Weekly Layout – Mini Time Block + Pumpkins & Mummy Text

October 21, 2017 4 Comments

Simple Weekly Horizontal Spread with Mini-Time Block with Pumpkins & Mummified text

It is nearly the end of October! What happened? This month went by faster than September! This month has had some ups and downs. I think I take on too much emotionally. I internalize everything. Journaling has helped me overcome this and get me out a slump or help me pull myself back up and keep moving on. I created a simple weekly horizontal spread with a larger place for daily ‘to dos’ and a small area for time-blocking.

This spread focuses focus on just the area of time that I am struggling with – the evening time, which is when I do a majority of my blog/video work. I find that if I am slipping into a slump of some kind simplifying gives me freedom, which reignites my creativity. This is a HUGE reason why I am an advocate for my bullet journal. I have the flexibility to change things week-to-week or even day-to-day based on what I need.

Weekly Horizontal Bullet Journal with mini-time blocking and cute pumpkin doodles

Last week I tried to time block my whole day but left little room for those pesky ‘to dos’ that creep up but don’t need a time-slot. If I start using dailies, I think that weekly overview of the time blocks would be more beneficial. I haven’t made the leap to using a daily planner yet.

Ways to use the time block

In the video, I thought I might write the tasks assigned to the time block below, using brackets to designate the tasks for the block of time. But I could instead use color to appoint blocks of time assigned to a task. Hmmm.

Left side weekly spread view, pumpkin details and time blocking are sure to warm up that inspiration | Chocolate Musings

Cohesive Weekday Plans and Off-the-Cuff Weekends

I start my weeks on Monday if nothing else to make my weekends look larger. But I like having my weekdays together – it makes things feel more cohesive. A little section for meals, general ‘to dos’, fill up what might be considered the un-scripted bottom part on the left page.

Saturday and Sunday nestle nicely together. I do not time block those days – we do lots of family things like going to the park or playing frisbee outside or in the cul-de-sac or building the tallest Lego tower ever so Lego Batman can scale to the top of the table or going to QT (QuikTrip – a local gas station that has fun drinks!) that are completely unscripted and usually spur-of-the-moment type activities. Sometimes, we just sit and watch a movie. Often times, my little girl (who is turning 6 tomorrow! – what???), will ask me to show her my art for the week and she will try out my techniques. She saw my ‘mummy video’ (see the post here on how to create mummy text) and immediately tried it out.

If I have errands or events, I will jot them down in the Saturday/Sunday slots – but those days usually stay pretty clear.

YouTube Planning Video

I created a video of my set up for this week. Watch the video below or on my YouTube Channel here. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for future videos.

Mummy Text and Script Hand Writing

I discovered that making Mummified text was so much fun – and completely appropriate for the nearing holiday, I added some mummy text to the weekday names. If you missed it, here is the tutorial for making mummy text or mummy pumpkins or mummied mummys. Whatever you wish to mummify. The orange washi tape is to mark my monthly calendar (see the set-up here). I love the sparkle!

Doodle Details

I love the days written over the top of doodled pumpkins and the swirls of the green vines on the pumpkins below. Just enough whimsy and doodle to keep the page interesting, but give enough space to write and plan and all the things.

Overall

Overall I love this Simple Weekly Horizontal Spread. It has enough space to plan and create and enough function to accommodate schedules.

Mummy text and cursive writing mix for days of the week | Bullet Journal Weekly Layout with Mini-Time Block

Weekly planner layout with mini-time block and fall doodles

Give Yourself a Little White Space – in design and life

October 10, 2017 Leave a Comment

Good morning! Well, its morning here and the start of a new day. Thank goodness for fresh starts! It is amazing what can happen when your baby doesn’t wake you up in the middle of the night. But I did have a terrible dream at the end of the night – it involved two of my old bosses. In the dream, they were Nazis and had to go through all my stuff and claim anything of worth for forgiveness of their own sins. I really didn’t want them to find my laptop but I was most upset that they were making my husband do the dirty work. The psyche is an interesting space, especially in dreams.

Looking at next week’s plans, I don’t have much on the agenda. For that, I am grateful. That dream was cause for some reflection. I think I need some downtime to organize and think about goals and priorities for the next year – just like I suggested in my last post. I like to call downtime ‘white space’. White space in design (also called negative space) is ‘the space between the design or the unprinted area’ (thank you dictionary.com). It allows your mind to rest and process the design. If you filled an entire page with ‘stuff’ in an advertisement, nothing would stand out and the message would be lost. Then it would become wasted space. The ad would fail and you would probably lose your job…eventually.

