Friday, July 31, 2020

Happy Planner "Little Bloom Box"

Happy Planner does a "Be Happy" box periodically, with various HP items. They're usually about $50 so I have not really been tempted to order one before now. But they released one for their 5th anniversary that I decided was a good deal, and I actually set my alarm and got up to order it, because I figured it would sell out fast - and it did. I checked a couple of hours later and it was gone.

I haven't been posting here much so I probably haven't even mentioned that I've developed a Happy Planner habit. (I have talked about my Erin Condren habit but that was a while back.) I still have an Erin Condren planner for 2020 and I'm pretty sure I'll still buy one for 2021, but I also bought my first Happy Planner when everything was on sale after Christmas and I have now bought several different formats to try out. (I'm keeping the EC book at home, and I'm using a skinny classic HP to carry around and make lists with, two different classic horizontals for journaling - one for books and one for everything else - plus a mini vertical that I'm now using to record what I spend - having determined that it didn't work well for me as a planner, see - and a couple of different Happy Notes, a ton of stickers, and other assorted accessories.) I haven't quite hit every format yet but I have a bunch. I'll try to get some planner pictures up in future, but today I'm talking about the box.

Here's the actual outside of the box. (I'm linking one YouTube Video about this - see below - but there are many others, and if you've seen any of those this is all going to look very familiar.)
Even the tissue paper coordinates:
So does the card on top, of course.

You can see most of the contents below: it's a set of black metal discs (which is apparently like a Happy Planner unicorn thing, they've only ever used them on one or two planner styles and never sold them separately), a whole lot of color-and-theme-coordinated stickers in black, white, and gold - one small sticker pad and two big 30-page sticker books. (I should add that I hadn't tried the metal discs at all yet, so I was really excited to get my hands on some - and black is great because it coordinates with so much else.)
One big book is "functional" - black-bordered boxes and various shapes - and one is "florals" - a whole variety of line-drawn flowers, flower-decorated boxes, and on and on. See the video below for a flip-through.

And then in the bottom there's a box to hold all your sticker books - in coordinated black-and-white florals, of course.
They've had these in other prints for a while now, but I'm just getting to the point where I was starting to think I had enough sticker books to need one. It's super-easy to put together, and holds a lot of sticker books - I put twelve in it, if I'm counting right, and it's not nearly full. (And it fits very nicely into one of those 3-tiered Michael's carts that everybody uses.)



I am a fan of Heather Kell generally, anyway, and the way that she loses it over these sticker books is the best thing I've seen lately. "YALL. YALL. YALL"

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

The Ordinary

 Here is some stuff from The Ordinary that I bought from Ulta not too long ago:
I realized when I looked at this picture that I actually hadn't tried the Azelaic Acid yet. I think I'm afraid of anything that's like a peel. (I started to say that it was the word "acid" I was afraid of, but that's not true - I use hyaluronic acid products with no fear whatsoever.) I've now tried it and so far it seems fine. I bought it because I read an article somewhere that was written by a dermatologist, demystifying the various Ordinary products, and I actually took notes. Azelaic Acid was supposed to be the very mildest one.

I really like the Buffet, too. I have a whole bunch of Ordinary serums - including HA and rose-hip seed oil and squalane. I like all of those, I just have issues with the whole craze the last few years where people think peeling off layers of skin is necessarily a good thing. A little bit, yes, but people take it much too far! (Why am I surprised?)