Am I a planner/journal junkie?

This post is dedicated to my bestie, Dianne Sylvan, with whom I share a love of planners, journals, writing, art, and coffee. You can check out her books and blog here 

Every Thursday, for years now, we meet at our favourite coffee shop, with occasional breaks because of holidays or finals at the university (the students all think a coffee shop is the place to study; they’re right of course), to write, chat, engage in snark (usually about the clueless college students around us), share journaling supplies, especially washi tape ¹, and generally enjoy each other’s company and a night away from home.

As I wrote in the last couple of posts, we’re under the duress of a pandemic: quarantines, lock-downs, shelter-in-place orders, and of course idiots. As a result, our favourite coffee shop has been closed and Sylvan and I couldn’t sit together even if it were open. So, we’ve been meeting via Zoom². The Zoom meetings often include her roomie/BFF, who is also a very close friend of mine, occasionally my husband, and the combined menagerie of cats and dogs.

Among other things last night, we were talking about people on YT presenting their “planner lineup for year XXXX.” And our question was, “WTF do you do with that many planners, woman? You’d not have time for anything else.” I decided to watch a couple to see. The queen seems to be novelist Sarra Cannon 

19.

Yes, 19.³

She, of course, has caveats for a few of them and admits that by the end of the year she might not be using all 19. (NB: she never mentioned a number. I had to watch the whole thing twice to get the count right.)

You can either watch the video yourself or save yourself 47 minutes and get the Cliff’s Notes here. Not all of these are planners and some planners are used more as journals, so here we go.

1.        Hobonichi Weeks in a pink Foxy Fix leather cover. Goes everywhere with her, is her wallet, daily expenses, weather, appointments, events, expenses, weekly income.

2.       Hobonichi Techo⁴ Original, A6, Part of her evening routine , track tarot readings

3.       Hobonichi Cousin, A5. Morning routine, signs, affirmations, synchronicities, journaling issues she’s dealing with, something she’s reading, meditation, insights, mental health

4.       Hobonichi 5-year Techo. 5-year diary

5.       A5, 6-ring with her own HB90 quarterly planner. Changes covers monthly (has 15+ of them), and the colour scheme etc., but the “guts” stay the same, just changes quarterly. Goals, monthly, weekly, daily pages, tasks, business to-dos, social media planner, writing sprints, ideas for Heart Breathings (her YT channel), vision board.

6.       Classic Happy Planner. Meal planning, food tracking

7.       Erin Condren LifePlanner (ECLP) Colourful Classic, vertical. Memory journal for her kids, family

8.       ECLP Neutral Classic. Everything to do with writing career, promotional ideas

9.       EC Deluxe Monthly Neutral, July-June. Planning Heart Breathings, blog, courses. This kind of planner has only monthly spreads and at least half of it is lined notebook paper.

10.   EC Deluxe Monthly Neutral. Family budget

11.   EC On-the-Go Folio. Wellness, habits, gratitude, self-care, and a blank dot-grid for journaling.

12.   ECLP Classic, Horizontal. Family gaming journal, track games, characters, fun things that happened, also the anime the watch.

13.   EC soft cover, hourly. Time tracker.

14.   Astro Moon Diary. Used only for the images and the information it contains.

15.   Chic Sparrow Traveler’s Notebook (TN) A5. Used in meditation area, journaling, dreams.

16.   Webster’s Pages composition-size cover, with May Designs composition notebook. Notes on the last two books of her series.

17.   TUL disc binder. Contact information and information on coaching sessions with her coaching clients.

18.   iPad with Good Notes app: amber McKee’s Fresh Start planner workbook.

19.   Old, Deluxe (full-size) Happy Planner. Converted into a plotting notebook

So. If there’s someone out there with more, I really do not want to know.  Granted, as I said, some of these are journals and not strictly for the year 2020, but still. Yikes.

But then, I got to thinking, how many planner-type things am I using? Well, let’s check it out, remembering I don’t always keep up with them.

1.       An Erin Condren LifePlanner (ECLP) coiled neutral, vertical, which I have not touched since I got back from my ill-fate trip to the UK. March is full of plans, departures, arrivals, hotels, notes on places to go. April has a couple of doctor’s appointments, which have all been canceled, and then POOF. I think I’m going to turn this into a planner for my book; maybe it’ll help me stay on track (hahahahahaha).

