City Organiser - Last Time Buy...

Sad times... at the time of writing this post City Organiser's online shop is no more, and the store in Bow Lane will be closing very shortly, by the time this post is completed the store will have closed it's doors for the last time.

I never had the good fortune to visit the shop, but I have had great service from them online previously. As they were closing down and had some great online offers, I though it only right that I should make up for never visiting by buying a stack of stuff from them.

I shall let the pictures do most of the talking today as there is just way too much to write about all of it.

The two main coveted items (that I must have put in my basket about 100 times previously) and finally saw in the flesh at the Philofaxy meet up were these two babies below...

It's quite a big box, so we're assuming A5

Can you guess what it is yet?

Loops are top and bottom instead of at the sides, how odd - and
why did I not already know this?

One minor ring issue, but I'm sure it's fine :-)

the gorgeous Osterleys - grey A5 and compact orange.

These two were top of my futures Filofaxes list, and at these discounts I wasn't going to hang about.

Once these two beauties were done (the main purpose of my visit to the website) it was time to look at inserts etc. The following is just a stack of photos of what I chose...

Deskfax inserts (which I had totally forgotten I'd ordered)

Really bad picture, sorry - you'll have to believe me when I
tell you that these are A5 cream ruled paper and zip lock envelopes

Personal plain cotton cream (ready for printing) and pocket
zip lock envelopes

City Organisers own brand pocket sized reminder sets, so
cute, and very cheap so I just had to get lots of them :-)

Then came the Moleskine onslaught:

Hobbit ruled and plain notebooks that I've wanted since before
they released them

What self-respecting female wouldn't want
one of these?

And this was an essential - another one
that I wanted before they were released

On sale and places I intend to visit :-) And some plain cagier
notebooks (somehow I have managed again to choose plain
instead of ruled - I am an idiot. Never mind, they will get used.

By the time this little lot was in my basket I wasn't far off the spend required to push it up into the next discount bracket. So bravely I added this gorgeous darling, which basically made it free :-)

My compact black Holborn - this my make me move out of my mini Chameleon as a wallet for a while...

Also, with each of the Filofaxes I got a free pen (one was hiding when it was photo time, clearly a little camera shy), so I will leave you with my favourite pic...

LJx

Staples FF Discounts? Ooh, Don't Mind If I Do...

I think I can safely blame Jayne for the following purchases from Staples... If she hadn't posted about the Staples discounts in the Philofaxy Facebook group then I wouldn't even have been looking at buying any Filofaxes... thank you Jayne :o)

Jane had managed to bag herself a Metropol in Kingfisher blue, the only Metropol colour that has tickled my fancy for a while, so I knew that I had to at least have a look.

By the time I had finished at had not one, but four, new filos in my basket (not all for me, some were earmarked as potential presents). I had a mail a few days later to say that they had run out of the personal Metropol in raspberry (one more present to find then), but the other three were on there way.

So, without further ado..., ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the personal kinfisher Metropol, stunningly presented by both the pocket and personal Dominos, dressed this evening in their matching violet outfits.

LJx

101 Progress Check - April 14th 2013

Hi guys,

What have you been up to this week?

I've had a good week, although still haven't managed to get as much done as I'd hoped.

I went and watched Rock the Ballet on Wednesday at the Maag Hall in Zürich, which was absolutely amazing - I would quite happily go and see that lots more times.

I had the boys all to myself this weekend as Ben has been away, so I took the opportunity to bake some chocolate cakes with them (their choice, totally from scratch) and if we'd had time to do icing properly I'd have been able to cross off my baking cupcakes, but we'll try for that next time :-)

My Les Mills Combat still isn't finished, but I only have five more workouts to go - I will get there.

Now that Christopher is reading German at school he's picking up books in English and having a read of those too, and is doing really well. He'll be way behind where he would be if we were living in the UK, but that's because they start school much later over here (7 instead of 5), but he seems to be picking it all up pretty quickly.

I tried to do two of my tasks on my list yesterday, "Set up Events Planner" and "Move Christmas Planning from Dodo Book of Christmas to Events Planner". Unfortunately this fell apart very rapidly when I realised that the Dodo stuff was significantly bigger than the A5 size that I thought it was (more proof, if it were needed, that I am really not very observant). So back to the drawing board for that one.

Have a great week,

LJx

Finchleys and Deskfaxes

The waiting is over (for now) and my Finchley's have arrived. They came special delivery, along with not one, but two deskfaxes.

