Kids

One Week Down, 467 To Go

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My big boy started Kindergarten last week. And thus begins the next 13 years of school. Waking up early, staying up late, making friends, and doing homework.  I had a mild breakdown after his meet the teacher night, but so far everything else has been pretty smooth. Except for him vomiting the morning that school started. That wasn’t exactly ‘smooth.’

Here are a few things we’ve learned about in our first week.

  1. The Temptation of Free Breakfast. Our school district offers a free breakfast for any student who wants to eat it. Pretty awesome right? Except – there’s only 15 minutes between the school door opening and teachers picking up in the cafeteria. My super hungry growing boy wanted to do a pattern. “Eat at home, eat at school, eat at home, eat at school, and continue the pattern,” he said. But then it turned into eat at home and again at school, eat at home, eat at home and again at school, eat at school. Free Cinnamon Toast Crunch was just too much for his little body to resist. This would’ve been fine with me, until 3 days in he tells me that he walks himself to class. Which should be false since the teachers pick the students up in the morning. After some questioning, he is insistent that his teacher does not walk him to class, he just knows where his room is. Ugh. I emailed his teacher, and she confirmed that he’d been rollin’ on to class at about 7:55 (10 minutes after everyone else). We have since discontinued the “eat at school” parts of the pattern, and now it’s eat at home and get to class on time, eat at home and get to class on time.
  2. Pete the Cat, the Optimist. Pete the Cat is pretty entertaining. And after Day 1, I was being taught a song about a happy cat who steps in all kinds of crud, seemingly ruining his shoes, but just takes it all in stride. It went something like this. “Pete stepped in a big pile of strawberries. Did he cry? Goodness no! He just sang his song, ‘I love my red shoes, I love my red shoes…'” I feel for poor Pete’s mama. She went out and bought some brand new white shoes, and Pete can’t help but step in every pile of everything he sees. She now has to decide whether to be mad about some shoes or be happy that her kid is so darn easy going. A true conundrum. I’m a little bit like Pete’s mom. As a back to school gift from my mom, we were gifted a brand new pair of Puma shoes. He loooooves them. On the first day, he got them caked in mud putting his bike on the bike rack. But did he cry? Goodness no… he just sang “I love my brown shoes, I love my brown shoes…”
  3. No Amount of Tired Will Make My Kid Nap. It’s true. Both of my older boys stopped napping between 18 months and 2 years. Which is kind of the pits. I hear about 3 and 4 year olds who still take a 1-2 hour snooze every day, and I can’t help but wonder what is up with those kids. Are they running laps every morning? Staying up until midnight? I know it’s likely they’re just nappers, but I can’t help but think I should start some kind of training regimen to wear my boys out each morning (kidding.) In any case, my oldest has never been as tired as he is right now in his first week ever of starting at 6:45 am and going all day every day. I saw some first day pictures of kids passed out in the car on the 5 minute drive from school to home, and I thought maybe he would be so tired he’d need a nap one day. Nope. Not here! But it’s just as well, because lately I’ve been feeling like I am missing out on so much time with him that I’d actually be a little bummed if he came straight home and went to bed.
  4. If I want to know what happens at school, I will need to go there. It’s official. I have an, “I don’t remember,” kid. The kind that you know has never forgotten anything in his life, but suddenly you want to know what went down in P.E. and all he can muster is, “Something with handshakes.” Um, what? I’ll never know what the first day of P.E. activity that was his absolute favorite part of the whole day was. I just have visions of kids running around shaking hands willy-nilly. It has gotten better, another day I got that they threw a scarf in the air and had to clap twice before they caught it. And still another day I learned that when on the track one whistle means walk and two means run. But then there’s been conversations like this one:
    KP: Me and Emma were the 1st ones to move up on the (behavior) chart!
    M: Oh buddy that’s awesome! What did you do to move up?
    KP: I answered the question!
    M: What question?
    KP: Who was it?
    M: Who was what?
    KP: Me!
    M: No, why did she ask who was it?
    KP: Because she couldn’t remember who it was!
    M: Who it was that did what?
    (More confusion and “Who was it?” talk)
    KP: She couldn’t remember who answered the question, and it was me, so I raised my hand!
    M: What question did you answer?
    KP: huh? I told her it was me!
    M: No, what did you know that she couldn’t remember that you knew?
    KP: Oh. I don’t know what I knew.     
  5. School Is HARD. On everyone. Mom, dad, brothers… nobody is immune. I kept telling my son this summer how much his life was about to change forever. I knew he’d have a big adjustment coming – getting up early, being away from the house all day for the first time, homework, and being on his best behavior and alert all day. I did not think about the adjustments we’d all be enduring. My 3 and 5 year olds share a room, and this has meant that my 3 year old now wakes up at 6:45 or shortly after on most days. He’s also a no-napper, so he’s been a little (okay a lot) on the grumpy/needy/whiny side this week. He’s also lost his best playmate, which changes up my day considerably! The baby does still nap, but I will rejoice when I can figure out how not to have to wake him up each day for pickup. We’ve had a few days of 15 minute naps before it’s time to head out to get big brother.

