August Bullet Journal Spreads!

I don't know about anybody else, but I swear July never even happened. How is it almost over? Honestly, our July wasn't great. We still managed to get plenty of fun in there, but there were a lot of bad days with illnesses, poison ivy, and car troubles. No wonder it went by in such a blur. Normally, it's my favorite month of the year, but right now I'm feeling ready for a fresh start (and also really excited about starting school again!) so bring on August!

I got to sit down when I had breaks in my day yesterday and today to do my bullet journal spreads for the upcoming month! It's been almost two years now that I've been 'bullet journaling' and I keep waiting for a month where I'm kinda over it and don't do my pages, but it hasn't happened yet! I look forward to and love the days at the end of one month when I sit down and get ready for the new month! I shared back in January what a bullet journal is and how I set mine up for the year. You can find that here. But today I just wanted to share what my pages for August ended up looking like! I've tweaked things here and there since I shared pictures last and I know lots of people are always curious to peek inside bullet journals, so here you go!

This is the first year I've done a habit tracker and I love it so much. Often by the end of the month I'm not great at keeping up with actually filling in the little square (sometimes I am, but there have been months that I'm not), but just knowing this list exists helps me stay on top of these things!

My cleaning schedule tracker is different now than it was in January. What I had been doing before just looked cluttered and wasn't helpful. This tracker (and the schedule itself!) is working great! Our budget page stays the same. It's just the best way I've found to 'Dave Ramsey' the way James gets paychecks.

Monthly menu and shopping list has stayed the same. I started the year though just using the shopping list page to write out the things I needed for the dinners I had written on the menu. I now put my whole list on this page, not just dinners, because it makes it easier to write out into an organized way in the smaller notebook I take grocery shopping.

Monthly calendar pages still the same. Love this layout, especially the spot for future planning since I don't always have the next month's pages done to jot down events as they come up. This works great for me.

2nd or 3rd incarnation of weekly spreads this year and I think I've finally found 'the one'. I like how simple it is and that the whole week is one page, but I have plenty of room to fill in each days' tasks.

And just some fun pages to show how I also keep other types of lists in here, as needed 🙂 I never make these kinds of pages very fancy, just a little doodle or two if I feel like it. I usually end up with 2 or 3 list or planning pages like this at the end of each month's group of pages. I like doing it this way, rather than keeping my lists grouped together elsewhere (or just in a different notebook entirely) because the lists usually pertain to the specific month they're following after. 

And that's all folks! This all took maybe an hour, at the very most and was split up into little chunks of time here and there over 2 days. It's so enjoyable for me to do it that it doesn't ever feel like a lot of work so I wouldn't even mind if it took longer!

Hope this satisfied your curiosity if bullet journals are something that you're into! Happy Almost August!

Setting Up My Bullet Journal

Sometime in the fall of 2016 I stumbled across a few 'bullet journaling' pins on Pinterest. As somebody who loves order and organization, but also likes a fair amount of flexibility, bullet journaling almost seemed to good to be true. But it also looked way too intriguing to pass up!

A Bullet Journal is basically a customized planner that you create yourself in a blank notebook. Ryder Carroll, a digital product designer from NY, first developed the bullet journaling system, but it has evolved and changed as people have adopted it and made it their own. (Read more about the original system here) The beauty of bullet journaling is that it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be, it can change to fit your needs month to month or even day to day. Scrolling through bullet journaling pins on Pinterest or #bulletjournal on Instagram can be incredibly overwhelming, but when you remember that the main point of a bullet journal is to turn a blank notebook into whatever you need, it suddenly doesn't seem so bad!

I've shared some photos of my bullet journal "spreads" on social media and everybody always seems to want to know more! So I thought I'd show what setting up my bullet journal for 2018 looked like. Other comments I often get are that it looks like too much work, or that the blank pages are just too daunting for a perfectionist. The daunting pages? YES. I get that. I totally get that. I've been doing this bullet journaling thing for close to a year and a half now and blank pages still make me so nervous! But it's actually helping me honor the perfectionist in me, while also relaxing my standards a little bit. As far as it being a lot of work, it is a fair amount of work. It's work that I don't mind though, and I don't think it's quite as much work as it might seem. To hurry things along each month, I've made templates of my most used layouts, so I can just quickly trace them without having to measure them out again every time. And months that I am just incredibly busy and don't have a weekend naptime to devote to making that month's pages (that's all it takes), I super simplify my pages so they only take a few minutes to put together. The initial set up is probably the most work because I have a few trackers set up to track things that I do all year long. But those are done now! Those trackers are all set up for the whole year. If you have been intrigued by bullet journals before, but have been nervous about messing up or not having enough time, I encourage you to just try a few pages in any old notebook you have laying around! It might not be the right system for you, but you also might find just the kind of planner you've been needing (and gain a fun hobby too!)

