Journaling and planning: August - September 2017

September has been so crazy, and I didn't have much to share sewing wise... however here is a two months review in my fantastic Emerald Leuchtturm 1917!!

For disclaimers about how I personally use this Journal/Planner system, please refer to these previous posts: July review, Mid-year review, May review, April review, March review, December review (evolution of a Quilter's Planner), November review, October review, September review.

(click on each picture if you want to see them in more details)

I kept on with the practice of selecting an artist each month and using her art to decorate my planning. Since this book has many pages, I decided to start making "month cover pages" and this is my August page, inspired by the work of Helen Lundeberg.

Each week now is on two pages, and this gives me space to be creative (by integrating the artist style into the decoration of the days) but also to be practical (by listing daily taks, ideas for meals, exercise practice and even some new recipes or plans for quilting projects!)

What you may notice is that I integrate what I want to get done in the house, with exercise, meal ideas, recipes, events, etc.
It looks extremely messy, but it is NOT!! :) the amount of information that I have at the beginning of the week is very minimal and things get added as I go along with my life! And I am blessed to have a full life, so that's why my pages are full! :)

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Below you can see the daily tracker, with my weight tracker and my steps tracker. I stopped tracking my water intake, so I decided to add a list of different things to do this month.
This list has been an absolute blessing, and I got sooooo much more things done just because of the list!!

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I coundn't keep  up with the Free Motion Daily Doodle spread (each day is a different design from Leah Day's blog)... This is the beauty of planning in such a dynamic and white-canvas journal: as I realized this is not useful for me any more, I just dropped it for Septemeber. It may come back, it may not, who knows!

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Various trackers!

These trackers/collections are great to keep specific topics under control: for example I am running a blog hop (Art with Fabric blog hop) and I need to understand who sent their picture, if those have been added to my intro blog post, etc. A simple table on a single journal page is all I need to have a clear idea of what's coming next!! :)

Tracking health or the Lush products I like, also just require a simple table! Those things are so simple but they give you great insights if you complete them on a consistent base.

Finally the 5% challenge (I heard about it in a podcast, but I cannot remember which :) )...

I am trying to spend 5% of my monthly salary to support creative people that share their talent on the web for free!! Youtubers, Quilters, Creators, etc. I want to support their business so I support them through Patreon or by buying their products. They fill my life with joy, creativity and inspiration and I think it's important to support them financially since they share so much for free!!

I encourge you to do the same! It doesn't matter how much you actually devote to this, even few dollars make a big difference for small creative businesses!!

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Similar setup for September (Vincent Van Gogh as my inspiration artist).

I used washi tape in the weekly spreads... I do not like it, and I will go back to simple lines and text.

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And some creative spreads, just to celebrate special events that happened during the month: in this case, I went to the movie theatre to watch "The Dark Tower".

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I am all set up for October: I changed up few things that I want to track, dropped some, added others: this is the beauty of this planning style, you can change it up to suit your mood and style!

If you have any question about my planner, my spreads, my comments, etc, don't hesitate to comment below. Also please share planning, tracking and productivity tips, as those are always welcome!!!!