March Coffee Date

Dining room with wood table.

We’re already coming to the end of March which means…

A) SUMMER IS SO CLOSE I CAN LITERALLY TASTE IT!!!

B) It’s been a minute! We should catch up! Coffee Date style.

Spring drinks of choice have been mango kale smoothies (I’m hopping back on the train!), iced crafted press-es from Caribou, green tea lemonades, and iced royal tea lattes from Sencha but let’s be honest, that never changes. I even had a rogue WATERMELON juice the other day that was so good and so summery it almost made me cry.

But today, for this “coffee date,” I am actually drinking a big ol jug of minty cucumber water! Um, yeah. It’s taking my entire life up a few notches. More on that in a second.

Let’s chat about March.

A dividing line with a '1' in the middle.

I Switched To Beautycounter And I Wasn’t Super Impressed.

Beautycounter product.

(To be fair, I love this product I’m holding which is the mattifying powder. Pure magic.)

So.. yeah.

Call me crazy, but specifically for the Beautycounter skincare, I don’t think I would spend the money again. I just didn’t love the products enough to justify the extra cost, especially when I feel like I can find other clean skincare alternatives that work just as well at more of a drugstore-level price. The lotion never really hydrated my face and the cleansers didn’t feel like anything special to me. Am I insane?

The good news is that even if my skincare spree was kind of a bust, I have found a lot of clean beauty products over the last few years that I can strongly recommend (including a few of Beautycounter’s makeup products):

Also worth mentioning that I used the Vintner’s Daughter Active Botanical Serum for several months last year as my night-time moisturizer and I really liked it. If you want a skincare splurge and you’re into oils, it’s luxurious and lovely.

Okay, are you a clean makeup / skincare enthusiast? What are your favorite products? Does anyone have a good clean shampoo recommendation? That’s one I haven’t found yet.

Also, tell me what you think about Beautycounter. Are you a fan? I love their other stuff (listed above), and if I didn’t care about the cost I would totally buy their lemony-sugar scrub on the regular. It was just specifically the skincare that I wasn’t crazy about.

1A. Eyelash Extension Update

I didn’t keep them up. They’re gone. Too expensive. Too time-consuming. Very pretty, but not worth it for me. End of story.

A dividing line with a '2' in the middle.

I Need To Drink More Water.

Cucumber mint water.

Like, we probably all do. So I’m trying a few hacks.

  1. Adding mint, cucumber, lemon, and other yummies to my water each day. Kind of obvious, but for me it’s a good place to start.
  2. Drinking out of a peppy 20 ounce tumbler with a straw. Just more pleasant, IMHO.
  3. Only refilling when I’m finished with my existing water so I can track how much I’m actually drinking.

My goal is three of those guys per day (plus additional water from juice, coffee, soups, fruit/veg, etc.), which probably isn’t all that lofty of a goal, but to me it feels kind of epic.

Anyone got any other get-yourself-to-drink-more-water-hacks that I should know about?

A dividing line with a '3' in the middle.

Bullet Journal Is Life.

I have gone back and forth and back again on every kind of calendar out there, and I think the Bullet Journal has had more staying power for me than all the other methods combined. Here’s why: it’s customizable. You can make it be what you need / want it to be. If you need specific time slots, add specific time slots. If you need it loose, just keep it loose.

Here’s what mine looks like at the beginning of the week, when I put in my scheduled events with a little circle and leave space for the rest of the week to fill up as needed:

Hand writing in Bullet Journal.

And at the end of the week:

Bullet journal.

I use a modified version of this Bullet Journaling shortcode to keep track of what I’ve done, what needs to still get done, what I decided not to do, etc. Bullet Journals are good for people who like to kind of build their own thing. It is basically a next-level to-do list that is highly personal and doubles as a calendar and/or a journal.

How do you keep your life organized? Do you use a physical planner / journal / calendar?

A dividing line with a '4' in the middle.

I Made Myself a Mini-Jungle-SPa In My Office And It Makes Me Feel Happy.

Office with grey chair and plants.

Chair, diffuser on side table, and plant shelves over top. That’s all you need to make a jungle spa in your very own home. This corner of my office is my favorite place EVER! It’s where I sit in the morning to just kind of center myself before the day starts. Music, journal, pray, meditate, read, avoid email, all of the above.

It’s also where I pile the junk that I don’t know what to do with. Very handy for that.

What’s your happiest place in your home?

A dividing line with a '5' in the middle.

We Got a TV!

Living room with television on wall.

We didn’t have one (2009-2013), then we had one (2013-2014), then we didn’t have one again (2014-2018), and now we have one again (2018)! This is our struggle. Thank you for understanding.

What is your TV set up? Any no-TV-ers in the house?!?!

That’s all from me!

But that’s not all from Sage.

She would like to look into your eyes and say HEY! You’re gettin’ it done! You’re working hard! You’re rising above! YOU ARE AWESOME!

Sage with bunny ears.

She would also like you to know that even when you make mistakes, you can always try again.

Pillow on floor with stuffing torn out.

And she will be trying again in April.

Sage loves you guys.

Cheers to a great coffee (tea / latte / cucumber water) date! See you next month.

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