Overall we’ve had a good first week, and are starting to see just how busy we’ll be this year between school, homework, soccer, and life. There’ve been a few emotional breakdowns (from a mix of kids and parents!) but we are getting it figured out. There haven’t been any notes home, and we are pretty sure our boy is telling the truth about winning a ‘super student’ award for his class this week! (I’ll know for sure when I see it in the newsletter.) It’s a relief to send a kid off to school and at least know they’re behaving like a respectable human while they’re there. How is your crew holding up after the first week?

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Holidays

Halloween Pumpkin Cake

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Halloween cake

*This post contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase an item after clicking a link in this post, I’ll receive a small commission – at no extra charge to you!

Bake Me a Pumpkin Cake!

We recently threw a Halloween (birthday) party for my three year old. His birthday is in August, but he’s batty for Halloween (see what I did there?) – so we went with it. You can read about the party as a whole here, but I wanted to give a few more details about the good stuff – the food – so we’ll start with the cake!

I decorate cakes sometimes as a side hobby/job. Which may sound at first like it’s a great thing when it comes to planning my kids’ birthday parties. It’s a double edged sword though. On one hand, I don’t have to pick a cake from the book at Wal-Mart. And I’m able to give my kids a custom cake that doesn’t break the bank. Because my budget is definitely going to land my kids a grocery store cake if I’m not doing it myself. (I feel like I should say that I actually love the Wal-Mart whipped icing. Like I sometimes actually crave it. But I don’t want to make my kids pick a sheet cake when they know good and well I can make them something else!)

I also don’t have to worry about a cake surviving a drive. I hate cake driving! And I’m pretty sure everyone else on the road hates cake driving too. (I know my husband especially hates cake driving when he’s the one doing it. Because I can’t control my gasps and need to grip the door handles on every turn.) Next time someone is driving like crazy slow in front of you, take a deep breath. Convince yourself they’re delivering some kid the birthday cake of their dreams. It’ll help calm you down. Maybe. I also don’t have to worry about somebody spelling my child’s name wrong or sending us a cake wreck. Not all of my cakes have turned out perfectly, but I don’t recall any TOTAL disasters. Okay, maybe one.

These points are all great reminders of why it’s nice to be able to bake my own cakes. However, I always tell my children to take their expectations down a notch for their cakes. Because I’m not just making their cake, I’m having to do decorations and other food and clean my house too! So it makes for a bit more work on top of regular birthday planning. Therefore, I need the cake to be easy and fast when it’s for us.

Super Easy Halloween Pumpkin Cake

I asked my son what he wanted for his Halloween birthday cake, and his only requests were “sprinkles and pumpkins.” So I went literal, and gave that boy a sprinkle explosion topped with a pumpkin. He loved it. To me it kind of looked more like a sprinkle disaster, but kids do. not. care. I don’t know what it is about sprinkles, but they want them on donuts, cakes, and anywhere else they’ll stick.

Make it Work

I cannot tell you how easy this pumpkin cake was. The pumpkin part alone would be plenty for a small party. I just needed a place for the requested sprinkles so I did two tiers!

The Bottom Tier

The bottom cake tier was assembled from two 9″ round cakes. I leveled my layers with a cake leveler (a serrated knife would work fine too!), placed one on a 12″ cake board, then iced them with buttercream.  The iced bottom cake went in the fridge for about 10-15 minutes to let the buttercream get somewhat set so that as I tried to press sprinkles into the cake I didn’t wind up with a palm full of icing. I could not find Halloween sprinkles anywhere (because remember – this was an August party!!) so I went with a bright blue/green/white round sprinkle mixture along with orange and black nonpareils.

In hindsight, I definitely should have just picked one of those color schemes, because I did not love them all mixed together. And not to mention, the different sizes of sprinkles didn’t adhere to the cake uniformly, so keep that in mind too if you’re mixing several types of sprinkles! Again though, the man of the hour was thrilled with the sprinkle situation, so I am happy.

