Planners

The other day I mentioned that I had ordered the 2022 Book of Days for tracking my stitching. 2021 was the first year I had one . . because that’s the first year I was cross stitching. I love it and I love tracking all the needlework in there but . .

In late February, 2021 I ordered this planner and I love it and have already ordered one for 2022. A couple of times during the year, I thought about combining everything and using only one planner but I think I’ll again use two. I have til the end of December to decide since they’ll both be here and ready.

I keep our calendar on Google as far as appointments – haircuts, doctor’s appointments, the day the plumber is coming, etc. But, I do love writing with a pen and colored gel pens and I love using stickers. My paper planner makes me happy.

I’m not showing the months I have written things down but all appointments for things we have to do are written in red. All appointments for people coming here to do things, and I hope there are fewer and fewer of those, are written in dark blue. Anything to do with Addie is written in hot pink. That’s where I put days I’m picking her up at school, her games, etc. Birthdays are written in light blue. Even though I know most of the birthdays I want to remember, I’m constantly thinking . . did I miss someoneone’s birthday. Reminders for things we have to do (Master Gardener weekly deadlines, check on property taxes, pay quarterly taxes, etc.) are written in green. That makes it fairly easy to find things.I look at my calendar for sure on Sunday but often other times during the week.

This area I kinda use for a diary. Each week I stick a sticky note down on Sunday and that’s where I write my grocery list. As I find recipes I want to make – In July I may find a soup recipe that looks good and like something I want to make in October, I’ll pencil in the link to the recipe in October. If I find a recipe that looks good for a Christmas side dish, I’ll pencil the link on the December page.

This is where I thought I could write my stitching down but I like having the whole month at a glance so I’ll keep using the Book of Days for that. The positive to using this for stitching is that I have bigger space, though some/most days, I don’t need bigger spaces.

Stickers . . I learned from flosstubes that the Book of Days has to be decorated . . kinda like a kindergartener would do.

Last year I ordered these two books.

Those were the only stickers I had so my decorations were a bit sparse. I ordered more and most of them arrived today.

These are mostly flowers, trees, animals, etc. I need to get patriotic and seasonal stickers – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring.

Those four little boxes have a ton of stickers in them. I opened up the bird box and this is how many were in there. Because it was too difficult to get them all back in the box without bending and crumpling them, I put some back in the box, and put some in zipper bags. I’ll give Addie the boxes.

I’m so tempted to finish out 2021 with more fun stickers but I think I’ll save them for 2022 and have a much better decorated book in 2022.

Lots of stickers and lots of colored ink. I have a set of better quality pens that I used last year but the colors were lacking so I went with quantity over quality for 2022. We’ll see how that goes.

Purple for new starts, green for finishes (FO) – the stitching is done, blue is for fully finished (FFO) – after they’re framed or made into pillows. You might guess that I don’t use a lot of green or blue but somehow seem to use a lot of purple! 🙂

So I don’t get confused as to which purple to use, I’ve labeled all the markers I use for main topics.

In the back of the Book of Days, I have small sticky notes and once a project is finished, I write the name on a sticky note and then when it’s fully finished, I remove the sticky note and toss it.

In 2022, I think I’m going to keep a running list of charts I add – something I’m hoping will keep me from ordering so many charts.

Now you see why I get so little stitching done . . I’m too busy playing with other toys.