New Planner…New Plan

Hello wild ones! It’s Friday and for the first time in a couple of weeks I’m actually going to get a post up…yay me. Gosh I suck sometimes.

Alright, so I mentioned the other day that I was working on getting a new planner set up, which seemed super ridiculous to me because I was barely using my damn planner as it was. I would set the damn thing, but once it was set up and filled in it’s not like I was consulting it everyday to make sure I stayed on task. Which is kind of the entire freaking point of having the dang thing. Soooooo, in order to help myself achieve planner peace I knew I needed to make a change.

There was nothing wrong with the one I had, it was fine for what it was, but in order to use it the way I needed to I had to make changes to the weekly layout. If you have to alter your weekly layout every single week just to get use out of it something is wrong, in my opinion anyway. I know there are people out there who cover their planners with stickers and cute stuff, which makes me super jealous, but I can’t work like that. I like things simple, clean, and streamlined, which is why I needed to change.

After watching a shit ton of videos it became apparent that what I needed was a bullet journal system. It’s totally customizable. The entire thing has to be set up by me, so I get to design every single page. It was kind of a lot of work, but once I sketched out what I wanted it was easy to to go back and finalize everything. Now I have a planner that has everything I need and nothing I don’t, which kind of already has made me use it more. It’s also made me think harder about what is important to keep track of, I had to really think about how to use each page in the most efficient way. The entire process was kind of therapeutic.

Here are some pictures of my completed planner. If you’d like a more in depth look into how I planned out each page let me know and I’ll come up with a post for that.

 

I think coming up with this new system really made me look at my life and realize that I over complicate more things than just my planner. I tend to make my life much harder than it has to be, so with the new system I’m trying to make myself remember that simple is better. Simple. I need things to be simple, so I’m making an conscious effort to make everything more simple.

It’s no secret that I struggle with my place in life, I’ve talked about it until I was blue in the face and I’m sure you’ve read about it a crap ton up to this point. I’m slowly trying to figure out what I want out of life and once I do that I can figure out how to go about getting those things. Right now that means keeping to my blog schedule because when I miss days or deviate from the plan it causes me anxiety and then I start getting really rough on myself. In order for that to stop I need to stick with my dang blog plans.

So I’ve got this new system in place. I’m going to use it. I’m going to love it. I’m going to find planner peace and shortly after (hopefully) peace in life. Okay…that may be going a bit far, but hopefully once I get my life organized everything else will follow suit.

Alright kids, I think I’ve prattled on long enough about the new planner system and my hopes  that world life domination will follow. While you’re enjoying your weekend, go follow me on Instagram to keep up with my weekend plans. Maybe head over to Goodreads to see what I’m going to be reading tonight while I’m pretending to work. And of course if you have snapchat you could go find me @crazydame90. I hope you have a great and safe weekend!

Until later, stay wonderfully wild!

Chels

Boxes! *cue explosion noises*

Ugh, guys, I want you to know that I did actually write this on Wednesday after posting the Hump Day Book Review, but you see we ran into a little problem just now. I plugged in the SD card from my Camera to upload the pictures of the mock box I made as an example and some freakin’ how all of the pictures I took of the box I gifted to Sterling are GONE!!!! They’re not on the camera, they’re not in my one drive, and I have no idea how they disappeared or where they’ve disappeared to. Bleh. Anyway, luckily Cassilee had the brilliant idea to ask Shelby to just send my pictures, so I had to wait for those, but nothing was going to stop this from happening today!

So…here we go, on with the show.

Hello wild ones! TGIF! Though…for me it’s more like the middle of my weekend already, I’m due back at work on Sunday night, so currently I’m trying to squeeze every ounce of fun I can out of my time with Cassilee and Corbin.

Alright, so like a freakin week ago I teased you with an explosion box walk through and then never delivered…just like me. Well, today I bring you the explosion box. Full disclosure before we start, this is a super simple version of some that you may have seen elsewhere. I was a explosion box virgin when I made my first one a couple of weeks ago, so I didn’t go too crazy with decorating the inside our outside. There are however plans in the making for bigger and better boxes. Casilee is expecting her second baby in October and I’m making one for baby number two that will probably blow the first one out of the water, but we gotta start somewhere right. Leonardo didn’t start off with the Mona Lisa.

Anyway, here’s a list of the basic stuff you need.

• Paper (duh) – the size is really up to you. For the box that I’m showing you I used 4 sheets of 12″ x 12″, cut down in the following way: 1 sheet of 12″ x 12″, 1 sheet of 11.5″ x 11.5″, and 1 sheet of 11″ x 11″, and 1 sheet of 9″ x 9″. Of course You can use any size you want, the basic requirement is that the paper is square.
• Scissors
• Adhesive – you can use glue, double sided tape, or one of those fancy tape/glue guns, I used all three.
• Ruler
• Paper cutter (optional)

And that’s it kids. If you want to make a super simple box like the one I did those are the foundation components. From there you dress it up any way you want. For Sterling’s box I added pictures from her mother’s pregnancy as well as the first pictures I received of her. Oh, I also added a little note from me to her and her little box held a tiny piggy bank (because I collect them and I thought it would be a cute way to give her a piece of me). I went back and forth on trying to figure out what the hell to give her and the new born baby and I settled on something straight from my hands and heart.

