Review: OliClips

I did not receive compensation of any kind for this review. I paid for these products myself when they had a sale.

I've been using magnetic bookmarks in my planners forever. Years ago, I picked up a set of three at a craft store, and paired with some decorative paperclips that I received for free with sticker orders, I managed to separate my planner.

It wasn't until I got into the Tomoe River Paper planner community that I heard of OliClips. There's like an umlaut involved, but I don't know how to make an umlaut in Blogger, so apologies.

My first attempt was an OliClip knock off. It was okay, but it looked like a knock off. It was out of alignment, kind of banged up in appearance, and generally not ascetically pleasing.

When the real OliClip maker had a sale, I tried some of their small clips. What a difference! These were awesome and so much better than the craft store magnetic bookmarks I'd been using. The next time they went on sale, I tried a bigger size clip and the new (at that time) slimline version.

The big clip is excellent for thick sections of paper. I'm using this in my everyday planner to separate the weekly section from the daily pages. The smaller clip couldn't handle the thickness.

And the slimline. I love the slimline. It seems to have less magnetic power than the small OliClips, so I reserve them for particular uses, but the reason I love them so much is how they work in my time tracker booklet.

I was using the small size OliClips in my time tracker, but the bottom righthand clip covered up the page at the bottom. One of the things I use my time tracker for is to record the number of words I wrote that day and I put that number on the last row of the grid. It got annoying having to slide the clip up and down at the end of the week. Too high and it covered up my timeline. Too low and I had to move it to record my word count.

It took me until the end of January to go, hmm, I have a couple of extra slimline clips. I wonder if that will solve my problem? It did.

I was using a decorative paperclip in the top left, but it kept falling out, so I added another slimline up there. Another problem solved. All my annoyances were solved with two small switches.

Anyway, if you were wondering if the OliClips are worth it. I think they are. I wish I'd found them earlier because they are so much better than those weak magnetic bookmarks I had been using before I bought them.

Highly recommended. Your size depends on how much magnet you need, so choose wisely.

And as a reminder, I did not receive compensation of any kind for this review.

Souped Up

One of the things I love having for dinner before it gets too hot is soup.

When my dad was alive and living with me, he did the cooking because he enjoyed it, and he was good at it. Me? I hate cooking. I get bored, wander away, and up with stuff burned to the bottom of my pans.

I really, really missed my dad's Tortilla Soup with Chorizo and Turkey Meatballs. It was a recipe I found at Cooking Light back years ago. A search of their site didn't turn it up, but I found a blogger who has the recipe posted and linked to that site for you.

As much as I wanted the soup, it seemed like too much work. Like was I really going to make turkey meatballs? No. But a friend told me there was premade turkey meatballs available at the store. Okay, call me stupid, but it never occurred to me that they sold premade turkey meatballs. I knew they did premade beef meatballs, but turkey?

My ignorance ties into something else I hate. Grocery shopping. Ugh! I make a list, I run in and buy what is on this list, and I get the heck out of there ASAP. I've since learned that a lot of ADHD people (like me!) do not like grocery shopping or cooking. With my get-in-get-out mindset, I don't do any exploring.

With the knowledge that I didn't have to make my own meatballs, that I could buy pre-chopped onion, and that the only thing I would have to prepare would be the poblano pepper (it's mild!), I headed off to buy what I needed to make my favorite soup.

The premade turkey meatballs worked great. They weren't as good as homemade, but since I'm not making my own, it was good enough. The prechopped onion was also most awesome. I hate cutting up onion. I tossed everything in a big soup pot, added all my ingredients and let it cook for about half an hour to make sure the premade meatballs were hot.

Shock of all shocks, I actually made a good soup!

I added more corn kernels and tortillas than the recipe called for because both items were getting a little old and needed to be used up. I also added a lot more chicken stock than the recipe called for because I wanted more soup. And after I had a bowl, I added even more stock and seasoning so I would have lots and lots of soup.

The biggest issue I had was that I couldn't find things. The kitchen was always my dad's space, and he set it up in a way that worked for him. For example, before he moved in with me, I had my spices setup in an organized, alphabetized order so I could locate them.

My dad liked the spices he used all the time in front and everything else shoved in the back of the cabinet haphazardly. I needed ground coriander for the recipe. Could I find it? No. Do I own any? I assume I must since my dad always made the soup. Did he skip the coriander? Maybe. That means I might not own any. When I have a little time, I'll have to take out all the spices, inventory them, and reorganize for me.

