{Filofax Friday} The Tour – Part 1

February 15, 2013August 25, 20166 Comments

So for the first part of the {Filofax Friday} posts, I’m going to be doing a tour of my lovely personal size Osterley in Plum. To keep it from being one long picture-heavy snooze-fest, I’m going to break it up into a few parts. This first part will be an overview of the set-up. I’ll go into further detail with how I use my monthly, weekly, and daily {yes, I use all three} inserts in later posts.

Here she is in all her glory. Not too stuffed, but just stuffed enough. I had wanted to name her as I did with my personal Malden{Molly} and pocket Malden {Polly – get it Polly Pocket for any of you who may have played with them…} but honestly what starts with O. So she just stays as Osterley. {Full disclaimer: I reused pictures from the Filofax Photo Challenge because nothing has really changed.}

In the front pockets I have a set of oddly- sized pink Post-It notes I found one day when I was cleaning out our office. They are slightly smaller than a business card which is perfect for the personal size. I just wish I could find them in stores. I also have my library card {for checking out e-books}, and the Filofax card still for some reason. In the full length pocket, I have a DayRunner zip pocket that has my Masking-It sticky flags, and some sticky to-do lists from Muji. {I’m still trying to get in the habit of using them.}

My front page is some gorgeous glittery scrapbook paper which I absolutely love. Here’s a close up of the glittery awesomeness.

Behind that, I have my goals tab {a top tab using a sticky tab by Martha Stewart} which has my overall “resolutions” for my life on the front, and more specific goals and projects for 2013 and “2014 and beyond” on the back. {For anyone who hasn’t read any of my other posts about my goals, this is a new addition for 2013.}

The next section is my Diary tab {nothing special here, just the standard Filofax Diary divider} which has my monthly, weekly, and yearly inserts.

The Diary section is followed by a To-Do tab that holds my daily inserts.

The rest of the sections {decorated with washi tape} are used less frequently are dedicated to areas of my life:

Me {for personal projects}
Work {for information and work projects}
School {for graduate school info}
Financial {wishlists and gift ideas}
and Misc. {store cards, important numbers, prescription information}.

I may or may not go into further detail on these tabs in a separate post. {If you want me to, let me know.} To be honest, I probably don’t really need all tabs at the back. I actually had to look through and see what I even had in the sections as I was writing this. I just don’t know where else to put the “stuff” and haven’t sat down to figure it out. I may do this soon though.

At the very back in the full length pocket, I keep another Day Runner zip pocket that has my coupons tucked into it.

One of the best things about the Osterley is it’s two elasticized pen loops. In the front loop I keep a black Bic Atlantis for general things, and the back one holds a Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coleto 5 Color Multi Pen from JetPens for my color coding.

That’s it for this week. If any of you are still with me, I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the set up of my Filofax. Tune in… {Can I say that for a blog? I feel like that’s for TV and radio broadcasts.} Anyway… tune in next week for a peek at how I use my monthly and weekly inserts. You guys may like what I have going on… I’ll give you a hint… it’s my solution to get monthly inserts and tabs working with weekly pages…

Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 14, 2013January 20, 2015Leave a comment

I hope everyone has a wonderful day today. I don’t have any new content, but I do have some cute valentines day recipes to pass along.

Check out these adorable strawberry ice cream sandwiches from Missy at Pink Pistachio. {I have to admit, I’m totally jealous of how awesome her blog is. Her pictures and family are adorable.}

And for some healthier alternatives, some Valentine’s day treats from the wonderful Tone It Up Girls.

Let me know if you try any of them, and how they turn out.

{Blog Update} Just Some Quick Updates

February 12, 2013August 25, 2016Leave a comment

So I’m fairly new to the blog world. I have been a long time lurker of many blogs, and I’ve always wanted to start a blog, but I never actually kept up with it. I’d make one post, be discouraged and never write again, and start a new one later. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time clearing out old blogs. One of my goals for 2013 is to not only start a blog {and only one}, but keep up with it. So far it’s going well. I have to admit I’m kind of addicted to seeing the views climb each day. Thank you everyone!

Hit the jump to continue reading…

Given that I’m new to all this, expect some changes and tweaks as I figure things out. I must admit, I’m not exactly happy with the title {UPDATE: New Title Added!} or the theme at the moment. I’m also debating whether to splurge for some extras like an actual domain or custom theme. Maybe once I get some more readers, I’ll take that leap.

So far, I’m already making a few changes:

My {Filofax} Week posts will be moving to Mondays, because I plan on devoting Sundays to Sunday Social link up.

In an effort to make this a not totally Filofax-centered blog {because you all know we really need another one… ^_^}, anything Filofax-related will be posted on Fridays. So stationary and planner addicts, that’s your day.

And for some other future posts coming up:

I’m going to try and post monthly reviews of my ipsy bag and birchbox shipments.
Keeping with the monthly things: monthly goals, recaps, and photo challenge posts too.
I really want to start posting about my massive room renovation project that I have been planning because it’s kind of a big deal.
I feel like this blog wouldn’t be complete without at least one or two obligatory What’s in my Bag posts.
And of course I also have to introduce you all to the 5 crazy animals that rule my house.

