Kat likes unicorns

This summer is, for many of us, the time where we leave our home and move - to go to college or university in another city, to spend a year abroad, to stay on our own feet. Living on your own is great - whether that’d be alone or with friends. It grants you so much more freedom than living with your parents, but it also includes some burdens that might be hard to overcome at first sight. One of those is money. When living with our parents, we mostly don’t even notice all of the things our parents pay for for us. We get our pocket money, and whenever we need something but can’t afford it, we always know where we can go and ask for it. But the second we move out, there are so many things we probably didn’t even think about paying. Rent, insurances, fees, food, cleaning equipment, furniture, simply everything. And due to those rather new circumstances it’s no wonder that at one point or another we might not be having enough money anymore. So here’s my tips on saving for everyone who mi...

It’s happened to all of us - we rush to school in the morning and notice we’ve forgotten something very important. Who’s there to save us? Our locker, filled with goodies we couldn’t survive without. Well, it might not be that critical, but a locker is something that does make your life at school a lot easier. It’s always there for you, and you can use it to store so much more than just your books and PE kit. Over the years I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff in my locker, and I noticed that, while I don’t need every single item I hoarded in there, some are definitely things I wish I had in there way earlier already. So here they are - my locker essentials! You might find yourself thinking that you personally don’t need them, but I got my good use out of all of them, and perhaps you’ll find one or another thing on that list you’d like to put in your very own locker - who knows? The bare minimals of a pencil case Nobody wants to buy an entire second pencil case, but I started hav...

Listening to music while studying isn’t for everyone, and it definitely isn’t for me, however, I do listen to music while writing fiction. I feel like it does help getting into the mood your characters are in, thus helping you to describe their emotions in much more detail, but that’s just on a side note. Music can help us feel so many things. It can make us feel happy, sad, or just overly emotional. Music can add so much to our lives, and it can also help us focus. Even if it’s just to block out background noises - music does the job. It can make us feel more alert, or even more awake at times. But which music is ideal to help us focus? I created a playlist with my recommendations for you to check out. If you’d like to see it over on spotify and listen right away, click here . I’ll add to this over time, so make sure to check it out every now and then if you’re looking for more songs for your very own studying playlist. Music that I find helps me focusing usually only meets ...

Hello beautiful people of the internet, and hello July! June has been an incredibly busy month for me - I had my last final on the 28th, and I passed! Also, we had a giant heat wave going on, and that really isn't the best combination for a busy month, but we made it, and now we're finally onto the beautiful month of July! If you've seen the post about my songs of the month of June, the theme for July won't come as a surprise to you, but yes - it's penguins. I fell in love with the penguins back in 2005 when I saw the first Madagascar movie in the cinema, but I never really decided to be active in the fandom online, mostly due to my incredibly slow internet at the time. In 2011, I ran into Rica, who soon became one of my best friends and encouraged me to look into fanfiction and fanart. She was the biggest Fanguin I ever met - you should have seen her room. Everything was Madagascar, and she couldn't stop talking about it. We watched most of the TV show t...

I’ve never been a person to study a lot, and I’ve never run into problems because of that. Throughout my entire school life I’ve always had people bullying me for having so much free time, as they saw me being online or playing video games whilst they themselves were busy doing their homework or preparing for tests and exam. I feel like this has a lot to do with our school system as well. For most subjects during middle school, we only had 20 minute long tests every couple of weeks, all of which were asking for you to only repeat what had already been discussed in classes. For maths class as well as all my language courses (I took english, german, latin and french language, and let me just say, I shouldn’t have) we had one to two 45 minute long tests per semester. For language subjects, these tests had a part where you were supposed to write a text, as well as a couple of grammar exercises. On my way to the A-levels this changed for all subjects to one to two exams for which we ha...

Now that I don’t have regular lessons due to the finals coming up this summer anymore, I managed to extend this morning routine from just the weekends to the entire week. As I do have a lot of free time in the mornings now, I do have a rather complex morning routine, but perhaps it does give you some inspiration for what you could include into your very own morning routine. I usually try to wake up between 8 and 9AM, depending on how much I had to do the evening before. The first thing I do each morning is to have a glass of sparkling water. I know not many people like sparkling water, but I find it a little more refreshing than still water. Anyway, drinking something always boosts my metabolism and instantly makes me feel more awake. I get up, block the bathroom for about half an hour, get dressed and then have a morning workout. Sometimes, that’s just a couple of sit-ups, planks and some uncoordinated, but exhausting, dancing, on other days I like to go for a run or even to th...

It’s always a great thing to go to bed early, spend just a couple of minutes on social media and then fall asleep, waking up feeling amazing the next morning. It’s really a sad thing that never happens. Those five minutes on facebook, and those on tumblr, and those on twitter suddenly add up to five hours in total and result in about three hours of sleep that night. I had that phase a couple of years ago where I would just spend hours and hours talking to my friends overseas. Different time zones are really a great thing. By now I noticed that that’s not the road to success and over time I changed my time management to the point where I actually developed something like an evening routine . Since I have to wake up around 6:30am, I usually try to be in bed by 10pm. What I would consider my evening routine takes place between about 8pm and 10:30pm. To me, that’s the time to relax and end the day in a nice way. I generally try to be done with all school related things by 8pm,...

On your road to being more productive it might have come to your mind that being a morning person does have quite some positive impact on your studying routine. Not only do you not spend almost the entire weekend sleeping but also are you more awake and alert during the first lessons of your school day. So let’s become morning people, shall we? The key to waking up early is a consistent sleep cycle. Going to bed early each and every day will create a habit out of waking up early as well. Falling asleep can be quite difficult at times, but keeping your sleep cycle as consistent as possible is important. If you have difficulties falling asleep earlier than usual, try creating an evening routine that makes it easier for you to get into a more sleepy mood. Banning all electronics from your bed and having hot chocolate or a soothing bath in the evening time are just some of the many things that you might want to include. However, keep in mind that you should definitely stretch out ...

I’ve been into bullet journaling since the beginning of this year, and I must say - it’s really great. It definitely made me more productive and helped me get most of my work done in time. So I thought I’d share my spread for june with you guys. If you’d like to see me creating the spread, head over to my YouTube-channel! If you'd like to see me creating more bullet journal videos, do let me know! I'd love to share some more spreads if you're interested in seeing them! So let's look at my setup for june ! I like starting the month with a nice title page that makes me look forward to the days to come. The theme I chose for june’s title page is rather tropical and summery, but I thought it’d match quite nicely since it’s very hot outside right now. However, I didn’t go for a tropical palm tree theme throughout the entire spread - it switched to greenery and leafy vines paired with some succulents and cacti, but you'll see that later on. Mat...