Productive Pixie: September 2019

Fall. It is one of my favorite times of the year. The weather starts getting colder. Leaves fall from the trees. Delicious Thanksgiving goodies. And it is time to figure out what you are going to wear for fall and winter.

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Updated for 2024

Maybe you have no idea what to wear or maybe you don't even have anything in your wardrobe that you like. If the second option is what you are feeling right now, go check out the post Capsule Wardrobe 101 + a List of Must-Haves and then come back here to finish reading this post.

Just a side note, the staple items in this post may not apply to you if you live somewhere where it never gets cold at all or if you live somewhere where it gets extremely cold. These are my personal wardrobe staples, and even though I tried to make these items very general, if you never dress up very often, or you don't like wearing skirts, then that is totally fine. These are just wardrobe staples which I think everyone should have some form of,

That was a long side note. I didn't expect that it would be that long, but okay, back to the post about fall wardrobe staples.

4 Fall Wardrobe Staples to Have in Your Closet

1. A Button-up Shirt

Button-up shirts are very classy and they can be dressed up or down. They can be worn casually on the weekends, or to work, which makes them perfect for almost everyone. Just add a button-up shirt to a pair of skinny jeans and some cute ankle boots (more on those later :) ) and you are ready to go for the day and look very put together.

Just remember to iron it, or buy wrinkle-free shirts so it doesn't take your outfit down a level.

For fall, button-up shirts are warm enough (At least mine are) so I don't have to wear them with a jacket most of the time, but jackets, like a blazer or peacoat, can be layered over a button-up shirt to create a very nice look.

In every wardrobe, I recommend having around two button-up shirts in different styles or prints. If you don't like button-up shirts at all, then just have one or leave them out of your wardrobe if you absolutely detest them. :)

2. A Nice Coat

Yes. You need a nice coat and no, a hoodie doesn't count. Buy a coat like a trench coat, or a peacoat. If where you live it doesn't get very cool, buy a blazer or a more casual field jacket (I have one from Old Navy!)

The peacoat in the picture above is also from Old Navy and I really like it. It is warm, but not super heavy and the material is nice and thick too, but I am not sure if it would be warm enough for really cold winters. :)

A nice coat is something that you can take with you everywhere and it helps make you always look put together.

When you don't know what to wear, just throw on a tee, some skinny jeans, a coat, and shoes of your choice. It is that simple.

3. A Cute Skirt

My choice for a cute skirt is a circle skater skirt, but you can pick whatever type of skirt you want. Skirts are great for fall because they look more dressy, but usually, don't take more effort. Plus if the temperature is warm then you don't have to be wearing pants.

If it gets colder, that is no problem, just throw on a pair of black tights underneath the skirt and a pair of boots and your outfit is done! Just a word of caution about wearing tights underneath your skirt. Don't wear tights that don't reach to the top of your boots because that will make your legs look shorter.

The skirt in the picture above is from Amazon and the material is thick, so it is a pretty warm skirt. I bought mine in the longer length so it reaches almost to my knees. I actually have two of these skirts. One in black and the red one which is shown above.

4. Boots

I put this header as boots so you can pick what type of boots you want to wear. I have read some must-have item posts that have a specific set of items with links to each item you are supposed to buy. That wouldn't work for everyone because everyone has different needs.

I tried to make this post general enough so that you can notice what you have and then use it. If I put his header as ankle boots, and you had knee-high boots and lace-up boots. You don't need to go out and buy ankle boots. Just wear the ones you have, unless they are getting too small and you need to look for something new.

Boots are perfect for fall. They keep your feet warm, and they can sometimes be worn with longer comfy socks too, depending on the outfit! For a capsule wardrobe, I recommend having two pairs of boots so you can have a pair that are more dressy and a pair that are more casual.

The boots in the picture above are Candies and I don't think they are sold anymore, but I have had these ones for over two years and they still look almost brand new, which makes me really happy. I like it when my clothes last for a long time!

Which Wardrobe Staples do You Have in Your Closet?

I would love to hear what your fall staples are? Do you love to wear cardigans and sweaters or are you dependant on your lace-up boots during winter to take you everywhere? Leave me a comment below and let me know! :)

If you liked this post, you might also like these.

I hope that you liked this post! If you have any questions, leave them down in the comments below.