I won't go into full details about pocket layouts etc, as most people are pretty au fait with them. Here is a link to Alice's blog if you want to see more detailed shots.

I think these two complete my Finchley family - I don't think I need any more. The colours of the Finchleys complement each other beautifully. I will do a brief post about my Finchley family in the not too distant future.

The flash has washed the green out a bit, it's a slightly
darker colour than this...

Waiting to go in their new home, where I have saved them
space next to their sister, Miss Vintage Rose

One of the reasons why I love the Finchleys, the lovely
stitching, including on the clasp

For today we will continue to the desk faxes, Richmond & Windsor. Both are brown, although the Windsor is a much warmer shade, unfortunately the picture doesn't show that very well.

Richmond Deskfax

Windsor Deskfax

The Richmond is much sturdier than the Windsor. Both have clearly seen a fair amount of usage, as witnessed by the various marks from general wear and tear (nothing big).

Windsor with minor (and slightly odd) marks

Internal layout of the Windsor - secretarial pocket on the left,
complete with ID slot and 8 credit card slots, and large zipped
pocket, notepad slot on the right

The clasp & pen loops (two) have seen some work :-)

No gaps in these rings...

Internal layout of the Richmond - 2 open pockets, a zipped
8 credit card slots and a smaller pocket on the left, with a
notepad slot and a further full length pocket on the right 

Richmond's clasp and pen loops (two again) - Richmond
arrived with a few inserts.

Again, good rings with no gaps 

A few rust marks 

 The ring mechanism on the Richmond has small amounts of rust, so needs a little TLC, and I have given both a little love with some beeswax polish when they arrived, just to give them a bit of a treat.

I was (and still am) amazed at the lovely condition that these vintage babies arrived in...

LJx

Planner Planning - Which Ones to Use For What...?

This was fun and has given me lots more things to add to my to do lists (although I think I need to concentrate on my 101 in 1001 first, before trying to fit any more onto my plate).

After reading Laura's list of 105 Uses for a Filofax over on her blog (and before anyone gets clever, no, frisbee is not on there!!!), I thought it was about time that I actually list the plans that I have for my filofaxes, and start to make it happen.

I already had some plans, but reading the list inspired me to plan a few more...

Daily Planner (work & personal, brown A5 Holborn Zip) I posted about this new set up here last weekend.

Craft Fax (A5 Domino, not sure which colour yet)
     -     knitting info
     -     embroidery
     -     scrapbooking
     -     fonts directory
     -     sticker storage (or I may set up a separate Filofax for that)
     -     washi tape samples

Photo Album of my boys (probably in an A5 Domino) - this will be particularly for photos of them when they were still babies, although I need to try to get some baby photos of my oldest boy from other people as I can't find mine, and all my copies were on my laptop which got left on the train, never to be seen again.

Events Planner (A5 vintage pink Finchley)
     -     Christmas planning (sheets from Dodo book of Christmas)
     -     birthdays (including space to put cards/postcards ready to use)
     -     holidays and travel plans
     -     names and addresses (these already live in this binder, and I'm most likely to use
                   them when I am doing cards, rarely any other time)

Face-O-Fax (personal, possibly teal Ava as it's a bit wider)    -     like an address book, but with photos and information about the person.

Doodle-Fax - obviously I will need to buy a Doodle to fulfil this one, it would be wrong not to :o)

Gratitude Journal (personal aqua Finsbury) - I have started this a number of times, but never manage to keep it up for more than a week.

Greetings Cards Storage (A5 Chameleon, not sure which colour) - to keep special cards that we have received.

German Language (personal navy Portland?)
     -     vocabulary by type
     -     verbs and the conjugation of
     -     tenses and sentence structure differences

Letter Writing (A5 purple Malden or mustard Finchley)
     -     paper and envelopes
     -     stamps and mailing stickers
     -     pen pal info (name, address, birthday, personal info)
     -     dates written/received

Little Book of Calm (personal pink Winchester)
     -     10 minute things to do to help feel calm
     -     sources of calm
     -     calming foods
     -     calming drinks (I often find a large Bailey's does the trick, but I'm not sure that counts...)
     -     calm thoughts and quotes

Journal Fax (A5 jade Finchley)

General photo albums - personal Dominos

Pin-O-Fax (A5 purple Malden or mustard Finchley), a bit like Pinterest, with categories for:
     -     Filofaxes
     -     cakes
     -     food
     -     stationery
     -     holidays
     -     mood boards
     -     clothing

Religion Filo (not sure which) - I want to learn about lots of different religions (not in huge detail, just enough to understand their main principles and beliefs) and would like to dedicate a filofax to this.

