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ARTSY CRAFTY DESIGNING (& BAKING) FUN
(Michael's haul) (Hobby Lobby haul)
I had a lot of fun shopping around for card stock and stickers and other supplies for my new Erin Condren planner. I haven't decorated a planner in a long time! Back in high school it was almost mandatory for a(n Asian) girl to have a Sanrio planner. Preferably in the leather casing. We bought stickers and paper and pens and all kinds of stuff for it. One of my best friends, Asako, would give me a bunch of cute anime stuff to put in it. I wish I still had it honestly. I'm sure I have one or two lying around in a box somewhere hehe. This time I wanted something a little more "mature" but still super adorable. The Erin Condren Life Planner was absolutely perfect albeit a little on the pricey side. I wanted to try it out anyway. And I must say I absolutely love it!
(original layout for the monthly page of December)
(original layout of the first week of December)
(my organized chaos!)
It was so much easier planning it out in my head than it was to actually put together lol. I ran into a few road bumps but all in all, for my first time, I'm very pleased with it. Thank you to Pinterest and Belinda Selene (www.belindaselene.com) for the great ideas and tips. I'll be slowly collecting a bunch of stuff to stick in it as the months pass by! My life isn't very eventful but there are a lot of things I have to remember and I am all about time management. I want to be time effective. Using time wisely and being very organized is very important to me. And now I can do it in a very cute way!
(layout for month)
(layout - 1st week)
(layout - 2nd week)
(layout - 3rd week)
(layout - 4th week)
I like to work in themes most of the time. And I love Christmas! So what better theme than Christmas? For my first week I kept it fun with the card stock borders because of the fun day I am going to have on Friday. For week 2, I was inspired by Hobby Lobby's vast array of Christmas decorations, one which I thought was fascinating. PASTEL CANDIES AND DESSERTS. It was weird to see actually, because it looked more like Christmas in Candyland than an actual set of Christmas decorations, but I love pastels and I thought it was cute. I didn't have anything glittery or cupcake-y to use, but I had pink card stock and pink polka dotted washi tape. Week 3 has the first day of winter on it so I went with a "Let it Snow" theme. And week 4 obviously is Christmas where I had a lot of fun putting all those fun stickers everywhere.
(dashboard side 1)
(dashboard side 2)
To be honest, I wasn't sure if I wanted a dashboard. It's a cute little addition to the book, but I thought it might take up more space than necessary. But as I was going through December, I noticed that there were a couple dates I had forgotten to pen in and I found myself digging through my box of supplies. I thought to myself, oh why not?! It'll look cute and it's functional. I added a few foam stickers to fill in the spaces. And even if I don't use them all, I can always peel off what I haven't used and add it to the next themed dashboard. It actually came in very handy today at work when I thought of a few things I needed to jot down! I'm happy I did it last minute.
Sorry for the bad lighting. I just wanted to snap a bunch of pictures before work and I'm sure I forgot a few important dates like my son's Taekwondo belt testing and holiday party. I hope it inspires you to be just as creative and to have fun with life!
EDIT: I am obsessed with quotes which was another deciding factor in why I bought the Erin Condren Life Planner. But while I was busy planning out my layouts for December's pages, it didn't occur to me that I would be covering up the quote in the month page. I am a little sad about that and will be thinking of better ways to incorporate the quote for the month of January ^_^
I took a step back from putting the finishing touches on my planner today. I'm very organized and I'm all about time management. I take my time very seriously. With kids, dogs, a husband, work, and friends, I have to slip in there time to clean and cook, do the laundry, and run errands. Then there's whatever else I want to do, like concoct ideas for my writing, this blog, trying to start up my vlog on YouTube, read a good book (I'm always up for suggestions!), doing something crafty, or just watching a movie. (Redbox I apologize for yet again having a movie for a good 2 weeks >_<).
I can usually time manage in my head, but I like to leave myself little notes just in case. Hence why my planner is such a very important part of my daily life. I have so many things going on that I will forget something. I always do.
Anyway, I'm usually very good at managing my time. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday however have really thrown a snag into my time. Despite everything I had to do today before work (which worked out very well actually) my concern was Friday and Saturday. Friday both the hubby and I are off so we decided to take the kids (really it's mostly for our eldest) to Navy Pier for Winter Wonderfest. Friday night is my salon's informal-fun-night-out Christmas party. Saturday I work 11a-7p. And I had signed up to bring treats that same Saturday. I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out where to slip in time to bake these treats! Thursday night was a no-go I thought, simply because I close at the salon and I still had to pick up my daughter from my babysitter's. I wasn't going to be home til 11p. That and I wanted my "famous" chocolate chip cookies to be as fresh as possible for Saturday. Friday was definitely a no-go. My whole day was full. Saturday I wouldn't have the time unless I woke up at 4am and that was DEFINITELY not going to happen because of the Christmas party.
I did my best to come up with a good solution. In the end, I thought of none.
The only time I would have to achieve baking enough cookies to share with clients and my stylists was to do it Thursday night. As I write this it is 3:37am. I'm sure by the time I publish this entry with pictures it'll be past 4am. And that's ok. Because the cookies look amazing and they taste even better.
This is how I spent my Thursday night ^_^
3 batches of cookies. I made them as small as possible to share with clients. Hopefully I made enough ;P I'm a little bit of an overachiever when it comes to the things that are very important to me. Everyone who has ever tried these cookies loves them, so much so they are very important to me. I tried to make enough to share with everyone. I can't make an estimate on how many clients will come into the salon between 8am-8pm on Saturday, and I honestly don't know how many cookies my coworkers are going to eat. I just wanted to make sure I had enough. I made 4 batches for my daughter's baby shower, but I had to bake them at the clubhouse we held it at because I had run out of time and they were gone as I pulled them out of the oven (I had almost 150 guests!) Needless to say, I'm hoping for a good turn out ^_^ All I really care about is that everyone who eats them enjoys them. I enjoy baking them (baking in general!) and I hand mix everything very carefully. The secret ingredient is love (hahaha corny!)
(do you think I made enough for everyone?)
(lol overachiever award! this pan is approx 4 inches tall)
Again, I apologize for the bad lighting. The lighting in our dining room is terrible and I've been meaning to go to Ikea to pick up another lamp.
Currently at 4:02am I have one last set of cookies baking. FINALLY! Time to get what little sleep I can before our fun filled family day and my Christmas party! G'nite lovelies.
Love sincerely,
Mich
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