*Note – if you are making a tiered cake as pictured, and are not familiar with how to stack cakes read the tips at the bottom of this post!

The Pumpkin Construction

Once the bottom cake was sprinkled, I began work on the pumpkin. For this element I baked two bundt cakes, leveled them, and built the pumpkin cut-sides together – with a healthy heap of buttercream in between, of course. There was a gaping hole in the middle of my pumpkin, so I filled it with scraps from the leveling. (I did not serve the scraps in the middle! They were just in there so I could have a surface built up to ice as the middle of the pumpkin & to set my stem on!)

The Icing

I dyed my icing orange using gel food coloring. I would highly recommend buying gel coloring if you are coloring buttercream, as liquid coloring will cause your icing texture to change and possibly separate. To get the icing on the pumpkin smooth, I iced the cake first not caring what it looked like – just getting icing for coverage. I then took my small angled spatula, and starting at the bottom of the pumpkin ran it up and over the top smoothing toward the center. I went all the way around the pumpkin doing this, making sure each stroke slightly overlapped the one before. This ended up leaving small vertical ridges of icing where the strokes were. But I actually liked that since pumpkins don’t have a smooth surface anyhow!

The Face & Stem

The facial features were cut from black fondant. You can get it cheap at a craft store with a 40% or 50% off coupon if this is all you need it for! I was stumped on what to do for the stem. I did not want to just put a huge ball of brown fondant in the middle as that seemed wasteful. So I ended up using a little bit more of those cake scraps from the leveling mixed with some extra icing to form a cakeball stem. Then I coated it with chocolate candy melts that I had left over from the time I bought the stuff for (but then forgot) to make a treat to take over to our new neighbors. Oops. Perhaps I should take them a belated welcome treat? Maybe one cakeball stem?

In the end, the birthday boy loved his cake, and it was not so time consuming that I couldn’t get anything else done! That’s my kind of cake.

 

*For stacking cakes, you’ll want to make sure that the top tier has a cardboard cake circle underneath it approximately the same size as the bottom of the pumpkin. The bottom tier will need some sort of supports added so that the weight of the top tier does not crush the bottom one over time. You can either cut 4-6 wooden dowel rods or straws cut to the height of the bottom cake. Evenly space them so that the top cake will rest on them. The dowel rods will be a stronger choice than straws if the cake will be sitting for a long time.

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Holidays

Happy Halloween Birthday Party!

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*This post contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase something by clicking a link on this post, I may receive a small commission – at no extra cost to you!

Throwing a Halloween Party for Kids

Halloween (Birthday) Party

I love my kids’ birthdays. I love giving them gifts, I love taking them out for birthday donuts, I love seeing how fun it is for them to have a special day, and I love throwing them a birthday party they love. There’s lots of stuff out there about “Pinterest culture,” and how being a mom is hard today because we hold ourselves to some super high standard because we have access to everyone’s absolute best ideas. Although I do frequent Pinterest, I have a realistic idea of what my kids actually need from me & realistic ideas about what I can and should be expected to do as a parent. I don’t give my kids cutesy lunches, and when it’s our turn for snacks at playgroup we bring oranges and Oreos.

However, as I mentioned before I love a good birthday party. I don’t plan games and themed food because I feel like I have to or need to compete with anyone, I just genuinely like doing it. And I don’t have any judgement on somebody who rents out the jumping place because they just don’t want to think about it. I get it – it’s a lot of work to do a themed party, and it’s not work that everyone enjoys. Kids love their birthday parties whether they are extravagant affairs, middle of the road planned (this is usually my line!), or thrown together at the last minute, so as parents I don’t feel like it’s necessary to stress about something you can’t/don’t want to do.

The Start of The Halloween Obsession

My 3 year old is all about Halloween – all year long. We read Halloween books all the time. These two are by far his favorites:

                                     

We read these often with other Halloween books mixed in. I really don’t even know what sparked this love of Halloween. Neither my husband nor I are super Halloween fans – though I do decorate, and he was incredibly excited about our giant spider web and fake spider that covered the mantle last year. He likes to talk about “ghostes” and pumpkins, but he is not into anything scary or suspenseful (in fact both of the books I mentioned have pages that at least at some point he has asked us to skip!) This year, he wanted to celebrate his birthday with a Halloween party. It was fitting for him, and I was excited because I knew we’d be able to figure out some fun things to do and make.

