On a whim--or maybe in response to the cruddy first half of February--I bought myself a Pipsticks birthday countdown.
I'm a paper planner person, and love using stickers in my planner for function and decoration. These stickers are more the latter than the former.
I struggle with the concept of play in my personal life, but I think my use of stickers qualifies. I definitely buy them to use, not collect, though I probably have more than I could exhaust in a decade. (I tend to shop as playtime--a topic for another post.)
As of this today, I'm halfway through the countdown. It's providing a spark of whimsical joy each morning, and retrospection too, as I fill in the short journaling prompts. I'm cutting those out to save in a notebook as a little time capsule of fifty-six-going-on-fifty-seven. Or six-going-on-seven, giggling over a new sheet of stickers each day.
