I Chose Poorly

In my last post, I talked about the difficulty I had choosing one of my good notebooks for (some kind of) a journal. I wish I was still dithering because I chose so poorly.

I had this great navy blue, hardcover notebook with silver stars on the front. Perfect, I thought. It even had gorgeous holographic stars on the page edges. It was so beautiful. I was agog. Beautiful edges, navy blue so it will stay clean-looking. What more could I ask for?

Choice made, I began adding the journaling stickers I've been buying for several years to the pages.

It wasn't until I had a number of weeks in that I noticed that the pages were getting lumpy because I was putting the stickers in the same places. Seven days in a week, across two spreads, giving myself enough room to write.

I didn't expect this because it's the thick, 160 GSM paper. Although maybe I should have known? It's just that I primarily use Tomoe River Paper, which is very thin and I have to be very careful with stickers. I expected thicker paper would have easier results.

I decided I'd live with the lumpy.

What made my choice of notebook such a poor one is that the stickers wrecked the smoothness of the page edges. Now there were gaps. Small gaps, but still gaps. Which means that gorgeous holograph is muted. Mostly gone.

I should have picked a notebook with regular edges, but it's far too late now.

I have learned a valuable lesson. 

The Notebook Dilemma

I swore (SWORE!) that I wasn't going to save my good notebooks. That I bought them to use them and that's exactly what I was going to do.

I also have quite a collection of journaling stickers and I thought what if I took an A5 notebook, used my journaling stickers and created something with that?

And then I ran into the notebook issue.

I have a lot of nice, hardcover notebooks. I want to use the one with the lavender pages. Oh, but I can't use lavender paper because it might clash with my journaling stickers. Those are all different colors and I don't want the paper color to hold me back.

What if I used the new notebook with the books? No, I don't want to use that one. I'm saving that for something different. Maybe a reading journal.

Me to me: You haven't completed a reading journal yet. Including the one you started this year and did nothing except the title page and some challenge pages.

Okay, but not the books notebook.

What about the dragon notebook?

Oh, no, I can't use the dragon notebook. That one is too special and I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this idea of mine.

What about the black notebook with the pattern?

Yeah, well, that one has page numbers and little marks to let you know where the center of the dot grid is. I'd really like to save that one because I can't replace it and I'm not sure what I'm--

What about the new notebook with the floral design?

Um?

The notebook with the southwest design?

And here I sit. No notebook chosen because I can't decide.

2027 Writing Planner Update

I did a second spread in this planner I intend to use for 2027. It's as amateur-looking as the first spread, but I've decided I'm having fun with it.

It's nice to have a creative outlet that doesn't involve words. It's a great way to get my head in a creative space without any pressure and to allow my thoughts to wander. Plot problem? Let's decorate a page and let the subconscious work on it while I decorate paper.

Yes, I'm really bad at art. I'll never be good enough to be happy with what I produce, but as long as I can let that go and be satisfied with the process, I think it's a win.

I repurposed a 2026 planner that I didn't use. It allows me to use stickers, not only to re-date the calendar, but to decorate the blank pages behind it. I'll never be a bullet journal person for my personal planner, but this planner set up? It's really a bullet journal in an old Erin Condren planner. This let's me revisit a process I thought would be fun, but just didn't work for my day-to-day life. Since my writing planning is minimal, this works for me.

Oh, and it also lets me use my Tombow marker collection, which has mostly been underutilized.

This is my latest attempt at decorating. The spread is for July 2027.

Title page with seagulls at the beach. I used the image on the sticker box and just taped it down.

My 2026 calendar set up for 2027. Since it was originally a Sunday start and I prefer Monday start, I really only need to change the day labels for the dates to be correct, but I wasn't passing up the chance to use colorful date squares.

 

This is the monthly dashboard layout. I'm not really using that this year, so it'll probably just sit blank, but who knows?

