My New Filofax

Hey There,

Today has been an exciting day in the Hales House. I brought down most of our Christmas decorations and began setting up my vignettes to see what needs to be filled in. We have family coming in for Thanksgiving so I have plans to put them to work on house lights as soon as I can. My goal is to put our tree up on Black Friday so it will be like they get to celebrate both holidays with us. I think it a good plan, let's hope it works out.

Now on to the real reason of this post, my new Filofax Compact Sage Botanics. I have wanted a Filofax as soon as I learned about them but never felt I could justify the cost when I had perfectly good Day Timers and Franklin Coveys. I mentioned in my last post how I spent time browsing eBay for a new to me Filofax and found a perfect match. I'm very grateful to the seller because she accidentally posted it for $15 without auction and honored her listing. I offered to pay for shipping but she declined. On top of all that, she included paperclips, dividers, project life cards, and even some Filofax note paper.

I lived in her setup for a couple weeks until I finally had a pretty good idea how I wanted to set it up for my current needs. I knew I wanted to DIY all my inserts in order to use up some of my stash. I ended up using my Planner Society Kit supplies to make everything. This is perfect because I was beginning to doubt the kits were my style since I had no inspiration for them before now. When it was all done, I had a dashboard, two dividers, and one flyleaf for the back.

These are by far my favorite shots. I love to have lots of clips sticking out the top of my planner. And that planner girl... she is so charming! The best part of this dashboard may be the word stickers {Be True, Be Kind, Be Thankful, Be Fabulous, Be Giving, Be Fearless, Be You}.

Here are my two dividers and flyleaf. Yes, only two! I currently only need my weekly pages and a brain dump. It's a compact size so I am taking it slow in filling it to the max. You may not be able to see the labels but the calendar dividers says "#sheplans" and the notes divider says "#checkthat". The labeled tabs are the brainchild of Christy Tomlinson and she graciously included them in our October TPS kits. The flyleaf is to cover the zipper and I can use it for any miscellaneous stuff I need back there.

One more shot of my planner girl and the pockets I get to fill with pretties. I'm testing out my DIY inserts before attempting to share them here. If you have any favorites, I would love to hear about 'em.

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to my new planner. I'm feeling pretty hopeful I'll be able to make this one work for the long haul.

2015 Planner Layouts, Weeks #41-45

Hey There,

Now that I'm getting back on track with my planner, I have three weeks of planner layouts to share today. I finally got my groove back for week#41 and decked out my planner for Fall. This is by far one of my favorite seasons so I love how it turned out.

I you're like me you probably noticed that I haven't checked everything off. Yep, I either didn't get it done or just didn't mark it down. I'll claim the latter, but I highly doubt it.

Moving right along to the week of Fall Break! For week# 42, I'm pretty sure I was itching to do a Halloween theme but it was just too soon.  Instead, I chose to do a transition toward it but not venturing too far from my Fall vibe. Since it was a full week of two boys at home, I was hopeful I would get to do some of the things on my list but not really expecting it to happen.

The two weeks following Fall Break were completely unplanned and mostly uneventful. The highlight of week #43 was when I received my Planner Society Kit. Happy mail in your sick bed is the best! After a week of self medicating, I spent week# 44 recovering from an allergic reaction from the antibiotics for Bronchitis.

Yea, these weren't the most memorable weeks for my planner. I was dying to get back to planning but just didn't have the motivation for anything but rest. I will say, I had a lot of time to think about how my planning situation was working out for me. After all my research and excitement to get my Happy Planner, I'm not so enamored with it now. I feel I've given it a fair trial as a daily planner but it just isn't suiting what I need during this season of my journey.

I thought transitioning from a full letter size planner to this would work out great but it's still more than I need. My last option was to move back into one of my smaller Day Timers OR finally make the plunge into the Filofax world. I'm happy to say after much patience, and lots of eBay browsing, I am the proud owner of my first Filofax Compact Sage Botanics. I plan to write an introductory post on her soon so I won't mention much more now. All this to say, week#45 was my first week of trying her out. I had no inserts so I got to get creative and draw out what I thought I wanted in my weekly set up. This weeks layout is a draft of what I came up with for the basic sheets I printed for the rest of November.

Well, that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed my planner layout catch up session. I've already made my own dashboard, dividers, and inserts for my Filofax that I can't wait to share real soon.

Hey Girls!

Hey There!

I have seriously missed my time on here! I don't really like doing "MIA" post so I'll skip it and keep moving forward. I'm so desperate to get back into the swing of blogging that I'm willing to do a picture-less post. This is serious, y'all! I broke my desktop computer, and my netbook refuses to connect to my wifi, so all I can do is use my iPad until circumstances improve. At this point, since there are maybe three people that even read this blog I'll say it's all good.

I jokingly told a friend last night that I should do a shout out since a couple of them discovered this little hobby of mine. Why is it so intimidating to know IRL friends might read what I write? So a shout out I shall do! Now promise me you'll let me know if you've been stalking!

After talking with you guys about being a "blogger", and mentioning my original blog I had in 2012, I went down memory lane. It was a lifestyle blog so I wrote about parenting, family history, cooking, crafting, and anything in between. Looking back, I'm proud of what we accomplished in that space. We documented some really good memories and current (at the time) events. All this to say, if your really interested in checking it out try this link. End Shout Out.

So what is my plan now? I've been off track with my planner so that is a priority and I'll do a catchup session for those. I also ordered a Filofax because the Happy Planner is just too bulky to carry in my purse. I think that will be a post all its own to discuss what my plans are for those two. I'm still trying to figure out the best use for my newbie and how I want to customize my inserts. It's a little challenging not having computer access so I'm not sure how soon that will be.

Other ideas I have been pondering include sharing some of my printables (old and new), increasing my IG presence, and whether or not I want to jump on the etsy bandwagon. I'm not really sure, I still have some evaluating to do to see how much effort I really want to put into this hobby. That's it for now, thanks for stopping by.