I’m sure other ideas will pop up as I brainstorm more. Also, I finally got around to writing my About Me page, if you’re interested.

Again, thank you all for reading, or just stopping by to take a peek. If you guys want to hear about anything, let me know in the comments.

My {Filofax} Week 6

February 10, 2013August 25, 20166 Comments

Happy Chinese New Year! {and boy am I glad to have to pretend to have a new start}. It’s that time of the week again where I show off my week to whoever happens to be reading this blog. I love looking at everyone’s weeks, and this is actually keeping me pretty accountable too. So without further ado…

Here’s my week:

And for a quick recap of what happened {in case you aren’t at all interested in reading about my life}:

My dog was really sick.
I was really sick.
I had a productive meeting with my boss.
I finished a book.
I got all my graduate work done early!
I started actually working out.
I broke up with my boyfriend.

And for the longer version {for those of you who like to read or are just nosy :)}:

Before the Superbowl on Sunday, one of my dogs, Zoey, got sick. She actually had a seizure and fell down the stairs to our deck on her way outside it freaked her out so much. {I guess it’s a blessing in disguise that I have two other animals who also have seizures when they get sick, so I wasn’t as freaked out as she was.} She spent two days being transported between our vet and the local emergency animal hospital. They determined her seizure somehow likely brought on a cause of pneumonia and she had some other weird things wrong with her. She came home on Tuesday much to her best friend {my other dog}, Remington’s delight. The cats on the other hand were about freaked out by her coughing which sounded more like a goose honking. I’m happy to report she’s doing much better now.
I ended up missing work on Monday and Tuesday for three reasons: {No, I was not attending the Raven’s parade even though apparently everyone else in this area did.} I was not feeling well at all and barely made it out of my bed for much of those days. Remington was incredibly worried about Zoey, as was I, and for reasons unknown to me, my car’s key fobs both decided to report battery issues at the same time which isn’t good when you have a car with an intelligent key and push button start. In some weird conspiracy, they have fixed each other. {Not very intelligent if you ask me.}
On Wednesday I ventured back to work and had a meeting with my boss which went quite well if you ask me. We have bi-weekly catch-up meetings, but honestly, they tend to be brief. This one wasn’t and we seemed to get a lot accomplished including an idea for what I can do for my graduate class’s project for this semester. I was supposed to also have lunch with my friend on Wednesday, but she had to rescheduled because she was closing on her first house. {So excited for her!}
Thursday, I finished the book I had been reading. It really summarized my introverted life and made me feel a little less odd for not being so outgoing all the time.
Friday not much happened. I did get my new Beach Babe DVD in the mail. But it was the start to Saturday’s drama. (Backstory: {Begin Rant} My boyfriend was planning on moving to a new place in a couple of weeks. It was close to his job and cheaper, so he sold his car and everything. Fast forward to the Superbowl, his best friend and I made some pretty stupid decisions that his future roommates didn’t like and it ended up costing him that place to live. I tried apologizing and even put together some thoughtful gifts for the two roommates, but they wouldn’t even accept them. {Kinda frustrated me, but oh well.})
On to Saturday, I woke up and worked out with the Beach Babe DVD. It kicked my butt. Then I proceeded to work my way through the almost 200 videos I’d been meaning to watch on Youtube. I hadn’t heard from my boyfriend, so I knew something was wrong. He felt like he had to make a decision: me who his friends now hate or a place to live. I knew what he was going to pick. He needed a place to live, but I needed someone to care about me as well so after 8 years of dating off an on, I decided it was time to go before he broke up with me AGAIN. So I drove to his house and got my stuff while he was at work. Surprisingly, I’m not even upset {Right now at least}. I think it was for the best. I just have to keep reminding myself I deserve better. {End of Rant}
Sunday was not too much different from Saturday. The cats woke me up at 5 am so I caught up on some more Youtube. Got a work out in, and then got to work with the usual Sunday laundry. Just trying to stay busy and stay positive.

So that’s my hectic week. Hopefully next week won’t be so crazy. So far I only have one meeting scheduled, but I haven’t looked at my assignments for graduate school yet so who knows.

As an added treat, I threw in a day from my day-per-page diary which I use as a to-do list. I started experimenting with using ever other line, and I like it a lot better. I also love the mix of colors on this page. {Full tour of the lovely Osterley coming soon.}

How did your week go?

February Goals

February 6, 2013February 21, 2016Leave a comment

February 2013 Goals

I wanted to take the time to make a quick post on my goals and projects for February. {Quick confession: I’ve never actually sat down and written out goals until this year, so this is a bit new for me. So far it’s working out well.} I will probably do a more detailed post of my overall “resolutions” at a later point. This is just what I plan to accomplish in February and what I’m going to focus on.

In terms of random projects I’m working on:

I want to finish reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking – So far I’m really enjoying this book. As an introvert, I can relate to at times feeling out of place in environments where extroversion is seen as the ideal. It has been extremely relevant and helpful considering one of my current responsibilities has become leading training seminars on a recent online service my university is providing to students, faculty, and staff.

