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5 Planner and Calendar Recommendations for 2022!

/ Srishty / Leave a comment

Many of us are into buying pretty calendars and planners on new year these days. I mean I know its an old tradition but its got an all-new vigour due to so many upcoming artists on social media. This post is more for me than you, basically I wanted to jot down all the options I am considering for a desk calendar and thought it may help someone else too. I know we are late for buying a new year calendar, but, what the heck! Its never too late. 🙂

Also, a word of caution – I am totally against buying anything one may not need, so only consider this list accordingly. For example, I am not buying a planner this year because, a) I have pretty notebooks that I am going to use, b) those pretty, bulky yearly planners get too much for me, I hardly end up using them even 25% and I have so many stickers already from my 2019 & 2021 Alicia Souza planners.

Starting my list of recommendations, a mix of planners & calendars both:

  1. The Spring Palette 2022 Calendars: My #1 recommendation as I am most likely going to get this desk calendar myself. I love this artist’s aesthetic so much and she even has notebooks, coffee mugs and a lot of other such stuff. You can find her on Instagram to shop from her website too.
2022 Positivity Desk Calendar by The Spring Palette | Table Top/Office Desk Calendar | Inspirational and self Motivation Illustrations | Perfect for Gifting

2. Odd Giraffe Planners & Notebooks: I have personally not used an Odd Giraffe Planner before, but whenever I have seen other people on social media use it, it seems like a very snug & compact form of the pretty, bulky planners. The quality seems to be great too. So, you can completely consider it if you were thinking of buying a pretty planner this year.

Odd Giraffe – Summertime Blossom | Yearly Planner with Sticker Sheet and Secret Pocket | 2022 Planner Diary | Made with Recycled Paper

3. Happy Wagon Devinity Desk Calendar: Happy Wagon as a company is doing a great job at giving platform to upcoming illustrationists and artists and their website has a ton of good stationary items. This one is a personal favorite! Look how cute and pretty it is for someone who appreciates a calendar with Indian Gods & Goddesses. Extremely worthy of a gift!

Happy Wagon | 2022 Devinity Desk Calendar | Gold Spiral Bound | Tracking & Scheduling | 12 Months | 270 GSM Sheets | 22 x 15 cm | Hand Illustrations – Digitally Printed

4. Lazy Gardener Desk Calendar: Again something worthy of gifting depending on someone’s interest. I love this kind of comics style aesthetic and I am considering this calendar for myself now although I am not that much into gardening right now.

Lazy Gardener Calendar 2022 Desk for Plant Lovers, Gardening Inspired Calendar for Desk

5. Amazon Planner: If you are anything like me now and want to go for simplistic notebooks as planners, which are easier to carry and don’t have a lot of fancy stuff going on while being pretty, you can definitely consider this one. In case you wanted to know, I am not using a dated planner this year since I don’t do a lot of daily to do lists, but rather random, flexible lists. So, I’ll stick to filling up my existing notebooks first and then move to either a notebook I got myself from Darjeeling or a handmade notebook a friend got me from Nepal.

Amazon Brand – Solimo – A5 Premium 2022 Planner (5.75 x 8.25 inches), 216 pages, 80 GSM (One Day At A Time)

Apart from all these, I highly recommend calendars by Bhuli Art & Neha Doodles, but mostly those go out of stock before the year even starts. You can go to their individual Instagram pages to see if they are still available for purchase.

Note: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you make a purchase by clicking on them, I may earn a commission. If you intend on purchasing these products, please click on my links (or images) and then make a purchase from there. 🙂

If you liked this, check out more of my latest posts:

4 Things I’ll Never Buy | Blogmas 11

/ Srishty / Leave a comment

Remember this post? I talked about things I love collecting. An antithesis of this post is here now, primarily due to the motivation to consume less and not collect stuff. I don’t know which of the two posts i thought of first but here it is for you to enjoy:

Well, never say never but you get the gist, right? I am vary of buying these things:

1. Vases: i do buy other things that serve as vases. Like ceramic pots that can also serve as water jugs? You know what i mean? However, I desperately steer clear of buying actual vases from a shop. In my head, that’s just too basic a decor item. Why not use unexpected things as vases that set your house part? I love the idea of using alcohol bottles as is for home decor too.

