feel like I changed and the blogged changed as well, so it just made sense to change it with the new design.

I say the blog has changed, and not only do I more carefully write my content (and (now) check spelling) but the one thing I can see the biggest difference is in my photography skills. I year ago I though I was a good photographer because I had a couple cool photos and some photography classes behind me, but when I look back at my blog photos from back then, they look really bad.

Here is an example of a picture from last year and one from last week post. I mean, can they look anymore different?




I didn't how to use light at all. It's still a work in progress and I still have place for improvement, but I'm proud of how far I've come.

Blogging have also become more than a simple hobby I was doing from time to time. It's a part of my life now and I feel really bad if I can't stick to my schedule like I've been doing lately. I also started working with a couple of brands, which is something I never though I could do in a million years. I'm no big blogger by any means, but Gendots have grown so, so much in the last year.

I hope you like the new design and I'll see you soon with a new post!

I have a strong love/hate relationship with social medias.

On one hand, it's great to stay in touch with old acquaintance on Facebook and to find out about new amazing people on twitter and Instagram.

On the other hand, I feel like it's all so fake. We are expected to share our lives, but no one really wants to hear of our struggles. And for good reasons, the more you surround yourself with positive, the more you stay positive. Or the other way around with negative. But at the same time, we compare our self to what others people post on social medias and, of course, our lives don't seem as perfect.

The other day I was on my bed, crying, because I can't seem to find a job and it can get hard on the spirit. And then, I took a selfie with a huge smile and posted it on Instagram. What the hell?

I still haven't found a job. No, that's a lie, I kinda have a job. A 10 hours a week freelance, job, thing, or whatever I'm supposed to call it. It's a beginning. And at least it's something to write on my CV, so there won't be as big of a gap in time. But 10 hours a week won't pay the bills.

The first 6 months after I finished university, I couldn't find a job, and I remember being extremely depressed. Like, I-won't-even-leave-the-house-to-go-to-the-grocery-store-that-is-just-one-minute-from-the-door kind of depressed. I eventually kicked myself in the butt and called a friend to hang out, which helped a whole lot. This time around, even if I have my down times, I'm absolutely not that far gone. I'm mentally pretty happy and healthy. And I think I owe it to this blog, or what it gives me to blog. I have something to do and deadlines to do it.

And it is only now I realize how much the whole blogging world has changed me for the better. Not just as a blogger, but also as a reader. It also changed the way I see myself and my body. I'm not the thinnest girls around. But contrarily of what I though in high school, or even just a couple of years ago, that is fine. I used to think I was so incredibly big. And even if I gained weight in the last year, I never felt better and more confident in my body.

I remember, I think it was three years ago, me and some friends went to the beach. And I tried to find the bathing suit that would cover as much of my skin as possible. Now? I don't go the beach a lot (or at all), but I really feel like buying myself a bikini (I've seen some great ones that are really tempting me). And I know that given the opportunity, I would wear it. Because why not? I only have one body and just because I don't wear a 00 pair of jean don't mean my body isn't a great one. So why hide it?

That's a little catchy, but the nicest thing you can wear is confidence.

Did that make any sense? I was just feeling like having a chat. Back when I lived in Quebec City, me and my friends were going out for coffee and a chat all the time. And even if I have some great friends in Montreal, I can't see them as much as I would like to. I chat to my cats all the time, but it's really not the same, is it.

These things were on my mind for a while and just needed to come out. I could have written a lot more, but I would have been rambling.

Please leave a comment telling us something that have been on your mind too, and maybe we could chat about it some more!