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Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl invited us to share our top ten non-bookish hobbies this week. At first I was like, “Non-bookish hobbies? Is that a thing?” But then my brain unfroze and I realized that I do, in fact, have hobbies outside of books.
- Travel–My husband I love to travel. In fact, we got frustrated with never having enough vacation time to go all the places we want. In early 2019, we quit our jobs and he signed on with agencies that let him travel as a healthcare professional. We generally stay in one place for three months, exploring heavily on his days off, and move on to another location. We travel in our RV while he’s on assignment. I keep thinking about starting a travel blog as well but 2020 doesn’t seem like the time to do that.
- Hiking–This kind of goes hand-in-hand with travel, but we love to hike. My favorite hikes are on ridgetops with views that go on forever. Home-home is in the North Carolina mountains, about a 15-minute drive from the Blue Ridge Parkway. If I need to think about something and don’t have time for a hike, I’ll head for the Parkway and check out that same view that goes on forever.
- Postcards & Letters–Since we’ve been traveling, I’ve found that I love sending mail back home to family and friends to let them know I’m thinking about them. I’ll even pick up little gifts and ship them when the spirit moves me.
- Games–I love board games, with Cranium being my longtime favorite. I don’t care for “real” card games like poker or rummy but I do like fun card games like Uno or Sleeping Queens (another favorite). I’ll play video games too, but I’m honestly not very good at them. I was just a bit too old when we got our first Nintendo and I had other interests already. I also waste too much time playing games on my phone. I was a dedicated Harry Potter: Wizards Unite player until recently, when I finally got bored with so many repetitive tasks. I’m currently playing Seekers Notes, a hidden object game.
- Easy Scrapbooks–I tried to get into the form of scrapbooking where every page is its own work of art but I don’t have the patience for that. One of my friends bought me a Polaroid Zip printer for my birthday a few years ago. I choose a few of my favorite pictures from each work assignment, put them in a scrapbook, label them, and call it a day. I’m also slowly working on a similar album from our trip to Egypt in 2018. Our tickets for the pyramids and temples were beautiful so I kept them. Now I just need to go through seemingly thousands of pictures to find the perfect pairings.
- Baking–I don’t have space and an oven that’s good enough for baking in the RV, but I do love to bake desserts. I even took a cake decorating class just for fun in my early twenties. I despise cooking because I feel like I have to babysit the stove too much. But I feel like baking lets me mix everything together, stick it in the oven, set a timer, and get on with my day while the delicious magic happens.
- Coloring–I rarely make time for it, but I really do enjoy sitting down and coloring. I find that I don’t care too much for adult coloring books though because they’re too busy. I prefer simpler pictures.
- Cross Stitch–Another hobby I rarely make time for. My cousins started cross stitching when I was probably 8 or 9 years old and I picked up the hobby with them. I can go years at a time without picking up a piece and then I’ll do a few small things.
- Gym–I really started working out about ten years ago and slowly got into amazing shape. For me, anyway. Work slowly got busier and ate up my time and energy. After I quit my job, I was getting back into the gym habit again. Then COVID started. I know gyms are open now, but they feel pretty high-risk to me. I really miss it though. I used to jog regularly too but my knees have started bothering me on hikes so that doesn’t feel like a great idea either.
- Home Design–Not that I’m an interior decorator or anything, but I love looking through home magazines and Pinterest boards for home ideas. I love how much painting a room can change the entire feel. I’ve even made a few small “home” improvements in our RV. I’ve never been into fashion at all but I definitely like following home trends.
That’s my list! Do you share any of my hobbies? What are some of your non-bookish activities? Link up every Tuesday at That Artsy Reader Girl!
I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase merchandise through links on my site.
20 Comments
I hope you’ll think about starting a travel blog in 2021. I would love to read about all the places you visit! I follow a couple of fulltime RV bloggers and have discovered some great places to camp, thanks to them. I would love to go fulltime someday. We’re both retired, although my husband still does freelance editing/writing, but for now we’re only taking 2-3 month trips since we’re living with my 87-year-old mom. Well, that was pre-pandemic. The only trip we took this year was last week for 11 days!
I’m curious where home is for you. We’ve been to Boone & Valle Cruses and love that area. I wonder if that’s close to where you are from.
Great picture of Myrtle Falls!
I love games, too. Have you played Quiddler or Qwirkle? They’re two of my favorites, but Mah Jong (the real tile game, not the computer game) is my all-time favorite. I’ll have to look for Sleeping Queens.
I wonder if it’s hard to find a way to exercise while living fulltime in an RV. I don’t run anymore (knees), but I do love to bike. It’s not always convenient, though, if there aren’t good trails. I took my hand weights on one trip, but couldn’t get into a good routine of using them. And of course, I can’t take my Peoloton in the RV, but if I could find a way to get a carrier rack for it (like my bike rack), I would definitely bring it along!
Great list, Jen. Looking forward to seeing where you head next!