2.       Cultivate What Matters Powersheets. I hadn’t touched these either after I got back, up until last week. They’re very trendy and mostly for people who actually have a life and give a fuck, but I thought what the hell. And I was trying to use them, but the plague kinda derailed it.

3.       My trusty faux TN, regular size. Sylvan gave me a cover made of vegan “leather” and several inserts. She’d tried the system and really didn’t care for it. It’s become my every day carry (EDC); it even went to England with me. I have several inserts, a folder for receipts, etc., a plastic folder with a pouch for stickers, and pockets for credit cards, although they usually hold old credit cards with lengths of washi tape on them, a DIY monthly insert, a dot-grid “bujo,” a DIY tarot journal that Sylvan made, an insert with a gold cover and chocolate brown pages by Chronicle Books used as a kind of junk/art journal. I have some ephemera and pages made from water colour paper tucked in it. Clipped inside the back cover is an A6 size journal for planning my as-yet non-existent YouTube videos. I did have a map of England there before I got back. *eye roll*

Recently I added a pocket to the inside front cover by sewing on a piece of upholstery fabric. I have three templates and a grid pencil board/ruler in the pocket.

4.       An A6 lined journal with a detail from Van Gogh’s “Vase with Sunflowers” on it. That’s one of my very favourite paintings, has been since I was a teenager. Sylvan gave me the journal for my birthday. I use it as a personal journal to write a bit at the end of each day, if I remember, that is. I put HP sprocket photos, quick water colours, and bits and bobs in it. I have a number of small, lined journals like this to use once it’s filled.

 

5.       3.75 x 6.25 hardback 2020-2022 monthly calendar with lined note pages. About half of it is note pages, to be exact. I bought this strictly to carry in my purse so I wouldn’t schedule doctor visits or vet visits, etc. on the same day, and to keep track of other things. In the notes I wrote out the W-L records of all the Major League Baseball (MLB) teams in preparation for the 2020 season, little imagining there would be no season. Figures, I finally get back to fallowing my favourite sport and it’s canceled. *facepalm*

6.       A 5-Year Question a Day diary. Sylvan and I got these at Half-Price Books.

7.       A little soft-cover pocket-size, 2-year calendar I use for my RP characters.

8.       Habit Nest A5 “The Meditation Sidekick Journal” which is woefully behind.

9.       Soft-cover, A5 “Coloring Book of Shadows” by Amy Cesari. This was actually a 2019 one, but I barely used it, so I re-dated it for 2020, and still have barely used it. Not too late to pick it up again. Some of the images I’ve coloured I think will go in my BoS.

10.   A gardening journal (again, not up to date).

11.   A fitness journal that I haven’t used in forever, again, I need to start.

12.   A household binder, patterned after the Flylady’sControl Journal.

13.   A hardbound A5 notebook with graph ruling I’ve had for several years. It’s been a bujo, a place for brainstorming, plans, lists, notes on my book, etc.
14. A Celtic desk planner from like 2018? After I realised I was never going to use it as a planner, I write a quote for each day. Every month is a different theme, like art or ageing. 

15.   Not to mention various and sundry other little notebooks I’ve started and never finished over the years, my BoS, tarot and oracle card notebooks.

16.   I need to start a project planner to stay on top of all the things I need to finish.

17.   And finally, I’ve ordered a Hobonichi A6 Techo Original from JetPens and a beautiful cover from Etsy. It might well become the projects planner, who knows?

 

 

In other words, I, too, am a total planner/journal junkie.

ETA: I have a Day-Timer A5, spiral bound notebook I keep track of the family photo/letters project.

18....Watch out Sarra, here I come!!

¹Be careful, this shop is deadly; you’ll want ALL. THE. THINGS.  And if you get the washi bug, this is my favourite shop https://www.etsy.com/shop/GoatGirlMH?ref=ss_profile

²In case you’ve been under a rock https://zoom.us/  There are several alternatives, as well.

³Really about 23, as the Erin Condren “On the Go Folio” has something like 4 different journals in it.

⁴Techo means “planner”  (TEH-choh)

WOYWW #186--lots of pics!

After a very long hiatus, I'm back. although I actually did this project back around WOYWW #160!  Between being busy and just flat-out forgetting to post (whoops), it's now WOYWW #186!