White Space in Design and Life is Necessary

White space is necessary for design. I would say it is needed for life. I refuse to call it ‘negative space‘ in context to my life – because it is anything but negative. Speaking in a design sense, the ‘negative space’ is probably the most positive space in my life. I would love to start a revolution to the term when referring to life from ‘negative space’ to ‘positive space’ because of the significant positive impact. But changing terms would be confusing and all the designers would be angry. I like what they do so I won’t start the revolution.

Leave whitespace in your life and in your planner to easily adapt to life's unpredictability and don't forget the whiteout

Correlations, Parables & Fables

I love these plays on words. I also love life correlations. In the New Testament, they are known as parables. Where there are but there are levels of understanding in a story. The more you study, the deeper the meaning. Aesop’s fables are another source for life correlations. Open for life interpretation. If you haven’t read the fables in a long time, the Kindle edition is usually very reasonably priced. I’m not saying that I have incredible insights and you should read more into what I am saying but it sure is fun to look for alternative meanings and deeper insights in the everyday.

Add Margins to Your Life and Designs

I designed this week’s layout with a significant amount of margin keeping with the simple, minimal design. Filled with white space. In my previous week’s post, I talked about my horrible day. Here is a preview of that day on my mood tracker. I woke up the next day determined to see a better day because I don’t intend to have an entire mood tracker filled with red and burgundy. What I fully intend is to have a lot of purple, yellows, and greens. I have to allow myself to recover from these bad days and the only way I know how is to leave myself some breathing room.

Mood Tracking - First Day Flop - Tracking moods by activity

How to Bounce Back

To bounce back from a truly terrible day, I knew that I needed to take full advantage of the margins I built into my days. Scale things back a little, enjoy some sunshine, make sure I play outside with my kids, go on an impromptu mini-date with my husband. Slow down and enjoy the things in my life.

Adding margin to your life allows for the unexpected. If you have room to adjust for surprises in the day-to-day you’ll be more likely to bounce back.

While I was setting up this week’s spread, I completely miscounted the top boxes. If you look closely on Friday, you can see my whiteout (though I use correction tape, not whiteout) I don’t mind using correction tape. It fixes the problem and I move on.

In life and planners whiteout mistakes and move on!

Here are some questions for you:

I’d love to know what your response is. Or you can just use them as journal prompts.

How do you plan white space into your day?
Do you include intentional downtime in your daily activities?
What impact does this have in your life?

I hope you have enjoyed a little insight into my life, my planners, and my dreams. We are all journeying to something bigger & better – at least that’s what we hope. Journaling and planning have certainly propelled me on that course.

I wrote an early post on who I give credit to here. I’d love to know who you credit in your current journey’s progression.

Remember to plan your life so you live beautifully.

~Tricia

Add margin and whitespace to your planner and your life

Hello October – Smells Like Fresh Baked Apple Pie – Monthly Welcome Page

September 28, 2017 4 Comments

Hello, October. You smell like fall. You smell like freshly baked apple pie.

If you don’t like apple pie, no worries, I’ll make apple crisp – you like that right? I’ll make extra topping.

You sound like the leaves crunching under my feet and the cool, crisp fall nights perfect for stargazing near a fire as it crackles into the night and then slowly dies to embers glowing in the moonlight. Oh Hello, October.

Hello, October. You taste like pumpkin spice.

You feel like the cozy socks I’m always tempted to wear and the heat seeping through the mug of hot chocolate as I enjoy the onset of a cooler season. If I didn’t know any better, I might say you are my favorite. Summer is fun, but it is so chaotic and unstructured. October feels like the time to slow down and enjoy life after school has started, schedules are in place, and before the craziness of Thanksgiving and Christmas set in.

October feels like a time to dream, so if it is chilly or not, if the leaves are falling or if they are staying green on the tree branches, pick up a good book, and let your imagination go. Daydream of the best times of your life. Or create a fall bucket list and enjoy this time of year.

Choosing a Theme

Halloween is always a fun theme for October. The festivities are at the end of the month, so you have a full month of enjoying little critters and ghastly ghouls. But this time, I decided to paint a pie. Truth be told, it would be the first pie I’ve ever made. Yes – that includes baking. I bake a terrific apple crisp, but I have never really attempted a pie.

Page Overview:

What I found difficult was getting the right color in the painting – showing a golden brown, not orange, and not burnt. Just enough orange and brown to make the pie look like it recently came out of the oven. The other thing is what to do between the lattice-work? I looked at lots of pictures of pies for reference and got very hungry doing it.

Overall – I’m pleased with the page – especially being that it is my first pie. The apples are my first painted apples as well. So many new things!

Typically my welcome pages for the months are on the right side, but I thought I would be great to include my monthly goals & monthly to-do list. I secretly think I just wanted to come back to this page and salivate as I look at the pie.

