2014 Diary Pages and Set Up

Check me out!!! Not even in the last month of the year and I'm thinking about my set up for next year - yes, I know, there are many of you out there that were set up and ready to go months ago, but for me this is very impressive. Please excuse the pictures, Ben has been using the timer on the camera and I have no idea how to turn it off, and getting the tripod out was not an option... oops!!!

Admittedly this decision was not something that has been plaguing me, and it was a snap decision that I made this morning, but I have a feeling that it's not going to come crashing down around my ears leaving my life in tatters :o)

When I saw the fabulous Debbie at the Philofaxy meet up at the end of September she gave me a set of A5 Gillio day to a page diary inserts (thank you Debbie!!!). So I did what any pretend organised person does and thought, fabulous - they'll be great for next year, I'll keep them wrapped up safe until then (see, pretend organised, a real organised person would have opened them up, put them in her Filofax/Gillio/other, and started writing in appointments and reminders the same day). But I was sat at my desk this morning, and there they were, looking at me - I'm sure they were bursting to get out of their wrapping.

Obviously, at this point I had to open them, I mean, come on, who could resist? I am so pleased to report that they are lovely. The day to a page layout has timed appointments 08:00 - 19:00 down the left hand side of the page, with space for tasks or other lists on the right, and spaces for notes and phone calls at the bottom of the page. Admittedly, I don't have many appointments, but I do like to assign time-slots to my tasks for the day in an attempt to get through as much as possible, and with this layout I can have a whole spaghetti junction of lines assigning tasks to time slots - awesome!!! As well as this there is also a memo page after each month so that non-date specific items for the following month can be jotted down ready for when you come to plan the days of that month, or maybe you could use it to note the highlights of your month so that at the end of each month you have a list of happy reminders.

The inserts come wrapped in two sections (Jan-Jun & Jul-Dec), I mean, who is going to want to carry around a full year of day to a page diary inserts...?  OK. maybe I will... but it's very sensible to split them into six month packages as many people don't want to carry that many.

Currently I have all my basic set up (personal & work) in my medium Gillio (personal sized in Filofax-speak), but as great as it s to carry just a personal around with me, when I saw this I realised I just have to move back to an A5 for work next year - I love them.

Having looked at them again I'm seriously considering lugging an A5 round with me everywhere again (not literally everywhere - it will be for work and home, not for me to take with me when we go shopping) and having my work and personal stuff in there.

The phone call section would also be perfect for a keeping in touch project, so I now definitely need to change my 101 list to avoid Facebook, and to keep in touch with people via letters and phone calls.

Time to get planning... thanks for stopping by :o)

LJx

101 Progress Check - 16th October 2013

Hi everyone :o)

Sorry for another lengthy pause between posts (maybe I should just aim to update monthly instead of weekly, so I don't have to feel so bad) - I've been away for two out of the last three weekends. Needless to say that progress is still slow.

I should have even done a post on my first weekend away as I was away with the Philofaxy gang and we were very privileged (don't laugh oh ye who are not of the Filofax persuasion) to be invited to the Filofax headquarters down at Burgess Hill where we had a fab time talking with the heads of various departments there, seeing potential new patterns for next year, fondling some of the older Filofaxes, and generally having fun. We all came away with a bag of Filofax goodies (and yesterday my friend also took delivery of a nappa Flex from them on my behalf - so looking forward to receiving that).

On the Saturday most of us headed to Vapiano (highly recommended - very relaxed atmosphere and lovely food cooked right in front of you), where we got to play with each other's Filofaxes, shortly followed by the obligatory shopping trip to Paperchase :o)  

Being up in London I got to see my brother, sister-in-law and their cool kids as well which was great - we lost touch for a while (nothing bad happened, we're both just utterly useless), so it's been nice to catch up again over the last six months or so.

Anyway, back to the topic of this post... although my 101 has been moving slowly recently I have two more tasks to cross off.

While we had a weekend free with no children around I went with my husband (I love saying that) to see Rasta Thomas's ballet of Romeo & Juliet - it was amazing, the music was cool, the moves were slick, and the bodies were hot... oops, did I just say that out loud?!!!