So we'll start with your tools. When I first decided to try bullet journaling, I used a blank notebook I just happened to have laying around, and a plain pen. That's it. I didn't want to get too fancy until I knew it was going to work for me. After a few months of that, I knew I wanted to keep it going, so I splurged for a Leuchtturm notebook with dotted pages. I knew I wanted either dotted or grid pages, to make it easier to make little boxes and whatnot, and the dotted pages looked cleaner to me. I chose the Leuchtturm over other dotted page journals because it has an index and numbered pages already. I also got a set of Stabilo colored pens. But please, let me make this very clear, you do not need fancy pens or notebooks to bullet journal! A $1 spiral notebook from the drugstore and any pen you have lying around works just as well. I feel like I need to emphasize this because I initially got very caught up in having the "right" tools to do this, but while I'm very happy with my fancy-ish notebook and pens, I was just as happy with my drugstore notebook and Bic pen! It's also helpful to have a ruler or something similar to help make straight edges.

You can see my templates on the right of this photo. Super helpful once you've found layouts you like!

When I'm ready to set up a new bullet journal, I like to first make a list of what I need. I've tried daily pages before, but it was too much prep work for me, so I personally need a monthly calendar page and then weekly planner pages. I also do monthly meal planning (more about that here!) so I need a place to write all of that down. I follow a cleaning schedule and like having a way to track that, bill tracker, monthly budgets. Basically I just make a list of everything I want to track and keep in the same place. Then I scroll through Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration. Using some ideas I find and some of my own creativity based on my personal needs, I draw up some rough drafts to see if what's in my head translates to paper. This year I had some pages at the end of 2017's journal to sketch and plan in, but the previous year I just used scrap paper.

Once I have a good idea of what I need, I group them into yearly and monthly. I put all of the trackers that cover the whole year in the beginning of my journal, and then after that I group the monthly pages together and just do one month at a time. These are my yearly and monthly "collections". The first page I do is the key. Mine is loosely based off of the original bullet journaling approach that I referenced earlier in this post.

Something that I'm changing up this year is actually utilizing the index and numbered pages. I didn't keep up with that last year and I really wished I had!

I like my very first page, before any trackers or lists, to be the 'theme word' that I've chosen for the year. I came across this idea last year, choosing a theme word rather than making a lot of resolutions, and I've been a big fan! This year's word is 'joy'.

Then I get all of my trackers that cover the whole year, as well as a copy of my cleaning schedule. The cleaning schedule is just for reference, I use a tracker in my monthly collections to actually keep track of what is getting done. Covering the whole year I have monthly habits, bill tracking, birthdays, and a "year at a glance" calendar for reference. I also like to keep a running "waiting on" page to track what packages I have coming in (especially helpful around Christmas time!!) This year I put that in with the yearly collections, but I'll likely need a new one later on that I'll put wherever I am at that point.

2 Thursdays? Hmmm. Mistakes happen. That's what white out is for right? Although, to be honest, I haven't fixed this yet. I'm learning to let some things slide 😛

After my yearly collection was in, I went ahead and did my January collection. Monthly I do a cleaning tracker, daily habit tracker, budget, month calendar page, menu, grocery list for monthly shopping, and weekly spreads.

I think habit tracking might seem silly to some, but personally I am very motivated by things like this. I am more likely to run back upstairs to make my bed if I know I'll break a streak of neatly colored squares if I don't! I know I can't be alone in this. Right?!

We are Dave Ramsey groupies and this is the layout that works best for our income. Expenses are listed on the left and the dated columns are paydays. We assign every dollar of each paycheck to expenses.

This is not the grocery list I actually take shopping with me, but this is where I write out the ingredients I need for all of the dinners on the menu. I do the menu and list all at the same time while I have the cookbooks and recipe links in front of me. Then when I go to make my grocery list, this part is already done and I can just fill in what I need for our other meals and snacks.

