I wanted to share some items from a shop that I massively love, called Pau and Ari designs. I’m very lucky that I am on their PR team and have been able to share their beautiful stickers over on my Instagram account. They make gorgeous stickers for planners and I am a huge fan! I purchased an extra set of one of my favourite kits – the Pocahontas kit – and a few other sheets by them that I wanted to giveaway to one winner…
I’m Reema – a young person who fell in love with volunteering and the charity sector. I’ve been volunteering for as long as I can remember, and yet I still wish I had started sooner! There is so much to learn from volunteering and so much to experience that you can never get bored of it. At one point, I was volunteering for over 7 charities at one time – giving my time and talents to them whenever and wherever I could. Inspired by the 2012 London Olympics, I think volunteering has really grown across the country and it’s great to see other people passionately doing what I love doing. And why wouldn’t you?
I don’t often talk about my personal views here – especially not politics – but today I cannot write about anything else. I cannot even begin to think about anything else. Those of you who aren’t living under a rock will know that UK made a very important decision yesterday and the result of that decision will affect the country for the foreseeable future. We don’t know what the effect of that will be – whether it will be good or bad in the long run. All we know for now is that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland voted to “Brexit” yesterday – aka leave the European Union (EU). Now I don’t know how much longer I will be able to call this country the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as some of the countries that form this are considering a split already, so I wanted to do so whilst I had the chance. We may not be the united for much longer… Or rather, perhaps we are divided already?
I didn’t expect this result – I always kind of assumed we would stay in eventually. I’m just as shocked as everyone else that we’re leaving the EU and that reality is slowly starting to sink in. It’s as bad – if not even worse – than people predicted and I understand the anger. But we’ve had over 24 hours now. As a country, I think we’ve wallowed in self pity in this time… Now it’s time to get up, brush off the dust and shake hands. It’s time to stand together, stand united.
I am really excited and I just HAD to share this with you. I have tons of new updates to share with you, and they are all so exciting that I don’t even know where to start… But there’s a discount code to one of my favourite shops for stickers at the end! There’s just so many things to work on right now (yay for being able to multitask!) that I wanted to take a moment to just share them all with you… Right, let’s do this. Sneak peek of what I’m talking about today includes:
I’m very excited today! My planner addiction is something that everyone who knows me knows about… It’s never been good for my bank balance or for the storage space in my room but today, that addiction is coming into a lot of use. I’ve decided to revisit some aspects of my life to redefine them, make them better and quite specifically, make them more organised. This organisation is the first stage to bettering myself in these ways and I have decided to share my journey with you, in the hopes that something will be useful to you and might help you to organise any aspects of your life that you wish to organise! So let’s get started, let’s get organised!
I love England, I love England to bits in fact. I could never imagine living anywhere else without comparing it to England. We have our faults, no doubt – every country does. But I was born and brought up here, it’s home and I’ve fallen in love with all of the good in the country. I was never sure how well I’d adjust to living in another country. I’m sure I would eventually – human beings are pretty good at adjusting – but that doesn’t mean I want to. Recently, however, I’ve started to travel more and go to places I haven’t been to before. The more I travel, the more I realise how amazing and beautiful this world is – and the more positives I see in living in other countries and experiencing them.
USA is one of those countries that is quickly winning my heart. Does the fact that a lot of my favourite companies are also based in USA help to win my heart? Yeah, probably. The stationery and craft industry is huge over there – and I love that. It’s very much a community and there’s always tons of events that look amazing to go to. I couldn’t help but spend tons of money whilst I was over there. If you’re interested in seeing what I’ve brought, head on over to my Instagram channel as I’ll be showing all of it over there, especially when I start using it. However, if you’re not on Instagram then don’t worry, I’ll be sharing reviews of some of the products on here too.
Whilst I was in New York, I managed to pop into two craft stores that I have heard a lot about but never been to before. Unfortunately, I only had 5-20 minutes in each store so I couldn’t take lots of photos (or do lots of shopping… but that’s good for my bank balance, right?). But wow, inside both of these is my idea of heaven. Hobby Lobby and Michaels… I was surprised at how big both of these stores were – full of stationery, craft and planning supplies. There was so much that I wanted to buy and I couldn’t even get around the whole shop in time (that didn’t stop me from spending a lot though!).
I’m already planning my return, I’ll be honest. There are so many states and I would love to be able to visit, even just, a quarter of them. That’s still a lot… Nonetheless, I’ve now done a couple more now… so getting there, right?! Time to get back to planning the next one!
Hey lovelies! Just a quick post from me today as I’m currently on holiday and slowly achieving my dream of travelling across the world! And I’m currently in the craft and planner heaven: America! (Can you tell how excited I am by all of the !s?!)
Ahem – anyway, I’ve been here for a few days now so I thought I’d just quickly check in with you all and update you. I’ll be travelling around the state of New York (and a few other nearby states too) so I definitely have the song “New York” by Alicia Keys in my head. I spent yesterday in Manhattan, visiting some amazing shops as I had a free few hours away whilst I was waiting for someone. Follow my Instagram account to see what I get up to but I’ve totally brought tons of stuff already so I cannot wait to share it all with you. For starters, I got to visit some of the amazing American shops that I hear people talk about in the planner / craft community but have never gotten to visit (sadly, they aren’t available in the UK yet – I’m holding onto hope that they will be soon!) and I’m lucky enough to have been able to order a few goodies in advance so that I can bring them home with me!
