Sunday Russet Club: Vol. 1

Hello, and welcome to Sunday Russet Club!

I’m Carmen! While I am the graphic illustrator behind this website and blog series, I’m also a nature lover, snack enthusiast, and dreamer extraordinaire!

What is this? Where am I? 🤔

Sunday Russet Club was born from a typo on an Instagram story where I was sharing my “Sunday Reset” chores but accidentally wrote “Sunday Russet”, and thought that a blog sharing weekly potato recipes would be super cute. So is this going to be a food series? No, lol! But have I been wanting to give my streams of consciousness a home but have been finding every excuse not to? Yes!!

I do love potatoes, though!

In short, I would like Sunday Russet Club to be a monthly debrief, a BTS/glimpse into the abyss that is my mind, and a place where we can get to know each other better! While I’m not sure what exactly I want this place to be, I’m going to put it out there (if only to get the idea out of my head) and see what forms it takes on!

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Taking the slow road 🐌

I thought I’d use this first installment (?? volume? post?) to talk about 2025 and what I would love for 2026 to be. Some of the biggest and coolest things in both my personal life and career happened to be last year, and I worked my ass off, but hoooooo boy, I was tired.

I felt like I was in perpetual fight or flight mode, like I was constantly running out of time, like I was simultaneously holding on to tight and losing control I felt like I was operating on 5x speed but still wasn’t doing enough, and judging from all the “slow down” and “go analog” posts on social media I’ve been seeing, I wasn’t alone in this boat. I’m starting to realize that the nagging feeling of not doing enough was because I *wasn’t* doing enough… for me. I wasn’t taking care of or listening to or nurturing myself. 

This year is all about freeing myself from the shackles of my own making. I’m going to play and experiment, and free up space in my head by finally bringing ideas I’ve had stewing to life (hence this blog!). I’m going to try for the sake of trying, and dang it, I’m going to regulate my  nervous system.

Currently 📋

Along with my rambles, I also want to share some things I’ve been up to/loving this month!

1. I'm really loving watching my pinguiculas (aka pings aka sticky plants) grow! I bought two from FB marketplace back in October and the family has since grown to four! They've also be really effective with those pesky fungus gnats that come out every winter!

2. We got into Culinary Class Wars on Netflix late last year and binged the second season as soon as it came out! The challenges are so fun and the judges really make the show enjoyable!

3. I've been spending time running around my Animal Crossing island, Cartopia! I was hesitant to get back into it when the new update was released because I was pre-overwhelmed (lol), but I've been trying not to put too much pressure on myself and it's been really fun! (Also, my hot take is that lots of cozy games are a lot of work and are not actually cozy at all hahaha)

4. I'm about 75% done "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin and it's safe to say that I LOVE this book! It's super relevant especially now, and I love the contrast between the two society models and the people that live in them. It makes you consider which one is the real utopia.

5. I finally tackled the mountain of junk that I've been saving to journal with and it's been so so sooooo fun to cut and paste all the things! I'm trying to apply this new method called "no think-y, just do-y" to all aspects of my life and it's worked really well here! I love not having a super rigid plan for my spreads and seeing where they end up, and I will definitely be sharing some spreads in the future!

7. And lastly, we got a waffle maker! It's been on my wish list since Andrew and I moved into our new place and we finally got our hands on one (thanks to digging around Andrew's parents house hehe) and I'm love it!! We've been making classic waffles, but I really want to try it with potatoes! (See, I brought this whole thing full circle!!!)

Love your neighbour 🏠

It feels wrong and selfish to continue with business as usual with all of the heart wrenching, infuriating, unfair things happening to innocent people in the US and around the world.

I shared the illustration below on Instagram the other day but I wanted to share it here as well before I end this post. I wrote a little bit of a caption but I also wanted to share the most important part here, "What is greed worth when everything is said and done? When the price is suffering? All we really have, and have ever had, is our empathy, compassion, hope, and each other".

Send off 👋