My monthly spread is usually the same, but sometimes the left side changes up a bit depending on that month's needs. This current incarnation has been working for several months now.

My weekly spreads change often, but this is working for me right now. I fill in the top section with my tasks and appointments and use the bottom to journal a few lines about the day and write out at least one thing I'm grateful for.

This cleaning tracker is a new layout I'm trying. Jury is still out on this one. I think it might be too messy looking for me. 

So those are my main pages. At the end of each month I take a little time to put together the monthly collection for the next month. I promise it does not take long at all!! Each Sunday afternoon or evening I fill in my tasks and appointments for just that week. Big events I write in the monthly calendar and then put it on the weekly spread when that week rolls around. In between monthly collections, I put whatever I need. Some examples of other pages I do:

Packing lists for vacation

Planning pages/menus for parties

Notes for a book I'm reading or a speaker I hear at MOPS

A list of prayer requests to go over when I have some quiet time

A list of books I want to read and a list of books I've read (look for a blog post soon about a book challenge I'm super excited about doing this year!)

A tracking page for a workout plan that I'm following

Lists of areas to declutter

Big to do lists leading up to events (like Christmas)

Basically anything I need. Any list I need to make or anything I want to keep track of, goes in my bullet journal. Sometimes I make them really pretty with borders and little drawings, but sometimes it's just a list with nothing extra. The act of list making alone helps me calm my brain down when I have a lot going on, adding a little bit of doodling makes it even better! Sometimes after a particularly trying morning, I'll sit down with my journal after putting the kids down for naps/quiet time and I'll make a very random list or just doodle a page with scripture or even song lyrics. A lot of bullet journalers get into hand lettering and that's a goal of mine for this year! Writing and doodling is so soothing to me!

I hope this post has answered some questions (and I am more than happy to answer any more!) and I really hope it has presented bullet journaling as a very helpful and achievable thing to do! I know it seems like a lot. I know it seems like you couldn't possibly devote any time to something like this. I know it might even seem like a total waste! And for some people, it might be! Bullet journaling definitely isn't for everybody! But it is absolutely the right fit for me. 

Menu Planning and Bulk Shopping

Have you ever gone grocery shopping with 3 kids 4 and under? If you haven't, I'll let you in on a little secret, grocery stores are about 25 degrees hotter when you have small children with you. I don't know how they keep the perishable food cold. Maybe it's just me, but even when everybody is behaving, it's a stressful situation. I'm lucky. For the most part, my kids are pretty well behaved in the grocery store. But, for whatever reason, it always feels like we're a walking time bomb. At any moment somebody could completely lose their you-know-what and then I'm just stuck there with a cart full of food. So yeah. Not my most favorite activity.

I do get myself treats though. Coffee, Noosa (you haven't tried Noosa?! Get you a Noosa yogurt ASAP my friend!), maybe a nice bar of chocolate. So, not all bad.

I have always made weekly menus and grocery shopped once a week. I did go through a phase when we were living in North Carolina were I would do a bigger grocery shop every other week, with a smaller one on the in between weeks, but I've always been a once a week shopper. For a while now though, I've been wanting to give monthly shopping a try. Besides the fact that I end up feeling stressed, grocery shopping also takes a huge chunk out of our day. A huge chunk taken out once every week gets frustrating. And once we moved, my favorite grocery store went from being 5 minutes away to 40 minutes away. I did try out a couple other grocery stores, but I just couldn't quit my old favorite (Wegman's!!) Monthly grocery shopping was making more and more sense. So I gave it a try.

I. Love. It. Love. So much love. And every time I've posted anything about it on any form of social media, everybody has lots of questions. So hopefully here are some answers.

First part of monthly grocery shopping (ok so I actually do 3-3.5 weeks at a time) is making a monthly menu. This SOUNDS very daunting, but I promise you it's not. Theme days make it a lot easier. If I cook a full dinner every night, we end up tossing so much food. So Saturdays are always a leftover night, and Fridays are a takeout/homemade pizza/eggs/leftovers/fend for yourself night. So there's a good bit of the month planned. Wednesday nights the kids and I leave around 5:30 and aren't home until after bedtime, so every Wednesday I plan for an easy crockpot meal or soup and sandwiches. Tuesdays Kate has ballet until 6:00, so on Tuesdays I plan meals that can be made during naptime and either kept warm in the crockpot while we're gone, or heated up easily when we get home. Bigger, "nice" dinners on Sundays since I have more time and to restock our leftovers for the week (James takes leftovers to work for lunch). So all that's left are the Mondays and Thursdays! Themes! You could do Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Casserole Wednesday, Crockpot Thursday, Pizza Friday, whatever themes you want. Promise it makes monthly menu planning so much easier!