2. Balloons: i have loved balloons for as long as I can remember. My mom tells me I used to be scared of them as a toddler, that’s why I said for as long as I remember. 🙂 But, but, they are non biodegradable and create a lot of unnecessary waste. Just beware if you were to put me in charge of planning a party, i can assure you though that I’ll get a mean party setup without them!

3. Dusting clothes: i dont understand why people feel the need to buy these. Maybe i am missing something here? How come people don’t have clothes that are discarded and can be used as dusting clothes? Or its not good to use them?

4. Storage boxes: unless they are furniture. I don’t like the idea of ‘buying’ boxes that you would use for storage. In all likeliness, I’ll figure something out from existing boxes like delivery packages. But this may lead to piling up a lot of stuff, again something i truly despise. But it’s just lesser of the two evils. I cannot even begin to tell you just how hard I cringe when movers & packers come over and insist on using their own fresh new boxes, instead of the boxes you already have handy.

6 C’s that I love collecting

/ Srishty / 3 Comments

I have shouted from the top of my lungs just how much I am against hoarding. Most of it has to do with the need of not wanting to increase my carbon footprint and nothing more which is why I am window shopping clothes etc anyway because I do find it fun nonetheless.

However, there are certain things that I never feel guilty hoarding because – one, I can easily justify more the merrier in their case, second, they are not that unfriendly to the environment.

6 of such things that I don’t feel guilty hoarding on actually start with the alphabet C. A happy coincidence! The moment I realized this I thought of blogging this some day. So here they are:

1. Cushions: I love the idea of filling up one’s home with cushions! Though if you see mine, there are hardly any that can qualify me as a hoarder. Instagram ads do keep suggesting pretty ones on a daily basis but, really, what is up with all these indie stores selling cushion covers at such exorbitant prices? Can anyone explain?

2. Candles: Now someone I follow since long on social media repeatedly talks about how fragrances of any sort are not good for our health. But a candle is a candle is a candle. Candles make me infinitely happier. When I went to my in-laws place on my current trip, I consciously didn’t carry any from my stash as all were bulky. I finally had to buy one there as I really wanted to light it. Best decision ever made because whenever I was in a stressful office call, I’ll just light the candle up and feel so much better.

3. Coasters: of course, this is more of a necessity. Then why not have pretty ones around the house? Again, I want to point out that I have super basic ones and really can do with some pretty or quirky ones. I just say that I like hoarding them buf I never actually end up hoarding. 😀 a coaster is something that I use a lot as well, I am very conscious of placing my tea cups or a drink on the rocks on a coaster, so much so that now I feel slightly cringe when others don’t do it! Total Monica from friends vibe here!

4. Ceramics: oh man! One of the most beautiful things in the world. I just need a little bit of more research to be super sure just how bad ceramics are for usage, or environment. For e.g., my dad says that this trend of using ceramic planters is absolutely worthless because plants don’t get enough breathing space in ceramics as it’s not porous. Need to validate these kind of things, but otherwise love, love, love ceramics.

5. Chips: of course. Shouldn’t have put it in a list of things that I love but are also environment friendly. A habit I truly should change because these come in single use plastic packs. I wish there was a way to go get your chips box filled at a lays station or something like that! Here, I am throwing a startup idea for anyone who wants to catch.

6. Coffee & teas: again something whose hoarding I would love but don’t actually end up doing because in the past 2 years, Rahul and I have lived so much like nomads, sometimes at my parents, other times at his and then some trips, that hoarding on any type of food that you expect to last for a long time is just pointless. But totally digging the idea of a well-stocked coffee station at home just like a well-stocked bar!

Any things that you would want to add to this list? What are some things you don’t mind collecting?