Before I went away last weekend I sorted through my stationery and packaged up seven RAKs - so that's another task that I've been meaning to do for ages that I can cross off my list - I'm sure if I hadn't put it on the 101 list it would still be waiting at the end of the year (and not necessarily just this year). This means that I can now leave the FiloRAK group. As much as I love the idea of the group, I just keep seeing lovely things, which send me off trawling the Internet, and the next thing I know it's three hours later and I've spent the whole evening looking at pretty stationery or crafty stuff.

I am seriously considering adding a three month Facebook ban to my 101 list (although I will still be allowed to check for private messages as this is how my family and friends contact me. Over the last couple of weeks my Facebook usage has been much less than previously, and it feels so nice not to feel that I must check into all the groups every day - in fact, I have left some already to remove the pressure (which is only from me, no-one else - just my own freakish OCD fault). There will be no checking groups or reading the news feed allowed, even though this does mean that I may miss out on actual news (not just the trash photos, hoaxes, game requests and adverts). Maybe I should also add a task to keep in touch with people and start writing letters and picking up the phone...

I finally got round to searching Amazon to get my three remaining banned books to read, so have downloaded Black Beauty and Fanny Hill (OMG, I wish I'd read the reviews before putting that on my list - I think it's just going to be rude!!!) onto my Kindle. Unfortunately Catcher in the Rye doesn't seem to be available on Kindle, so for now I've downloaded Uncle Tom's Cabin instead as this was banned in the Southern United States due to it's anti-slavery content. The Catcher in the Rye will definitely be read at some point though as I think my next reading challenge (either after the 101 list or alongside it) will be either the BBC top 200 or the Telegraph 100 - I'm sure there will be overlaps, and I'm also sure that I will have already read some of them, but I am looking forward to my next list of books :-)

That's me done for now, have a great week,

LJx

Anniversary Filofaxes and Later Purchases...

Hi All,

OK - so, many of you know that I bought a load of Filofaxes off eBay back in February, but I had to wait for many of them to arrive, and then got distracted by a host of other things so didn't get round to doing posts about them all individually.

Since then I have also bought a few others, so rather than doing lots of posts I'm just doing one which will be VERY picture heavy...  I'm not going to do lots of photos of each one as there are plenty of full reviews out there, so sit back and enjoy :-)

(I'll apologise now for the picture quality as well as I was totally unable to get the flash to work today for some reason - very annoying).

Pockets - green Botanic and brown Domino

Personals - brown Kendal and blue Piccadilly

Personal Clangers and pocket Bagpuss

Bagpuss inserts - complete with cute quotes including
"A ship? In a bottle? Where would it sail to?"

Clangers dividers - complete with indexed address pages

The Clangers inserts are well worth a quick review - this came with Communication/Meeting, Expenses, Goals/Notes, Monthly Planner, Weekly Planner, Diary Planner (???), and Projects sheets, along with ruled paper.

Clangers inserts

Monthly and Weekly Planner sheets (undated)

Diary Planner (labelled 8 - 19, any ideas?) and Project sheets

I have no idea what make the next planner is, but I can tell you that it is the softest planner I have ever felt - it just feels utterly luxurious.

Personal - black lambskin non-Filofax planner.

Flat, flat, flat - and did I mention... super-soft!!!

These are the last of my eBay finds - a fabulous group of vintage items

Writing cases and lovely old Filofax

Writing case layouts

Missing cap - I may try to fix this, or I may just leave it
alone - it is old and has obviously been well loved :-)

I love the inside of this - small rings, model...? I'm not sure

This may offer a clue... but not to me :-)

And now on to my non-eBay purchases...

Firstly, the lovely Chrissie, from the wonderful blog Chrissie's Universe, had this little beauty up for sale, and as I'd swapped out my ochre one i just couldn't resist...

Unfortunately the lighting was shocking, but this is
the fabulous purple Malden, along with the lovely
Vogue postcard that Chrissie sent with it :-)

My final (until now) purchases came from Margaret of Write at Home - a great online shop that stocks various stationery items, ships internationally and is very helpful. If she doesn't have it available on her website it's always worth sending a mail to see if she can get hold of it :-)

Back to School in green - looking forward to writing
my name on this one (and possibly adding a bit of
graffiti)

Originals - A5 in patent Fuschia and personal
in yellow (a proper bright sunflower yellow)

Not Filofaxes - but Margaret also stocks some of the
Gorjuss range, so I just had to get some

Now all I need to do is find somewhere to store these new gorgeous beings... maybe I can rent a shop (not to sell anything, just so I can have it all beautifully displayed). Tee hee hee.

