2015/08/10

My planner

I´m been extremely busy with all our building work! It`s been quite long since I last really built something, so I must confess I´m aching all over ;) . I´m glad though that I´ve had practice to use a nail gun, table saw and other tools! The last couple days I´ve spent on the roof of our future firewood "shed" ;). As soon as we get it painted I can show you some photos! There is going to be a small part for my son´s toys and for my things :). I look forward the organization project :). Yep, I LOVE to organize!


But today, I wanted to tell you about my new planner. I haven´t used a planner for a couple of years as I have used my phone`s calendar. I have lately noticed that my memory isn´t the same anymore, probably due to medication and stress. I thought long what I should do to really remember things and what to use to write things down. 

I have always admired people with beautiful planners! So that was my choice too! I opted to buy a planner cover with rings. That way I could use the actual cover for many years to come and only replace the planner pages.

I searched for a nice planner cover and found many possible ones! I loved Kikki K`s planners, but sadly all those lovely teal/turquoise ones were sold :(. Also Webster´s pages has lovely Color Crush planners, but guess what? All my favorite colors were sold out! I probably should have thought about buying one in December ;) to really get a color I want! Then I found Filofax site and this lovely aquamarine cover! 


I loved that with Kikki K and Color Crush you can buy lovely stickers and dividers etc. with the planner. Filofax don´t have those same options. From Etsy you will find many dividers, stickers and other stuff you can use to personalize your planner! I splurged and bought the cover, so I decided to save some money by making my page dividers etc. myself. With the planner cover I did get year 2015 planner pages, page dividers, note pages... None of them really were my style! And those pages were made of very thin paper.

I turned to Etsy to find a solution! I do love Jennifer Jones` from I heart Organizing planner, but it´s not really my style. So I searched and searched and finally found CrossbowPrintables. I loved the black and white design (we only have a black and white laser printer ;) ) and the style. I ordered several bundles and everything worked fine! It takes some more time to really learn what things I want and need from a planner, but these printables have worked fine so far!

  

I love this weekly view! I can write up meetings, hobbies, my son´s daycare times etc. There is also a little notes section under each day and under each page. I use them to write down daily menus, birthdays, to-do lists and all those extra notes :).


I also bought pages for my projects. I have pages for marking the work hours, meeting notes,ideas and sketches. It really helps when planning a project for someone else. In the above picture you can only see, that I divide those different projects with special pages for easy access. With the Filofax planner came also that plastic ruler. It´s perfect for sketching or drawing straight lines ;).


Even thought there are tons of different page dividers available, I wasn`t prepared to pay much and on the other hand wanted something to suit my style! The answer - Doing it myself! I bought a few cardstocks, printed some free geometric pattern pages and used those CrossbowPrintables quotes printed on a basic white paper. I also had some old scrapbook papers I used, and the total cost for all these personal pages was around 15 euros. Not bad ;)

I decided to make a different main page for each section, for meals, projects, lists, budget, blog and notes!


With that 15 euros I was able to make also these dividers! I used black card stock for the yearly calendar and turquoise for the others. I decided to only keep a six months of planner pages because I used a thicker paper to print them and they all would not have fitted in the rings ;).


For the month tabs I used an old card stock I had. I cut 3cm wide piece and clued a two sided tape on the other side. Then I folded it in half and cut out a piece for every month. Then I used my label maker to make those dividers!

The months can be seen along the long side. On the short side there is also tabs!


I made black tabs for the other pages and placed them on top of the dividing pages. That way it`s easy to find what I´m looking for! You may also wonder what is that turquoise tab! It`s a divider or exactly a mark for my calendar. I mark the current week, so it´s easy to find the ongoing week.


I ordered some embellishments from an Etsy shop P.s planning supplies and from Badges Folie for my cards and overall crafting! Some of them I used to decorate my planner, too ;). But really you don`t need that much to make a planner to look like you :). 


Here you can see how I`ve used some of those arrows and tapes to mark certain things in the planner. As I use this a little longer, I´ll be back to show you what kinds of systems I have come up with!
I´ll learn along the way :)


I just happened to bought a new pen and after a few times using it, knew it was just the perfect one for my planner! It`s Pilot`s FriXion ball pen and the best part is that it´s removable using the other end of the pen! These are available in many colors and I´m dreaming of buying a few to mark different things in different colors. I probably have to order them online as we don`t have many colors here in Finland!


On the photo below you can see almost everything I needed to make this planner more ME. I also used my label maker and needed a printer for many papers and the planner pages! It´s many times a good thing to have quite a minimal style ;)


So, what do you think? Can you guess this is my planner ;)? If you have a planner, do you make it yours in some way? I`d like to know!

Our building projects are in a good shape, so I hope to be able to post here more often! See you here again!


Warmly,
Jenni