36 | The Tale of the Most Ornate Blouse

/ Srishty / 1 Comment

Let me tell you a little bit about my sartorial choices – Whenever I have to decide on Indian festive wear outfits, say, for weddings, Indian festivals or parties where ideally you should wear Indian, I always try to get something unique. What I mean is I am sure a lot of people want that, but I am willing to go that extra mile. Basically, I don’t stick to just looking for ready-made garments, I try to have a picture in my mind of what I want to wear & then actively work towards making it come together. This is not so difficult if you do not care about how much you spend on the said outfit, because then you can simply leave it to a designer and tell her your vision, but I try to get these outfits for cheaper than the most obvious way to get them, because let’s face it, these outfits only have a face value & you cannot get a lot of re-use out of them.

More importantly, I love working on making these outfits come together, then just handing over the task to an expert, because I love when the end result is a fruit of MY vision!

I thought I’ll share some of these outfits on the blog from time to time, because the stories about how I ended up getting these made excite me a lot 🙂 Maybe, you will also find them as interesting!

Onto the story of the most ornate blouse:

When I graduated engineering college, we were preparing for our farewell & one of the most important bits for such events (especially when you’re young :P) is what to wear. Since we were supposed to wear a saree, I had a clear vision in mind of a plain thin material (like georgette) sari in hot pink! Being in the student life, I wanted to go as cheap as possible, so I bought a very pretty looking hot pink fabric for sari but it was a mixed fabric, not pure georgette, so it came for dirt cheap price-wise. Then, I looked for a border to put on the sari and another pretty sequin fabric for the blouse. This sari turned out way, way better than my expectations. Both I and my mom have re-worn it several times afterwards and I for one do not seem to get over it even after 6 years!! I am pretty sure I’ll re-wear it sometime again! Below is a bad quality picture from 2013. 🙂 That’s me wearing the sari for the first time. 🙂

Afterwards, I planned to wear this sari again for a close friend’s sister’s wedding in 2015 & I really wanted to do something new with the sari this time. I already had this purple blouse made and I paired the hot pink sari with the purple blouse. I would like to believe that this combination is match made in heaven.

But when did this ornate blouse happen? Come on, woman, people do not have time for so many of your silly stories!  I had gone to the Gujarati market in Janpath to look for something, don’t remember what and I was just walking back in disappointment on not finding it when my eyes fell upon this really ornate kurta. It was bright purple & full of golden & pink embroidery all over. It immediately reminded me of Madhuri Dixit’s ornate blouse in the song ‘Didi tera dewar diwana’ because of the color! Now, the Janpath Gujarati market deserves a post of its own because of its uniqueness. You end up finding absolutely one-of-a-kind fabric pieces or clothes there because its mostly hand-embroidered stuff which Gujarati families make & bring there to sell. I love going there because even if I don’t buy something, there will be just so much artistic stuff to look at! Sorry, back to the ornate purple kurta. It was a kurta but it reminded me of Madhuri’s blouse as mentioned above. Immediately I envisioned that I will get this made into a blouse & pair it with plain sarees or lehengas or whatever works! I ran to the shop and bargained the kurta from 1500 to 600 INR probably 🙂 (it was a long time ago!) and ran back with my prized possession! I was elated with my vision.

Never even once did it cross my mind that tailors will refuse to cut apart a kurta and stitch it into a brand new blouse because its extremely difficult to re-stitch something which has such heavy embroidery. I got refused by several tailors and my mom, who is anyway not into experimenting for outfits, suggested that I should simply wear the kurta as a kurta because who knows it will end up well even if some tailor agrees to put so much effort for us. This was unacceptable to me! My mind was set on the blouse. Finally, after a lot of coaxing, one tailor relented and the best part is that he stitched it very well also. 🙂

Afterwards, I also got a plain lehenga made to go with this blouse for another occasion. Whenever someone compliments this blouse or asks about it, and I tell them that it was a kurta I saw hanging in some market, they find it unbelievable. I am just happy that it’s a very unique piece.

