FINALLY! My Happy Planner Review

Good Evening Everyone! So I THOUGHT I had this post posted up for a couple days now and I just came to realize that I never pushed the publish button (SUCH A SMART MOVE, RIGHT).  As you will see in the following pictures, I was pretty busy. Well, without further a do, here is what I thought of my Happy Planner (please excuse my lighting right now, I promise I will try to fix this in future posts).

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS PLANNER!!!  To some of you this may be a boring/ bland overview of my month, the lighting makes it even worse, but I like it this way :)

I am not bashing other companies out there, nor I get payed to do so, but honestly I adore this much more than my old Erin Condren planner!  I did notice a lot of similarities on my Happy Planner to that of the Life Planner but for the price, I am very pleased with this so much.

 I should also point that the pages on these are so easy to remove!  You can't really tell on these pictures but it is a big bonus if you like to decorate your planner and dislike the whole 'rings one the way' thought.

If your wondering where did I get all these stickers... well I made them!  Yup, thanks to my cricut, printer, and some sticker paper, I whipped most of these myself. DISCLAIMER: I can't take full credit on making the stickers, since most of the images came from searching on google.  No, I do not have an ETSY store out there, although I have seen awesome sellers on my IG.  Still on the fence on creating an ETSY store, maybe y'all may push me on creating one :)

 As you may (or may not) have noticed, I haven't used the notes section on the far left.  Not sure what I will do with that empty space yet but for now I have been leaving it blank.

So, there you have it :)  My monthly overview may seem pretty empty, but weekly, it is a whole different world.  Some things I did forget to jot down or were just not written at all but I'm not perfect :)  Remember, I have three crazy pieces of myself running around in my world and they keep me busy!  If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask on the comments below. Till next time :)

DAY DESIGNER PLANNER!

If you are a planner fanatic, like myself, and love Target then you must go out and check their new line of planners!  Blue Sky and Day Designer hooked up this awesome and affordable planner line that can be seen here!  I personally wanted to see these planners in person just before I snagged one (*GUILTY* more so to convinced myself to get one ha,ha,ha). They had so many cute designs and sizes that it REALLY took me a while to finally choose one and JUST ONE :)

To be honest, I have never owned a Day Designer planner but from the looks of it, I do see some similarities in them.

I thought these pages were pretty neat; if your new to planning and trying to organize your life, this guides you/ inspires you to do so.  I've had my share of planners and this is one of my favorite things from this planner :)

Something different that from all the planners I've owned is the time on the pages.  I usually select planners that don't have this option but for this, I had no choice.  Not sure how I actually feel about this yet, but will see once I start using it.  If your asking how am I going to use this planner, well the answer is pretty simple... I'm JUST keeping it simple.  Might sound strange but as you can see from my previous posts, I LOVE to go "all out" when it comes to decorating/planning/decorating my planner.  Yup, no color coding, no stickers, not even pens for this baby.  I thought it over and sometimes when I plan I tend to have to white-out things and find something to hide the ugly mark, that's why for this, I plan to just write in my days with just pencil and use an eraser every so often :)

As far as pricing goes, depends on the style you want.  This in particular cost me about $19.99 compared to an authentic Day Designer planner (click on the link above), they can go from $59.00.  Now, don't get me wrong, I have spent A LOT more than that for a planner and spent as low as $1.  I believe it all depends on how/what your using it for AND IF you plan to use it for the whole time it entails.  I like to be as organized as I can, but that is just me.  Well, hope you all enjoyed this post, till next time :)

Summer on a Budget

So ever since last summer, I have had the privilege to have my 12 year old niece Angie stay over for a couple weeks.  She is from a small town in Nevada which is somewhat limited in certain things/places you can go too (the closest theater is about an hr away).  This year since I am home for the summer I thought we can do so much more, until reality hit, I have 4 kids under my waist! At first I had NO IDEA what to do with them!  Seriously, if you haven't been a stay at home mom for a bit, you sort of loose your edge, at least I did.  Especially when it came down to places to enjoy, entrance fees to those certain places, and plainly just what the heck were we going to do at home!

