"When you mix organizing and the enjoyment of crafting to better your life all at the same time!"
Before hitting that "halfway through the year" mark, I found my self a bit scattered brained. Ok, ok more like WTF AM I DOING??? It comes with the occupation, at one point I'm in L.A. and then finding opportunities in New York, to then be booking work in Miami. I'm a bit of a gypsy at the moment, but apart from my career side, I always want to make sure that my personal life and well being is in order. If that side stays sane/ stable, then I can deal with my impromptu career.
When I graduated college, my father sat me down and told me, "Write your master plan out. Visually see it, even if it changes, see it". The one thing that always would change are timelines. Life happens, new opportunities happen, different approaches are taken to obtain goals. Regardless as each year passed, yearly goals are made and then you continue to chisel away at the "Big Goals". It's the constant change that you have to keep up with. So when I'm feeling too scatter brained, I know i'm not writing and taking note of all my tasks, schedules and not checking in with "Mind, Body, Soul". There's only one thing- and most VIRGOS know this- that helps...
Weekly planners! Weekly planners have always been my thing, I LOVE to write my schedules, to do's, events, etc. down. I even type them in on my iPhone calendar, but for me to remember and keep accountability for certain things, I must write them in my planner. Aside from my weekly planner, I always have a notepad, where I scribble to do's, lists upon lists and inspo. In the last couple years, bullet journalling has really taken off. I love bullet journaling because they have made so many tools to make your journal look beautiful, like stencils, stickers, stamps. It's basically scrapbooking for all your task needs.
I don't think I'll ever go full bullet as I'm partial to my planners. Though I have adapted the bullet journal task legend in my already made planner. But for other things it has helped me immensely. When it comes to workout regimens, daily wellness, master grocery lists, books, event layouts, blogging: reminders/tools/stats --- SEEING IT, actually takes away that overwhelming feeling of having to remember it all the time at once. I personally love my blog monthly stat checker. It helps me see what themed post(s) I have thus far this year and eggs me on to keep note of if I am giving the variety I want or need to step up my game. Over all it's aloud me to ORGANIZE but also CRAFT all the things that are important to me. Crafting as a creative self is important to me and this method has made it a more enjoyable system to log, versus a studious report on tasks.
Enjoy my photos and descriptions below of some of the pages from my Master Bullet Journal and how I incorporate a bullet journal legend in my weekly planner. If you need more inspo on bullet journaling, there is a ton of outlines and pins via Pinterest! I hope you enjoy organizing and crafting your best life.
Go through your arts and crafts drawer and pull out pencils, thin to thick markers and colored anything. Your best friend will be a ruler, I personally love my 6" ruler, mechanical pencil and sharpie pen. Buy at your local craft store of office supply store for your basics. Also visit the dollar section at target for some fun stickers, pencils and fun planner items.
This legend is your standard "BULLET JOURNAL legend. Since I love my pretty little planners, I went ahead and added this to the beginning of my notes section of my planner for reference.
Here's an example of how I use my legend for daily tasks and events. Don't mind my hideous penmanship, I'm better at chalk boards for whatever reason.
One of the very first pages of my MASTER BULLET JOURNAL is my " Master Plan" - there are more detailed pages for each section that is important to me, but for personal reasons I'll keep to myself ;)
Here I'm entering my "HEALTH & WELLNESS" section. I have two ideal workout weeks written out. One heavy training week for slow work weeks and the other lighter training weeks for the weeks I'm crazy busy with work. The goal is to maintain these workout schedules on the regular, but I'm also human and get lazy and it's much different when you dont have your personal trainer on the regular waking you your booty up at 6AM. That's why I jot it down in my weekly planner to see/ take accountability to my fitness/meditation.
Based on my experience with my trainer and what diet works for me, it's simply lean meats, NO BAD CARBS, very little complex carbs, dark leafy greens and rooted veggies and small portions of fruit. I also have my trainer/s amazing 21 DAY diet schedule that helps you lean out in the best efficient way for your health and muscles, It's seriously amazing, but that's his own personal work that took him years to master, so that remains private. If interested in the best shape of your life, you can find Dodd Romero at SOMI FITNESS - Miami, Fl.
There is actually a more intricate method to taking vitamins, but that's a whole other post, and I just like to take note to remember, plus my written out line of my SKIN REGIMEN [READ HERE] and then some.
For fun, I recently added an activities section featuring "Weekend Activities" , weekly/Monthly "Chores List" working on a "Books to Read/Best reference Books" . It might seem superfluous but sometimes by the end of the week I'm fried and a little reference never hurt anybody!
Let's skip on over to blogging section (for any bloggers out there looking to get organized). Here I simply outlined the concept of BLONDE2BRUNETTE lifestyle blog. It's the rooms of the home and what they are to this virtual space.
Here I made a blog post STATS checker. I made enough to cover 7 years. I like the number 7. I have tallies but also the first letter for each room to see the themes of each post. Some posts have two themes they offer...
Here I am organizing the blog posts (still have to add more) that have gained large audiences, some "viral". It's a helpful way to see that party event planning, recipes and fun themes that are DIY do very well on Blonde2Brunette.
I broke up one page to two sections of " BLOG GOALS" and "SOCIAL MEDIA". On Blog Goals, it's a little bit of a word dump or reminders of weekly things I need to do/work on. For Social Media it's a way for me to go through one by one to make sure I've shared content. I'm really bad with the G+ and twitter. They are basically non existent. Gotta change that. I also now have a private LADIES ONLY facebook group community, that if interested please click here for more info: JOIN US| B2B FB Community
Light Bulb ideas and events blogged or in the process of. It's probably the cutest section in terms of hand written ideas.
You may recognize this from " Sylvia's DIY Garden Shower [CLICK HERE]", I loved logging the important details from the party, plus the week of schedule. It's almost is a formula for me and keeps me, again, ORGANIZED. If you need a little extra help, check out TWG Designs "PLANNER PRINTABLES HERE".
So there you go, I hope you get what I mean by " Crafting you BEST Life". It's a great creative way to organize anything you find important and helpful to aid in your everyday life. It's not for everyone, but it keeps me from snacking, idle time, phone distraction. I love it. I hope you do to! Remember to make it you, whether it minimal or super extravagant with design- HAVE FUN GETTING ORGANIZED, you still got five more months left of the year. Finish with a BANG!
XO,
Caro
P.S. I plan on sharing more pages along the way as they coincide with our blog post so stay tuned...