These are great non-bookish hobbies! I also like travel, hiking, and games and I’m hoping to be able to buy a house in the next few years and really get into home decorating 🙂
I enjoy traveling too. My favorite places so far have been Paris and Alaska. I love your cupcakes. They are too cute. I like to bake also. We like to play games and cards here too.
I’m jealous of your travel! What an amazing experience to be able to do that. I look forward to your future travel blog.
I like that type of scrapbooking. I’ve been meaning to do that forever but now I just print off collages and call it good.
Sounds like you have some great interests and hobbies. Good luck with your next posting. I hope it’s a beautiful area and look forward to your posts and pics.
There are some tradeoffs with the travel life, as with anything, but we’re really enjoying it. Printing off collages sounds like a good, easy way to preserve memories to me!
Scrapbooking is a great way to keep track of good times and memories. My mom scrapbooked a good 10 years of our life and I find so much joy in looking back through those years in the books. I do an easier version of scrapbooking in something I call a memory book; I basically just print out pictures on regular paper and paste them in a leather bound journal. I caption them, doodle, use washi tapes. It is pretty easy compared to the scrapbook brand of scrapbooking (if that makes sense).
My TTT: https://herbookishdesires.wordpress.com/2020/11/03/%f0%9f%9a%ab%f0%9f%93%9atop-ten-tuesday-non-bookish-hobbies%e2%9b%b8%f0%9f%93%93/
What great hobbies. I also used to cross-stitch. I haven’t had time for years. Baking is also on my list. Love those cookies. Thanks for sharing your neat hobbies.
http://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/2020/11/top-ten-tuesday-top-ten-non-bookish.html
Ooh, you just pointed out the one thing I’d see as a major downside to living in an RV. Not renting furnished apartments would be great, but not having a full-sized kitchen would be a huge minus for me. I love baking too much.
Travel is a great one! And while you might still have a lot of the world left to see, there’s a lot of people who never leave their home state (or province, or country, or similar). I really wish everyone had the opportunity to see the world through another culture’s eyes, even for just a couple of days.
I love travel too, though who knows when I’ll be able to go anywhere again!
My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2020/11/03/top-ten-tuesday-288/
Same. Cooking annoys me, but I love to bake. Making cookies or cakes or muffins is so much more fun than making dinner! I’m also a big cross-stitcher. Like you, I’ve done it off and on for years, but I picked it back up as a daily habit at the start of quarantine. I’m just finishing a big, four month-long project and I’m so excited to be done finally! It was a doozy 🙂
I love that you travel around in an RV. I’m a homebody, so that lifestyle isn’t for me but it does sound really fun (in theory). How awesome to get to visit so many incredible places!
Happy TTT!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
I used to love to scrapbook. I bought these 2 books from Close to My Heart that had scrapbook layouts you could copy. They gave you dimensions to cut and everything. It really helped.
We love to travel and hike, too. I used to cross stitch, but I haven’t done it in a long time.
I’ll be glad when we can easily travel and hike again. I’m all in favor of keeping people safe, obviously, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wish travel was as easy as it was a year ago. I have to step back and remind myself it’s all for the greater good and then dig a little deeper to find things that are open and fairly close to us.
Ooh I love games too! I hadn’t heard of Sleeping Queens but I’ll have to check it out – looks fun! Have you ever played The Dwarf King? It’s a trick-taking one and I think it’s super fun!
I just started learning to cross-stitch, but it’s hard because I’ve got two kids (ages 4 and 6) who always want to be in my lap!
Feel free to check out my TTT post here: https://elleyotter.com/2020/11/03/ttt-non-bookish-hobbies/
Sleeping Queens is kind of aimed at kids who are just learning basic math but my husband and I have enjoyed it for a decade or more now. I don’t know what that says about us! I haven’t heard of The Dwarf King but I’ll look it up. Cross stitching with kids in your lap would be nerve-wracking!
I love collecting postcards too! I usually buy them at shops hosted by any museums I visit, and I have a board where I pin them up. (I never mail the postcards to anyone.) That’s one more way to easy scrapbook, I guess. 🙂 Love your travel plans, just wait it out a bit.
Happy TTT. My own post here: https://lexlingua.co/non-bookish-hobbies-top-10-tuesday/
We have a few hobbies in common. I like travel, hiking, easy scrapbooking (haven’t done it in years though), cross stitch (which I do for about 1 week a year) and going to the gym (although we had to let our membership expire and my feet sometimes bother me).
Hiking is fun, and NC sounds like a beautiful area. And traveling is the best. That’s really neat you guys are getting a chance to explore and see different places!
I always enjoy a good game of UNO too. 🙂
Hi there! I think your idea of a travel blog sounds lovely! RV’s aren’t very big in South Africa, but I do believe it can be great fun, especially for making memories. And isn’t that what life is all about?
We have quite a few in common here. I also love coloring, baking and games. I never got into cross-stitch, but the Diamond-Dot-Painting is almost almost in the same direction.
Glad to get to know you a bit better! Here’s my The Collected Works of Elza Reads
Making memories is exactly what life is all about! That’s why we decided to start traveling while we had the opportunity.