Planning makes me a happy happy girl...

Hi guys, this is a fast post that I decided to do on a whim so please excuse the poor photos and lighting!!

This morning, while I was watching a YouTube video (which also spurred me to invent a new YT "series" I am going to start doing), I saw this neat Page Planner that Jen Schow uses.  She had linked to it and a light bulb went off for me.  I already use a Design A page planner (sorry looks like it is no longer available but did find THIS  and THIS for you) to do my PL but what I was struggling with was planning out my layouts too and how I wanted to put them in my albums.

BUT... yesterday I cranked the music and did a bit more of a purge and reorg in this nasty mess I call an office my scrappy space and found this super cute gold polka dot notebook.  And, as most of my brilliant (to me) ideas happen, I saw exactly what I needed to do.

Now, this was a problem because I literally felt like this idea slapped me on one side of the face while the idea for my YT series was slapping the other.  So the actual "go and scrap something" idea won out but as soon as I was able this morning, I bought, printed off and implemented this.

So here is the book: (just added some Thickers and tiny tile alphas)

Isn't that cute??  I am pretty sure I bought it at Chapters and it is Kate Spade (which means I paid too much for it but it was super cute).

And here is what I did inside the book!!  I took my Design A 8x5 x 11 planner (for me this is a month's worth of PL pages as I only do 1 12x12 page protector per week) and folded it in half and stuck onto one side and then trimmed the page planner done and stuck that to the other. VOILA, I can pretty much plan out a months worth of PL and layouts and see it all together.  If I need more than 4 layouts for a month I plan to just use washi to attach another sheet along the left side so I can flip them.

Here is a close up of how I use the design A planner. It is SUPER rough but it gives me enough of an idea when I am cropping the photos in PhotoShop and when I got to actually do that week I have the layout ready to go. This REALLY has sped up my PL planning, prep and execution.

Here is the page planner in action.  AGAIN, super super rough.  I just want an idea for photo cropping and to refer back to when I am ready to actually do the layout. I needed to order photos today and did a week of PL and 2 layouts in 10 minutes.  It was awesome.  And after a session on Monday of photo ordering I am now planned out for 5 weeks of PL and 6 layouts. 

I gotta say, you might be going, this is a no-brainer Jen and I do NOT know why you are so excited but for me??!!!  This just made a problem that has been bugging me for 2 years just disappear.  Happy happy girl!!

Thanks for stopping by,

Jen