Anyhoo, this is a now discontinued IKEA product that I loved, called a Fira. It's a little wooden dresser sort of thing that came in different configurations and you finished it any way you wanted. This is my version, used on my desk to store pencils, pens, binder clips, etc.

Happy Boxing Day!!

Photos after this break.

Jeans Recycling.

I've been hoarding a pile of old jeans for a while now, telling myself "I'll make purses! Or bags! or a brooch, or a pterodactyl... " and there they sat. So when my husband wanted a sleeve for his tablet, I said...ooooh..I have just the thing. And there they sat. I finally got my workdesk in the studio cleared to be able to sew and started late Sunday night. The only thing I had to go get was some Velcro®, everything else I had.

WOYWW #160

Hi, y'all--some of you might remember the debacle that was my kitchen table and studio in WOYWW #159.  Well...I got the kitchen table all cleared off and a nice table cloth on it, and made lots of headway in the studio (more on that in a bit), but still had to draw on the table this week. I started doodling last night, thinking zentangles, but that's not exactly what came out. Oh, before I show you the new pics, click here to see the vid of my son's journal--I showed you the cover in WOYWW #158.

In the studio, I started consolidating fabric and gave away four empty bins (some fabric might follow). That has freed up a bunch of space; I have more to go, but when I'm finished I should have space for a lot of art supplies, files, etc. I'm also tossing and culling as I go, so don't worry that I'm hanging on to everything. One of the things I started was a fabric journal.  I used a cute (ack!!) little notepad with very nice, strong paper (that's not perforated!) I won as part of a goodie-bag door-prize YEARS ago. There were a few things scribbled in it, including doodles by my son, who was a toddler at the time. I just went over all that.  It's small enough I can keep in in my purse when I shop for notions and matching fabric, or if I have a design idea. I labeled flip-top bins, small IKEA boxes, and Roughneck totes with things like FABRIC 1, 2, 3, REMNANTS 1, PROJECTS, etc. and then everything is getting recorded in the journal, with the box it's in, a swatch, width, and the yardage, plus fiber content, if I know it (a burn test will tell you if it's cotton, silk, wool, linen, ramie, rayon, or some sort of synthetic). Now all I have to do is flip through the journal and pick a fabric, go to that box and Bob's yer uncle.

And this is the work desk...or main event, as it were, with my art journal piece in progress (99%). Mixed media, Pitt pens, water color, water color pencils, and gesso and glue (had a bit of a repair issue due to old miskit).

Hope you enjoyed the show! Mwa!

WOYWW #159

Hi, Madame B here. I forgot to mention last week that it was my first WOYWW post! (I was #178...posted on Thursday. Hee.)

We had a marvelous thunderboomer in our neck of the woods today--not all of Austin got rain--lowered the temp and watered the garden a bit. DEEE-lish!

Okay, I never had to go to confession, but I imagine today's post would be a harrowing experience in the confessional: Forgive me, for I have sinned. What is your sin, child? I have allowed a large, wonderful place to work and craft get so totally cluttered with schtuff, I've had to work in the kitchen. Ooooh...I'm not sure there are enough Hail Marys or Our Fathers to cover that, but your penance is banishment from all craft stores until it's tidied up!!

So, before you click the thumbnails of DHOOOM below, a bit of an explanation is due, I think. My house is one constant reno project and things get moved about all the time.  Pic #1 is my kitchen table, because of Pics # 2-3. My studio. *sighs* I had to move things in there and then they didn't get organized at all. Today I was home, giving Valentino meds for his nastily infected eye, so I attacked the studio and started organizing fabric and project bins. Actually made some headway, too. :)

When I came in the kitchen to sit a bit, I was gessoing odd bits of things to use as tags and journals...and playing Bubbletown on the computer. Any wonder I don't get more done?

These are thumbnails, click on them for larger pics!

What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday #158

I know, I know, I'm a day late with this...but here it is. I'm working on a journal for my son to take with him to New Orleans for the summer. He's going to stay with my brother and learn how to work on computers and install CC cameras, techy-stuff, for which he will get paid! After I made the dos-à-dos journals (still need to post those!) I asked him if he wanted a journal to take with him and he said yeah! so many of these smashbook type journals are soooooo girly, so I'm trying to keep this very boy.

