2015 Planner Decorated

Start of a new year means a new beginning for most things. I have shared my DIY planner in my previous posts, here, here and here. Despite making my own, I still have yet to find 'planner peace'. My main grouse will be the heaviness and bulkiness of my DIY planner making it hard for me to bring out. After much deliberation, I decided to spilt up my planner.

 

I left all my stock lists, my finance papers for my store in the original planner file. This will serve as my working file for my store. I also realize that I am less likely to lug my main planner out as I am generally at home, going out only at most once or twice a month running errands. I thus need a lightweight planner to serve as my to-do list, shopping lists etc when I am outside. I also recently purchased a leather planner which will serve as my main planner where I decorate and do my daily reflection.

 

I was ready to stop here, not wanting to drown myself in planners! Alas! I had to discover that I need a brain dump, for all the ideas that I have floating in my brain. Up till now, my 'brain dump' had been whatever scraps of paper I could lay my hands at that moment. I realize that I needed a more permanent place for all these ideas so that I could return to them or keep them as reference. So yes, ANOTHER planner! GEEZ!

 

Using my firstborn's current pet phrase - 'O~M~G!' I am so not willing to have so many but I also know I need to try them out and see if it works. So here goes nothing.......

 

First of all, my main planner. This will be the main one that I decorate as I plan to incorporate the pages into my Project Life albums. My reflections will also be there, making it easier for me to refer to for my photo journaling. I decided to do away with all types of pages and purchased A6 plain grid paper. Why not plain paper then? In deference to my innate OCD of wanting straight lines, I know I needed some form of guidelines. I tried out with one day a page format but found myself running out of space to write both my to-do list and reflection on the same page. Yea, I am very longwinded :P So, I will next try a day on two page and let's see how it goes :)

Some examples of my a day in two page which I had found it worked wonderfully for me! I use one side for my to-do list and the facing page for my reflections, making it a piece of cake to refer and cross reference. It also will have an air of authenticity as these pages will reflect what I have taken in photos and in my reflections/journaling.

 

 

I have also decided to file my planner pages alongside my weekly PL layouts in the PL album. For the uninitiated, PL = Project Life, a memory keeping system that I have been doing for the past 3 years. It consists mainly of photos, keepsakes like ticket stubs and my journaling of what happened. As my daily planner pages will have my reflection for the day, it will only make sense to put them together and my kiddos will get a good sense of what happened on a particular along with my thoughts. Does it work? You bet it does! I have heard my gals commented ever so often that they had forgotten this or that. It was awesome seeing them relive the memories and emotions. Fast forward to 10 years later, this will truly be priceless memories. If you like to find out more, go here :) They now even have an iPhone app for this which makes it so much easier storing memories on the go and have them print out all done! I am oh-so-tempted to get the app!

Anyhow, I digress. As I was saying, I plan to file in my planner pages so I have made effort to decorate them and also make a start page for each week for easier 'filing'. An example of my start page for Week 4 of 2015 :)

 

My 'brain dump' planner will too be having grid paper but at A5 size to accommodate the various drawings and ideas that I would need to sketch out. This will be filed in yet another Daiso A5 file. However, this will be a soft file instead of the hard one for my store as I envision I may need to bring this file out if I am sourcing for materials. No unnecessary weight please.

 

Lastly, the functional lightweight planner that I have again purchased from Daiso - LONG LIVE DAISO! This will be the one that I carry around always, with all essential dates, events, appointments, to-do lists etc. No major décor here, mainly functional.

 

More details will be shared on each planners in future posts along with my review as I work through them :) In case you are interested, I purchased both the A6 and A5 grid papers from NBC at Raffles City. It is definitely reasonably priced and with member discount of 10%, definitely worth the buy!

 

I have also started on a new by-project this year, inspired by a Instagram post of someone I followed. It forces me to look at a particular part of my day and capture the memories. So far it had worked out great :) More on this in my next post :)
Have a creative weekend!