April 2017 Favourites

I love doing my favourites here, and last month I found a whole lot of things I really love and has been using very much. Here are some of my favourite things.

1. 3 Days (also known as orchid plant) | I am a terrible plant mother, I swear. Everyone known this but people still give me plants which I would never understand why. In fact, this plant was named 3 days because that's how long I thought I would keep it alive for, and a week later it's looking a bit sad and I did water it, but I don't know. I just don't have a green thumb, okay. Give me fake plants and fake flowers, ugh. 

2. BOOKS! | I am so torn between buying physical books and buying ebooks because I do want to read a lot of books but only want a library filled with books I really love and will read again and again so I have sort of stopped buying physical books but when my friends and I went to Asrafee last couple of times, we just ended up buying lots of books because they were really inexpensive and THEY HAD SUCH NICE COVERS OMG. I got all 3 of these last month and they were under MVR 300 so can you really blame me? I haven't read any of them yet, but I will. 

3. Sticker roll from Paper World | I love love love stickers so when I saw these at Paper World (which is one of my favourite places in town), I had to grab them. These are perfect to put on my journal letters and birthday gifts I want to give to people. 

4. Trophy from Friends | Last month, my friends threw me a graduation party and it was the most magical ever and they gave me this trophy which says "in recognition of a Master Snob" which I am so okay with hahaha. HOW CUTE IS IT? I totally feel like a star. Pro tip: get friends who are more excited for your achievements than you are. 

5. Washi tapes | I've been on washi tape buying binge. Two months ago, I had a total of 5 washi tapes because it came in a set and now I have 25+ because I went on a whole washi tape phase because they are just the cutest. These are from Doodle and Paper World and they are a bitpricey but I found some really cute cheap paper and plastic washi at Procure Plus which I also adore but didn't buy any last month. 

6. Mini paper doilies | I FREAKING LOVE DOILIES. I am obsessed with anything vintage and shabby chic and paper doilies are just all that. I've been using these I got from Doodle for all things like decorating my journal, letters and adding to cute drinks to make it look more instagram-worthy. These are just great for all your decor needs. 

7. Water Colour Set | I don't even remember the brand of this but that when I saw it from Chandelier, I knew I had to get it. I recently got a water colour brush pen which is super great and my old water colour set had already run out of most used colours so I picked this and it's very highly pigmented so the colours show up really vibrant so it's perfect. I use it pretty much all the time now. 

8. illnoise card | I was invited to the premier show of illnoise which had the best props, and they had this signed notecard which I thought was such a great personalized touch. The movie was alright, and for the most part I enjoyed the props and the set (I got a bit too excited about a bookmark he had in his book) and the story was important to be told. 

As for the other favourites, here are some. 

Rookie | Tavi is one of my favourite fashion bloggers and I've been following her journey since style rookie days so when the Rookie mag finally got a podcast, I knew I had to lsiten. It's very easy to listen to and Tavi brings great guests. My fav part is "ask a Grown Up" which is so funny but also very helpful. 

13 Reasons Why | I really enjoyed this book so when Netflix was releasing a TV Show, I was both nervous and very excited and I'm more towards the I really like the series but it was also very graphic but I think it added so many elements that the story didn't have and thought it was well done. I couldn't get through it quickly, I was more like Clay, going through each episode at a very slow pace so it took me 2+ weeks to fully watch it. 

That's it for all the things I enjoyed last month. What were some of your favourite things?

Bullet Journaling 101

Last year, October-ish I got into bullet journaling which was obviously the next step for me after my Filofax broke down after 3+ years of good use and I was ready for something new. I am a HUGE fan or organizing and a paper and pen kind of girl so I really loved the bullet journal system because it combines everything I love, to-do lists, journaling and art into one compact nifty little organizer. 

When you first start looking into bullet journaling, it may sound kind of overwhelming and you may not know where to start. All you really need is a book and some basic stationary (pen, rules, marker) and if you want to be fancy and love to decorate, you can get some washi tape, stickers and stamps or art supplies like water colour. 

Basically, a bullet journal is where you can track the past, organize the present and plan for the future. You can customize it anyway you like (which sounds scary, I know but it gets easier once you actually start) and record anything you'd like.

First, I don't like the whole "key" and "index" part and find it unneceasry so I don't use it. I use flag stickers to mark pages I often use so have no use for an index (which is basically a table of contents for your journal so you can number the pages and write it down for easier reference) and the only thing I use is boxes for my to-do lists so I don't need a key (some people use different symbols for different things like events, to-do, reminders, etc). Always stick with what works for you, not what other people are doing because the whole bullet journal journey is FOR YOU by YOU. 

Here are some of the very common pages you see which might be helpful to you. 

