Sticker planning has been a hobby of mine for a few years now and I am finally going to be taking the plunge next year and going full force in my sticker memory planning aka weekly sticker kits for every single week in the year.
I have included a photo below of what a typical weekly sticker kit looks like in my planner so you get the idea.
The past few years I have only been doing these kind of spreads for special occasions because it seemed like a lot of money to spend on stickers to do this every week. And it is a costly hobby, not going to lie I’m ashamed to say how much money I have spent on stickers this year because it’s just not the one.
But because I enjoy this hobby so much, I’ve decided to take it this step further. I didn’t want to start out full force in case I stopped the hobby after a few weeks and wasted money but because I’ve been keeping it up for a while I think it’s fine for me to take this step.
I have no idea what next year will hold for me in terms of life events or anything, but just know that I’ll be capturing it all in a pretty planner with lots of stickers haha. I look forward to showing you what it all looks like at the end of next year!
I started to rewatch Pretty Little Liars in June, and I even created a Twitter thread to share my thoughts. It started as a little casual rewatch where I would watch a couple of episodes here and there between other things. Cut to a few weeks ago when I started binge-watching it very heavily.
I can now say with confidence I am very much back on my Pretty Little Liars bullshit lol. I was obsessed with this show when it first came out, I think I got into it around the end of season 1/start of season 2 because I did have a few episodes to watch. Once I was in, I was really in.
I remember going to school every day and talking to my friends about A theories, and I made quite a few YouTube videos on the show as the series went on.
Man those were the days.
And then the show ended and the last reveals and mysteries were honestly, just not good lol. The show had the potential to be amazing, the fandom was so involved, and yet all the show did was let the plotlines slide away in favour of the ‘ships’ and it was very sad.
Don’t get me wrong, I was 100% in it with those ‘ships’ during the show. I sure as hell shipped Aria and Ezra and everyone else…but looking back I know I should not have supported Ezria as much as I did. He was literally her TEACHER and it was hella inappropriate from start to finish.
And during my rewatch I realise just how much the show tried to romanticise it and it was WEIRD. Like even when we find out all the crap Ezra was doing like writing a secret book on Alison and everything Aria just decided “oh it’s okay I’ll marry you anyway….” very questionable.
But yeah anyway, even though I know everything that happens and have already been on this rollercoaster we are back.
I think the reason why I’m being pulled back in, is that the early seasons of the show are really good. I mean that Mona reveal was EVERYTHING when I watched it for the first time. It was so unexpected (unless you’ve read the books) and the actress that played Mona just done it so well. I loved it.
And this time around the season that is really grabbing me in is season 3, when I have done rewatches in the past I only ever really made it through the first couple of seasons, so this time I’m determined to make it the whole way through and I can say with confidence I will.
Season 3 is really grabbed me with the Halloween train episode. If you ask me, that’s peak PLL, there were so many reveals and Aria was missing and the suspense level was at an all time high. I loved it all.
Which is why now all I do is think about PLL and it’s all I can post about online. So if you want to unfollow me on Twitter for a while I totally get it, though I try to contain the tweets to one threat so hopefully it’s not too annoying.
So yes, this is where my life is. Obsessed with PLL and also trying to play Animal Crossing all the time since the 2.0 update launched and gave us all the new content. Aka I have reverted back to being 15 and I can’t say I hate it lol.
Well, we started off strong but then fizzled out and failed halfway through haha.
That being said I am really proud of all the runs I did go on. For someone who has never run basically ever in their life before now this was good for me.
Sadly though, halfway through the challenge I did get sick and so was not running for a couple of weeks and then I just fell behind. Got busy and could not complete the challenge within the time limits.
The annoying thing about Samsung Health, is that I couldn’t edit the running schedule to run on different days or move the program back to say “I was sick and couldn’t run”.
Oh well.
For my first attempt, doing half the runs in the program was impressive. I thought I would have given up a lot sooner. And who knows, maybe if I hadn’t gotten sick I might have been able to do the whole thing.
Now that this is over, I don’t really have plans to keep running this year, as we head into the winter months it is starting to get darker earlier, and as a female, running in the dark by myself is definitely a scary thing. With all the news reports of spiking and other things, women anywhere at night are not safe. So I’ll be staying indoors.
That being said, next year I think I will try to get out running again. Maybe if I start earlier I’ll be able to complete the challenge, especially if the weather is better (and I don’t get sick lol).
In the meantime, I will have to find a replacement for cardio in my life, not sure what that’ll be but I’m sure I’ll find something.
It has been a long time since we got an Animal Crossing update and they really delivered on this one.
I am probably going to do a full blog post at some point diving into all the details about the direct but I did want to do a little video for my initial reactions.
I am so excited about all the new things we are getting and I am definitely counting down the days to Nov 5th!
I haven’t vlogged in almost two years so I thought I would give it a go again, especially because I actually had plans last weekend. It was a good time and I enjoyed getting back to vlogging. Can’t promise they will be a regular thing but every once in a while would be cool.
I’ve started running. I know, I can’t believe it either.
If you’ve ever met me you know I hate running. It started in secondary school with the dreaded cross country – no one likes being forced to run. And yes, it’s healthy and we totally should be doing it but when you’ve just spent all day in class you don’t want to be out running in the freezing cold because you have to. Not a fan.
But since last year, we’ve all been at home and let’s be real, probably put on weight. Me included. So I thought I would try out running to see if it would help – and also I really needed to work on my cardio because it is non-existent lol.
So yes, I’ve started running. The first time I went running I just went full force at it, I ran for a good minute before my lungs were on fire and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I think it’s important to note – I have asthma and I didn’t take my inhaler beforehand so that was definitely my bad. So I ended up walking home trying to catch my breath and also trying not to throw up because I felt so awful.
After that, I decided to ease myself into it because running is not easy. I don’t know how we all used to run about all the time as children because it seems impossible to do now.
I decided I needed some kind of guide because otherwise I was not going to keep at it and so I signed up for the Samsung Health Baby Steps to 5k program. Not sponsored, but Samsung hit a girl up if you feeling generous. 😉
So this is a program that anyone can sign up for if they use Samsung Health, you pick 3 days a week to run and the program runs for 10 weeks. Each running exercise consists of a warm-up walk, a brisk walking period, and then a cool down walk; each week the distance of these increases.
Something that confused me about the program is that the “brisk walking period” never turns to running – I suppose you need to walk before you can run but I decided to switch up “brisk walking” for alternating between jogging and walking. Otherwise, I was never going to start running.
So I first started this program in July, though I didn’t get very far before I stopped.
I decided to stop after a couple of weeks because my shins were very sore. Shin splints are not fun. And I knew if I kept running it wasn’t going to get any better. It would probably get worse and I didn’t want to injure myself further so I rested.
Fast forward a few weeks and my shins feel fine and I am ready to give it another go.
I have restarted the Baby Steps to 5k program and I have completed 4 runs so far.
I have also made a point to stretch my legs before and after running to prevent the shin splints from coming back and that’s been helping a lot. So stretching is important!
I have also been remembering to take my inhaler before running and when I come back, that way I don’t struggle as much to breathe when I’m running. Again important lol.
So far it’s been going okay, it’s definitely tough because I never did any running before this but I think I am making progress, slowly but surely. I am determined to finish the program, even if I don’t end up running the full 5k, if I can keep alternating between running and walking (hopefully more running than walking) then I’ll be proud of myself.
I have been keeping a Twitter thread of each run to keep track of progress, but I might check in here from time to time on it. Not sure how often though but there are still nine weeks left of the program so we see how it goes.
I’m not looking forward to running in the bad weather as we head into autumn though, so that will definitely be a challenge. But I am determined to power through and finish the program! Wish me luck.
I think this is the first time in my life I have completed a notebook front to back. Minus maybe some school workbooks but no one cares about those when they leave school do they?
This is the notebook where I started my journal a couple months ago, it only took me just under two months to finish the whole thing. I started 1st June and ended 26th July.
I’m really surprised how fast the notebook filled up, but when writing everyday, with an average of two pages per day, you can see how it adds up.
It has definitely been an adjustment to add journalling to my daily routine, but I think it’s been good for me. Sometimes it helps to write and let out all the frustrations. Though I have to say my life is a lot less dramatic than it was when I was 16. And also being in a pandemic and not leaving the house very often doesn’t leave much to write about haha.
Also with this journal I have been using washi tape to decorate the pages, I think it helps to break up the days and also makes it a little bit more fun. I don’t do anything super fancy with the washi, it’s usually a strip along the top and the bottom of the pages but it makes it pretty to flip through.
Along with my regular entries, I have also been adding a few decorative pages throughout, again inspired by the girl on YouTube I found that does journalling/scrapbooking type videos. I like the idea of having a day-to-day kind of scrapbook on top of a bigger scrapbook for bigger occasions. It kind of helps you celebrate the every day things.
A page I decorated for my birthday
Every so often, I’ve also been trying to do a collage-style of decorating to break up the pages instead of the washi tape, I can’t say I’ve been super successful with this but I have enjoyed doing something new.
And so I have already started in on my second journal for the year, this next notebook is a dotted journal so it can be used as a bullet journal, but I have just been using it as a regular journal. The dots mean there is so much more space to write in it so I imagine I will be keeping this one for a while, still I imagine if I keep this up I could be through a couple more notebooks by the end of the year.
I haven’t exactly decided on how to store all my journals once they are complete, my boyfriend and I moved into our house before Christmas and it is still very much a mess, so for now everything just sits on the floor in piles around my desk haha. I will need to think of a better way to store things as we decorate and start to have some order to our house. But I guess that’s a problem for another time.
For now, I am going to keep writing. I don’t know for sure if I would ever go back and read what I’ve written, mainly because there isn’t much going on in my life at the minute. But I’m sure someday in maybe ten years I’ll take a look, I do enjoy reading my old school journal entries from time to time so we’ll see.
Maybe one day I’ll publish them as an epic life story lol. (I’m kidding I could never do that and my life is not that interesting. No one would read that, people rarely read my blog haha)
This year, I have really thrown myself into my sticker planning. It started as a hobby a few years ago but over the last few months I have really gone OTT with my sticker buying. It’s like once I started, I couldn’t stop and so I thought I would share some of my favourite shops!
Papershire caught my attention immediately with their cute bunny character ‘Bunilla’. I think bunnies are adorable and hope to one day adopt my own rabbit so this was a no-brainer. This shop is super cute and I feel like I need a Bunilla for all occasions!
I have also recently bought a couple of journals from Papershire, and I can’t wait to try them out because they seem like amazing quality.
Plus, they are the only UK store on the list right now which is a bonus as I can order directly from them and don’t have to wait ages for things to arrive!
This shop also has a very active Facebook group which I don’t know is always a good thing lol I feel like people post so much just to win shop credit which is fine but also I don’t know how they do it. It seems very tiring. But everyone in the group is really nice and so it’s good to have a community where I can post about my planning addiction lol.
Just like with Papershire’s Bunillas, I feel like I need a OMWL munchkin for every occasion. These stickers are of very simple design, but they are just so adorable I find myself buying them all the time.
These stickers are also quite small which I like as they tend to fit really well in any sized box I put in my planner.
This shop is Canadian, but I tend to have them delivered directly to my house when possible as it means I don’t have to wait as long as I would if it went through Stackry. So far everything has arrived safe and sound from them so I’m glad it’s all worked out.
Also Marg has recently been taking a lot of request munchkins so I am looking forward to all those new releases!
This shop is super cute and fun and I have always wanted to buy stickers from them. So when I finally decided to use a shipping forward service from the US, Wonton in a Million is immediately where I went to.
The dimsum characters are super fun and the sticker quality is really good. I don’t know what they use but it’s kind of almost like a vinyl? It just makes the stickers feel high quality. But when you place them down, they don’t budge so you gotta be sure of your placement before you put them down.
I immediately gravitated towards the ‘Dimsum Crossing’ stickers though. Those are probably my favourites, because I love anything to do with Animal Crossing but they are so adorable and I have stocked up on a bunch of them. I just hope they never stop stocking them lol.
Not going to lie, I love ordering from them because the stickers arrive really quickly to my Stackry box because they are based in NY and the Stackry warehouse is in New Hampshire. Yes I still have to wait for all my other stickers to arrive before I ship my box over, but I just like that these guys always arrive first.
ScribblePrintsCo has become my go-to place for FOIL. I used one of their foil bundles on a weekly spread and I am OBSESSED. So now I have bought a lot of foil bundles from them to use in the future, probably more than I’ll ever need but that’s besides the point.
I also really love the weekly kits from ScribblePrintsCo. Mainly because they come with so many boxes. I have recently become a very ‘no whitespace’ planner so I need a box to write in for everything I do. And there is no shortage of those with an SPC kit.
Also recently, SPC did a HUGE destash event where they were giving away these grab bags/boxes of loads of foil, old stickers and everything and it was amazing. You got so many items and it was basically like an early Christmas present to myself lol. So SPC is definitely up there as one my favourite shops.
Plus I am obsessed with watching Andrea’s Plan With Me videos on YouTube. I just find her voice is calming and her planning style is the style I have adopted as my own. So I highly recommend her videos and her shop.
Elle, the owner of Glam Planner is who got me into sticker planning in the first place! 100% one of the first places I started to look into shopping at when I started using Stackry.
I have become obsessed with her glitch sales because I am able to pick up so much foil for cheap and it really helped me build up my collection.
I also think that Elle’s weekly kits are always so pretty so I have stocked up on a few to use later in the year. I have yet to use any of them but I am excited to get using them!
Elle also likes to do foil that overlays her full box scenes to highlight parts of the images which I think is cool. I have become a big fan of full box overlays so ones that are specific to a full box is interesting compared to a regular frame overlay.
Another fave of mine from Elle’s shop is the script samplers. I’ve gotten a lot of those during the glitch sales and I like that you get a variety of fonts so you can use more than one type of script in a spread and it doesn’t look as repetitive because it’s in a different font each time.
I also really love Elle’s YouTube videos! I’ve been watching her since probably 2011 when she made beauty and lifestyle videos. She hasn’t been doing a lot of planner videos recently, but I do still enjoy her current lifestyle videos too. Again, I find her voice really calming and I could listen to her do videos for forever. So definitely check her out!
Honestly at first I just bought some to try it out. I don’t really have a need for it in my planning style, but I have started to use it to decorate my daily journal entries to make them more interesting.
Now I’m obsessed and can’t stop buying pretty washi. I am definitely buying it faster than I am using it so I need to slow it down before I become a serious hoarder. But it’s just so easy to buy lol.
I would love to find other ways to use the washi tape aside from my journal, so I might try to incorporate it into my scrapbooking or something too, just so I can really get the use out of it (and justify buying so much of it lol).
And so these are some of my favourite shops at the minute! I definitely have a couple of other UK shops I shop at from time to time but since I haven’t really purchased from them in a while I decided to leave them out. Though who knows maybe I’ll make another post in the future to let you know about them.
But for right now, I’ve put myself on a bit of a no-spend because I’ve been buying way too much lol. At least I can encourage other people to shop though. So if you are in the market for some journalling/planning stickers then check out the shops I mentioned, or even suggest some I can check out for when it’s time to break my no-spend – I’m counting the days haha.
I mean it makes sense for them to cover something like this, but right now? While it’s happening? Very real, dark and depressing. Especially when Meredith is sick, I mean our girl’s been through a lot and now COVID? It’s wild.
So here are my thoughts on season 17 of Grey’s:
So Teddy and Owen are on the outs, not even surprised. I mean we all know what happened.
DeLuca is back on the mend, that’s nice to see. I was worried he was never going to get back to himself
Trust Meredith to be right in the middle of the action, I expect nothing less
Kind of sad that Link and Amelia are stuck at home with all the kids, but I guess someone has to be, and Amelia had that baby
Oh my God, Jo and Jackson? Weird af, I was feeling the second hand awkwardness and I hated it
Bailey is being her natural high alert, social distancing self and I get it. She might be overkill but at least she taking all the right measures.
Oh God. Meredith. No.
BUT DEREK. I CRIED. I mean I totally had this spoiled on Facebook for me but I still always cry for McDreamy.
So Nico and Levi be hooking up on the sly. What’s going to come of this? I feel like it’s not going to be just a hook up for Levi
Wow so Jo and Jackson really done the deed, I don’t know how to feel about them together. I mean sure neither of them are ready for a relationship, but like if that’s what it is going to be in the end…I don’t know
Maggie is having a cute time with her boyfriend with the Facetiming and all, I guess it just sucks they can’t be together. But it is a reality that is very true for a lot of people.
My heart is breaking for Tom, I mean he is also suffering from COVID, but everyone is focused on Meredith. I know his symptoms didn’t show right away but still…someone care for him
GEORGE – again spoiled on Facebook. But honestly…how DARE THEY. They can’t toy with my emotions like this honestly, if they bring back Lexie, McSteamy and all…ugh I’ll actually not cope
Also how come Meredith was able to reach George and not Derek? Also sneaky how they threw in why Meredith can see George as older, ya’ll could’ve just acted like he was the same or not addressed it.
But seriously if Meredith dies this season then the show ends and not only will the virus have claimed so many lives in real life, but it will also have claimed a fictional character that I am just not ready to lose to something real. Like MEREDITH GREY cannot survive 17 seasons of crap just to die now, I won’t accept it.
I just hope there’s hope for her clinical trial but honestly, my hope is very low.
Bailey’s mum </3 my heart broke for her. I think I’m going to cry at every episode this season and I hate that
On the bright side, Tom is okay! Hooray! Also are he and Teddy friends or what is going on because I think it would be nice for them to be more than that but who’s to say…maybe Owen will magically come around again
RIP DeLuca – I am only upset on behalf of Meredith because honestly she does not deserve this. I also think it’s rude of the show to kill him off after he worked so hard to get his mental health in check and was trying to stop that child trafficker. He does not deserve this
If Meredith reaches Derek, she’s going to die right? That’s why she can’t? Oh God I can’t handle that
Seeing Derek again is enough to melt my heart honestly he’s a babe, I miss him
I didn’t think I was going to cry at DeLuca’s funeral but then they showed that clip of him and my heart broke
I’ve been crying every damn episode but like this time for happy reasons, Maggie saving the day, everyone happy dancing, Meredith off the vent and MAGGIE GETTING ENGAGED yassss we love to see it
Grey’s is definitely getting so real this season with this Black Lives Matter episode…damn
We love Schmitt thriving under Meredith’s voice haha what a king
So Jackson is leaving…he’s having some awakening and I’m not a huge fan of it. It seems so random. Like I 100% agree with his cause but it just seems so strange for him of all people…is it just me?
People have been saying Greys is very “preachy” this season and I agree. I just feel like the issues are being thrust into my face rather than handling it in a less direct way.
Oh and Tom is leaving too? This is sad. Honestly I felt like he was a better fit for Teddy. Sad that isn’t working out
And yes I did cry when Meredith came home. I was totally fine and then tears – this season is wrecking me lol
I am so sad that Jo didn’t get to adopt that baby I would have loved to see her have single mom vibes
Also Bailey’s husband has cancer? What is Station19 doing…
Nico’s change of character all of a sudden is so sus – like first he’s not about commitment at all and then next thing he’s just like “I wanna make you tea and watch Lord of the Rings”…sure Jan there was literally no development at all he just became totally different over night?
But for real how could they not explore Levi getting with that vaccine trial guy. Also love that they just kind of skipped ahead and were like “oh yeah vaccine worked Levi is fine”. I mean that could have been a good storyline.
This season wrapped up too nicely…like okay yes we love happy endings but like…we are still in a pandemic lol
So yes Maggie and her guy get married – we love that, but girl the ANXIETY I felt watching that wedding scene. Too real. We still can’t dance at weddings or any venues in the UK so that’s not it for me.
Meredith is fine – obviously, the queen of surviving everything
Jo gets her baby! I am so excited to see her as a parent. And I love that Jackson left her his apartment.
Also Jo sold her hospital shares to Tom?! Does that mean he isn’t gone? I mean they probably won’t talk about him ever again except in passing…but okay.