I get a LOT of my recipes from Pinterest, but also from 100 Days of Real Food. Seriously amazing blog and fantastic cookbook.

I print blank calendar pages to fill in with meals and keep them in my home management binder. They could be easily kept in a folder or written out in a notebook instead of a calendar page.

I do try to plan meals that have like ingredients to save money. Things that I'll buy in bulk to use for multiple recipes include:

chicken broth

canned tomatoes

frozen vegetables

shredded cheese

pasta

meat (of course)

Wegmans sells bulk packs of chicken breasts, ground turkey, and ground beef so the majority of our dinners come from that. I like Wegmans' quality and prices on their bulk items, but you can also use a membership at a store like Costco or Sam's Club.  I portion out the meat when I get home (or at least within a day or 2 of shopping), wrap tightly in plastic and foil, and keep in labelled freezer bags. I've found that the combo of plastic and foil keeps the freezer burn away the best. Someday maybe I'll have a vacuum sealer...

When my menu is finished, I make my grocery list. I write it out by aisle which makes shopping a million times easier and FASTER. I first write out everything needed for the recipes I have planned out for dinners. I obviously can't buy fresh produce for the whole 3-4 weeks, but pretty much everything else I can. After I'm sure I have all the ingredients for the dinners, I fill in what we need for breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. I don't plan those for each day, but I do keep a running list of things we normally eat. I usually stick with snacks that I can buy in large portions or snacks that I can make homemade (granola is one). A big bag of pretzels, another of animal crackers, and a few boxes of cereal bars (making these homemade is another goal) will last us through the month. After that I go through my pantry and check my staples like flour, sugar, coffee, etc.

A note on pantry staples. We are very lucky to live right in Amish country and so we are never far from an Amish bulk foods store. They have all your dry goods, including spices, sold in bulk for super low prices. I try to go every other to every 3 months to stock the pantry. The only pantry staple I consistently buy at Wegmans and not the bulk food store is my white whole wheat flour. The bulk food store doesn't carry it and Wegmans has it for the lowest price I've found. I go through it very quickly, (and I'm about to go through it even quicker since I've made it a goal to start making most of our bread homemade), so a low price is very important to me.

 A bulk food store and farm stand haul from this past summer!

The last portion of my list includes things like plastic wrap, baggies, etc. I try not to get any cleaning supplies or toiletries during my big grocery trip.

The day I go, my kids are bribed heavily prepped beforehand. They eat something in the car on the way there because hungry kids are obnoxious kids and Kate (who sits in the cart) is allowed to bring a little toy in. Henry gets wrapped.

Getting so much food all at once does make our trip a little longer, but since I take the time to organize my list by aisle it's really not too bad. I do sometimes go before the kids have Awana at church, and I end up running through the store in order to finish in time, but it's worth  it since we're out that way anyway. Saves gas.

If I've gone shopping before Awana, I pack the cold stuff away into coolers in my trunk. Regardless of when we go shopping, I only put the cold stuff away when I get home. I just cannot face getting it all away at once. Cold stuff goes away and shelf stable stuff gets all set out on our island to be put away later. I've also been known to put away the cold stuff, leave the shelf stable stuff in the bags during the kids naps so I can unwind, and then put it away later while I'm making dinner.

Once I'm actually ready to get it put away, I take everything that can be taken out of boxes, out of boxes. I have all sorts of jars and bins that I keep things in. When you buy so much in bulk, it can get really hard to organize. Emptying boxes into jars and/or bins helps keep things in order. Keeps it all fresh too!

So what about produce? Milk? Eggs? That stuff I do have to buy weekly. But during the spring, summer, and early fall I can get all of my produce at farm stands and our town's grower's market. In the spring I run to the closest store for a quick trip. Half an hour tops. Next summer and fall we'll hopefully be eating a lot of produce we grew ourselves. Couldn't manage to do that this year since we moved in July.