I took a box that a store version of Hamburger Helper came in (don't look at me, I don't eat that crap), gessoed it, painted it matte black, then Mod Podged on torn pieces of scrapping paper. Then I mixed ultramarine acrylic with some Mod Podge and scraped that on.

Tonight I'm at the coffee house, writing, but tomorrow...after I get back from the dog park, I'll do the inside covers and start sewing in the signatures.

Bonus Post-IKEA hack

This is to make up for not really doing a bona fide post yesterday. Way back, I bought a couple of Metro shelves at Sam's. At the time they were only $70. One went in my kitchen to pad out my pathetically small pantry (read: teeny weeny closet with some shelves). I made a table top thingy from nice birch plywood and the middle shelf relieved my counters of the microwave and toaster oven. The other Metro shelf went in my sewing area to hold supplies, etc.

So, one day when I was in IKEA...they had these really great lightweight cotton bedspreads, the Bomull series, for next to nothing. Sadly, they've been discontinued, but I snagged a few before they did. When you wash them, the fabric becomes wonderfully rumply and natural looking with defined ribs.

I took one of the bedspreads and cut it into panels and used IKEA's Riktig curtain clips to make a curtain around the bottom, hiding all the really ugly stuff.

So...this is what I made:

Cat Condo-IKEA hack (photo-heavy)

Lord have mercy...I actually uploaded these pictures almost two years ago, and according to the stats on the original pictures, I took them in May of 2009. *le sigh* But now I know (aside from my terminal procrastination) why I didn't want to do this post. With the really time-consuming and awkward photo insertion tool in WordPress, this post is taking far longer than it should have!

Anyway.....check it all out....

Simple Ikea hack

Take one of these. Which is designed to hang on the wall and hold these and these; put it on your laundry room wall and presto!

Return of the modern middle ages

OT for a sec..I could have sworn I made another post after the one about automatic updates.  Weird.  Anyway.

 

Some of my vast readership (bwahahahah) might know that I belong to a group called the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. It’s been an on-again, off-again relationship for a long time (1988 to be exact). I’ve made tons of friends, a few enemies, and a lot of memories. I met my husband in the SCA.

There were times I was totally involved and on a fast-track for big things (awards, etc.), then we had our son and played a bit, then not..then some more, then was out, then came back, blah-de-boop as my daughter says.

Recently, I introduced a pair of friends of mine, Ms Pushing Furniture and her hot boyfriend, to the SCA and damned if they didn’t take to it like ducks to water. Really active; she’s being her OCD self and turning out costumes and doing all sorts of things, including helping another relative newbie learn to sew.

And I’ve managed to get myself appointed as Chronicler (I do the baronial newsletter), which is the first ever office I held in the SCA nearly 23 years ago. *arched eyebrow of confusion*  But back then we did it the hard way, cut and paste on blue-line boards, now I just use Adobe InDesign the same as I do for the newsletter I do at work. Easy peasy, as they say. That is if I could get people to submit articles and things.  I think people just don’t care anymore. It kind of went to pot over the last couple of years because the woman doing it didn’t have time..or something, not sure what, so I think people just kind of gave up. The newsletter is a requirement of being a barony, so we have to turn one out, but I think unless we start getting submissions, it’s really a redundancy: everything you need to know is on the website.

So, anyway...we’re “active” again...sort of. I’ve gained so much weight that none of my costumes fit anymore. And I had made some pretty nice ones, too. And my husband’s stuff doesn’t really fit, and my son has none...and the whole barony seems to be on this EVERYTHING MUST BE LINEN kick. Yes, linen was period, cotton wasn’t, at least not how we use it. But not everything was linen, either, and I see a lot of clothing being made out of linen that should really be wool or even silk. BUT. It’s Texas, so I’m totally willing to give them that one.

Linen is much more available than it was 20 years ago, but most of what you can get locally in Austin is all in trendy colors or is a linen/cotton blend. The blend is sorta-kinda okay for certain things. It is cooler and doesn’t wrinkle as much...but then that signature wrinkling is part of the linen “mystique,” if you will. The other nice thing is that if you order online, you can get a number of different weights of linen in white and then dye it if needed.

The point of this post originally was to lay out all that I need to do to even go to an event. List making ftw! We shall move apace in the next post.

