Tag: summer

Bullet Journal & Planning

Bullet Journal | June 2019

ClassicBhaer20 Comments

Recs

So, this month I was so excited to be starting a new bullet journal. I don’t know about you, but I get super excited about starting a new one. It feels like a fresh start, a sweet breeze, or a clean slate. I can take all the spreads that have worked for me and leave the ones behind that I either don’t use or out grew. It is nice to see it evolve and grow as you do. Well, this time around I will admit I was heavily inspired by the Plant Based Bride over on youtube and her blog, http://plantbasedbride.com. I really enjoy the feel and simplicity of her bullet journal and I have heavily taken inspiration along with the spreads that have worked for me to create this new bullet journal.

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My last bullet journal was a Rhodia goalbook, I HATED it. The pages fell apart just from erasing it, the paper was awful and I will not be buying a new one. Also, their customer service is horrible. I filled out a from and reached out on twitter and they said they would contact me twice and they never did. Not how you handle a situation as a company. This time around I am trying a new company, their notebooks are a bit pricy, but I was lucky enough to get it as a gift from my wonderful BF. I am trying an Archer and Olive notebook.

Before I moved into my new notebook I decided to make a list of the spread I wanted to keep and the ones I wanted to add. Here is a bit of a peak into the spreads I wanted to keep for this bullet journal, as well as add.

Keep

  • Crochet hooks ✔️
  • Weight-loss Tracker ✔️
  • Yearly Reading Goals ✔️
  • War and Peace readalong tracker ✔️
  • Twitter tracker ✔️
  • Blog tracker ✔️
  • Seasonal Bucket List ✔️
  • Grid spacing ✔️
  • ARC Tracker ✔️

Add

  • Period Tracker ✔️
  • Crochet Project Tracker/Wishlist Just Bright Ideas ✔️
  • 5K Training Progress ✔️
  • Owned TBR ✔️
  • Buddy Reads ✔️
  • Study Tracker ✔️

-General Spreads-

This layout is very helpful for me when I move into a new bullet journal, especailly when the brand is new to me. This lets me quickly see where 1/4, 1/2, or 3/4 in either direction as well as how many boxes are in each page.

I tent to only keep a bullet journal for 4-6 months, so I only bother putting 6 months ahead so I can easily see how many days are in each month. I also left an area on the bottom incase I wanted to add a particular note for a day. On the other page I updated my eARC/ARC tracker page. I can easily see when a book comes out and if I have reviewed it. In this bujo I only added the ones I am still working on.

While I am not in blogging or on twitter for the numbers, I find it fun to track them. Seeing all the people I can connect with or who want to read my work is motivating in a way.

Alright, these two pages are totally new. On the right I added a different layout for my War and Peace reading this year. This year I decided that I would read W&P on the right hand side I write what sections I should read each month to finish on time. On the right I am writing when I actually end up reading it. I also added a little progress bar at the bottom. On the right I decided I wanted to keep track of all the books Reg, Jenna, Amy and myself read together. I added a bit of a starry night because I messed up, but I really did love how it came out.

Here is my reading challenge tracker, the same as it was in my old bujo. On the right I started writing my seasonal bucket list. I am still thinking up ideas, if you have any suggestions let me know!

I decided I wanted to track my studying my writing in the topic as well as checking off if I actually do study. I am trying to become a bit more structured. On the right I am tracking my period, I find myself needing to track it more now so I figured having an over all picture in one place would be helpful.

If you did not know this year I am really taking the time for myself and my health. So, I have been doing my best to make healthier decisions and lose some extra weight. I really loved the spreads I had in my other bujo so I migrated them over. I took the layout on the right from Forever Good Life.

A bit of a continuation, I am currently doing a 5K training app. I wanted to track my progress through the program as well as the km per week I am running/walking. On the right I wanted to keep track of the crochet hooks I have so I did some googling and found this spread from paperandinkco.heidi on instagram.

On the left I decided to give myself a space to write all of my “dream” crochet projects. I also decided to implement a kanban board for my blog posts. I picked this up from Plant Based Bride, as I said in the start of this post I found a lot of inspiration from her.

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-Monthly-

This is my dashboard page and a bit of a monthly overview. I really enjoy having this monthly overview each month and I wanted to continue with it.

This is my normal book tracker that I have been using for MONTHS and I just love seeing what books I read and on what days. It is a great overview picture of my reading habits without using a habit tracker, which I realized are not for me because I don’t look at them for days and then have to do my best to remember when I did what.

Here is a bit of a view of my other reading tracker. I color in a block for each chapter that I have read. It is almost like a goodreads for my notebook when it comes to progress.

I wanted to try something new for my social media page. I decided to draw a mini calendar and highlight my blogging days, but I want to also color in when I post on instagram. I will see how this format goes instead of a list. On the other page is my TBR, pretty simple and straight forward.

Last month I used this weekly spread and I really loved it. I had to resize it a bit for this new notebook, but I still really like it. It made organizing my day really easy and gave me a clear view of my week. I will be adding some quotes as I move through the weeks, but I also left room to add doodles if I want to as well.

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Well, there you have it, my new bullet journal and my June spreads, what do you think? Have you ever used a notebook by this brand before? Are there any notebooks you think I should try in the future?

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Bullet Journal & Planning

Bullet Journal | July 2018

ClassicBhaer10 Comments

RecsHello everyone! So this month I had a lot of fun with my bullet journal theme. This month I decided to bring in some lemons. My boyfriend and myself have an inside joke where we call each other lemons instead of evil. This stems from the Spongbob Squarepants episode where EVIL stands for Every Villain Is Lemons. We were having a bit to fun before I started working on my doodles that I needed to make it this months theme. In fact, my boyfriend gave me a prop to use as inspiration that I shared over on twitter. Well, here it is my July bullet journal spreads.