Another goal is to finish patching the walls in my bedroom and bathroom – I’m going to post a bit more about my bedroom/bathroom remodel in a later post. I’ve been planning this project for a while now, but I’ve been dragging my feet on it. I’m a bit tired of the bubble gum pink and lime green walls from my high school years and am looking forward to a new look.

I’m participating in FMS’s February photo challenge as part of my resolution to take more picture – I’d really love to complete it on time (without catching up as much as I did with the Filofax challenge, but I’ve already gotten off to a bad start, mainly because I didn’t realize the one I was doing was from LAST YEAR! {Major fail on my part.} I’ll be posting the pictures to both Instagram and Flickr.

Along with my overall resolutions and goals for the year, I also decided to come up with a focus for each month. Last month, I focused on just writing out my goals and resolutions because it was such a busy month getting ready for the new semester to start. This month, I’m focusing on relationships, so I’m going to be doing a few things with that:

I’m going to work on remembering how grateful I am to have such an incredible boyfriend. – That means appreciating him more, and learning to let little things go. I have to keep reminding myself that the little things he does that may frustrate me in the moment are usually the things I look back on and think of how glad I am that he keeps me on my toes and doing things I would normally be too scared to do.

I’m going to work on hopefully repairing some friendships that I royally messed up. – This is going to involve some incredibly crafted gift bags, and some explanations I should have given people a long time ago.

and I have some cute little projects for Valentine’s Day that I’d like to complete. – I gave my one idea away already so now I have to come up with something else. I’m looking to be a bit more creative and crafty though so this is a good way to do it.

Well that’s it for my goals this month. Back to reading for my class.

My {Filofax} Week – January Catch Up

February 3, 2013August 25, 2016Leave a comment

I’m happy to finally be joining in on PaperLovestory’s “My Week” posts. I’m a bit late to the game on this one so I figured I should catch up. Better late than never, right? (Be prepared for another picture heavy post.)

Admittedly, I already had a slight planner fail this year. I bought a set of lined WO2P as my overview for the week. I thought it would work out great. I liked that the lines kept everything neat, but since I only use the weekly view for appointments/meetings (I use daily pages for to dos), I was starting to feel like WO2P was overkill. Then the semester started, and I realized I forgot about one thing. My graduate courses are organized so that all the assignments are due at the end of the week, and the WO2P doesn’t give me the space to write down the list of assignments. That’s when I remembered why I really loved using the week on a page + notes layout. So with that, I finally decided to scrap the WO2P and ordered a set of Week per page plus notes, and transferred everything over. So without further ado, here’s Weeks 1-5. (I didn’t start using the Notes pages until this past week so I didn’t include them until Week 5.)

As you can see, the lovely Masking-It sticky tabs I have had forever have finally been put into use. I’m trying to make the pages look a bit more fun each week. It was a fairly boring first week. I also caught a nasty bug that was going around so I didn’t do too much.

On January 3rd, our offices were getting recarpeted so we had to temporarily move all operations upstairs. The office we were using were incredibly cold and closed off from the rest of the world, so I was excited to move back downstairs on the 9th.

While this week looks fairly busy, I was actually on vacation. It ended up being pretty hectic to plan because the other full-time employee ended up unexpectedly also being out of the office for most of the week. Thankfully, the students in the office kept everything running smoothly.
My work tends to schedule meetings every two weeks so that they all fall on the same weeks. This was one of those weeks. I also had to venture downtown for my first time ever leading training seminar. Being quite shy, I was not looking forward to making a presentation. It went better than I had expected, but I still wouldn’t say that I enjoyed it.
Lots of snow in the area this past week. We ended up having a 2-hour delay on Monday which also happened to be the first day of the Spring semester (usually a very busy day for the university, but I think the snow kept some people home.) Tuesday was the crazy day at work. Phones were ringing off the hook. I didn’t even get a chance to take lunch. We got tons of rain (and flooding) on Wednesday. {There was actually a swift water rescue at the river at the bottom of my street. Talk about crazy!} Thursday was round 2 of training downtown. This time went a bit smoother, but public speaking is still definitely not my thing. The most exciting part of the week has yet to come… *drumroll* my home team, the Ravens, are playing in the Super Bowl!!!!

Last but not least, I actually had something to write on the notes page this week because my class started. It was a pretty standard first week – Read the syllabus, get familiar with the class procedures, and introduce yourself. The only thing freaking me out so far is that I have to work with a real world client this semester, but hopefully all goes well and I’m a bit more motivated this semester than I was last.

I hope you all enjoyed seeing my weeks. I know I enjoy sneaking a peek at everyone else’s weeks. Check back next week for Week 6.

January Photo-a-Day Challenge Recap

February 1, 2013February 21, 2016Leave a comment

One of my resolutions this year is to take more pictures. To help with that, I’ve decided to do a photo-a-day challenge each month. This month, I joined Carla’s from Friday, I’m in Love.

Continue reading →

About Me

January 30, 2013February 21, 2016Leave a comment

I read Chloe’s A-Z About Me post over on her blog, Rainbows & Honeysuckle. Since I’ve been procrastinating on getting this blog up and running, I thought it would be a good first post for this blog. So here goes: