My New Day Book! (post one)

Happy Tuesday, my friends!

(I teased this pic on Facebook the other day, but wanted to share it here, too!)

So this is a new daily planner I bought at Target over the weekend because - well, first off - I'm absolutely weak when it comes to Target, especially in the planner aisle - but also, I have been feeling really out of control with my daily planning lately. I have so much "to control" each day - so much on my plate - and I use a lot of tools to keep track of it all - the cleaning, dinners, homeschooling, appointments, tasks, budgeting, writing, seasonal ideas, etc. So when I flipped through the Blue Sky Day Designer I found it quite tempting ...

I liked the colors, the font, the paper, the overall set up ... with my Target goggles firmly in place, I could envision it working for me, perfectly. Now, whether it proves to be perfect remains to be seen, but I am hoping to use this agenda (modeled after the Whitney English Day Designer) for as many areas of my planning as I can - maybe even a bit of journaling. There seems to be plenty of space to play with ...

(You know, I have been truly out of the loop when it comes to popular planners - so stuck on making my own, I guess - but apparently Erin Condren, Emily Ley, and Whitney English have really cornered the market when it comes to pretty/efficient planners! Pinterest is full of ideas on how to use them to your liking ... let me know if you're using any of these! )

Anyhoo, I am only just starting to use it - like, yesterday - but I will do a very thorough post in the near future about just how I am using it and how I am liking it and what I'm doing to make it work for me. (Going on the premise that it WILL work for me, lol.)

Note: It was $19.99 for those interested, which I don't think is a bad price at all for a daily planner, because that's a lot of pages! (It runs from July 2015 - June 2016.) And it's quite sturdy and portable, with metal coil binding and plastic covers. There were also other styles in this "Day Designer" line - very pretty florals and interesting shapes (including a horizontal weekly planner I found appealing). They're worth a look if you're in the market for a planner!

❤

In the meantime, I am valiantly trying to finish up the school reports this week ... the year-end progress reviews and next-year ed. plans I send in every August. I'm about halfway through and hope to be mailing things off next Monday. Once I get that major challenge out of the way I will be turning my attention to PLANNING and not just with this day planner but with the whole "school" year ahead. One thing I am realizing (and I do this every year but for some reason don't take myself seriously) is how very much I NEED to be much more organized with our home learning materials and records. Because once again it is nearly August and I am scrambling to remember what-all we actually did last year ... because I know we did stuff! We did a lot, if memory serves! But why didn't I take better notes??

So on top of this day book I am also re-organzing my homeschool binder and the way I plan and review our lessons each week and how I store materials, etc. Next Summer I want to be able to breeze through these reports - with less stress and time away from my family - because I have so much information to draw upon!

So more on all that very pretty soon ... :)

I hope you are all having a good week ... it's VBS week in our parish ... and hot as you-know-what in New England. Every day brings 90° and high humidity and afternoon storms ... but you know what? This is Summer! The dog days of Summer are here to stay it seems ... and I'm glad for it, to be honest.

So take care of yourselves and your loved ones, my friends, and please stay tuned ... I will be back here again to chat sometime soon!