The Invite

The invitation was made in Photoshop using some free patterns for personal use. My kids love to have their picture on their invites – I guess it’s one of those things that you do it once, and it becomes a ‘thing.’ He really likes the word “spooky” so I had to throw that in there!Halloween party invite

Spiderweb Bean Bag Toss

I asked him what he’d like to do at his party, and he said, “Play with my toys?” So I figured I was on my own there. I know that nobody has high expectations for a 3rd birthday party. But I at least wanted to have something to offer so that it wouldn’t be like we were surprised everyone showed up! After all, a birthday party is a special day, so I like to have a little bit of out-of-the-norm fun. I started by thinking about bean bag games or something that would be easy to make out of a large piece of cardboard. I figured I could cut some holes pretty easily and paint some pumpkins and ghosts & call it a day (we already have beanbags for other games).

But then I had a genius idea (if I do say so myself!) The church where I take the boys for a weekly play group puts on a huge Halloween carnival, so since it’s off season I thought it was at least worth a shot to see if they would let us borrow a couple of games for the party! And I was ecstatic when they agreed – one more thing off of my list!

Children's Halloween Party Game
Wow! What a hole!

Jack-O-Lantern Felt Board Game

My older son is Pokemon obsessed, and at his party we had a “pin the Pokeball on the Pokemon” felt board game. It was a big hit with the kids, so I really wanted to incorporate a felt board game at this party too. I don’t mind putting in work for things like this, because my boys can play with the felt board year round. For felt board games the fun is putting on and taking off. So what’s a better Halloween felt activity than mix-and-match Jack-O-Lantern faces? Nothin’, that’s what! It turned out that this one was not AS big of a draw as the Pokemon felt board. But it definitely kept a few kids busy. And again – mine will use it again, so I’m calling it a win.

DIY Felt board Jack-O-Lanterns
Look at those faces!

Trick-Or-Treat!

Finally, what is Halloween without Trick-or-Treating? There was no way we were going to have a Halloween party for kids without taking a loop around the block begging for candy. I did give my neighbors a heads up. Everyone I asked (that was going to be home) agreed and loved the idea. I offered to bring candy to each of them – because I didn’t want this to be a burden to anyone else. But most of them were so excited about it that they bought their own candy. We have great neighbors who love seeing happy kids. We had the kids wear costumes, though most of them were surprised about the Trick-or-Treating.

My in-laws live in the country and holiday fun almost always includes a hay ride. We threw it out there as an idea for the Trick-or-Treating, and my father-in-law was all in. He loaded up the trailer and puttered around the block. We thought about asking if it was legal beforehand. But we figured it was the kind of thing that might be better to ask forgiveness! And hey – if my 3 year old got his first ticket for a birthday party hayride, I figure that’s a pretty good story for the future, right? It was truly awesome, and a little bit of rain made it bearable to be outside in the Texas summer heat. I know that not everyone would have access to a city hayride. But don’t let that deter you from a Halloween themed birthday party! The kids won’t even know they’re missing it, because candy.

The Spooky Food

Hands down, my favorite part of planning a party is the food. My family has a lot of fun coming up with silly names for all of the items we serve. A few of the things we ate this time were mummies, zombie eyes, and worm food. Check this post for the details and some free printable labels! I decorate cakes as a sometimes paying hobby, and this year when I asked what kind of cake I should plan on, he said “Sprinkles and pumpkins.” Ask and ye shall receive, child. He got sprinkles, and a pumpkin.

You can read more about the cake here! I was a little bit bummed because we wouldn’t be able to find cute Halloween plates and stuff in August. But alas, JoAnn Fabrics seemed to know what was up, and put their Halloween swag out about 3 months early. Normally I’d be with everyone else saying slooow on down JoJo, but this time I was like yesssss. So we got some cute on-theme plates. But black and orange would’ve done fine had JoAnn not come through in the clutch.

Happy Halloween!

I was really excited about how everything turned out, and I think all of the kids had a great time. (And the games just might have gotten more play by some of the parents than the kids!) I think our 86 year old neighbor said it best, “I never heard of this, but I like it!” Halloween in the summer was awesome, and if you don’t know your neighbors, well – what are you waiting for? Go out and meet them, because you may want to ask them something crazy soon. And they need to know up front what type of nut you are! We lucked into a wonderful neighborhood, and I was so happy that everyone was on board to make the day special for our big 3 year old boy.

DIY Toddler Pumpkin Costume
The cutest Jack-O-Lantern around!

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Organization

Bullet Journal for Beginners

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bullet journal

*This post contains affiliate links. Please see my affiliate disclosure here!