I know we are always overly critical of our own work, so I will admit that I like the “Hello October” but I think I could have done better on the “Monthly Goals and To Do” my spacing is a bit scrunched at the end. I’ll just put that on my to-do list for next month. That is one thing I have learned from my bullet journal. I have learned that it is ok with things that aren’t perfect. Sounds strange coming from a self-proclaimed perfectionist.

Now that this is done…

I may actually create a bucket list for October just because it has given me all the feels.

Leave me a comment and let me know what your favorite thing about fall is – and what is on your fall bucket list. I’d love some ideas! I’ve included a list of items I used in this post below. Enjoy!

Pirate Map Weekly Layout – ‘X’ Marks the Weekend!

September 12, 2017 6 Comments

We celebrate a random holiday. We started celebrating it before we found out that Krispy Kremes celebrates it too – with free doughnuts. Now we just celebrate more. Pirate costumes and swarthy accents are a staple at our house. I have to admit, the kids have now outgrown their pirate costumes, so we need to get our act together and get new costumes, because…

International Talk Like a Pirate Day
is September 19!

I had to make my week pirate themed in my bullet journal in honor of such a great day. Bring on the silly puns, the tri-corn hats, and my attempts at a pirate accent. {My husband’s fake accent is pretty good, honestly, it’s mine that is lacking.}

If Krispy Kreme is still into the pirate life, they give away a doughnut for an accent. If you dress like a pirate, you get a free dozen of their original glazed. Hoist the anchor, unfurl the sails, load up the Jolly Roger and head to Krispy Kreme for a swashbucklingly good time.

EDIT:

I found out that Krispy Kremes is not into the pirating lifestyle this year. It does not matter to me. We will still celebrate by speaking like a pirate all day long.

It’s becoming ever more popular, so expect a line sometimes going out the door. Worth it? Yes, but only if you like talking like a pirate. Which we do.

In my weekly log layout, Tuesday the 19th is not where X marks the spot – of course, X marks the spot on THE WEEKEND.

I used Prismacolor colored pencils – they are so soft and blend so well and are truly lovely pencils. My husband got them for me YEARS (really – years) ago and I put them away during the dark ages. The ‘dark ages’ is the time that I call my life when I was not doing anything really creative. I’ve found the light now.

Thought you might like some close-ups of the drawing. Shading really gives depth to the images. The skull face on the hat, I am pretty sure is alien. That mouth! I’ll practice more on skulls for next time. I love the feather plume in the hat and the treasure-hunt feel for the week. Yep, I am treasure hunting for the weekend.

I track my meal plans each week, so those are on a barrel. The Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen writes great over the colored pencil. I wrote the dates and drew the dotted line to find the treasure. I left it open to dry a little, but it has not smeared at all.

The parchment background is an uneven line with random tears drawn into it. then colored darker around the outside. The darker you color, the more lines drawn, the older and more fragile the parchment looks. Next time I am going to add some curl to the edges of the tears.

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I told you my pirate accent needed help.

Want to know what supplies I used? I’ll tell you.

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New York City Skyline Weekly Layout

September 8, 2017 1 Comment

I Found a New Love: Skylines.

I sometimes play a game called “Cities: Skylines” but that is another story. For an Instagram challenge this month, I’ve done a couple skyline outlines and, well, it carried over to my weekly theme.

My weeklies start on Monday as I was planning the weeks, I noticed that 9/11 was on a Monday this year. The date stuck out to me. September 11 is very emotional to me. I truly consider it “the day the world stopped turning”. I remember watching in horror when the second plane hit the building after the first was billowing plumes of smoke from the earlier crash. The memory of where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, embedded itself deeply into my mind. Somehow, I knew I would not be the same, I would not look at the world through the same eyes. I am a believer in love overcoming differences so the shock of such hatred was heartbreaking to me.

I am still a believer in love no matter what happened.

Years later, the twin towers rose out of the ashes united in one building instead of two. The skyline of New York has changed and so have our hearts. The only way that we can make sure this world is a better place is by filling our hearts with love and hope.

Vivid Colors

The vivid colors on this layout speak happiness to my soul. The imagery of a sunrise says that there are new beginnings with each new day. Here’s to my memories of the day the world stopped turning, and the ability to start it moving again, let’s move in a positive direction.

Colorful New York City building silhouette at sunrise and reflection | Bullet Journal Inspiration | Weekly Log

Reflections

Above the reflections in the water, I wrote the word “reflections” – a place to include a journal entry for the week. (not shown)

Watch the video of how I created the skyline below. I tell you all about the struggles and the wins of creating this page – if you like it, subscribe. I’d love to make more videos!

Have you used skylines in your planner or journal? What was your page about and which skyline did you include?