It’s time to gush about my September favorites! These are some of the things that were bringing me joy last month, including food, a TV show, a productivity app, and more. I hope you’ll find something of interest in this list!

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Cooking creamy vegan pasta

I tried quite a few new recipes in September with mostly great results, and I’d like to highlight a video by Rose from Cheap Lazy Vegan, in which she cooked 3 creamy vegan pasta dishes. Rose is one of my favorite Youtubers, she’s hilarious and as the name of her channel suggests, her recipes are easy and delicious!

I’ve tried 2 of the 3 recipes shown in this video, and both turned out pretty great! The main ingredient of one of them might make you dubious but it was my favorite of the 2 I tried! (You’ll know which one I mean once you see it haha). All of them are also very gluten-free friendly – all you have to do to make them gluten-free is to use your favorite gluten-free pasta and, in one case, gluten-free flour. What about you, are you team creamy sauce, or red sauce?

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Learning in a Skillshare class on Interior Design

I watched an online class called Interior Design: Interior Decorate Like a Boss taught by Rose Sprinkle on Skillshare and loved it! It included both some theoretical design principles and practical examples of how to decorate your space. As someone who has recently moved and hasn’t really dabbled much in any decorating before, I found it highly enjoyable and valuable.

I have an annual membership of Skillshare, which costs around $8 a month, and I love having unlimited access to a whole lot of classes on various topics, although I don’t take them as often as I’d like to. If you want to try Skillshare for 14 days for free, you can use my link (if you decide to sign up, that would give me one month for free).

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Playing with Notion

I feel like Notion experienced a big spike in popularity in September, which I’m all here for, because I love seeing all the ways other people are using this all-in-one, “organize-everything-in-your-life” app! I’m actually typing this very blog post in Notion while praising Notion! :- ) I’m still very new to it so I haven’t created an all-encompassing system for myself yet but besides all of my blogging stuff (blog posts, content calendar, to-dos, and resources), it also hosts my daily logs, my ultimate to-do list, wishlist, and other pages.

It’s a really complex app with lots of functions but what I love about it the most so far is its clean interface where you can organize your whole life, and also the fact that it lets you view your data from various perspectives. For example, you can create a table, in which you list blog posts on each row and add all the related information you need to keep track of, and then you can switch to a calendar view and see your publishing schedule! Honestly, it’s a dream come true for organization enthusiasts like myself.

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Watching Parks and Recreation

I’m not a huge fan of movies and TV shows (most of my watch time is spent on Youtube), and when I do watch TV, I usually rewatch my favorites (hello, Gilmore Girls and Miranda) so sometimes I’m super late to a popular series, in this case, Parks and Recreation.

I started watching this political satire sitcom a couple of weeks ago and was confused for a few episodes but since then, I’ve been absolutely loving it (I’m currently in season 3 and very exciting things are happening regarding some of my favorite characters, yay!) Watching this show has been bringing me a lot of joy so I’m really glad I finally gave it a try!

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Reading A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole

I’m a huge book lover, and although I haven’t been reading as much as I’d like to during the last few months, I read a couple of good ones in September (I literally finished only two books but it’s fine). One of them was A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole, which is the first book in an adult contemporary series called Reluctant Royals.

This book is told from a dual perspective. Naledi is an epidemiology student juggling grad school and part-time jobs. As a former foster kid, she had to learn to rely on herself and is very hesitant to get close to anyone. What she doesn’t know is that she is actually betrothed to an African prince named Thabiso, who is the sole heir to the throne in Thesolo. As we learn from Thabiso’s point of view, her parents fled the country when she was very little and died shortly after that in an accident so Naledi has no idea where she comes from.

When Naledi starts receiving emails informing her about her past and requesting she gets in touch, she ignores them as spam, which prompts Thabiso to seek her out in New York. When they meet, he is mistaken for Naledi’s new coworker and he decides to play along because he longs to get to know her outside of his royal identity and everything that goes with it. Their instant connection is intense but the question is what will happen once Naledi learns the truth.

This book was so much fun. The worlds and personalities of the two main characters were very different and it was interesting to see how they learned from each other and balanced each other out. It also touched on themes like racism and sexism, which Naledi faced at her workplace, and also dealing with a toxic friendship. I would highly recommend this book if you’re in the mood for a steamy romance and I’m looking forward to reading the next books in the series, in which we’ll follow some of the side characters.

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That’s all for my September favorites! What are some of the things YOU loved in September?