Emergency Grab Fax ( A4 brown Metropol)
     -     birth certificates
     -     everything super important (I have a list somewhere of all the things I need to include)
     -     especially radiation tablets

Filofax of Filofaxes (pocket ochre Malden, unless I decide to include photos, then I will go to the personal size) - this will contain a page for each of the Filofaxes that I have bought with all relevant information about each one.

Bills to Pay and Filing (A5 ochre Malden - just because it's so fat)

School Letters and Filing (A5 black Lyndhurst Zip)

Recipe Filo - I'm not too sure about this one as I bought a Moleskine recipe notebook a while ago, and so should give this a try, but we'll see...

Blog Posts (A5 Domino - although I may be better off with an A4 ring binder)

Wallet - this is my black mini Chameleon, and although I occasionally move out, it's never for very long.

Wow - so potentially I could have 22 in use (well more I guess, because there will be more than one photo album).

I am quite excited now :o)

LJx

Daily Planner Setup

I am very excited to share this post.

I think there will  be a few surprised people by the end of this post - don't worry, I haven't moved away from Filofax as my planner of choice, but I have setup my planner using things that I just haven't been able to get to work for me before.

After my total failure to set up my personal planner I spent 10 minutes planning, to work out exactly what I need in my personal setup... so, here is what I discovered (again) in summary... outside of work I have no life, and therefore don't need a lot in my planner. Bear in mind that all my exercise, food, cleaning and other routine type logs for the time go in my Plannerisms planner.

With the little amount of personal stuff that I need it makes more sense for me to keep my personal stuff in with my work planner (gasp!!!). Hang on, haven't I been here before? Didn't I say that as I don't need my work filo at home then I can't keep my personal stuff in it? Isn't flipping to my personal to do section something that never happened when I tried this before? Er... yes, yes and yes, in that order :-)

As I use an A5 for work and cannot bring myself to try to downsize to personal for work, this means that I will have to lug around a rather full (another shock to my system I can tell you), heavy, A5 :o(  Suck it up girl!!! Man up and get on with it!!!

So, let's see what happened. Firstly, which love did I choose to be my companion on this arduous quest? Why, the magnificent Holborn Zip of course. I find that the zipped Filofaxes are just so much better for me for work, and Mr Lyndhurst (as lovely as he is) just doesn't fulfil my personal needs as well.

My beautiful A5 Holborn Zip

Handy pocket on the outside for carrying docs to meetings
or for travel

Of course, pride of place we have the essential Philofaxy business card. I also have a small plastic bag for carrying bits that I happen to need.

At the very front I keep a small pile of punched funky A6 notepaper pages in case I think of shopping lists to write. In the credit card pockets I have various plain but funky post-its. 

Then we come to the dividers, nothing fancy about these at all. They're not even labelled properly. All I have done is use Post-It arrow tags to show where each section is.

I have six sections currently...

Lists, with top tab sub-sections for "read this", "listen to this", "clothing", "watch this", "investigate this", and "101 Project".

         These are mainly to write down ideas from blogs that I read, or Facebook, or any other random
          thought processes.

Food planner - fairly self explanatory, but not actually used yet, so let's see what happens with this one.

Blog planner - literally just a list of posts that I need to do. No plans or outline, when they should be posted or anything sensible and organised like that (I admire people who manage to do that).

 Capture pages - just pages to write down things that I need to do or think about. These mainly come from emails at work, but are, in theory for my personal things to do. I must try to remember to write
these down.

Next up is the diary section, and this is where we find the biggest surprises...
     i)   a vertical diary, despite deciding here that this layout doesn't work for me. Having seen the
          pictures that Robyn Placek (I think it was) posted on Facebook I couldn't get this layout out
          or my head

    ii)  colour coding!!! Don't get me wrong, I've always loved colour coding and believe that it can be
         put to great use, it's just that whenever I've used it I've given up because I've never been able to
         remember what any of the colours are for.

Somehow I have managed to overcome my Wednesday issues (being too close to the rings to write in), and have finally found a colour coding system that is working for me - with my wonderful Frixion pens.

I have used one of the tips from Kent from Oz, and added small post-its to one side of my today marker and thought my hotlists from Imy of imysworld would be the perfect addition for the other side

I have even added relevant stickers, which I am quite excited by :-)

Behind the diary section I have my projects section, which I use purely for my work projects. Technically my 101 list could go in this section, but I wanted to keep it separate. Really I guess the Lists section is for me personally, and the Projects section is for my work.