1. Monthly Pages + Trackers. 

Monthly pages are where you plan your entire month. I like to have a calender so I can see the whole month, and a small area for monthly goals, and plans for this blog, as well as two trackers. Trackers are for things that you want to track of. Daily trackers are those that you want to do everyday. I use it to track my prayers, journalling, exercise, etc. The monthly tracker is actually for things I do once every week, like reading a book a week, etc. 

As you can see, I just print out free printable calendars on one page and have my daily tracker and monthly tracker as well as goals and blog schedule and I continue the same template every month because it's simple and easy for me and works. 

2. Weekly Pages

I like planning my week and seeing it on two pages so that's the format I use. I just write down the date and day and a task list of everything I have to do, including events and reminders. I also include a to-do list for the week and a column for "next week" for those things that I want to include next week, like events. For things happening later, I use a future log which is a place where you write down things that might be happening in future. Some people do daily pages which are great if you have a lot of tings to do everyday but I just like the weekly pages so I stick to these.

I have a couple layouts I really like, such as this boxed layout which I sometimes use because it looks really neat and visually pleasing. 

Sometimes I go all out on themes like this Harry Potter inspired page I did. Just include whatever you love in your journal, the whole process of decorating is actually very calming. I put on a podcast and just decorate away sometimes it takes 10 minutes, other times I spend about an hour once a week. 

I have been loving this non grid all over the place template for when I feel a bit lay but also want to decorate a bit but don't want to spend too much time. A lot of my weeks look like this. 

Sometimes I directly take inspiration from tumblr and recreate other people's bujo (bullet journal,haha) spreads. Tumblr and Pinterest are great places for inspiration. Whenever I find a nice spread I will pin it to my BUjo board on pinterest so when I'm out of ideas, I will look through and re-create spreads. 

3. Collections. 

These are some of my favourite things to include in my bullet journal. I have collections of things such as movies I watch, books I read, birthday wishes I want to remember, etc. You can basically write anything you want to include in here.

I always record the books I read and movies I watch, it's always great to see what I've watched and read, especially since I do blog about it as well. 

4. Gratitude Logs. 

These are things that make me grateful everyday. I have actually changes this to highlights because I started writing down the highlights of each day and love looking through these to find out the things that happened during a particular month. 

5. Timelog. 

You don't have to do this and neither do I but I love doing it because it helps me know how much time I spend on things and it's meticulous but it actually helps me to remove unproductive time and also to multi-task. I just colour in the times I do tasks and once the month is over, I go all the way and make a pie-chart to see what things I spend the most on. 

If you want to get into bullet journaling, do search on Tumblr, Pinterest and Buzzfeed, you'll find a lot of inspiration and how-to's. And ofcourse, YouTube. 

Happy Bulletjouraling 

April 2017 in a Nutshell

April was a true roller coaster. I had a wonderful month, despite how very dark days at the end. It was filled with so many celebrations and love. It started with me finally getting my masters degree (after everything last year I was surprised I even passed) and celebrations afterward with my friends (some of who actually showed up to the ceremony, yeah they crashed a graduation ceremony because they are such wonderful people) 

We celebrated two very special birthdays last month. It was the best! We had themes and dressed up. Both of them were pre-birthdays but at this point that's what we do. We had to take one party to the girl who was sleeping and another we though the other person informed the friend to bring the birthday boy so we had to wait about half an hour before we realized none of them informed hahaha 

We watched Amaanaiy, which if you don't know is a really good old Dhivehi movie that is a classic. One of out friends is a kid in the movie and let's just say we're big fans. Here's the director making a cameo in the form of a drawing, how cool is that?? The movie is on YouTube, so go check it out!

One of my colleagues at work had her wedding so we helped make her backdrop which was a whole lot of fun. They were doing it at another colleague's house and I almost got lost at 1 AM while trying to come home. So many funny stories and a million leaf garlands later, it did turn out beautifully.

I also did a whole bunch of planning on my bullet journal which I will write more about in another blog post. Here's a shot from an earlier month.

The best part of the month was when my friends, my very wonderful friends threw me a graduation ceremony, with a chief guest and all. It was truly remarkable. We had a photoshoot and afterwards I thought we were going to have tea but turns out they made an entire ceremony with speeches and an award. I feel so blessed to have these wonderful people in my life, it's crazy. 

Last week tho, was a sad week for the country because we lost yet another wonderful human being to the hands of a murderer. The outspoken, funny and always ever so humble and beautiful @yaamyn was brutally murdered on Sunday and it has never been the same ever since, and it won't. He was a constant in Maldives twitter and always there to help. We all miss him so dearly. Please go to #WeAreYaamyn and show your support and continue the fight to justice. His "This Week in Maldives" on The Daily Panic was one of the only new sources I actually diligently read and it will be missed alongside. 

I will always remember him as the funny and wonderful person that I knew him as.