LJx

101 Progress Check - July 28th 2013

Hi Guys!!!

I'm back and ready to party!!! I've had a fab couple of weeks off work, starting with a family holiday to Centerparcs at Longleat, and then a wonderful trip to the US with my man.

So, let's see what's been achieved shall we - like you don't already know...  lol x

Well, my Plannerisms planner has totally fallen by the wayside at the moment as I use it to log food, exercise, cleaning etc, all of which has been completely ignored as far as routines go aver the last few weeks, but I will be pulling that one back into the fold shortly.

While I was at Centerparcs I went to the spa for an Elemis facial (amazing), and while I was there I had threading done on my eyebrows and upper lip as they apparently don't do waxing for these areas there... ouch!!! At least waxing is just a quick rip and it's done :-)

After Centerparcs Ben and I headed off to Vegas, arriving in the middle of a thunderstorm, flooded roads etc. We stayed at the Vdara hotel, and loved it - we had an amazing view of the Bellagio fountains from the huge window outside the door to our suite (we got upgraded - yay!!!). There is no casino at the Vdara, so it's not as manic as other hotels, but you can go into the others anyway - there is a short walkway that takes you straight from the Vdara to the Bellagio. When we woke up on our first morning there was no sign whatsoever of the rain the previous night - it was bone dry, purely because it's damn hot!!!

I'm not going to go through everything we did while we were there, but there are some amazing things to see and do in Vegas - many of the hotels are just beautiful inside (Venetian - wow!!!), there is great food (check out the Peppermill for breakfast - near The Riviera), and spectacular shows (we went to Mystere by Cirque du Soleil). We had a lot to do so didn't catch any others, but will definitely make a point of seeing more next time we go.

I'll let the photos say the rest as I cross items off my list:

Go to Vegas - check

Get married - check

Have a manicure - check

Obviously there had to be a Filofax present to represent the rest of the family :-)

Have a great week,

LJx

More Swapping and a New Family Member

Can I just say how much I love the Philofaxy community - there are now three splinter groups set up on FB, one for bags (there seem to be many people in the group who love their bags too, so Steve has set up a group to go with his Bagsey blog), one for washi tape appreciation (which seems to cover all the prettiness that people put in their filos, not just washi tape), and the fabulous Swap Sell Source Stationery where people can look to do swaps, find out where to get various stationery/filofaxes from and potentially sell some of their stationery that they no longer need to friends within the group.

It was on this last group that I spied that the wonderful Stephanie was looking for a personal ochre Malden and had a green Kate Spade planner that she was willing to swap for one. Did I have a personal ochre Malden, yep, did I like the look of the green Kate Spade planner, big, big, big yes!!! I have seems the one that Imy bought with her to the Philofaxy meetup in London and it was gorgeous, but the main thing to consider was could I cope with the fact that it has gold rings... that did take a bit of thinking about as I have a bit of an aversion to gold generally. I have a maroon Panama which has never been used (and probably never will be), mainly because it has gold rings. Being the Filofax traitor that I am I decided to go with the swap and was so excited when it arrived - OK, so it was actually the day after it arrived as I was expecting a knock on the door from the postwoman and I only discovered by checking the tracker when Stephanie messaged it to me that it had actually been delivered the day before. I sprinted down the stairs and out of the house, down to the bottom of the path, to my postbox and saw a package sat there (it had been there all the previous day and night poor thing, but it forgave me).

Check it out...

Badly angled shot, it isn't stumpy at all...

 Lots of pics inside, as it has the cutest inserts...

Inside front

Notes & Doodles

To Do

More To Do

Birthdays

Restaurants

Addresses

Inside rear

So my Malden family was sad to see it's middle ochre buddy leave, but they have welcomed the new Kate Spade with love and open clasps.

But what made the pain of their beloved friend leave, was the arrival of their new aunty...