I have also kept the A-Z dividers in here. Originally they were left there because I couldn't be bothered to take them out, but they are quite handy for random stuff, eg holiday dates/notes (for work planning purposes).

In the back I have a few stickers and have just added a red Moleskine cahier notebook which is the perfect size to slip in the back pocket.

So far this set up is working really well for me (including my busy week last week shown below :o)

 Long may it continue...   

LJx

101 Progress Check - April 7th 2013

Hi All,

There's really not a lot to write about this week.

I am behind on Les Mills Combat as I've been feeling a bit rough this week (I swear this is the longest Winter ever, with the most colds ever).

I have read another of the banned books - A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. Apparently this was banned in Boston due to the author's linguistic and sexual frankness...

I have a ticket to go and see Rock the Ballet next week, so that'll be one of the dance productions down, and Swan Lake reloaded is going to the same venue a couple of weeks later. I may be lucky and get a ticket for my birthday :o)

Have a great week,

LJx

The Personal Setup Palaver

Hi all,

As some of you may recall from this post on FB back in the middle of March I had decided I needed to set up a personal planner again...

"I am so rubbish at organising my personal stuff. Because I have just moved back to an A5 for work, my personal stuff isn´t actually anywhere. My 101 at the moment is focused on exercise, so I have everything that I actually use in my Plannerisms planner at the moment. As far as personal organisation goes, if it ain´t exercise, it ain´t getting done... My addresses are still in my A5 Finchley that I set up eons ago as a household filo, but is now only used for addresses, my fitness programmes (apart from the one I am currently doing) are all in my ochre Malden (being ignored as I don´t need them), my happiness binder is happy with what it has in it, but isn´t so happy about the fact that I have (again) stopped writing in it... with work stuff I am generally very good, personal stuff, nothing seems to get done... Sorry for the long post, just seem to have hit a wall..."

It took me another week or so before I sat down to do the task. I pulled out a load of inserts ready to start my set up, and got a bad case of planner block. I spent 30 minutes trying to set up a "carry everywhere" filo, and got precisely nowhere.

Figuring it was time to take a break before I drove myself totally insane I checked my list of things to do for the day, and what was the main thing that was outstanding?... yep "Plan personal setup" - doh!!!

Less haste, more speed!!!

A couple of days later I spent 10 minutes and had planned my planner setup, felt much happier, and was ready to set up my planner.

Stay tuned for the post of my new setup :o)

LJx

Tivoli and Rymans - Two Places I Love

OK - maybe love is a bit excessive, but I love going to them both :-)

This is just a quick post (mainly photos) to show my hauls from Tivoli (shopping centre about 20 minutes from home) and Rymans who I visited while I was at the Philofaxy meet up in London.

Goodies from Tivoli...

Plastic card holders and A6 document holders, all bought
in the hope that I could do something with them for my
Filofaxes (super cheap from Migros supermarket)

Personal sized card inserts and quadrille paper all
reduced from a shop that sells a bit of everything,
and these were discounted so very cheap

A5 quadrille paper from the same shop, more discounts

New stapler and uniball pens in various colours (not so cheap)

Stickers!!! Multicoloured dots and hole re-inforcers

 Next we come to the stuff from the stationery department in Manor, I go in here almost every Saturday...

Pretty notebook (it's a shame that the sticker doesn't
come off easily though)

Plain on one side and lined on the other, perfect for
journalling, or just sketching and making notes

Vespa notebooks - I couldn't resist these

Another funky notebook, and some cute paperclips 

A better shot of the paperclips

Inside back cover of notebook

Inside front cover of notebook

And now for the Ryman's goodies that I got in London. Ryman's was just across the road from Vapiano's where we met up for lunch so it meant I had time to go in there before the meet up, and here are the bits I picked up while I was there.

Foam pads & glue dots ready for my scrapbooking attempts

Pack of 3 red Moleskine cahier notebooks, perfect
for slipping in an A5 Filofax

Ryman's own brand notebook - this is quite Moleskine-esque,
the paper feels nice though I haven't tested it out yet, and
the cover feels nice.

 As we popped into Artbox at the end of our London meetup, it would have been wring if I didn't buy anything, so I got these super cute Little Red Riding Hood phone charms, which are unlikely to make it to my phone :o)

 

LJx