Happiness is Scrappy: August Planning with Bel

Hello! I'm so excited to be sharing my August planner set up with you here on the HappieScrappie blog today.

Most of you may know me as Bel or @Thatsitreally over on Instagram or "Bella Baker" over on FaceBook; If not please do pop by to say hi!

I've been a big fan of the travelersnote book system since 2012, when I bought my first Midori, so I was thrilled when Sam said she would be introducing a Travels HappiePlanner kit!

I recently purchased a beautiful leather dori from a wonderful lady called Cindy, whom I met through Sam. Cindy, the owner of Pelle_studio Etsy store helped my narrow down my choice to an "extra wide, regular, Seafoam, Pelledori with white stitching and I couldn't be happier with it, it's absolutely gorgeous!

Not only is the shade on of my all time favourite colours, but the blue goes perfectly with all of the HappieScrappie TN kits to date!

August saw the end if the summer holidays here in Central Scotland and the beginning of a new school term. So everything went from lazy to crazy pretty quickly!

I decided I was going to use my May kit, cloud and hot air balloon themed notebook. I love the versatility of a blank page and because I can't write straight to save my life I prefer grid to unlined paper.

After an unfortunate event in town, where I dropped my TN and it wasn't shut properly, I tend not to over stuff my Pelledori. I currently have 3 HappieScrappie Travels Notebooks from May, June and July HappieScrappie kits (although they can be purchased separately when the store reopens around mid-October) Then I have one Kraft pocket, where I store journal cards, sticker, washi samples and a few clips. Finally I have this awesome kraft pocket I also store a heap of sticker and other planner goodies in.

If I'm going out somewhere and I don't have room in my bag for my full Dori, I'll remove my notebook and the kraft pocket and leave the rest at home. If I'm carrying drinks and snacks for the kids I'll pop it I'm this cute plastic pocket so it's not at risk of getting damaged.

So let's get down to the nitty gritty shall we! Here's how I went about planning August 2015:

With four young ones to run around after pretty much 24/7, I've come to accept that if I don't write it down I'll probably forget it, so pretty random things can occasionally show up in my lists!

I've taken to use an adapted version of Ryder Carols "Bullet Journal" (bulletjournal.com) so I can identify what's what in the list, just by a quick glance at the icons.

The first page of my new notebook contains my index page for the first half of the book. I then label the bottom right of every other page. I always manage to make a mistake but it's easily corrected with a sticker or two.

I used a Ice Cream theme card from the June kit to jot down a reference key and I used one of the cute critters from July kit to make into a pocket to store it in. @mariacgbc has a great tutorial for this, link here.

I always like to start each month with a "brain dump". To me a brain dump is to list everything I didn't get done last month and everything that needs doing this month. Here I used some cute stickers as titles.

Next up I have my month to view, where I note important dates, events and appointments. It's a quick overview only. I had fun trying out some new kit stickers here, which I never really did before I met Sam! Now I use stickers at any given opportunity.

As a family of 6, colour coding is really helpful and by some small miracle all of the stickers Sam has designed Have all six colours in!

At the beginning of each new week I try to meal plan. This layout contains 2 weeks menu because it was the last 2 weeks of the summer holidays and we had visitors as well as trips planned so it was easier to plan them both in advance.

Next up we have a list page! Now normally when I'm writing a list I don't combine a whole week, but it was feeling super lazy, as it was so lovely and warm, that I really only got the bare minimum done. Holidays aren't just for the kids, I needed to recharge before the beginning of term too.

Normally I would list my priority tasks for the day at the top and then all other tasks underneath, in a similar layout as you can see here.

After this page it's pretty much anyone's guess what comes next. If I want to write a recipe or a list of books I want to read, then I'll just go ahead and add it in.

This system really worked for me this month because of the structure of it or rather lack of structure; holidays and then adapting to new school time tables mad working out new routines for everyone.

Next month, with after school activities, tea dates and clubs starting, I may need to move back to a more formal diary layout, but that's the beauty of a Traveler's Notebook. You can adapt the system as much as you like, it's as simple as popping in a new notebook!

Here are a few more photos of my August Planning. I hope you've enjoyed looking inside my world as much as I have sharing it with you.