If you’re on Pinterest, you’ve probably seen pins pop up every now and then about bullet journaling. If you’re not on Pinterest, or only look at food on Pinterest, then you probably don’t know why I’ve put these two words together! Whether you’ve heard of it or not, I firmly believe that after having used one for just under one year, everyone can benefit in some way from starting one.

If you talk to my college roommate or my husband, they would probably tell you that I’m… a bit of a mess. I don’t do well at the whole “a place for everything…” rule, and I generally have about 5-6 unfinished projects going at any given time. Whether it’s stopping in the middle of paying bills, cutting fabric to be sewn (later, of course!), or getting distracted while making a snack, I’ve probably got a little something in every room at any given time.

I’m also not that great at keeping things organized, and used to have about 100 “super important” random pieces of paper with notes on them (that my tidy husband sometimes threw away). I’ll get great ideas for organization and go all in, but I usually slip back into old habits in a short time. (I’m not making myself sound too great right now, but I do have redeeming qualities!) That’s why to my husband it is completely shocking that I’ve stuck with this for a year now. My bullet journal has changed over time, but it is one of my most handy tools. And I have a feeling it is about to get to a whole new level of helpful now that my big boy is starting school. Cue the tears.

What Is A Bullet Journal?

A bullet journal is a journal that you use as a calendar, organizer, to-do list keeper, doodle pad, or whatever else you would maybe be doing on post-it notes or in several other organizers. I use mine for my weekly menu, grocery list, calendar/to-do lists, and a host of other lists and functions including a “restaurants to visit” page and a page with current orders and their necessary materials. It is a minimalist system that allows for ultimate customization and creativity (if you’re into that – but if you’re not, that’s fine too!).

You literally buy an empty journal, and fill the pages how you see fit – with some guidance to get started! How many times have you bought the “it” planner and spent like $50 to find out that you don’t actually want to record about half of the things on the pre-designed pages? I’ve only done it once – because I’m no fool. If you do end up searching Pinterest for bullet journal uses, you’ll see some pretty intricate page designs that most of us cannot replicate. But it’s important to note that the creator of the bullet journaling system uses a very simplistic system of lists and notes – no fancy doodles, drawings, and colors. So no matter your skill level in the doodle zone, you’ll be great at bullet journaling.

There are no rules about how fancy you have to look. I’ve played around with different styles and levels of prettying up, and I feel like my journal is a reflection of my style. My husband just started one too, and his is a reflection of his style – straight to the point without any fluff.

Where To Start

Step 1:

Pick your journal. I searched through many posts about what the best choice would be, and I landed on this one. It’s the Moleskine large dotted soft cover notebook. Mine is bright pink, but I believe that color is discontinued now! (On Amazon anyway!)

I was not sure about how I would do with dots instead of lines, but it turns out this was a good call. There are times that I do want to sketch something (like when we were working in our kitchen and needed to constantly reference how many cabinets/drawers we had – a super simple sketch on my “home improvements” page was added). I would not want lines going all through my (not so) beautiful drawing! I also think it just kind of makes the pages look neater to have your writing straight because of the dot guides, but the areas without writing more or less looking blank. You can also use them to make boxes and vertical lines, which I do often, and that would be harder with traditional lines. But that’s personal preference!

I like that it’s a soft cover because it makes looking through it comfortable. The size is perfect – fits in my purse, big enough to write what I need. And they come in a few cute colors. I’m about to finish journal #1 and start on #2, and it’ll be a nice but weird change to switch colors! (And now that there are two of us keeping them we know whose is whose!)

Step 2:

Pick some pens. You’ll want some that have little to no bleed through. I chose these. I love these pens. Since beginning I have bought different packs to get more colors (a pack without purple was no pack for me!), so this 10 pack is actually a mix of two. These pens are wonderful. The best. Ask anybody. They’re great pens.

Step 3:

Get going! You can go to the official bullet journal website for the suggested guidelines straight from the creator, but I’d suggest starting by setting aside a few pages for an index – yes, it’s really necessary.

See, my pages are NOT super pretty! Just an attempt at a header, and a list!

You don’t want to have to flip through hundreds of pages to find your restaurant list! This does require you to number your pages, but it is really truly easy to get into that habit. And if you forget, then it’s very easy to go back and add them in! I initially thought the idea of an index was a bit overkill, but I have used it way more than I thought I would.