 

July 1st is a Thursday, so the first spread only needed four days. There are eight check boxes. Each represents 250 words. To check all of them off, I need to write 2000 words. The box at the bottom of the page is to record my total word count for the day.

 

These four spreads allowed me to create a scene with markers and stickers. Many of the ideas came from the Hubman and Chubgirl YouTube channel, but since I'm using my planner for a different purpose than most people are, I frequently diverged.

 

 Here, I used the journaling card and some washi sticker strips to decorate the final page of the month.

The Juniper Finale

I talked earlier about having the junipers removed and replaced with sod. I also mentioned that the project was not complete. Here is the rest of the story.

They ran out of sod when they were out originally to do my yard project. The owner of the landscaping company promised me they'd be out the following week--the first week in June--to lay down the rest of the sod. Perfect.

Except not so perfect because the first week in June went by. No sod. The second week passed. No sod. And then we reach week three and there is still no sod. And now the bare patch of dirt is loaded with ugly weeds. I contact the landscaping company, Um, hey, I need this project finished.

I was promised they'd be out the following week. The fourth week of June.

Monday passes. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. And then it's Friday and I'm like, damn it. Now I have to contact them again and the only info I have has me talking to an admin, so it's not like I can be irritated with her. It's not her fault. She doesn't do the scheduling, she just answers emails and the phone.

Then, around 3 p.m., I see a truck come up the street. I'm sitting in my home office, swivel my chair, and lean forward. Yes, it is my landscaping company.

They showed up on June 26th, four weeks after the original sod was laid down on Memorial Day.

The good news is that my yard is finally complete. The bad news is that I have to water this new section of grass double the time the sprinkler system is scheduled to run for another month. Water down here? Priced at ridiculous levels. I pay TRIPLE down here for one month than I paid for three months in Minnesota.

At least it's done. Next year, the grass will have to fend for itself.

Test Decoration

I talked about using a 2026 monthly planner with notes pages as my 2027 writing planner because this was sitting unused, and all it took to make the calendar work was switching the Sunday start to a Monday start. Since I prefer Monday start anyway, I decided this would be easy.

While I love my 2026 writing planner and I use it every day, I don't use it to the extent I planned on. Instead of brilliant marketing strategies and carefully thought out goals and reflections on goal progress, I mostly just use it to keep track of how much writing I did that day.

Since I'm hardly using it the way I'd hoped, it made sense to repurpose an unused planner I already owned.

The caveat, though, was could I create my own daily boxes on the blank notes pages without hating it? I decided to spend some time creating the January 2027 spreads to see what I thought.

First up, the monthly title page. This was not strictly necessary, but I'm happier with decorated planners.

I didn't need to decorate the monthly calendar for January because I had already done it in January of 2026 with stickers I got from a seller online. Same with the dashboard page. Since those were just rote stickers set down in set locations, I didn't take any pictures of those pages to share.

First page of the month encompasses a partial week with three days.

 

Those blue blobs are supposed to be clouds. Clearly, I'm not an artist. I was trying to follow the Hubman and Chubgirl video tutorial on YouTube and her navy blue clouds looked great. Mine? Sigh.

But I got my three days set up. The square check boxes each represent 250 words and there are eight of them, so if I write 2000 words in the day, I can mark all the boxes. The colorful boxes at the bottom of the daily boxes are to record the total words written that day.

 

Here is the rest of the month, decorated with all boxes ready to go for writing in January 2027. Clearly, not an artist which is so frustrating. I also overdid some of the stickers, but I was trying to use up sheets so I could throw them away, so I over stickered.

I was a little sloppy lining the boxes, too. It's especially noticeable on the boxes where I used a blue marker instead of gray.

I had one page left over at the end of January, so I made it a notes page. Not sure how much use I'll get out of that because I didn't use them at all in 2026 after the first month or two, but there's space if I need it. I also have notes pages at the very back of the planner if I need it.

I'm hoping I get better at the artistic aspects as the year progresses. Can't get much worse, I guess.