Not to worry guys, aunty Rose is here :-)

As lovely on the inside as on the outside

I haven't taken a stack of photos of the new Malden addition as she wanted to get to her family as quickly as possible and fuss over them like a mother hen.

Thank you so much to the lovely Christa for selling me this gorgeous Malden - I had missed out on one on eBay a couple of weeks previously, so was very pleased when this one came up for sale :o)

LJx

101 Progress Check - May 5th 2013

Hi Guys,

Firstly I apologise for the lack of 101 updates over the last couple of weekends, I had to go to the UK for the weekend a couple of weeks ago, and last weekend I just really didn't feel like doing an update, although I had actually achieved stuff.

I took the boys on a family day out (minus Ben as he was away, but I'm still counting it as it was a success). We went to the wilderness park near Zurich, which the boys love so much and as the weather was lovely we saw a lot of the animals - even the foxes were out and showing off :-) The boys were most impressed by the frogs and the huge blobs of frogspawn though.

I had a few days off work and was mainly lazy (and felt guilty for being so, what is that about? even I know that I deserve some lazy days), but I spent a bit of time one afternoon doing my very first attempts at scrapbooking, using some photos of my chaps. As these were first attempts there is nothing ambitious in there, but I am happy with how they turned out, now I just need to buy a 12 x 12 binder to store them in.

Last weekend I tried out digital scrapbooking using a trial of Corel Paintshop, and it was going quite well, but I got a bit stroppy trying to get the photos to do what I wanted (I have very little patience, and I was already tired, so it probably wasn't the best time to try it). I also downloaded a trial of Photoshop Elements 11 (it turns out we already have version 9 as standard on our home pc which I was totally unaware of), which I tried out last night, and here is what I produced using the freebie that came from The Digichick via the special freebie for April on their Facebook page.

I'm not accomplished enough to get the photos to fit to the shapes properly yet, but I am very happy with the layout and even though it is quite flowery, the boys are impressed too :o)

So "Scrapbook 3 photos of my boys" - done :o)

On the fitness side of things I am very pleased to report that I have completed my Les Mills Combat programme and am happy with the results - I am still not putting up any before and after photos though as I would feel like an idiot. However, if I manage to carry on with the next programmes as planned then I may be looking my best ever by my 40th birthday and may post some then :o)

I was supposed to be getting my "3 sessions of Just Dance or Dance on Broadway in one week" challenge done this week, but as I can't actually find either of the games I'm a bit stuffed on this one. I should probably have swapped and done my "4 sessions on My Fitness in one week" instead, but got far too grumpy to do anything else when I couldn't find my dance ones. I was really in the mood to get started on the dance one and jump round the room like a loon, but it just wasn't to be. Today I need to get off my butt (before it starts to expand again) and get on the "My Fitness" challenge as I really want to get this and the dance one out of the way so I can get myself going on my next Beachbody programme.. which to choose, that will be the next question.

On the organisational side of my challenges I also have things to report. Before I do this though I have a confession to make - over the last 3 weeks I have barely used my Plannerisms planner for my household routines, this isn't because the planner doesn't work for me, but because I have been ridiculously lazy/distracted, so it's time to give myself a kick up the butt and get back on it.

However, I have managed to set up an events planner Filofax (using my lovely A5 antique rose Finchley) - at this stage it is pretty basic and I haven't taken any photos as I will be tweaking and prettifying it, but as far as the challenge of setting it up goes, it is done.

After my initial failed attempt at moving my Christmas planning stuff from my Dodo Book of Christmas to the A5 events planner, I decided that there must be a way, and there was - it's not perfect due to the size differences, but I bit the bullet and cut down the inserts to size (losing one year of Christmas card list functionality, which I can live with) and re-writing everything. So now all my Christmas planning is in my events planner Filofax :o)

I have also been doing lots of planning for one of the other challenges on my list, but I will let you know about that one a bit nearer the completion date... ;o)

I won't be posting an update next Sunday as I will be away completing another of my challenges "A Family Weekend Away", we are leaving for Europapark on Friday, and coming back on Sunday (which is Mother's Day here, so I will mainly be having a fun time and eating nice food).

Have a great week,

LJx

 

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