Thank you for pinning and sharing. :)

September 28, 2019 No comments

September 21, 2019 No comments

Creating a daily routine is a method you can use to be more productive. But if you can't stick to the routine, then it's not going to help you be more productive, right? In this post, I tell you how I created my daily routine, and how you can use these easy tips to create a routine that is right for you!

Updated for 2024

How to Start a Daily Routine You Will Actually Stick To

You start out the year sticking to your daily routine every single day. You push yourself really hard to make sure that you do everything on your daily routine at the correct time, in the correct order.

Then you have a hard day and what happens? You miss doing one thing on your routine and then the next day after that it is just as easy to miss it again, and again, and again. Pretty soon you aren't doing it at all. Well, there goes all of your New Year's goals. Maybe next year.

You don't want this to happen!

Testing My Daily Routine

Making a daily routine doesn't have to be super challenging unless you want to make some big changes to what you normally do throughout the day. If you start small, then it makes it a lot easier.

Before I created my daily routine bullet journal layout, I tried out the different ways I could make my daily routine. This helped me a lot.

I started out by seeing what my regular day was like, so I could decide where I wanted to put different tasks I wanted to add to my daily routine.

I definitely recommend testing out your daily routine before just jumping right into setting it in stone before even trying it out to see if you will like it or be able to do it.

Some things you might want to add to your daily routine are...

Exercise
Cleaning up Before Bed
Washing Dishes Right After the Meal
Cleaning up After Lunch
Morning Routine
Night Routine
Planning in Planner or Bullet Journal
Journalling
Work Hours
School Hours

I have seen a bunch of bullet journal layouts that show morning and night routines, but I thought that would be just another page to add so I decided to add my morning and night routine right onto the daily routine page, so I can see at a glance what I want my daily routine to look like.

For my daily routine, I knew that I wanted to stretch every day, so I thought about when the best time would be to do it, and then I tried it out for a few days to make sure that I liked doing it in the morning.

Making My Daily Routine Bullet Journal Layout

I am not a big fan of time-blocking. I know that it works for a lot of people, but for me, it feels too restrictive and then I become bored. Instead, I like to do one thing after another. So, I knew for my bullet journal layout, that I wanted it to not have times on it.

So, for my routine, I just added a wake-up time and a certain time that I want to be in bed by and this so far has been working for me.

As you can see in the picture above, I have a column in the middle of the page, with colored blocks in the center. This is just an estimate since I don't have any exact times on this. I added noon in the center, and then I added my morning routine at the top with bullet points and my night routine at the bottom with more bullet points.

Below are the steps you can take to make your daily routine bullet journal layout.

Add a header. I really like the sun I added to mine. :)
Make a column going down the center of the page. I made mine two boxes wide.
Add your wake up, lunch, and night times if you want to. I made sure that I added noon right in the middle, so I knew how much room I had to write before and after lunch information.
Add in morning and night routines. I added in my morning and night routines with bullet-pointed lists, so I didn't have a bunch of small lines right next to each other.
Add in everything else. Then I started adding in everything else going from the top to the bottom.
Color in the blocks. After that, I colored in the blocks and did the lettering with a black sharpie pen. (I draw in almost all of my layouts in pencil first.)

The supplies I used for this layout are as follows.

A Sharpie Pen
A Mechanical Pencil
A Crayola Super Tip Marker
A Circle Protractor for the Plate

This was a fairly easy layout to make even though it took a long time to make because I had to figure out what my daily routine was. I enjoyed adding in the doodles and I love how they make the layout look!

You might have noticed that I only used two colors in this layout: black and pink. I like to think of my layouts as minimalist even though I use doodles and calligraphy in them! I see a lot of the two-color layouts on Pinterest, and I love how clean and simple they look, so I have been making quite a lot of two-color layouts.

Update - This is a picture of what my daily routine for the 2020-2021 school year bullet journal layout looks like. My one from last year worked well, so I did the same type of set up. :)

Making My Daily Routine Work

I make my daily routine work, by just doing my best to do it, but if I miss a day, I will focus on making sure that I do it the next day. It is better to miss one day and then do it the next day, then to force yourself to do it every single day for a month before giving up.

In the long run, you want to turn your daily routine into habits. It doesn't matter if you miss one day as long as you try doubly hard the next day to make sure that you don't miss two days in a row. That is when it turns into a habit. I do the same thing for my habit tracker. If I miss for one day, I tell myself it's okay that I am not getting a perfect streak, and then I make sure I do it the following day.

There are going to be days when you will be under the weather, or have a change in plans, and that is okay.