 

Digging around, planning, thinking...

First off, I'd like to say how disappointed I was to find that this lady is no longer keeping this blog smoke and ochre. Rats.  There are so many nice, nice pictures and all on it. But, you know...a kabillion, bazillion, and 93 blogs on the intarwebs and so little time.

Now that the energy devil is not sucking my aura away every day, I'm finding I have enough get up and go to get a few things done. After we decommissioned the old building on Friday, I skated.  R had the day off (LBJ's birthday, doncha know), so he took me to work, went home, slept in, then came and picked me up. We didn't do much..picked up Taco Bell and came home. I crashed at some point and foo...what did we do Friday evening. I don't even remember....OH! Crap, of course! Sylvan's party! Oy, such a knucklehead I am. Her first novel is coming out, officially on Tuesday! I've read the first...second?...draft, but changes were made after it went to the publisher...anyhoo, her BFF, the self-same Laura of Pushing Furniture fame, threw a surprise party. R, W, and I went. It was fun, and we totally surprised Ms. Author. :D

Then we came home and I was kind of sick at 4 AM. Nauseous...and for awhile didn't know which, erm...end....would be a problem (hoping that it wouldn't be one of those, ah...double-ended things. I HATE that).  But as soon as I "went," the nausea went away and I was able to go back to sleep. Got up about 9:40 yesterday and spent a good bit of the day washing dishes and general clean-up, then went to Lowe's and Tar-Jay. Spent way more money than I should have. Dammit. But I had most of the $50 GC Laura's BF gave me for my birthday left. I bought a composter thingy.  Now to get it set up.  I had made a really cool FREE composter out of hardware cloth and a hula-hoop, but the dog can knock it over too easily to eat the scraps and eggshells. I'll use that for grass and weeds before adding to the bin.Dorky dog. I got some plastic potted plant pans, a nifty cobalt blue glass mister (on clearance for $1.62!), and some hose parts to repair hoses. At Target, I got some groceries, another pair of black leggings, and a few items of make-up. Yeah, make-up. Gotta problem with that? ;)

I also picked up a metric-ass-ton of paint chips at Lowe's and then sat on my bed and played with kitchen design until two AM!

One of the reasons I never get anywhere is...well, it's a many-layered thing...like an ogre. It is my decorating ogre. I can't make up my mind...then I have no money...and I change my mind...things go out of style...I have no money....I get more craptastic hand-me-down furniture that needs "fixing" (refinishing, etc.) and just looks like early Salvation Army meanwhile....then I change my mind...and I can't decide on a color scheme...ad nauseum.

I've gone from warm, earthy tones in the great room to working off the grey and charcoal palette in a print I have, back to the warmer tones.  I want a mind of Mexican feel to the kitchen and since the two rooms are, um...rather linked, to suddenly go to greys and blues would be weird. Also? I have this olive fabric, like 22 yards of it, for a slipcover for the sofa, and it wasn't fitting in with the greys in my mind. Well, it would, but there are tones of blue, charcoal and a deep, deep red-brown in the painting. I dunno, it might still work.  Otherwise, I'm not sure what to do with that piece. Feh.

So anyway, here's the latest grouping, sort of, of colors. It seems a bit washed out on my monitor. paint link

There'll be more of this, but I started this post three days ago, so I'm posting now.

Pain, Crabs, and Assorted Crap (from my Live Journal)

lj-music: Shuuush of the dryer

My hands have been killing me lately…sometimes making me yelp in the middle of conversations…just deep aching, in the big thumb muscle, the joints and the bones between the joints.  And the left hand is numb on top of it all.  I have so much to do and no one else to do it. And before you ask, no it’s not carpal tunnel. It’s arthritis and the numbness is due to thoracic outlet syndrome. I’ve had arthroscopy on both shoulders and I don’t get the numbness in the right side nearly as bad as in the left. But the pain…in the hands and shoulders, and the grip weakness…oh.my.goddess.  Anyway…not sure there’s much I can do about it.  My take home pay is going down because UT’s not giving raises* but our insurance premiums are going up. At the same time the deductibles and out of pocket cap are going up…so I’m paying out the fucking wazoo for insurance I can’t use.  Nice.  Goddamned Republicans.  GOP=Grand Obstructionist Party.