While I was at school or work I would have so many ideas I can do/ teach my kids, sadly all those ideas just weren't coming to me in the time of need :(  Well, neat less to say Instagram and Pinterest saved me and brought my mojo back! I found a lot of DIY projects that you can do and on a really good budget!  The dollar stores are one of my favorite places to go to.  You can really get a whole lot of supplies there and if you get on craft stores' mailing list, you can get plenty of more deals and puts also puts a smile on your wallet :)

One of our first summer projects were Popsicle frames. My niece Angie put one of her favorite pictures in here of this summer :)  The sentiment came from Cricut Font and Basic Shapes using my Explore, which she knows all to well :) Even Eileen had fun making one and she is half her age!  Personally I think craft stores are a bit overpriced for plain Popsicle sticks so try going to the dollar store for this or just stock up on ice cream and collect their sticks!

Since the photo kept sliding down, we took one of the sticks, cut it in half, and glued it down. We also stuck on some magnets to stick the frame to our fridge. The magnet sheets I got are from  Hobby Lobby Thought these were pretty reasonable in price since I cut them to the desired size. Eventually it all depends on how much your willing to spend and obviously how much your going to make, then again the possibilities of using this are endless :)

Andrew and Angie made these awesome canvases! Before painting, they applied tape to the spots where they didn't want paint on them. After they painted their canvas the way they liked it, they removed the tape (waited to dry about 10 min) and VIOLA!  This one in particular is from Andrew.  The canvases I bought were on sale at my Michael's and so was the acrylic paint.  If you are not in their mailing list, do so, it will save you in the long run :)

It is so much fun to create with kids and letting their creativity take off. It really beats sitting on the couch watching television or playing a game console for hours not really moving much. Summer is in full effect right now and so many more ideas come to mind!  I have already told my kids to save our toilet paper rolls for our next project LOL!  As for this one, this is one of the girls favorite but at the same time a challenge and that was a to create this dream catcher!

This project did take them a bit more time but I'm pretty sure with some more prepping we could have done it in less time.  Eileen had the most trouble doing the 'threading' with her little hands and both Andrew and Angie are lefties which made it a bit more challenging.  I do recommend being extra patient with this one if it is your first time trying :)

The feathers for this are from my dollar store and come in a decent pack as you can see in the previous picture. The beads are from Hobby Lobby but using their coupon (get yours joining their mailing list) I got 1lb of beads for about five dollars.  Can't beat that if you have girls in the house :)  I am pretty sure I will have to go back and get some more LOL!

Of coarse summer is not complete if you just stayed home (personally I like that idea, HA) so Groupon has been a help too!  Signing up is totally free and easy.  Also checking your city's website can also give you information on free activities as well as discount days like museums and what not. Even places like Chuck E. Cheese have promotions! Oh, if only Disneyland offered one free park hopper for residents one day out of year *sigh.*  Well Walt did say Dreams Do Come True :).

My Life

Holy cow, I can't believe it has been over 1 year that I stopped blogging!  Well, what can I say, my life can be quite chaotic at times and when it's not, I like to enjoy it with the people that matter most :)

As some may  know, I have three crazy kiddos that I LOVE and obviously keep me busy.  I just finished the first part in my nursing career and will start on my next one in September.  I LOVE to craft but due to school and my little wild things, I have been quite MIA (not for long).  I am also quite the scheduler as my love puts it :) 

Besides creating and making cards, scrapbooks and so on, I LOVE planners!  As you can see in my previous post I have had a Filofax which I adore but had to put on the side for now.  I also had an Erin Condren Life planner which I also loved but died in a water accident :"(  They just recently launched their new line and it is AMAZING!  I was so excited to get my hands on one, but my  budget frankly didn't allow me too :"(  SO, I recently came across a new/affordable planner that almost resembles an EC and that is my Happy Planner from Me and My Big Ideas which can be found in their site here!

I got this one at Hobby Lobby.  The best thing about it is that you can use their 40% coupon with it so it came out even cheaper :)  I also purchased the expander rings and extra covers for future use :)

The monthly overview is one of my favorite pages because my calendar starts on a Sunday.

 

As you can see, as I inspected the pages, most of them seemed to have some type of water mark.  It did irritate me at first, but somehow convinced myself not to exchange it.