But for now, I just wanted to stop by and say that there’s definitely a lot of hauls I need to show you all so be prepared for an Instagram spam of pictures and perhaps a haul post (if I somehow manage to fit it all into one).
Since I’ve been busy with National Stationery Week and blogged daily for the whole of the week, I thought a little break was justified. So I’ll be taking next week off and I’ll be back on 28th May with another blog post for you all!
As I really enjoy travelling too and have been to 6 countries in the past year alone, I thought I’d do a little series about travelling and how I get organised for it. What do you think? Is this something you would want to see? I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions about it so please comment away or drop me an email on hello@aumsome.co.uk – thank you!
Today might be the most important day of the whole week – thank you thursday. Often, we forget to say thank you to the people closest to us, the ones we take for granted or the ones we think should just know how grateful we are… But people don’t always know until you tell them. So today is about taking a moment out of our busy lives and saying thank you to those that matter to you. What are you doing for Thank You Thursday? Why not write a letter or buy a thank you card to send to someone? Even if you can’t send it today, make the effort to send it this week and I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to receive it.
Now I have said this in the past few weeks and will, most definitely, be saying it again in the next few as I relaunched my blog with your support and will hit my one year anniversary soon too… But I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to you. You are the reason I blog – because people like you stop by to read it. I have learnt so much since starting Aumsome, new skills and knowledge that I’m so grateful to know now. I never expected to be able to work with brands but I have. I never expected to go to blogger events or planners meets (I didn’t even realise you could do that before) but I’ve loved each and every one of them. I’ve found new passions and dreams that I had knew about or considered before I started blogging.
So without much further ado, here you go:
Transcript (if you can’t read my handwriting or the image doesn’t load…)
To you – yes you,
I’ve probably already said it but I wanted to take a moment to say it again – thank you. You’ve come to visit my blog, read my posts and supported me in more ways than you can possibly know. More of you than I ever imagined have also shared, messaged me or commented on my posts. When you comment or message to say that you’ve enjoyed my post, learnt something or felt inspired by it I feel all warm inside! Your support truly means the world to me – you should see how happy I get everytime I get a notification of a comment or message from one of you!
So thank you – for just being you!
Love,
R x
I wish I could send you all a letter each but sadly, I don’t have the resources to be able to do that (and it will probably be very weird I asked for everyone’s postal address…). So hopefully this will work – my letter to you all. For the letter, I chose to write it on Molly & Rex paper from the ‘Create your own happiness’ paper pad. I love Molly & Rex note pads and always write letters using it but can’t find it easily. I get mine from Homesense or TK Maxx (which I believe is TJ Maxx, if you’re in the States) and swear by them so I would definitely recommend them. If anyone wants a closer look at the notepads I have from them then please let me know and I’ll happily share some more pictures with you (or send you a letter, *wink wink*).
But for now, let me sign off and just end with a big thank you! Happy Thank You Thursday everyone – please do spread the love and tell someone that you’re thankful to have them in your life too, thanks!
Hello! As you may know, I took a “short” hiatus from blogging to focus on my health. Daily life stresses were mounting up and getting to me. Unfortunately, the hiatus was longer than I had originally hoped but I just kept constantly getting ill! I’ve now caught some sort of chest infection and just finished a course of antibiotics – which aren’t working but hey, at least we might be getting closer to fixing the problem? Hopefully?
Nonetheless, I really missed blogging and so, I’ve decided to reopen my blog. There’s so much to share with you and I have tons of ideas or plans put into place for the coming year. The timing is also right as it’s almost National Stationery Week! It’s a week that’s dedicated to stationery and using it! This year, the week takes place from the 25th April to 1st May 2016 – watch out for all of the amazing giveaways and blog posts that appear during the week!Read More »
Hi there! As you may have noticed, I haven’t really stuck to my “one post a week” plan in the past month and I wanted to quickly explain a bit about why – as well as my upcoming plans. Firstly, I would like to apologise for totally failing to post this month and not even updating you as to why! It’s been a really hectic month (as you can imagine, with Christmas coming up) and unfortunately, I have been ill quite a bit because of this. Work, family life, finance – everything is a bit more stressful right now. And so, I decided just to allow myself not to blog for a bit so I can try to relax a bit and ease the stress.
I did hope to get a giveaway ready in time for Christmas but that’s clearly not going to happen! However, instead, I have decided to go on an official hiatus for a little while so I can prepare for the New Year and spend time relaxing this Christmas. My plan is to also plan the giveaways and get things set up ready for 2016, so that I can come back to blogging with some great things! I have a lot of things I want to do and thus, need some time out to get working on them.
My plan for 2016 includes (but is not limited to):
But mostly, I really want to hear from YOU! I would love to know what you’re interested in reading about, what you want to see on here and what would be useful to you. I am hoping to create things for you to download and use so I would love some suggestions as to what you might be interested in / need.
Email me on hello@aumsome.co.uk or comment below. I’m also available on various forms of Social Media, if you prefer that – click the links in the top right corner to find those.
So, until later on in 2016, this is Reema – over and out! 🙂
aumsome 