I have always been old-school when it comes to schedules and calendars. I'd much rather write an appointment down in a date book than enter it into a cell phone or computer calendar. I have a couple of date books on the go - one is purse sized and the other is desk sized. But I always wanted to take the next step...
I've been ogling all the pretty, decorative yet functional planners on Pinterest for a long time. I've looked jealously at all the creative ways people come up with to organize their lives. I want to be one of those people too. Well I finally took the plunge! After a couple years of trying to decide which planner was the right one for me... Filofax? Erin Condren? Daytimer? Cheap generic one from the Dollar Store? Even printing my own... I stumbled upon the one that is perfect for me.
I found the Create 365 The Happy Planner from Me and My Big Ideas just by accident a couple weeks ago. It's not one of the more popularly pinned planners for some reason, but I feel it should be! I ordered the optimistically titled "Good Things Are Going to Happen" one and waited. And waited. And waited. It was on backorder, probably because they were getting geared up for 2016. My planner finally arrived and I excitedly opened it up and just about melted into a pile of giddy goo. It has a monthly calendar on two pages so you can keep your month organized in one place and actually keep track of all appointments there. But it also has two pages per week with little rectangles for morning, afternoon and evenings. This is where I found my bliss!
I have been immersing myself into decorating each section, while keeping track of my appointments and significant daily happenings. I have been using washi tape and stickers, and different coloured ink for colour coding my life. Doctor appointments are in pink, physiotherapy is green, my husband's appointments are in dark blue, I use aqua blue for fun "me" things like mani/pedi appointments or lunch dates.
What I think I appreciate the most about this particular planner though is the system they used to hold it together. It's like the Levenger or ARC system. The rings slip into little slits that look like mushrooms and they are so easy to remove to write on and then quickly replace into the book. You can buy larger rings than the ones that come with the planner so you can expand to hold little extras like the cards that you can buy on the MAMBI website.
My pretty planner
It's definitely nowhere near as elaborate as some of those Pinterest ones, but I'm satisfied with it. The only problem I have is that when I've finished doing one page, I have to wait until tomorrow to do the next one!
I didn't stop there though. I also have wanted to keep an art journal but hadn't really been able to decide how or what exactly I wanted. Well, I finally worked that out too. I found a beautiful leather hand-bound journal with handmade paper on Amazon that was really reasonably priced and incredibly high quality. I played around with it for a while, trying to find my style. I discovered that I'm not so much interested in actual art journaling as just journaling and making it look pretty.
My Journal