A few favorite parts of this planner is that at every month you have a page to fill out dates, birthdays, ect.  The rings of this planner are just super cute!

Besides the watermark pages, the tabs aren't sturdy at all and as you can see they are easily bendable.

 Ran out of laminating sheets so tried the next best thing, TAPE!

Looks pretty good if you ask me but will see over time :)

I haven't put this planner in full use since it is the first week but so far I love it!  I will make an update by the end of this month and see how it goes so stay tuned!

Easter Buckets

     Hello, everyone.  Hope y'all had a great Easter weekend!  Today I would like to share with you a quick and very last minute Easter project. As you know from one of my previous post, I have been really busy with school and family.  So busy, that I totally procrastinated on the whole Easter basket and goodies for my kiddos :(  I was so sure that this year we weren't going to take the kids egg hunting... until my other half told me to 'get crafty,' (easy for him to say ha, ha, ha).
     I admit, my mojo wasn't all there so all you IG and Pinterest people, you guys and gals helped me on this one :)  I ended up going to my Michael's and getting a beach pail for all my kids.  The rest was up to my Cricut Explore.



 

The Bunny was cut at 5.25'' from the Teresa Collins Bunny and Chicks and the names were from Boys Will Be Boys font cut at 2.5" in height.

Everything was all from cardstock glued with my ATG gun!

 

Kids had a lot of fun and SO fast on looking for those eggs! I wasn't able to get a good picture of all the kids but this one seemed good since the rest were pretty much blurry tsk, tsk.

 

Throwback Thursday - Flowers

     Good morning everyone!  Today I feel like sharing with you a throwback Thursday project from a couple years ago.  Esh, I really can't remember how old this mini project was but it is roughly over 2 years old.
     There was a time I was OBSESSED with Prima mini flowers but at the end of the day, let's admit it, they are pretty pricey and add up :(  Don't get me wrong, I still love Prima flowers but I just had to find an alternative to save a bit.  Thanks to YouTube (couldn't remember the original name, sorry but there are a lot of good ones out there) and my trusted Cricut Expression, I was able to whip these out in a decent time!  The best part of it is that I am able to cut out flowers from any color I want!

 

Items used: Bazzil Cardstock, Hot glue gun, Stickles for added shine, Cricut Expression, and the Accent Essentials Cricut Cartridge.

 

 

These were soooo cute in real life I think I may have to do these again soon :)

 

 

No Breaks!

     Good morning everyone!  Well, it has been over a month I haven't posted ANYTHING on here!!!  Super sorry but I do have an explanation and it starts of with being a mom LOL.  No this is not a rant, just a plain explanation of what I deal with on a daily basis :)

     As some of y'all know, I am a mom of three. There ages are 9 (Andrew), 5 (Eileen) and 1 (Noah).  They are the peanut butter to my PB&J sandwich :)  They come first above everything, all moms can relate to this, especially when it comes to making them happy.  I do help them with homework as well as taking them to their out of school activities.  Mon, Wed, and Fri my two older ones have Jiu Jitsu practice and Tues and Thurs Andrew has baseball practice.  On the weekend they have either a tournament competition or Andrew has a baseball game Sat and Sun.  They too are busy, but they love to be out there practicing and having fun with their friends.  It is a fun way to spend it with the family while the kids have fun as well. 

     Besides their activities I am also a full time nursing student.  Mon-Fri from 6am to roughly about 4pm.  Talk about nuts, but that is another passion I have and I made it my goal to be a one of a kind nurse to my future patients.

     As for my planning and such, I am still on top of that.  More so since I am busy ALL the time now :)  My Filofax comes in handy there and saves me plenty :)  I think this week fits in the theme of hectic, especially with all the earthquakes we have been having!  Yes, I get terrified but living in California my whole life, we don't have frequent earthquakes that are felt in a somewhat high magnitude.  So far since this past Friday we have felt over 5 and they just keep surprising us.  Some friends of the family have said that they have been feeling one at least every half hour!  It's nuts over here but all we can really do is prepare and TRY to keep calm :)

I really liked how this turned out :)  I do have some pages that are my favorites :)  Do you women and men have pages that are your favorites?



Some of the items I used to decorate.  The giraffes are super cute :)  Target's dollar spot is AMAZING!