To start set one piece of your 12″ x 12″ paper aside for the top.

Next take the other 12″ x 12′ piece and begin by placing your ruler on the bottom edge of your paper and marking every 4″ inches, repeat on all four sides, and then connect the marks to create a grid. Should look something like this.

• Using your scissors cut out the 4 outside squaresYou should end up with a plus sign/cross that looks like this.
  Now simply fold the 4 remaining squares toward the center, one at a time, to create a sharp fold.

Set that aside and repeat the process on the remaining paper. Please note, that before beginning to mark your smaller pieces you should take the full height and divide it by 3 so you get even sized boxes all the way around.

From here your going to embellish each layer however you want, making sure to leave the middle square blank.

Once you’re done decorating, it’s time to start layering.Place the largest piece, decorated side facing upwards and slap some adhesive in the center box. For this step I used actual e6000 because I wanted to be sure that my box would not come apart, but you can use any adhesive you have. Take the second largest piece and place it on top of the larger piece, so that their middle line up, and then repeat for the last layer and allow to dry.

 

Now it’s time to make the top. For this step I messed up a tiny bit because the 12″ x 12′ square was a bit big, but I ended up just cutting about 1.5 inches off each side. For the top, you’re going to make the same grid we made on all of the other pieces, but instead of completely removing the outside squares you’re just going to make one vertical cut on each side.

 

After making your cuts, you then fold each side in, one by one, to get the sharp folds, and once that is done you’re going to take one side, fold it toward the middle, so it makes a 90 degree angle, and fold the outside flap toward the next side *see picture* and then repeat that process for the remaining sides. You can add glue to each of the little flaps as you fold them in, so your structure is stronger.

Now simply hold your layers up at a 90 degree angle.

 

Viola, you have an explosion box!

 

I hope that was helpful and not too confusing. Of course, if you have any questions please leave them below. If you follow me over on Instagram you’ve already seen a couple of these photos, but here is the finished box that I gave to Sterling, minus the little piggy.

If you decide to make an explosion box of your own please, please, send me pictures! I would love to see what you create. Don’t forget to go follow me on Instagram to see more pictures of the stuff I’m up to. Check out my Goodreads profile to see what I’m reading this week. And, if you have snapchat come find me @crazydame90 to witness the ridiculous stuff I send out all day long.

Night kids!

Until later, stay wonderfully wild!

Chels

 

 

Baby’s Day Out With Me

Hello wild ones!! Hopefully this is finding you relaxing on your Friday evening. I’m run down as hell, or at least I feel that way this evening.

I spent most of the day with Shelby and her newborn, Sterling, because I’ve been trying to be a better friend. It’s been an unofficial goal of mine for a couple of months now. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before about how terrible of a friend I feel that I am, but recently I realized that I don’t want to have regrets 10 years down the line when I can do something about my relationship now, so I’ve been making a serious effort to connect to the people I want in my life that I may not see every day. I’m feeling pretty good about my progress thus far, but honestly, I have to constantly remind myself not to fall into bad habits of just forgetting about people until something jobs my memory.

Speakin’ of memory, I think I told you that this week I was going to show you the explosion box that I made and kind of walk you through how I made it, well due to the fact that I spent so much time with my bestie and her baby I didn’t get the thing written. Ugh. So that is going to have to be put off a bit longer.

Which kind of brings up what I want to talk about tonight. I want to be better at this. I want to be super good at the bloggin’ game and right now I feel like I’m mediocre at best. I hate feeling ordinary, so I am going to do something I should have done last year and study up on how to make my blog better. You guys deserve better and I need to be the best that I can be because otherwise what the hell is the point.

If you can think of any blogs, books, articles, or other material I should check out please feel free to let me know in the comments or shoot me an email. Next week is going to be all about trying to make this a better place to hang.

I’m so over just being okay.

I wanna be great.

I wanna be killin’ the bloggin’ game, so I’m going to start working toward making it better all over.

Again, if you have any suggestions or comments on things you think I may be doing wrong, or shit I could just improve on, please let me know. Criticism is part of leaning. That being said, keep the douchy stuff to yourself, because I am liable to go off on a troll.

Part of this trying to be better thing is that I’m going to work on writing my blogs the day before I post them. Otherwise, we are going to be constantly running into problems like we have in the past, I get busy, I make plans (like today), or I just can’t get something done because other shit is going down.

I’m also going to be doing some soul searching, so maybe prepare yourself for some touchy, feely, mopey, angsty, and possibly depressing, but very revealing post next week. I’m warning you now kids, my brain is a scary place to live and I will be unleashing it on you, so get ready.

Alright, well I’ve got some stuff I need to get done before I go back to work tomorrow, so I’m gonna hit the road. I will talk to you again on Monday. Be sure to go follow me on Instagram to see what I get up to this weekend. Check out my Goodreads to see what I’m reading. And if you’ve got snapchat go look for me crazydame90.

Night kids!

Until tomorrow, stay wonderfully wild!

Chels