Review: The Daily Paper Dotted Notebook

It has officially been an entire year since I purchased and started using this notebook as a bullet journal. I am still using it and enjoying it immensely, so it’s about time for a review, I think. The product I purchased was The Daily Paper’s A5 dotted notebook with numbered pages because, honestly, way too lazy to number all the pages by hand.

At the time of purchase, it was only $9.54 + tax, which, for what you’re getting, I feel is an absolute steal. As a bullet journaling novice, I wasn’t about to spend $40 on a dotted notebook, and this one turned out to be perfect for me. I’m slightly devastated that it no longer seems to be in stock and their website is currently down for updates because I can’t recommend this notebook enough.

I apologise in advance for the inconsistent lighting in these photos. I’m bad at photo editing, especially in Mac Preview. That said, I did try to get the colour of the notebook to as true-to-life as I could.

There are 183 total numbered pages, along with multiple other helpful pages that a BuJo may need. If you are an avid bullet journalist and enjoy creating your own spreads for everything then it probably won’t be the right fit for you. I’m a very basic beginner who had very little idea what I was doing, so the default spreads helped a lot.

The 120 gsm paper has been great for me, it’s decently thick and bleeding through pages is hardly a problem unless I’m really going for it with my highlighters. I switched to Mildliner Brushes a few months ago and they’ve been brilliant on this paper with minimal bleeding.

The vegan leather cover is delightful. It’s soft and durable, and while I have made sure to take good care of my notebook in the first place, there are barely any signs of wear on the cover, and it still feels as smooth and soft as the day I got it.

I’m also impressed with the elastic band and pen enclosure. It’s a thick elastic band that has not lost any of its elasticity over the past year (though to be fair, I am not a heavy BuJo user). The pen enclosure is large so I’ve been able to squish a couple of pens in there at a time, but you’ll definitely only want to hold pens with clips to keep them in place. A singular pencil will undoubtedly fall out.

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I Tried Going No-Poo for 18 Days

As the title suggests: I tried to do no-poo for 18 days. That’s no shampooing my hair at all, and if possible not washing for as long as my hair will permit, starting 1st June.

Yep, perhaps I have gone crazy, or perhaps I’ve been newly inspired? Or perhaps I’m just next level lazy. But now that lockdown is easing and I have had my COVID vaccine, what better way to celebrate re-engaging in social life but to… not wash my hair for almost 3 weeks. Lol. (To clarify, I am still showering during this period, just not shampooing my hair. Hygiene is important.)

To be fair, it’s something I have attempted and failed a couple of times in the past, so I don’t have high hopes that it’ll somehow come to fruition this time. In fact, this attempt comes hot off the tail of another failed attempt. I lasted about 4 days before my scalp got so itchy and gross that I had to wash it with water, and a week before I gave up and had to shampoo my hair. Same thing happened at the start of quarantine when I first saw videos about it cropping up on YouTube.

But COVID restrictions are being lifted, I have a much-needed haircut scheduled for 18th June, so figured I may as well try once more as a last hurrah, and will make sure to tip my hairdresser well when the time comes haha.

When I was younger, I only washed my hair every 3-5 days and it was always fine, but at some point in my life it was stigmatised and I was told that I should be washing my hair daily. That never came naturally to me because my hair just… never got that greasy or gross in a day? I did start washing my hair more frequently, and now that I think about it, all it did was make my hair greasier if I didn’t shampoo & condition it every day or two.

Fast forward to these days, there’s a huge No-Poo movement where many, many people claim to have not shampooed their hair for months or years and their hair looks great. All of a sudden I don’t feel bad for not washing my hair as frequently, and if there’s a chance I could wash it even less frequently and have it still be fine, perfect haha.

Naturally, if you’re reading this post, it means that… well, something has happened. Either I gave up, or I succeeded. Either way, there will be photos of potentially very gross-looking hair and scalp so if you’re morbidly curious and not easily disgusted, read on. If you don’t want to read about my full experience and would just like to skip to my key takeaways from this, click here.

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Review: XP-PEN Deco Pro S

It’s been a long time since I had a tablet, and I really felt like I needed one again because using the Apple Trackpad 2 was starting to hurt my fingers. After a bit of research I decided to go with the XP-PEN Deco Pro Small. It comes in a small or medium size, but as you can see from the above photo, it is really not that small! In fact, it’s larger in width than my new M1 MacBook Pro. I’ve only had it for a couple of days, so this review is just my initial thoughts.

It comes well-packaged, everything is individually sealed so I was very confident my product was brand new. Upon opening the box, you’ll find the tablet and a pen holder that contains both the pen itself and 8 replaceable pen nibs. The lid of the pen holder can be used as a pen stand. As well as the tablet being sealed, there is another layer of protective film over the surface.

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Personal: And We’re In!

Yay! Today was the day! Well, technically it should have been ready for us yesterday I think? But we ended up not having a chance to swing by yesterday. So we went this evening after Jacky was done with work. We dropped by to change the lock and unpack a few bits and pieces. We’ll be slowly moving in over the next month and a half, so we’ll just be taking a few boxes at a time, and eventually hiring some movers to help with the furniture. This will also give us an opportunity to do a mini-purge of our possessions as we move.

We’re so very excited to be in our new place. There’s nothing there yet so we just mostly took photos in front of the kitchen island. Even with all the blinds all shut there is still so much natural light coming through; it’s amazing.

I’ve had many second thoughts and doubts about this place after we committed to purchasing it but every time I go back through the front door it just feels right and I feel at home and I’m excited all over again. God has blessed us greatly with this new house and I’m so very thankful. Soli Deo Gloria!

Also, happy 1st of June! Goodness me, is 2021 almost half over already? I can’t quite believe it.

Muchos love,

Bobbie

Electronics: M1 Apple MacBook Pro

Oh man. Remember how I wrote that my employer decided to buy me a new device for work? Well, it’s here! I’m typing on it right now. It’s much lighter than my previous MBP and it is much faster, as one would expect. It took a couple of hours to set up but actually, now that I think of it, setting up and transferring thousands of files in a couple of hours really isn’t too bad.

Opening applications or starting it up hasn’t been as lightning fast as I was expecting given what I saw of it online, but its speed did shock me when I put my laptop into clamshell mode and my external monitors did not even blink. I thought it meant the laptop didn’t work properly in clamshell mode, but actually it had already switched modes!

I should have expected the silver version when it arrived – duh, that’s what I ordered. But the colour still surprised me a little because this is the first silver MBP I’ve seen of Apple’s new lineup. All of the device reviews or model devices I’ve seen have been grey. Now that I’ve got the silver version, I do quite like it but I think the grey actually looks more sophisticated.

I thought I’d hate the touch bar because I just didn’t see the point in it. However, within 10mins of using it I fell in love. It’s so much faster to use than moving the mouse around to click the right buttons, and being someone who uses hotkeys like nobody’s business it’s exactly what I didn’t know I needed haha. The only downside is that I sometimes end up clicking buttons on it by mistake when I’m going for the delete key.

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