How to Start a Daily Routine You Will Actually Stick To

If you liked this post, read the ones below too!

I would love to see what your daily routine bullet journal layout looks like! Have a productive week. :)

Pin this if you want your friends to have a more productive day!

September 14, 2019 No comments

This is my first bullet journal style monthly layout in my binder planner, and I am really happy with how cute it turned out! This is also my first plan with me post. I hope that you like it! :)

Plan With Me September Bullet Journal Layouts

Updated for 2024

Monthly Bullet Journal Title Page

The first page for the month is my title page. This month, I decided to go with a plant theme and a hexagon theme. For my monthly pages, I used only one-color marker, to try and make it a little bit more minimalist.

Below the hexagon garden hanging, I added a box for my goals because I love having a title page, but I don't like the feeling of having a page that is just for looks. I like having the goals on the front page because it reminds me of what I am working on for the month.

Bullet Journal Supplies Used

The supplies I used for these spreads were...

A Black Sharpie Pen - I use my sharpie pen for almost everything in my planner. If you see anything in black, it was probably done with my handy black sharpie pen, unless it is calligraphy or hand lettering. :)
A Green Crayola Super Tip Marker - I bought the Crayola Super Tip 50-pack recently, and I love them! I use them for pretty much all of my spreads because they can be used for practically everything with their special tip that can be used to draw thick and thin lines. I don't know what color this marker is because they don't say on the side, which is a minus for some people, but it doesn't really bother me. You can read my full review of these markers here.
A White Gel Pen - White gel pens are super handy to have. They can be used to white out small mistakes. Even though they don't entirely white out the mistake on some colors, (Like darker colors) they still make it less noticeable.
A Mechanical Pencil - I actually draw out most of my layout in pencil before I use pen because it eliminates most of the mistakes I would make and then I can decide if I like how the page looks before I draw it in with pens and markers. This does take longer though so if you don't make many mistakes or large mistakes, then you can save time by drawing it out in pen.
A Small Stencil - The small stencil, which I used for the hexagons in the monthly calendar portion, is one of the accessories, which I usually don't use on my layouts. I used it since I was doing a hexagon plant theme, and I wanted to incorporate the hexagons somewhere else on the layout besides just the garden hangings. The small stencil I used can be seen in the picture below.
A Ruler - Now this technically isn't a ruler because it is really just a small strip of laminated cardstock, but it can be used to draw lines, and I don't need markings on it because I use dotted pages. I like using it because it is flat, and thin so it is easy to store. Plus it has a pink watercolor pattern on it, so it is cute!

These are all of the supplies I used for these bullet journal layouts, besides my planner pages of course! :)

Monthly Bullet Journal Calendar Layout

At the top of this page, I added the header in caps. On the other side, I continued the theme of the plants and then I added the "Choose to be kind" quote.

When I made these pages, I actually started with the monthly calendar page, before making the other two pages, so I could figure out what theme I was doing, and what type of fonts I wanted to use.

For the calendar portion, I did a weekend column instead of having seven columns, so I wouldn't have to figure out having three columns on one side and four columns on the other side. Or having one column in the center covered with rings, so it would be practically unusable. I usually have fewer tasks on the weekend, than during the week, so I don't need as much room.

I did hexagons around the day number. At first, I was going to color in the hexagon, but then I tried it out on the first day, and then the lettering for the day number was too dark, and I didn't really want to do it in white, so I just left that one and then did the rest of the days in with the hexagon outlined in green.

Monthly Bullet Journal Tracker Page + Next Month

On this page, I really liked how I did the small headers coming out from the side of the box with the black lettering on top.

For my habit tracker, I added small numbers going down the side. Every day I do my habit, I add a dot to the corresponding habit. I used to do a checkbox, but the small dots look more minimalist, and it is easier at a glance to see how well I am doing on a habit.

Next to the habit box is my gratitude box, which has my word of the month at the top next to my small hanging garden. The word I chose for the month "kind" matches up with my quote, so I can remember to be more kind this month. Below that, I have enough room to write down one thing I am grateful for each day which is one of my monthly habits.

Below that box, I have space for me to write down the tasks that I have to do next month. I am putting a bullet point next to each task so when I make my new layout, I can transfer those activities over to my next monthly layout.

Plan With Me September Bullet Journal Layouts

These were all of the pages I made for my monthly bullet journal section. Next month, I will tell you how functional these layouts were and maybe switch up the design for next month.