At least I was able to find my big soup pot and the ladle. 

Epic Fail Time

I never enjoyed crafts when I was younger, but now I knit, and I did learn to crochet, although I forgot how and would need to relearn. I play with stickers in my planners and vellums and washi tape.

For the life of me, I cannot use ink stamps or stencils without it looking like a five-year-old child decided to play with those tools.

The stencils should be easy enough that even I can successfully use them, however, this is not the case. I've tried different pens, holding the pens at different angles, and everything else I could think of. My stencils still don't look like any of the stenciling I see online.

I'm even worse with ink stamps. Especially the clear, silicone-looking stamps.

I found videos on YouTube that say the problem is likely over inking the stamp. That makes sense, I thought, so I went out of my way to not over ink the stamp. I still end up with a hot mess. Especially on my fingers, the table, and the paper I'm trying to stamp.

The smaller the stamp, the better the job I do. Mostly. My small weather stamps (sun, cloud, rain, snow, etc.) usually come out okay. Not always. Sometimes I still end up with an extra line of ink when I stamp, but at least I have a fighting chance. These are wooden stamps with rubber impressions.

The bigger silicone style stamps that need to go on acrylic blocks are my Kryptonite. I probably have a 5% success rate with the damn things. Otherwise, it's a hot mess.

I honestly have no idea why this is so challenging for me, but apparently my crafting ability ends with yarn, stickers, and washi tape.

Fitbit Hell

I don't remember how long ago I bought my Fitbit Luxe, but it's definitely nowhere near as old as my previous Fitbit which lasted forever. I can't remember the name of that one, but it was the same size and shape as the Luxe.

Anyway, the Luxe has started to become a problem. Instead of charging it twice a week, I need to charge it every other day. That's not as big a problem as how far wrong the battery reading is. I just swiped and it says my Luxe was at 77%. Good, I thought.

And then thing wouldn't come on when I tapped it.

Back on the charger long enough to restart it and now the battery is listed at 1%. Really? A minute earlier it said 77%. Did the restart take 76% of the battery? I doubt it.

I only wear the Fitbit now for sleep information because I have my Apple Watch for steps and works outs, so I thought I'll just buy one of those cheap knock offs and use that.

The cheap knock off is fine. Mostly. Except that it lights up brightly enough to signal the International Space Station every time I move my arm despite the fact that I have it on manual. I also have doubts about how accurate the sleep times are because it will say one thing when I wake up in the morning and then an hour later it says I slept more. I didn't.

That drove me back to the Fitbit. It might be a pain, but at least it doesn't light up unnecessarily. But here I am, blogging nearly half an hour after I wanted to go to bed because the Fitbit is charging from the 1% it claims it was at. It also takes forever to recharge. Grrr.

I'm to the point where I actually debated buying another Fitbit Luxe. Guess what? Unavailable. Double Grrr.

Planner Review: Part 2

Just an FYI, I received no compensation of any kind for this post, and I paid full price for all my planners. My credit card is still unhappy about this fact.

On Tuesday, I talked about my 2025 planners, including the monthly, weekly, and the EveryDay Carry (EDC) planner. I also reviewed how those were working for me. Today, I review my daily planner selection. The winner is at the bottom!

Since I was switching from the planner I'd been in since 2015 to a new planner, I bought a number of different ones because I wasn't sure which one would work.

The Hobonichi Cousin in A5. It's fine. All the other planners I bought are boutique planners, so if worse came to worst and they ceased to be created, I could move into this planner. I'm not a huge fan of the quotes because they squeeze the page, the colors are not my choices, and the timeline on the daily pages is not usable for me, but I found a shop that sells a sticker timeline that goes over it and I can deal with the rest. If I had to.

Hemlock & Oak Dated Daily. Hemlock & Oak makes a really nice, nice planner. I used it as a daily journal in 2024 and loved the hell out of it. This is the only planner I tried for 2025 that didn't have Tomoe River Paper, but a thick, regular paper that doesn't show any bleed through and I also have zero ghosting. I still love this planner for journaling, but I don't think I would want it for my daily planner. It's in an A5 size and is thick and heavy. I don't carry my desk planner with me, so this wasn't a deal breaker for me and there's plenty of room to write. I'll continue this as a journal.

Sterling Ink Daily Planner A5 and B6. I really like Sterling Ink planners. I had a weekly for 2024 that I journaled in, and I enjoyed it immensely. My weekly was a B6, and I like that size, but I wasn't sure it would be big enough. The B6 might be a little small for me because I would have to record my water, vitamins, etc. in here on the daily page. The A5 has more room. The biggest drawback for me is this planner has no weekly pages--only monthly and daily.

