Category: Wrap-Ups

Lauren Lately | June 2019

Posted June 14, 2019 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 0 Comments

Because my Bookmark Lit Bulletin wrap-ups got out of hand, I wanted to break up my monthly wrap-ups into two posts: one personal and one bookish/bloggy. I created Lauren Lately here to highlight all of the personal happenings in my life: events, activities, shows I’m addicted to, things I’m obsessing over, recipes I’ve loved, and goals for the next month. I decided to space them out so this wrap-up happens around the mid-point of the month and the bookish one happens at the end of the month. ✨ Check out my most recent bookish and bloggy wrap-up HERE ✨ What I’ve Been Up To Money in the Bank | We were fortunate that MITB, one of the best WWE shows ever year (just because ladder matches are so fun), was in Hartford this year! A group of five of us went and it was pretty wonderful until the end. I know I don’t need to get heavily into the wrestling stuff but let’s just say I hate Brock Lesnar and he ruined everything, as usual. Memorial Day Weekend – Bridal Shower and Double or Nothing | As everyone knows by now, Chris’s sister is getting married in August and that’s the last wedding that I’m in for the year! (I have one more to attend in September, I believe… my book club friend is making sure she can squeeze us in 😂) I planned her entire bridal shower basically and it went off without a hitch! That night, we had the first AEW PPV, […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | May 2019

Posted June 1, 2019 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 2 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin wraps up the last month in reading and what was on the blog, as well as what’s coming up next. You can check out my book haul, books read, posts shared, challenge updates, etc. You can read past bulletins here. If you’re looking for more personal updates, you can check out my Lauren Lately feature; it highlights my life events and non-bookish fun from the previous 30 days. Like I said about April, May was also bound to be a shitty reading month. I had my friend’s wedding the second weekend of the month, where I didn’t read the whole 3-4 days of festivities, and a bunch of other weekend plans to account for. Luckily Bout of Books happened the day after the wedding, which put my butt in gear to get back on track with reading and make up for lost time! I ended up reading two graphic novels for one of my challenges, which helped keep me in the normal range of 9ish books read. All of the books from this month: Check out my 2019 challenge sign-up post for more details, goals, etc.! Popsugar Reading Challenge 3 read this month | 29 read total | 73% complete L-R: Set in space, read during season the book is set in, by two female authors Monthly Motif Challenge 2 read this month | 13 read total This month: One sitting reads Retellings Reading Challenge 1 read this month | 3 read total | 30% complete L-R: […]

Lauren Lately | May 2019

Posted May 15, 2019 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 3 Comments

Because my Bookmark Lit Bulletin wrap-ups got out of hand, I wanted to break up my monthly wrap-ups into two posts: one personal and one bookish/bloggy. I created Lauren Lately here to highlight all of the personal happenings in my life: events, activities, shows I’m addicted to, things I’m obsessing over, recipes I’ve loved, and goals for the next month. I decided to space them out so this wrap-up happens around the mid-point of the month and the bookish one happens at the end of the month. ✨ Check out my most recent bookish and bloggy wrap-up HERE ✨ What I’ve Been Up To We are officially in the busy section of 2019 for me! Starting with my friend’s bachelorette trip to Charleston last month, through May and into June, we will be quite busy. We have another wedding we’re in (both Chris and me!) in August but luckily there isn’t a whole lot going into it. We had a little birthday celebration for my friend Cassie during Easter weekend, where we got new cartilage piercings and tacos for lunch. We also went shopping to get the matching Easter outfits that Natasha and I always wear for my family! I snuck in some reading time before Easter while everyone else was sleeping and then we had a nice day at my mom’s house. We don’t have a reason to celebrate Easter but we do it anyways? lol. I’m super busy with birthday things in April, as you all probably know by now (five super important people in my […]

