Bullet Journal

Recently I spent far too much time on Pintrest. I guess I'll come clean; this wasn't the first time. Haha. 

I am slightly obsessed with planners, planning, lists, and all things crazy organization. Listing helps alleviate my anxiety about upcoming events and life in general, so I do it often. The wonderful thing I discovered is called Bullet Journalling. Here is a link to the site that started it and how to get started. 

I was so inspired by the following, please take a look, I'm sure you will love them too! 

http://www.bohoberry.com/bullet-journal-update/

http://www.tazandbelly.com/

http://www.bohoberry.com/bullet-journal-hacks/

http://aprons-n-pearls.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-peek-into-my-2014-planner.html

This morning I ran straight out to target to get started. I decided on Moleskine, since they make my favorite journals. The covers are soft and they offer blank, lined, dotted, and quad paper. I chose dotted. I normally would choose quad, but most of the planners I was inspired by were dotted, and I wanted to give something new a try this year. 

Here is the journal I chose. It's the 5.1"x8.2" soft cover. It has a rubber band to keep it closed and a book marker to keep your page. I love the paper moleskine chooses. It's thin enough to be reasonable, but thick enough to keep ink bleed to a minimum. This one has a pocket in the back to put loose papers or receipts. I think I'll put stickers in there, because who doesn't love stickers. I picked mine up at Target for about $20. 

What coloring and writing utensils do I like? That is a hard question because I love all kinds of different pens and pencils. I want to keep my planner consistent, so I'm going to bag all my writing utensils separate from the bulk of my collection.

I like these colored pencils for the few things I'll be coloring in, I'll show you some examples further down. I bought my set at Walmart, but they don't carry them anymore. Here is a listing on amazon for the ones I like, but you can use any basic set of colored pencils. I don't need that many colors, so right now I'm using a 12 pack. 

For writing and heading, There are a couple different products I like. 

I really like the Elk Tools Journaling Pens. I bought this set at Target for labelling my Christmas card envelopes this year. I love how they turned out. They have a .45mm tip and there are 8 colors. I only wish they had a larger color pack. 

I also like these Staedtler fineliner pens. They are my husband's favorite pens, and I like them for a felt tip. Last school supplies season, Target had a buy one get one half off, so I got the large color set for myself and my sister. 

The last pens I like are the Sharpie pens. I purchased my set at Target, but they are available at Walmart, Staples, and Amazon as well in various colors depending on your needs. I got both the fine and medium tips for different things. 

From thickest to thinnest: Sharpie pens med, Elk Tools Journaling Pens, Sharpie Fine and Staedtler Triplus Fineliner are about the same. 

I also plan on using some Washi tape for marking long term events in my calendar and decorating various pages. 

Now onto my pages... 

I don't think they are perfect, but that is the beauty of this system. If I don't like something this month or this week, I can do it different the following week or month. 

I started with an Index. This will be a work in progress, as I add pages, I will add to the index. I left two pages for this. I labelled them "I" instead of with a page number. 

Page number 1 begins my actual journal. I used this for my Key. I will add key items if I think of any extras later. 

Pages 2 and 3 are my 2016 Year in Review. I used these pages to document anniversaries, birthdays and holidays. This helps a lot with purchasing Birthday cards and long term planning. 

Pages 4 and 5 are for my January Calendar. I don't want to bog the days down, so they are just for major events. The heavier planning will go in the day to day. 

Page 6 is for my January Goals. Here is where I will write items I want to complete this month, but not on an exact day. There are also goals that are collective, like lose 3 lbs, etc. 

Page 7 is my habit tracker. This new year I am trying to form better habits like walking the dog every day without skipping, logging my food in myfitnesspal, and things of that nature. I log those here. I color in each box if I accomplished that task that day. I also added things like "crochet". I like to crochet, and it is also my business, so it will be interesting to look back at the end of the month at the number of days I crocheted. Here is where I used the colored pencils. 

Starting with page 8 are my daily plans and notes. These include appointments, to-dos, errands, and other notes. I didn't make these a designated size since each day has different demands. There are days I work on my thesis in the lab that I will have several pages of notes and others that are home chore days with just a few bullet points. I also put money I have spent that day in red and money earned in green to help me keep track of business earning and spending at a glance. I will probably create a separate page for this at some point. 

   

That is as far as I have made it today, but I'll post an update when I move forward with this fun new planning and journaling experience. 

I hope this will keep everything organized and in one place. I no longer will have a personal journal, crochet, school, thesis, and business. This year I'll keep it all in one place! 

Happy journaling and hooking friends!