Several years ago, one of the NCOs at work had gotten her son a pair of hermit crabs.

He wouldn’t take care of them, so she gave them to me.  The poor things were in the little clear plastic Kritter Keeper they came in, with an inch of *growls* aquarium gravel, and she was giving them TAP water.  GAH!  So I did a bunch of research and spent about a 100 bucks getting a crabitat set up. Little guys were most appreciative and showed me by almost immediately moulting. The bigger one moulted several times and then went down and didn’t come up.  Spikey had “disrobed” over the tank heater and dried out.  So he’s buried with Caldwell, the Betta Fish, under the Texas Mountain Laurel in the front yard.  So…that left Tiny, who is now way bigger than the larger one was when we got them (he was itty bitty at first, hence the name).

I’ve been keeping Tiny in a Kritter Keeper, with the proper bedding, water, and a sheet of cling wrap to hold in the humidity, so he’s doing okay. But hermies are social critters.  He needs friends.  So I’m going to get one or two more crabs and set the terrarium back up. Scorpionis (Thank you!!) gave me another 10-gallon tank. I have this little wooden typing table—so very, very ubiquitous at UT. I think the furniture shop must’ve made a kabillion of them over the years. I took it and peeled the fake wood Formica off the top and painted it. It’s kind of a pale yellowish now, but I think some nice dark green or blue will be a better color for a crabitat. One tank on top and one underneath, then get some of this…

…which is 4” in diameter (it’ll take the crabbies a long time to get too big to get through it)

and connect them…like this

And see if hermies like crabitrails…hee hee hee

I started this post on Friday and now can’t remember what the “associated crap” was.  *facepalm*

*We are getting a one-time 2% payment, not a raise.  It’ll be in time for Yule and for me, after taxes, etc. will be about $450…better than a sharp stick in the eye, and just in time for presents, but geeze…really?

Things needing done around the house

Each one of these is a project--and a story--unto itself, and will engender a list, or lists, of its own.

• Repair pavilion


• Sort, organize,purge bedroom and closet


• Build my bed


• Build outdoor cat run


• Build and install catwalks, hidey-holes


• Tear down roof over back deck


• Demolish existing deck


• Build new deck cover, screened in


• New deck..patio...?


• Landscape front yard


• Landscape back yard


• Repair drain in hall bath


• Replace tub, surround in hall bath


• Floor in hall bath


• Repair or replace dryer....or put up permanent clotheslines?


• Replace garage door


• Build kitty loo


• Finish sewing/craft/studio/office...room...space


• R's bedroom...paint, floors, etc.


• Kitchen...OMG.


• New curtains in bedroom


• Rework wall'o'books in living room


• Finish purple desk


• Finish washstand


• Finish "buffet" chest for kitchen


• China cabinet project


• Dining room table and chairs


• What to do with family antique chairs?


• Table for deck/patio


• Coffee table madness


• Slipcover for couch and Loveseat


• Paint and attach plant platform to top of dog crate


• Crabitat project


• Tame the jungle in the kitchen


• Finish building R's chair (I've only had the wood--already cut into the proper pieces--for 11 years...ELEVEN)


• Put a coat of wax on Big Dot's bookcase


• New colors for bedroom?


• Scrape that GOD-AWFUL popcorn texture off the ceilings. Can you believe my Auntie J LIKES that shit? I'm thinking of sending it all to her in a box when I'm done.  When  they remodeled the house they're in now, she asked for that crap, on purpose, and had sparkles added....  >.<  This is a woman with exquisite taste in everything...except, apparently, ceilings.

What a marvelous thing.

A clean fridge is a marvelous thing.

A clean refrigerator. Aaaah. My hands are raw and I've dripped soapy water from one end of the kitchen to the other, and most of my groceries (except dairy) sat out all day. But the fridge is all washed and the crap cleaned out.  I took out every shelf and door pocket, took them apart and scrubbed 'em with Method Purple Spray (which, by the way, works better than anything I've ever found on that tough, sticky kitchen grease), and also with soapy water, rinsed and dried, and reassembled them.  Also took a bunch of stuff out to the compost. The person who messes it up will not be a happy camper.

The freezer side is next. Then to conquer the rest of the kitchen. Ennui be damned!

Oh, and the spousal unit laughed his ass off at me taking this picture.