Goals & Challenges After 4 Months | Check-In

Posted May 3, 2019 / Features, Wrap-Ups / 2 Comments

I always do a midpoint check-in around July to share my general progress on reading goals and challenges, but I thought it would be fun to do a quick check-in now. I’m noticing major progress on my challenges but veryyy little progress on some of my specific reading or blogging goals. I’ll be including pages from my bullet journal to get my point across too 😉 I didn’t bother including personal goals for this particular check-in because I’m just kind of struggling right now, balancing a lot of expenses and stresses. Also, quick note, all of this progress is as of the last day of April. I always set a variety of reading, personal, and blog-related goals for the year. I tried to outline them nicely in my bullet journal to track them a little more often, since I tend to write the post and forget about it until the midpoint check-in! I wish I could tell you that the bullet journal thing was helping buuuut instead I just feel guilty when I ignore this page in my updates 🙁 Continue to not feel pressured to read and enjoy other hobbies ✔ Yep good on this one. Reading when I’m in the mood and not reading when I’m not in the mood. I took a little break in April when I went on a trip and expect a similar situation in June when I go to California. Read 50% or less contemporary novels ❌ LOL this is actually the goal I’m paying […]

March-April Bookish Bullet Journal

Posted May 2, 2019 / Features, Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc., Wrap-Ups / 3 Comments

When I mentioned the idea of sharing layouts from my reading-related bullet journal on the blog, most of you seemed interested to read about it! I can’t justify making one post each month dedicated to the 3-4 bujo pages I make during that month, so I thought doing a little bullet journal update every two months would be fun instead! In these posts you will see all of the new pages I added during the past two months. I shared my first set of bujo pages in the post I linked above, where I talked about the overall layout of my journal and showed my February layouts. I didn’t start the bujo in January, so there ya have it. Here’s what I’ve been doing for the past two months! (Sidenote: I’ll be showing any other pages that get updated in the midpoint of the year too, so the post for the May-June bujo in July will show any yearly challenges or graph pages that I update at the end of the month, just to show midyear trends and such!) March bookstagram: I didn’t end up doing this beyond the first few days of the month, but oh well. I love how the “bookstagram” title came out on the page! That’s worth it alone 😉 I usually will do two columns – one for the actual promp and one for the idea I have for the photo (location, props, and book titles). March TBR: I’ll be keeping this book stack format, with […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | April 2019

Posted May 1, 2019 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 1 Comment

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin wraps up the last month in reading and what was on the blog, as well as what’s coming up next. You can check out my book haul, books read, posts shared, challenge updates, etc. You can read past bulletins here. If you’re looking for more personal updates, you can check out my Lauren Lately feature; it highlights my life events and non-bookish fun from the previous 30 days. I knew April was going to be a garbage reading month, as evidenced by the fact that it took me the entire first half of the month to read multiple books. I finally got back into the groove once the bachelorette trip was over mid-month! I made a little version of ARC April for myself to focus on only reading review copies and I did such a good job of keeping that promise. I still managed to complete 9 books (yes, two were novellas, leave me alone) and DNFed another. All of the books from this month: Check out my 2019 challenge sign-up post for more details, goals, etc.! Popsugar Reading Challenge 7 read this month | 20 read total | 50% complete L-R: Includes a wedding, set on college campus/university Monthly Motif Challenge 2 read this month | 9 read total This month: Crack the case Retellings Reading Challenge 2 read this month | 2 read total | 20% complete None this month L-R: Brothers Grimm, Shakespeare Picky Pledge My goal is to work on Alexa […]

Lauren Lately | April 2019

Posted April 15, 2019 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 4 Comments

Because my Bookmark Lit Bulletin wrap-ups got out of hand, I wanted to break up my monthly wrap-ups into two posts: one personal and one bookish/bloggy. I created Lauren Lately here to highlight all of the personal happenings in my life: events, activities, shows I’m addicted to, things I’m obsessing over, recipes I’ve loved, and goals for the next month. I decided to space them out so this wrap-up happens around the mid-point of the month and the bookish one happens at the end of the month. ✨ Check out my most recent bookish and bloggy wrap-up HERE ✨ What I’ve Been Up To Maple Festival | The town next to ours hosts a cute Maple-themed festival in March each year, so we invited up our maple-syrup loving friends for the weekend! We bought a looooot of maple food, walked around the little fair, and then showed them around the UConn area (including their amazing dairy bar ice cream!). We went out for Mexican later AND got some Insomnia Cookies because clearly our MO was to eat ALL DAY LONG. Weird weather | We got a freak snowstorm one night in March. Like… completely unexpected. We got probably 3-4 inches at our house, while about 3-5 miles away there was ZERO SNOW. How is that even possible?! We also got a lot of nicer, warmer weather in the last few weeks too. It’s been a bizarre Spring so far but honestly I don’t expect anything less from New England! Bridal shower and various plans […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | March 2019