Plans by Just Scribble Horizontal in A5. I really, really like this planner, and if it were in one volume, it would be a contender for my winner. Unfortunately, it's in two volumes and that's a deal breaker for me. I'm using it as a secondary everyday planner. As in it's a reminder for me to glance out when I'm on the other side of the house, but it's not my primary planner. I'm hoping that for 2026, there's a single volume option.

What I like about this planner is that instead of being setup with all the months together, then all the weeks, and then all the days, Plans has it setup so that the month comes, then the week, then the 7 daily pages for that week, then the next weekly pages, then the next 7 daily pages, and so on. I like this setup a lot. I also love the horizontal weekly setup with the blank page. This planner is so awesome! But as I said, two volumes are a deal breaker for me. I need/want one book. I'm not looking for portability in my official planner. That's what my EveryDay Carry planner is for.

The winner for me is Nisha Fernando Designs Journey Planner in A5. I found this planner late, after their preorder closed, but as soon as I saw it, I was like, I think this planner would be perfect for me! And I was right.

What I like about this planner: It has an entire section to record meals. It also has space for water and vitamins. I adjusted it slightly because I take medication for my acid reflux with every meal, so I needed AM/Noon/PM and not the single vitamin dose the planner offered. It was a simple fix. There's also a section off to the right (not in the picture) that I was able to adjust to record how much sleep I was getting every night. And there's the little barbell to check off workouts. Win!

All planners have a monthly section, so nothing unusual here.

I decorated my monthly page with washi tape. February was a nice, light month. All the monthly reminders are out of the picture. If you look closely, you can see some ghosting. That's that Tomoe River Paper does, but that doesn't bother me at all. I love the crinkly texture of this paper, and the major win is that I can have the room and pages I need in one book because of how thin the paper is.

This is a vertical weekly planner which I work around with washi tape and stickers. I don't plan in my weekly pages because my brain doesn't process information in this mass of days. I tried weekly planners before switching to daily and it was too easy to ignore everything when it was all lumped together.

Here's a picture I sent a friend to show her what I was doing. I used thin washi tape to divide the page. At the top, I'm keeping track of the temperature, and I have a stamp set for sun or rain or clouds that I use up there as well. The bottom section is for word count. My goal is 1000 words a day. I record what I actually wrote below the goal.

The most important section is the "THIS WEEK" part on the middle right. This is where I record any weekly tasks that need to be done. Since this picture was taken right after I setup the planner, I only have the four tasks I want to do every week.

There wasn't enough space on the side bar of the monthly pages (above) to keep track of my monthly To-Do list, so I needed a work around. The Journey Planner has a blank page at the beginning of each month of daily pages. I found a sticker company, Mandy Lynn Plans (again, no compensation was received by me.) that makes monthly dashboards. Problem solved.

The colors of the stickers are much more vibrant than the picture shows. Apologies for being a horrible photographer.

The sticker kit gives me a variety of options for the headings on each section, but the ones I use every month are "This Month," "Important Dates," "Goals," and "Notes." There are tasks I do every month like my newsletter. Important dates can be things like doctor appointments or holidays. Goals are whatever I want to do that month. The important section for me is "This Month." I put check marks in the circles to the left as I complete an item.

And last, but certainly not least since this is the most important for me. The Daily Pages.

You can see the thinness of the Tomoe River Paper in this picture because the stickers on the other side of the page are clearly silhouetted there. Stickers are from the Scooby Doo collection from Capitol Chic Designs (Again, I received no compensation for this post. I bought my stickers from this shop.)

The timeline is printed on the left side of the page and goes from 6am to midnight. There's space above the 6am, so if I need to write something in earlier, I can. Same with space below midnight. There are small marks to divide the page, but I didn't want it halved, so I took a light marker and drew a line down the page to separate the timeline from my daily To-Do list.

I was going to use a dot marker to create check circles to mark off when I accomplished an item, but I discovered that the ghosting was too much, and I switched to a highlighter with a square nib.

I've done other little things to the planner. I've added tabs to all the sections. I've decorated my pages because the A5 allows me room to do that. There's also a section full of trackers, but I've found that I don't really keep up with trackers, so I'm haphazard on using them.

This planner is amazing for me. It gives me the space to have everything in one place and to organize it in a way that makes sense to me and works with my brain. I found my new everything planner and I'm so grateful it exists.