September Favourites / Obsessions

I thought I would do something different today and dedicate this week’s post to talk about the things that have happened in September – and more specifically, things that I have become obsessed with over the month.  A number of these will end up on my blog with a proper review, no doubt but for now, I just wanted to give you an overview of my life and my current loves – and perhaps a glimpse of things coming up. So without much further ado, here are my five favourite things to do / use this month, in no particular order!

1. Planners.

Sept Obsessions - PlannersI have always loved planning and lists but I’ve always made done with a couple of planners that I just put everything in. Back in July, I spoke about the planners that I was using (and had been doing so for a while).  However, recently my love has become a little bit of an obsession!  So I have ordered a number of new planners and soon will start setting those up, getting them ready for 2016.  It may seem bizarre to have more than one planner but (if all goes to plan) I want to have a number of different ones for different purposes and I will aim to try and use all of them regularly in 2016.  I won’t give away too much but this weekend, I have been working on setting up my main 2016 planner (the Happy Planner pictured), a pocket sized traveller’s notebook to carry around with me, a Christmas Planner and my blogger’s planner.  There are a few more in the mix too (it really is an obsession)!  But as they say, planners got to plan!  If you are interested in seeing reviews of the different planners (which range from everything from Filofax to Hobonichi) or planner set ups for any of them then please let me know!

2. Washi Tape.

Sept Obsessions - Washi TapeAlright, who doesn’t love Washi Tape?  They come in so many great colours and patterns, with tons of uses!  Once you discover it, it is hard to go back to regular cellotape!  Recently, I have been buying lots of this stuff as I realised my collection was severely lacking.  I may have too much tape by now but it’s definitely still growing!  I particularly love adding washi tape to decorate envelopes for the letters I have been writing (this is coming up next!) but I also use it in my planner, for example.  There are tons of places to get washi tape – whether in store or online – and they come in a huge variety of colours so I’ve been picking up some whenever I’ve been shopping somewhere recently!


3. Snail Mail.

Sept Obsessions - Snail MailSnail Mail, Happy Mail, Letters… whatever the name, I absolutely love this old school form of communication.  These days, it’s rare to get something nice in the post.  So I decided to start doing something I love doing – sending out letters and cards again.  I do love technology and I’m thrilled Social Media exists but the joy of getting a handwritten letter is hard to beat these days.  Earlier this year, I sent some friends a handmade ‘Good Luck with your exams’ cards as they were sitting their final exams of their six year degrees and were incredibly stressed.  It made them so happy that I still hear about it today and I love that my little cards helped make them smile and relax a bit in such a stressful time.  So inspired by that, I have gotten some penpals and will be sending out more and more letters, as well as cards randomly.  And with Christmas coming up soon, it is definitely a good time to start now!

4. Watercolouring.

Sept Obsessions - WatercolouringI have recently picked up my Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolours again, alongside my Tim Holtz Distress Markers (that you can watercolour!).  And instantly I remembered why I love watercolouring.  I love the joy of making simple cards with a bit of watercolouring and have now started to extend it to experiment with these paints on my planners and letter writing paper.  And let’s be fair, most of the paper I own doesn’t do well with water but it is still really fun trying it out anyway!  For watercolouring cards, I tend to use my Daler Rowney Aquafine watercolour paper pad and love using stamps to create simple but fun cards.  I feel like I need more stamps though and that cannot be healthy for my bank balance…  Currently resisting as the other obsessions have mostly filled my bank statements with purchases.

5. Photo-a-Day.

Sept Obsessions - Photo-A-DayThis is by far the most random, given the rest are all stationery and crafts related.  However, I set myself the challenge of taking a photo a day to summarise my day simply because I wanted to.  I had no expectations from it nor rules to follow, allowing myself the freedom to do whatever I wanted to.  Mostly, I thought I would just take a picture every day and write a short description to accompany each photo.  It normally does not take too long but I like the idea of being able to go back through my photos and see what I was up to several months ago.  And it does not have to be a good photo or a happy photo but rather, just a photo of something that means something to me.  I upload these photos onto my personal Instagram account and am thrilled to say that September saw me crossing the one year mark of this challenge!  I have now taken a daily photo for over 365 days and I’m thrilled it is still going as I never expected it to last.  Annoyingly, my phone did not save all of the photos in the ‘Instagram’ folder like it normally does so I don’t have easy access to them all but I will definitely be finding the photos in my gallery, printing them off and attempting to make a book for them!  If anyone knows a good place that I can print off Instagram photos in the UK then please let me know!

So there you have it, my top five obsessions recently – which gives you an idea what might come up as blog posts soon.  These things will definitely be featuring on my Instagram account (@AumsomeBlog) so if you want first glance at what I’m up to then that would be the best place to follow me.  If you have any questions or requests then please get in touch, I’d love to hear from you!  Thank you for reading!