    4 | A day full of shopping

    / Srishty / Leave a comment

    How’s that for a heading? The thing is I haven’t shopped in an unabashed manner from a physical store in quite some time. First of all, I mostly shop online because of the discounts. Second, if I am shopping in store, there’s mostly a target in mind. Today was nothing different. I did have a target in mind, but once that didn’t get fulfilled, I ended up liking few things in the ongoing sale that will be good for me to have.

    I do love just taking my own time and decide after proper deliberating as to what I want to buy and whether I am getting a good deal or not. I really, really enjoyed it. And I’m a happy camper back home!

    You see, as it was a Friday, I was thinking of doing a nice Friday’s list post today, but got tired and it totally slid off my mind.

    Just for the record, I got some nice kurtas from this brand called Soch. I am very happy with the purchases today. 😀

    3 | How Kindle changed my life & the BS that surrounds it.

    / Srishty / 3 Comments

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    I sat smugly in the “e-readers must suck” gang till the beginning of 2018. If you are thinking of closing this tab because you too sit comfortably in that same group, I request you, please spare few minutes to read this till the end. Not any special reason, I haven’t mentioned anything out of the world here, but I do want to tell my experience with Kindle and I don’t want book lovers to discard this without even consideration.

    e-readers can never replace physical books – Of course! And they shouldn’t either. Who wants someone or something else to occupy the space of books in their life, anyway? The smell of books, the touch, flipping the pages, the pretty book covers, even prettier bookmarks – aaah! who really wants to substitute this bliss for anything else, leave alone an electronic gadget?

    But, but. Have you ever used that electronic gadget? Let’s just say, it does have a feel of its own because its your personal area where you store your favorite books. Basically, your personal library. Don’t you think you will immediately connect with something like that? At least, I feel genuinely attached to my Kindle!  The point is you have to stop treating it as a substitute for physical books. Because, its not. Its another way of doing your favorite activity. Is it better than the previous way? Well, you really don’t need that comparison as long as someone is not pointing a gun at you to only choose one.

    All my physical copies are still with me and I love and cherish them even more now. Just like I love strolling around bookstores. Kindle or any e-reader is not a replacement to your existing love for books, don’t treat it as a betrayal, please. 🙂 Here’s why:

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    How Kindle changed my life?

    As I mentioned above, I was always clear that I do not want to give e-readers any chance as it is never going to be the same experience as a physical copy. Not even when I moved to Bangalore from Delhi in 2017, even when it felt perfectly logical to not pile up here because God knows for how long I was going to be here. Anyhow, I still stuck to physical books. Then, I moved to Dubai for a supposedly 2 months assignment in Jan 2018. I carried one of the books I was reading with me. The idea was to buy more in Dubai when I finish this current one. Simply because I like buying books, stationery and cosmetics in new places that I visit. But what do I find in Dubai!!! The same copies that we get in India priced almost 4 times higher! The assignment got extended but I was supposed to travel to India after the first 3 months and be back in Dubai for another 3 months. By the end of initial 3 months, I had made up my mind that a Kindle is the perfect thing for someone who may have to travel often. So much so that I decided to buy one in Dubai, but I found out that it’s cheaper in India and my India trip was approaching anyway. So, I bought the Kindle in India and came back to Dubai for 3 months again.

    I cannnot stress enough how much my life has changed. It is always with me, ALWAYS. I can read in any queue, can settle in any pretty looking cafe with a coffee to go along or I can just read on my way to work like I do/used to with physical copies. Of course, its not the same feeling as a physical book but let me tell you something even more important. The satisfaction of reading is the same. It’s a very, very satisfying feeling but just the touch and feel of the reading device is different. I love my Kindle way, way too much and I love reading on it as an experience. What I mean is holding it in my hands, flipping the pages, bookmarking stuff, deciding on a Kindle cover, adding stuff to my Kindle library is just as much fun, only in a different way.

    In the end, just one thing – do give Kindle a chance before you say ‘e-readers are so not for me!’.

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