Posted April 1, 2019 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 3 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin wraps up the last month in reading and what was on the blog, as well as what’s coming up next. You can check out my book haul, books read, posts shared, challenge updates, etc. You can read past bulletins here. If you’re looking for more personal updates, you can check out my Lauren Lately feature; it highlights my life events and non-bookish fun from the previous 30 days. I’m happy I increased my reading numbers, meaning I’m super ahead on my Goodreads challenge! I read SO many books in March. The middle portion of this year will be challenging for reading, with a decent amount of trips planned and weddings to attend between April and August. In any case, it was a good reading month where I kept up some momentum and continued to love my bullet journal! Related not-as-bookish sidenote: I asked you guys where you want to see wrap-ups for my bujo pages (if you did at all) and there was even split between “yes make a separate post” and “yes wherever you want to post it.” I’ve decided to do a bi-monthly bujo wrap-up post! All of the books from this month: Check out my 2019 challenge sign-up post for more details, goals, etc.! Popsugar Reading Challenge 7 read this month | 20 read total | 50% complete L-R: Zodiac/astrology term in the title, based on a true story, retelling of a classic, extinct or mystical creature, about a hobby, inspired by folklore/myth/etc., weird/no chapter […]

Lauren Lately | March 2019

Posted March 15, 2019 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 4 Comments

Because my Bookmark Lit Bulletin wrap-ups got out of hand, I wanted to break up my monthly wrap-ups into two posts: one personal and one bookish/bloggy. I created Lauren Lately here to highlight all of the personal happenings in my life: events, activities, shows I’m addicted to, things I’m obsessing over, recipes I’ve loved, and goals for the next month. I decided to space them out so this wrap-up happens around the mid-point of the month and the bookish one happens at the end of the month. ✨ Check out my most recent bookish and bloggy wrap-up HERE ✨ What I’ve Been Up To Lazy days | We had a few weird weather days in the last month, so we’ve spent quite a bit of time relaxing. We’re hitting the GIVE ME SPRING feels hard right now, guys, but trying to enjoy skiing/snowboarding and snow while we can I guess. Above you can see me learning hand lettering, Chris playing Pokemon, and me reading. That’s about it! Local bookstore exploring | I went to two indie bookstores and one of my favorite chains at the end of February. I went to Book Club near my office for the first time (all of the pics above are from there lol). I’m going to an actual book club event at a brewery hosted by them later this month. We also went to Bank Square books in Mystic when we were there for the chowder fest, then headed to Books-a-Million (the closest is in the southern part […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | February 2019

Posted March 1, 2019 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 5 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin wraps up the last month in reading and what was on the blog, as well as what’s coming up next. You can check out my book haul, books read, posts shared, challenge updates, etc. You can read past bulletins here. If you’re looking for more personal updates, you can check out my Lauren Lately feature; it highlights my life events and non-bookish fun from the previous 30 days. February was a bit of a whirlwind in my personal life and my reading life was somewhat weirdly affected. I did still manage to get a lot of reading done despite that (and also despite reading one book for the entire month basically). I have to count this as a success! I also read mostly books I had laid out on my TBR for the month, which always pleases me too. All of the books read this month: Check out my 2019 challenge sign-up post for more details, goals, etc.! Popsugar Reading Challenge 8 read this month | 8 read total | 23% complete Prompts (L-R): Makes you nostalgic, debut novel, about a family, author with the same letter for first and last names, two-word title, favorite prompt from past challenge (twin characters from 2018), revolving around a puzzle or game Monthly Motif Challenge 3 read this month | 6 read total | This month: Cover love Retellings Reading Challenge 0 read this month | 0 read total | 0% complete UGH I SUCK AGAIN !!!!!!! Picky Pledge My […]