Planner Friday - July

Who's ready for another Planner Friday?  Please pop over to the Trendy Twine blog and check out my latest post!

It's finally summer and the schools have broken up for the holidays here in the UK!  I am all set for fun in the sun, days out and lots of adventures which I want to document in my cute little travellers notebook and Annie's Paper Boutique have the perfect stamps to help me do it!

Products used: Choose Happy stamps

Documenting The Everyday stamps

Documenting The Everyday #2 stamps

Used but not pictured: Mini calendar card

Camera paper clip

Kraft tag-its

How's The Weather stamps

You & Me stamps

Perfect Pairs stamps

Foodies stamps

Drinks & More stamps

I wanted to create a spread I could fill in whenever something memorable happened during the break so I got out my stamps and planning essentials and set to work!

My summer holiday spread

I started with a strip of washi tape along the top of the page and then added a sweet mini calendar which I filled in with the dates for August.  I am going to use this to record any important dates during the month and the week my husband has booked off work.

I used stamps from the Documenting The Everyday #1 & #2 sets to make sections for my memories and stories so now I have space for Family Time, So Fun, Time With Friends and room for my favourite photo I take over the summer.

Creating sections

I stamped my kraft tag-it with the Details stamp from the Documenting The Everyday #2 set and glued it next to the place I had made for my photo so I can write about when and where the picture was taken and why it is important to me.

You can read the rest of my post here.

Thanks for stopping by!

My summer of freewheeling and dirty planning

First off I have to say I have no idea where summer went, I feel like I blinked and missed it!  Things were very quiet here on the blog for a couple of reasons, the first is I was freewheeling.  The six week summer holiday is the one time of year where I don't have to stick to a strict schedule and I can just coast along.  There are no assemblies, presentations, concerts, performances, games, or workshops I need to attend, I don't need to set an alarm for the mornings and on the whole everything is more relaxed and unstructured.  Because I have a lot less going on I don't need to rely on my planner as much as I do during the rest of the year, this leads us to my second reason.... dirty planning.  

Dirty planning

This is a term I heard in one of the planner groups on Facebook and it tickled me.  Dirty planning means no decoration, no fuss, just scribbling things down and not a scrap of washi tape in sight!  The only reminders I needed in my planner over the summer were for paying bills, birthdays and my husband's work schedule.  I knew I wouldn't have to check these multiple times a day so it didn't seem worth the effort to decorate my pages.  Instead I popped everything into my Dodo Pad inserts, they already have their own doodles and quotes on them which is more fun than blank pages and I didn't feel the need to liven them up.  It was kind of nice to take a break from washi, stamps and stickers for a while and it has made me enjoy playing with them even more now I am back to using them again.

Here are a few things I did over the summer:

* I received this gorgeous letter from Lucy of Quill London earlier in the year, I thought the envelope was so pretty I didn't want to throw it away so I turned it into a pocket to keep bits and pieces in my planner.

Envelope into planner pocket

* I have been in my Van der Spek organiser for over 12 months now, I still love it and I have no intention of moving out of it any time soon!

Planner peace

* The Color Run Birmingham (the happiest 5k on the planet), what an amazing day!  I can't wait to go again next year! 

Clouds of colour

It's a messy business

* I went on holiday, I adore being by the sea and spent as much time as I could on the beach.  I took my travellers notebook with me and had some fun filling it with memories and stories.  I will be showing you some of my pages from it next Friday so keep an eye out for that post.

Ilfracombe beach

Ilfracombe harbour

My Van der Spek travellers notebook

I think that's everything and we are all caught up now, I have a few My Weeks to share with you so I will be working on those next.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you had a great summer too!