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Here you can see my July page, I will admit I had a hard time figuring out how to get the depth I wanted on the lemon slice due to my limited color choices, but I ended up liking how it turned out. It feels so positive, bright, and happy. I also loved these flowers so I needed to showcase them as well.


Here you can see how I set up my monthly overview plus a little sneak peak into two of the blog posts I already have scheduled. I never write my blog posts in order, but it works for me! I am debating if I want to reprint the images of the book stacks I used last month or not. I figured I have time to decide so I left it pretty much blank.


On the left hand side you can see my TBR pile image. I posted it on instagram so instead of rewriting everything I decided to just print it out and paste it in my bullet journal. A funny about The Invisible Man, I accidentally read the wrong one and I was so confused as to why it was not science fiction. I borrowed it from the library digitally and they did not display the author, but it was so funny when I finished The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison I enjoyed it, but I was so confused. But, I do plan on “fixing” this by reading the H.G. Wells novel by the same name soon.


I decided to try using squares instead of circles to mark my days read in July. I also tried to play with script writing by writing a cute phrase of some sort.


On the left hand side I cleaned up my Read 5 Buy 1 tracker, I like this cleaner set up a lot more. On the right hand side I updated my tracker to not only track how many times I go to the gym, but also if I study and drink the amount of water I need to drink. As you can see I do not strive to do it everyday. I never go well with changing my own patterns all in one go, so this is how I operate.


A few months ago I participated in the OWLs readathon I met all my requirements to become a potions master and I am eligible to take my NEWTs in August, but my friend Amy wanted to participate so I told her I would do it with her. So as you can see I completed 5 already, this month I am focusing on working on the exams I did not complete. For each I write the title of a book or short story that would work for each prompt. As you know, I never stick to a TBR so this should be interesting.

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What theme should I try in the future?

What is something you track in your bullet journal?

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To Be Read

June TBR | 2018

ClassicBhaer13 Comments

ToBeRead12:17

I am not sure about you, but the entire time I was creating my TBR for this month I just kept thinking about summer time and reading on the beach. June is the time of year I think about relaxing and when I tend to do most of my reading so this TBR is going to be a bit longer than it has been in the last few. The first book I will admit is a carry over from last month, but the rest are all new.

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In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott

In the Days of Rain

I really want to get to this non-fiction book, it seems so interesting.

In the vein of Bad Blood and Why be Happy when you can be Normal?: an enthralling, at times shocking, and deeply personal family memoir of growing up in, and breaking away from, a fundamentalist Christian cult.

‘At university when I made new friends and confidantes, I couldn’t explain how I’d become a teenage mother, or shoplifted books for years, or why I was afraid of the dark and had a compulsion to rescue people, without explaining about the Brethren or the God they made for us, and the Rapture they told us was coming. But then I couldn’t really begin to talk about the Brethren without explaining about my father…’

As Rebecca Stott’s father lay dying he begged her to help him write the memoir he had been struggling with for years. He wanted to tell the story of their family, who, for generations had all been members of a fundamentalist Christian sect. Yet, each time he reached a certain point, he became tangled in a thicket of painful memories and could not go on.

The sect were a closed community who believed the world is ruled by Satan: non-sect books were banned, women were made to wear headscarves and those who disobeyed the rules were punished.

Rebecca was born into the sect, yet, as an intelligent, inquiring child she was always asking dangerous questions. She would discover that her father, an influential preacher, had been asking them too, and that the fault-line between faith and doubt had almost engulfed him. -goodreads.com

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Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent

Lying in Wait

I read Unraveling Oliver by her and I loved it so much. I was so excited when I saw it on Netgalley and then I was so surprised and excited to get approved for the eARC. I have a feeling this is going to be the first one I finish this month.

My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.

On the surface, Lydia Fitzsimons has the perfect life—wife of a respected, successful judge, mother to a beloved son, mistress of a beautiful house in Dublin. That beautiful house, however, holds a secret. And when Lydia’s son, Laurence, discovers its secret, wheels are set in motion that lead to an increasingly claustrophobic and devastatingly dark climax. – goodreads.com

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All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages by Saundra Mitchell

All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages

The title alone makes me want to read this. Then there is the description!

Take a journey through time and genres and discover a past where queer figures live, love and shape the world around them. Seventeen of the best young adult authors across the queer spectrum have come together to create a collection of beautifully written diverse historical fiction for teens.

From a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood set in war-torn 1870s Mexico featuring a transgender soldier, to two girls falling in love while mourning the death of Kurt Cobain, forbidden love in a sixteenth-century Spanish convent or an asexual girl discovering her identity amid the 1970s roller-disco scene, All Out tells a diverse range of stories across cultures, time periods and identities, shedding light on an area of history often ignored or forgotten. -goodreads.com

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The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw

The Wicked Deep

I got this for my birthday and I read the description and I just want to read it ASAP!

Where, two centuries ago, three sisters were sentenced to death for witchery. Stones were tied to their ankles and they were drowned in the deep waters surrounding the town.

Now, for a brief time each summer, the sisters return, stealing the bodies of three weak-hearted girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring boys into the harbor and pulling them under.

Like many locals, seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot has accepted the fate of the town. But this year, on the eve of the sisters’ return, a boy named Bo Carter arrives; unaware of the danger he has just stumbled into.

Mistrust and lies spread quickly through the salty, rain-soaked streets. The townspeople turn against one another. Penny and Bo suspect each other of hiding secrets. And death comes swiftly to those who cannot resist the call of the sisters.

But only Penny sees what others cannot. And she will be forced to choose: save Bo, or save herself. – goodreads.com

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What are you reading this month?

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