January 2021 – The Writer of Letters

To Make Him Known Co. review curls up in my fuzzy sweater

Hello friends! How are you doing today? I hope you’re doing wonderfully 🙂

Today I’m back with a really exciting post, a review of ToMakeHimKnownCo.!!

Here on my blog, typically I tend to lean more towards pen-pal or journaling as that’s more my niche (as you can probably tell from the name of my blog) but I really love fashion so I’ve been wanting to dabble in more posts about it! I reached out to the lovely team at ToMakeHimKnownCo and they kindly agreed to send me a product to try and review! They sent me the ‘Make Heaven Crowded‘ crewneck which is one of my FAVORITE things in their shop, #1 because I love the quote, like it’s one of my favorites ever. And #2, because crewnecks are super comfortable which I’m all about and it’s brown which is also really cool because brown is definitely not as popular of a color for clothes I feel like. A good 50% of my hoodies and crewnecks are gray which seems to wash me out and make me look paler *or so my mother says*. Idk 🤷🏼‍♀️

Anyways let’s look at some pictures and then I’ll tell you some thoughts on it!

*Shout out to my sister for being willing to “model” the crewneck for me , isn’t she just the sweetest? Also all photos were edited with Lightroom and taken by me!

I think cuffing or rolling the sleeves looks super cute!

Adding a cute pair of jeans, some boots and chunky socks is one of my favorite looks!

Do you know how hard it is to get the crewneck position just right so the wording looks good?!

I’m quite proud of my pictures for this post 🙈

Especially this one, I love this picture!

And this one! We took pictures back at the pond behind our house and I really like how they turned out 🙂

Overall, I give this lovely sweater a 10/10. I found no cons with it! Typically with sweaters that have words or designs on them when you wash them it can peel or crack the words but even after washing this sweater I didn’t see anything that would leave me to believe that would happen! It’s such a warm, fuzzy crewneck and I absolutely love the design. Check it out right now, here! The price is also really affordable and good for a crewneck, I definitely would buy this again without a second thought! It’s a great addition to my closet 🥰

A huge thanks to the team at ToMakeHimKnownCo. for collaborating with me, I really enjoyed working with y’all!

What picture from this post was your favorite? How’s your day going? What’s you favorite color right now?

Thank you so much for reading, and have a lovely day!

x, Jasmin

What I got for Christmas! hugs my friends

Hello friends! How are you? I hope you’re doing wonderful!

Today I’m back with the last of my seasonal posts for the 2020 Christmas season because we just had our last gift exchange last week! It was with two of my good friends, who for privacy reasons, we’re gonna call the S+S. My sister and I met S+S while playing softball a couple years ago and have been really good friends ever since! For our Christmas gift exchange, we decided to switch it up and do a white elephant type gift exchange, which I really enjoyed. I figured I’d hop on and do a haul today because I always love reading others hauls! Just as a disclaimer, I am in no way, shape, or form trying to brag about what I got, I just enjoy reading these kinds of posts and thought it would be fun to post! Now, let’s get onto it 🙂

Photos edited with Lightroom, as usual 🙂

Ahh I love everything in this picture!!

We each bought 3 gifts, staying in or around a $15-$20 price range, so we each got 3 gifts. We also got a pair of dice of and took turns rolling them. Whoever rolled highest got to pick a gift first, and we did 3 rounds of that! I thought it worked really well!

For this gift, I received this superrr cute yellow mug! Yellow is such a happy color in my opinion and just generally reminds me of light and sunshine so this will be a really nice cup to drink my coffee put of in the morning when I’m feeling a bit moody. Hopefully it will cheer me up 😉 I also got a pack of gum and a thing of tic tacs which was great because duh, who doesn’t want tic tacs and gum?? Also has anyone ever noticed how cute the inside flap of the gum wrapper is? This one says something about 18 sticks of gum=18 opportunities to make new friends or something and I think its so adorable.

Next, I got this cute little spiky room decor thing! I don’t know quite how to describe it but I think it’s really cute and it’s now sitting on my shelf in my room! I also got a bag of this chocolate which is some of the best chocolate in the world imo, especially when it has caramel in it! Safe to say I really really enjoyed this gift 🙂

ahhh all the pretty bujo/pen pal vibes from these pics!

For my final gift, I got some markers, which are always handy and these super cute stickers! I really love the camper stickers, and the colors are the cutest. I adore the little yellow jeep 🥰 And I got some Washi tape!!! I love Washi tape, its so fun and easy to just overall amazing for pen paling or bullet journaling (which, btw I want to start bujo-ing more, I’m hoping to get a February setup done sometime 🤞🏼) But anyways, I love the Washi tape, or actually I love the whole gift!