I don't know if this post has made monthly menu planning and bulk shopping seem any less complicated and daunting, but I promise it really isn't. It does take more thought and planning, but it is just so worth it! Besides saving me a lot of time and stress, it's been saving us quite a lot of money! And who doesn't want to save money right? ;)

I'm sure all of this will grow and change as time goes on. I'm hoping to start making a lot more of our snacks from scratch (I know we can do better than the boxes of cereal bars), as well as our bread, and if we can manage a good garden next year that will make a big difference as well. Stay tuned for how all of that goes!

Our Playroom

So we're 3 days post Christmas, which means a lot of parents are suddenly in a full on, "Where did all these toys come from and where in the world am I going to put them?" freak out. Or was that just me?

We tried not to go overboard on the toys this Christmas, and I think we suceeded, but we still had a lot of new things that needed homes. Until today I was ignoring the problem. Which, to be honest, confused the heck out of my kids. They'd get up from a nap, "Hey! Our toys are still out!", I'd announce bedtime, "Wait. Don't we need to pick up our toys first?", and then the next morning, "Ummm Mama? Why are the toys on the floor still?" I've always been a stickler for twice a day playroom cleanup, such a stickler that even a 2 year old and a 4 year old immediately noticed when I skipped it.

Today though I'd officially had enough. Last night we were at Target for 2 things. So naturally, we left with a full cart, including a few bins I thought would be helpful for the new stuff. Our playroom was already fairly well organized. I have an obsession with storage bins so everything, for the most part, had its home. There were just a LOT of things needing a LOT of homes. So I decided to give toy rotation a try. 

I've been considering toy rotation for a while, but had no clue where to start because they seriously play with EVERYTHING. I had originally wanted to have 3 distinct rotations, but that was feeling overwhelming, so I just sort of culled down a few categories of toys that were a bit overloaded. Mostly vehicles. We had a small car/truck bin, a medium car/truck bin, a large car/truck bin, and still a few larger ones stored under the train table or on top of the shelf. Not necessary. Sure, sometimes Sam plays with every single one, but he obviously doesn't HAVE TO. So I consolidated all the vehicles into just 1 bin. After that I got into it and filled a couple boxes of less used toys to take down to the basement. I'll probably rotate them back up in 2 weeks or so. Once that was figured out, it was easy enough to find a place for all our new things. 

I had hoped to do all the toy downsizing furing nap time to avoid a lot of inevitable, "Heyyyyy! Where are you going with that?!", but that didn't work out so I parked them on the couch with a movie. I still got a few, "Wait! That's mine!", but they mostly stayed distracted.

They have been playing in the clean and reorganized playroom for 2 hours now, and not a single mention of the missing toys. Plus they've been fighting and whining less because their things are easy to find AND they have more room. I might even downsize a little more this week. Probably not necessary to have 2 baby strollers AND a shopping cart out all the time. Rotating them would definitely open up a lot of space! 

So here is our playroom! This is technically supposed to be the dining room in our tiny little house, but we sacrificed it and squeezed a table into our kitchen to free up space. I so love having s dedicated playroom that giving up a dining room was a no brainier! 

This was "before" (before Christmas even. So this is without the new toys. Here is is messy:

Yikes.

And here it is clean:

Organized, but still a little cluttered.

So here it is now:

I cleared off the top of the low shelf, to give them a space to build with Legos or do puzzles. I also corralled the dress up corner into one basket and a few hooks. All the bins are organized by category. So we have: Mega Bloks, animals, Little People, Barbies & action figures, gear building set, big trains, vehicles, and now one for baby toys too since Henry is starting to play a little.

Can't tell by the pictures, but there used to be a ton of stuff shoved under the train table. Now there's just bins holding various Duplo sets

On the other side of the room is the kitchen and Kate's babies. Luckily our toy kitchen has a good amount of storage space and I utilize that.

And here is our dress up corner:

When we move in the spring James will be building a little dress up cart to help organize all this, but for now this is working. 

We have a nice wide windowsill over the train table that I use to store our craft/coloring stuff. 

I kept out a couple of puzzles, but the rest of the puzzles and games (along with some of Sam's "big boy toys" like Legos and Playmobile) I keep in an organizer in our hall closet (it's crooked because the vacuum was put away weird)

Since Sam and Kate could easily clean up the playroom BEFORE I downsized a bit, I know that it'll be even easier for them now. So that's exciting. 

In my mind it's even neater and more organized, but that will involve a lot of projects first. So this is it until we move and have both more space and more time. 

Now enjoy some shots of my ridiculously cute kids (and husband... lol) playing ;)