If you go to any blogger’s website right now, you will probably see at least one gift guide posted. Probably more than one by now. Those are awesome gift ideas and I like looking at them. Since there are tons of gift guides out there already, I thought I would do something different. I’m going to share my best Amazon purchases of 2018. Maybe these will give you ideas for what you may want to put on your Christmas list or what to get others.

One thing I love about Amazon, besides the fast shipping, is that you can look at your purchase history without any limits on how far you can go back. Well, at least I can look back to 2011 on my account. If you land on a product that you bought before, it will tell you the date when you last purchased it. This is a great little tool for making repeat purchases. For this post, I looked back through this year and picked out my best Amazon purchases of 2018.

Amazon’s prices change a lot, so I won’t list specific prices. They will probably be different by the time you look at these. But I will say the price range so you have an idea of what to expect.

The New Year is going to be here before you know it, whether you like it or not! I thought this would be a perfect time to share my favorite planner of 2018, before the New Year. So if you’re looking for a new planner, this may be a good option. It’s called the SELF Journal.

Before I get started, I wanted to say that this is not a sponsored post. I’ve just really enjoyed using this journal/planner for the past three months and wanted to share my thoughts. I also got another one for the next three months.

Can you believe it’s almost Halloween, which means it’s almost November?! Halloween is definitely on my radar at the moment. I can’t believe how fast fall is flying by. I’ve actually made good progress in getting everyone gifts for Christmas, so I feel good about that. It’s not fun to stress about gifts in November and December. I wish holiday gifts didn’t give me so much stress, because that’s not really what holidays are all about, but I also don’t like giving terrible gifts. I like to see people excited after they open my gift to them. Can’t say I always succeed in that, but I try.

If you’re anything like me, then you love to read books and listen to audiobooks but hate spending a lot of money on them. Now, I’m not saying the authors don’t deserve to be paid – of course they do. But it’s hard to spend $30 on one book when you don’t even know if you will like the book. And if you’re trying to read more than one book per month, the cost can really add up. Don’t even talk to me about the cost of audiobooks! So far, I’ve successfully been able to read and listen to many books without breaking the bank, so I’m going to try to help you learn how to read a lot of books on a budget.

I’ve already had some people ask me how they can read more or where to get audiobooks, so I thought I’d share in a blog post!

When Travis and I spent a couple days in Venice, Italy this summer, I learned some things about the city. Usually, you only hear and read about the amazing things this city has to offer and nothing else. I’m going to tell you ten things about Venice that I learned that are not the typical sightseeing and restaurant recommendations. Keep in mind that this is from 2018. Venice was very different just ten years ago and it may be very different if you read this years from now.

I have been totally against subscription boxes in the past. I thought, “I don’t need that pointless stuff.” Or “I would rather buy specific things I actually want.” Things like that. And then I tried one box and another and another and another…. Okay, I didn’t subscribe to all of these all at once. I had my limits. But I did try some and then once I got tired of them, I would cancel them, and sometimes I would find other interesting boxes to try out.

For the past couple of years, I have been really into audiobooks. It all started with the book Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald. I loved that book, even on audio! Sometimes I don’t like an audiobook but I don’t think that I don’t like the actual book itself. It may be that I don’t like the narrator’s voice or he or she may be a boring reader (in my opinion) and that ruins the whole story. A bad narration doesn’t allow you to get into the book and I usually don’t finish those audiobooks.

This summer, I started reading more printed books and e-books because I was disappointed in a few audiobooks. I am going to share what I read or listened to and will give my book reviews. If you want to see a complete list of what I have read, listened to, and what is on my to-read list, you can see all of that on my GoodReads account.

You’re sitting at your desk at work and you realize 45 minutes has gone by and you haven’t actually worked during that time. Maybe you were shopping online or reading news articles, whatever it was, it wasn’t productive work. The bad thing is that you didn’t even realize a whole 45 minutes had passed! Whoops! How can you focus and stop the procrastination? The answer is the Pomodoro Technique. It will help you focus and stop procrastinating in as little as 25 minutes.