Amelia and Link are over? Very sad. Honestly I was rooting for them but I know that this life was not what Amelia wanted…still. I like Link as an actor – biased from his Nashville days – so I hope he sticks around. I can’t have more people leaving.
There’s probably loads I’m missing but let’s leave it here.
So this season was…a rollercoaster. I feel like my bullet points are not as good as they normally are lol this season was so disjointed for me because I was watching it on and off for ages. Like I remember in the early parts of the season, it was the height of COVID and the show made me even more depressed about the state of the world because it was affecting my shows too. So I had to give it a break.
I hope that in the next season they move on from the COVID storyline, but at the same time I don’t know how they move away from it like everything is normal again because the world still isn’t back to normal. That’s why I think it was going to be hard for them to do a pandemic season, because the show is officially confirmed to be in real time and so they can’t just be like “oh COVID is over” because it ain’t lol. So yeah I don’t know what they’ll do in terms of that.
It’s funny that I said I would stop doing these after season 15 because I was binge-ing it yet as soon as I started season 17 I instinctively made started this post. But how can you not? Especially with this season. So I guess I’m just going to keep doing them until the end.
As always I really don’t know how long the show is going to continue, I just hope they end it well. Like I NEED the old characters who haven’t died to come back. I need the Christina – Meredith reunion, I need Arizona and Callie, I need Alex and even Izzie. I just need like the old Grey’s for a minute and we’d be fine. Hell, this season we got MCDREAMY and GEORGE back. You can’t tell me we can’t get the others.
And so that is where we leave Grey’s for now…in the mean time I am trying desperately to find out where and when I can watch the Gossip Girl reboot because I need that in my life. Otherwise I’m just back rewatching the same old shows because I can’t bring myself to watch anything new lol.
Like with blogging, I feel like journalling is something I have tried on/off over the years. And I was actually quite consistent with journalling when I was in secondary school, I kept an online one and I used to write about everything.
After school, it was harder to keep up a journal because I was busy and often forgot or didn’t make any time for it. So the posts got less frequent.
Then in an attempt to get back into it, I started writing in a physical journal and I think I went through a few notebooks that way, I kept it up for a few years but again, never as consistent as when I was at school. I think I wrote maybe once a week and I got a new notebook every year so I probably didn’t fill them as much as I would have liked.
Fast forward a few years, the journalling had stopped completely. I hadn’t really thought about getting back into it or anything.
Not until last year when I discovered Notion and thought about keeping a journal there. It didn’t last very long. I feel like I didn’t like the format there so I went on the search to find something else. I could have just used the online journal I used when I was at school but I wasn’t a fan of that style anymore.
I downloaded lots of apps trying to find something that I would like but nothing was for me. I don’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I just knew it wasn’t out there for me.
Then one day, I saw a Facebook post in one of my planner sticker groups of this girl’s physical journal. She decorated each day in a scrapbook style and she has has a YouTube channel where she would share all of her journalling videos. (See this one below)
After watching some of her videos and seeing her journal I was inspired to start a new journal.
So here we are. I had a pretty notebook I bought a few years ago that had no use and decided that would be my journal. I also would like to decorate it to have it be more interesting than just pages of writing. So I recently bought some washi tape that I have been using to decorate the pages.
So far I’ve been sticking with it, although it’s only been a week lol. I started it on the 1st of June because I liked the idea of starting it at the beginning of a new month, better than waiting until the new year to start anyway.
We’ll see how it goes. I do enjoy journalling because I like to look back on them. Especially the ones from school, those are very cringey but still nice to look at from time to time.
I was also thinking I should try to write more blog posts more often but I’m not really sure what to write them on. I know I always do book reviews and things about TV shows but I would also like to try and get back to doing more lifestyle posts as well. I just don’t know what to do them on because my life seems really boring lately. But I guess that’s something to think about too.
Though I think I should take it one step at a time when starting all these things up again so I’m not overwhelmed so we’ll just start with the journalling for now.
Here’s hoping by the end of the year I have a completed journal, or maybe even more than one, I’ll maybe do a blog post at the end of the year to show my progress and how it went. In the meantime who knows when I’ll blog again or about what but just know I’m always thinking about this space and what to do with it.
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