Step 4:

Create basic calendar pages. You might have a great list you’re excited about having in your journal. Maybe it’s a reading list because people are always suggesting books to you and your mind goes blank at Half Price Books. Maybe you hate the tea at one restaurant and the ranch dressing at another and can never remember that until your cup is full and you have gross dressing all over your salad, and you want a place to write that stuff.

Whatever your awesome idea is, take a minute first to add a few pages. My husband didn’t put any of these in his bullet journal because he “does all that on the phone.” But I find it very helpful to be able to see a clear overview of my year/month/week and throw in to-do lists too! And I don’t have to have my phone out and open what I’m using my bullet journal, I’ve got it all in one place.

Here are some of the most basic of calendar pages and how to use them.

  • A “future log”/yearly overview.

This is a handy reference, especially when I’m looking for an event that I’m not exactly sure what month/week it falls on, and I don’t want to have to be searching through my phone to find it. One quick glance, and it’s there. I use this for logging future events – I only write something on this page if it is further out than the current month. Once we hit a month, nothing else will get logged in that month’s future log.

 

  • A monthly overview.

    This was a particularly slow month – just the way I like it!

    At the start of each month I transfer dates from my yearly view, then only add to this page if something is happening further out than the current week. This is for events that I need to record for later in the month. For the record, ‘Finish painting the kitchen’ wasn’t scratched off until much, much later.

  • You guessed it… a weekly spread!

I used to take time each morning to write down what I needed to do that day. I’m not that disciplined right now, but I still keep up with my weekly events here. My weekly spread is much more time consuming than the one on the bullet journal website, so if this looks intimidating, don’t sweat it. You do not have to draw boxes every week. I just like doing it. My favorite part of my weekly spread is my menu. This menu was clearly before I was eating Whole 30ish, but the spirit of the spread is there! I write my grocery list as I make my menu, and that green box is for things that come up during the week that I’ll need to remember to put on next week’s list!

Some people take it even further and put in a daily spread, but you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. It’s your custom journal! Right now I have enough room in my weekly spread for anything I need on the daily level. If that changes and I become super busy or have a need for more tracking, I’ll change this!

What about the bullets?

I love the “bullet” part of the bullet journal. The whole idea is that you are quick logging everything – as this is meant primarily to be a tool, not a time sucker. The bullets for lists follow a simple system. You write tasks with a traditional bullet, and then use the following on top of those initial bullets:

  • X: Task complete
  • >: Task “migrated” or moved to another time

There are other symbols suggested on the website, but these are the ones I use most frequently and consistently.

Habit Trackers

One of the things that I was most excited about when I started my bullet journal were my daily/weekly/monthly habit trackers.

Oops! Guess I took a week off!!

With a habit tracker, you can add in tasks that you either want to improve upon (like making sure you do your daily chores!) or things you want to track – like how often you are eating out. I now just keep a yearly tracker (the headings are the months of the year) where I store things like ‘clean the fans,’ ‘change toothbrushes,’ and ‘back up pictures on phone.’ That way I can see when it was I last did all of the things that are sporadic and easy to let go.

Ideas for Other Pages

I have mentioned quite a few of my pages that I utilize, but here’s a recap and roundup of some of my favorites.

  • Calendars and future planning
  • Daily to-do lists
  • Habit trackers
  • Wish lists – Seriously, how often does someone ask you what you want for a Christmas gift and your mind is vacant?!
    • Kids’ wish list
  • Books to read
    • Book series tracker – I have one where I keep track of what books in a series I have, and which ones I’ve read
  • Restaurants to try
  • Instructions you have to look up all the time – for me one of these is an Instant Pot cheat sheet!
  • Home improvement wish list
  • Cleaning Schedule
  • Lawn & plant care record/planner – I keep a chart of when I’m supposed to fertilize, apply weed killer, and trim various plants
  • Meal ideas – Always get stuck on what to pack for lunch? Keep a running list of your favorites and some things you’d like to try!
  • Places to visit
  • Family Favorites – I recently asked all of my family members about their favorites from Starbucks, Sonic, etc., favorite meals/pizza toppings/desserts with the thought that now I can a) surprise someone with a drink and b) plan a meal if I’m having family over without a lot of questions up front!

Go for it!

If you have any questions about bullet journaling, please feel free to ask! I’m not an authority by any means (are there bullet journal authorities?) but I have been at it a while and have picked up some tips along the way! Don’t get swept up in the beauty and intimidation of the Pinterest journals. Yours can be whatever you want it to be, and it will evolve over time as you see what works (and doesn’t) for you. Are you going to start a journal? Let me know what kind of page you’re most excited to add, or if you’ve got an idea for a different page!

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