And that wraps up this gift exchange! Ooo that would almost be a good pun, get it? Like “wrap” like gift wrap? Ooo ahhh. yeahhh. Points at brain bc “big brain time.” (about that last few sentences. I can’t wait to look back at it in a couple….minutes and realize how cringe it sounds. I apologize. But hey, you only live once so go ahead and point out the bad puns.

Okay now that I just rambled for 3 minutes in that last paragraph, I wanted to say a big thank you to the lovely person you are for reading this post, I appreciate it so much!

Do you like secret Santa or white elephant gift exchanges better? What did you get for Christmas? What present would’ve you chose given the choice?

xx, Jasmin

Seventeen Syllables poetry book review. pt. 1 falls back onto bed in pure happiness

Hello friends! How are you? I’m doing wonderfully today, especially since I’m writing this post and you. guys. I’m so over-the-top excited for this review! I’ve done quite a few reviews but this is definitely going to the top of my list as one of my favorites.

Let me give you a bit of back story. Lori Hetteen, one of the loveliest people on Etsy, kindly agreed to send me her own two poetry books from her Etsy shop, lorihetteen. She has two books of poetry that she has for sale on her shop, both of which are absolutely, positively amazing in very way and I’m so very happy with them!

Now, with these poetry books I don’t want to spoil too much of the insides of them for you, especially if you are to buy them! But a struggle I came across was while trying to pick my favorite pieces of poetry to share with you, I couldn’t decide. So I decided to split this review up into two posts, and in this post I’ll review the Seventeen Syllables book! Now to show you some of my favorites pieces from the book, and to share some lovely pictures! Let’s go!

*All photos edited with Lightroom preset 🙂

The cover!! AHHH I’m in love, it’s so simple but beautiful and happy n carefree ✨

The cutest intro page in my opinion 🥰

This page is quite explanatory if you read it, but ill sum it up for you once more. Lori often adds little notes, thoughts or explanations about the main piece of poetry. When she does this, she adds it to the bottom of the right hand page and it’s honestly one of my favorite things. It just helps expound more and really gets you thinking!

I love this!! I feel like a lot of the poems and pieces are about this but honestly this is one of the best reminders for me. There’s goodness in every stage, as long as we look for it. This relates back to last year, 2020, where a large majority of the year sucked but there was good. Quite a bit of good if you ask me. And i’m not saying 2020 was a “good” year, in fact it was quite pitiful but i’m choosing not to dwell on that, and instead to think of the more happier, positive things 🙂

I really love this one. I love the little definition/explanation or expanding on the haiku. I find it fascinating how its mentioned in the poem, we keep picking us. It’s so true and to look back at my life and realize how I chose my friends or how they chose me is mind boggling, it’s really something to think about.

A lovely piece of encouragement and such a good reminder. God’s got this, Even the ravens and the Lillies know that.

People like sunshine. They’re truly the best ❤

My mindset and hopeful mentality. It’s sometimes hard to keep a positive outlook on life but it makes all the difference.

The strugglessss. Especially of an awkward, socially incompatible teen like me. But we can do it. And I love the reminder of the right picture, “give up the act..” Yessss!! Exactly. Let’s all just be the real us and I think we shall get along fine.

Amen sister, amen.

I’m obsessed with this one. *realizes I’ve said this about almost everyone so far* 🤦🏼‍♀️ But it’s true! The journey is what matters most in my opinion. It’s hard though to not want to rush to the end, to get to “the good part” but trust me, the journey. is. worth. it.

And that wraps up the pictures! I hope that wasn’t too many and I hope you weren’t bored, I certainly enjoyed reading through the book!

For a final review of Lori Hetteens poetry book, Seventeen Syllables, I’d like to give it a glowing review. Lori was so sweet and responsive and kind, truly wonderful to work with and everything about Seventeen Syllables completely amazed me. The pieces of poetry were relatable and just, so perfect and really good reminders of good life lessons, be thankful for the journey, treasure every moment, be kind and reach out. Continue to pick “us” and never look back.

Please please check out Lori’s shop, here’s a link to it! and a link to Seventeen Syllables 🙂 And as always, if you end up ordering this book, reach out to me! I have a contact page on my website and I would absolutely adore to rant and rave about this poetry or almost anything under the sun. Keep an eye out for the second post of this review, where I’ll be looking at The Moon says Hello, and have a wonderful day!

Which piece of poetry from this post was your favorite? How was your day today? How’s 2021 going for you? Did you check out Lori’s shop?

thanks for reading lovely,

xx, Jasmin