We went up to San Francisco for the day and ended at Niku Steakhouse. We got the A5 flight with 4 ounces of each of the 3 different types of wagyu and it was really good but a lot to eat… Pretty sure I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night sweating wagyu fat
I asked Jack to plan a surprise date that included one activity and one meal, and we had it this past Saturday! Honestly it was probably not the best day to do it as it was the hottest day in weeks and it turned out to be outdoors, but we didn’t die or burn so it was not unsuccessful 🤷🏻♀️
Short hike, picnic table lunch (with food quantities and the barcode to the bread so I could keep track of the calories 😍), and TeaHub on the way home
I managed to snag a Sprocket for 50% off on Prime Day so I used it for a spread… Unfortunately wasting a photo of the sticky note of food quantities because I forgot I could just put the sticky note in it
This year we went to Zurich, Munich, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Here are a few photos from each location
Zurich
Moo moos on the hike from Uetliberg to Felsenegg
Beautiful view on the hike from Uetliberg to Felsenegg
…yeah, I really enjoyed the hike from Uetliberg to Felsenegg
Munich
Day trip to Neuschwanstein Castle
Bavarian State Chancellery, seen during a bike tour of the city
At Hofbrauhaus
Brussels
Relaxing lunch of waffles and biscuits
The Atomium
Day trip to Bruges
Amsterdam
During a countryside bike tour
Beautiful day
I love poffertjes, I had them three days in a row
Bonus
Bonus photo of Jack with Harry Shum Jr!!! <3
Last month, I saw this neat style of mood tracker:
View this post on Instagram
I really liked it so I decided to try to do something similar for April. I attempted it with some watercolor flowers!
And for May, I’ve decided to do this plane seat map mood tracker! We’re taking a long trip in May (in fact I’ll be on four trips in the next 45 days) and I’ll be on ten flights between now and mid June.
I spent this past weekend at PlannerCon. It was an interesting experience, especially as a first-time attendee going by myself!
Technically I found out about it because of the Penguins 🐧 When I went to Michaels to get supplies to make my sign for the Penguins @ Sharks game, I discovered Wonton In A Million on one of the endcaps. Of course I bought some stuff, then looked them up online to see what other products they had. The online store was temporarily closed with a message to check their Facebook group for updates. After joining, I saw a bunch of posts of people asking the creator if she was going to PlannerCon. It was coming up soon and only 15 minutes away from my house… so why not?
Friday I stopped by after work to register and check out some of the vendors. I tried to browse some of the shops set up downstairs, but it was in the same room as the Planner Prom that was going on, so it was dark and also pretty crowded. I ended up not staying too long due to this – which is probably a good thing or I would have spent even more money than I ended up spending! Good thing I hadn’t discovered the shops on the second floor yet.
Saturday and Sunday was speakers, workshops, shopping, and lots of swag. The speakers got pretty honest and personal, which I appreciated.
On Saturday, I took a lettering workshop from Kelly Creates, and a bullet journaling workshop from Plans That Blossom. Sunday’s workshop was lettering and doodling with Mommy Lhey. (I can never take a picture without the cats wanting to be in them, so I let Dragon stay 🙄)
This is what I ended up buying over the weekend… I lost track of how much I spent halfway through because I was trying to use cash as much as possible and didn’t have receipts 🤐 I’m going to start a 2-month no spend… Though my estimate is about half of what Jack thought I spent when I said “I spent too much”, so it can’t be that bad!
And this is the swag from vendors, speakers, and the convention itself.
Finally, there were a lot of kind people that were giving out goodies! I didn’t make anything to swap, but they just enjoyed sharing. (This time I couldn’t get Juggernaut out of the picture)
As a side note, I had made a spread for the March doodle challenge from Plans That Blossom that I saw on Instagram but forgot it was the same person from the workshop I was taking… I remembered it when she mentioned the challenge during the workshop and asked her to write a note in the spread 🥰
The first weekend of February, I took a giant knit blanket workshop. It was a fun small class (6 students) in a cute little local store, and we made them laid out on a table without any knitting needles. The blanket came out really soft and fluffy… So fluffy that Dragon just tries eat it if I have it out (well… it may also be because of the sheepy smell of the yarn). Unfortunately I haven’t really been able to use the blanket due to this – anyone have any suggestions for how to handle a cat that eats your blanket???
The second weekend, I took a watercolor lettering workshop. This one was a larger class, filling all of a coffee shop that closed early just for the workshop. It came with a coffee drink, dessert, customized tote bag, and the watercolor palette and brushes to take with you. I wasn’t quite happy with my lettering by the end of the class, so I took the card supplies home to make later rather than during the workshop. And yes, my final card did include the word “poop” 💩
The third weekend was the long President’s Day weekend. I decided I wanted to tour a cheese farm, and discovered one near Mendocino that was having a special brunch and tour that weekend. At that point I figured I might as well just do Mendocino for the weekend… So we had a weekend of wine tastings, pregnant goats, beautiful ocean views, and a soggy waterfall hike.
Finally, this last weekend we took an overnight trip to South Lake Tahoe with some friends. Jack’s snowboarding has improved a lot this year (even just from when we were in Vail at the end of December), so there was less of me skiing ahead and waiting for him to catch up (or waiting until he got far enough ahead before I started skiing). It was a lot more fun!
It’s a new year! 🎉
Last year I started to consistently use a planner, and bought myself a premade planner with my name customized on the cover. It was going pretty well for a while until I started to follow more planner and bullet journaling communities on Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. I saw all the fun creative spreads people made and wanted to do my own instead of using the same premade layout every week! Unfortunately I felt that I should finish up the premade planner I got, so I got myself a dot grid journal and satisfied myself with making a few collections in it until I could switch over completely.
Now it’s the new year and I’m so excited that I’ve switched over to making my own planner spreads! It’s been a lot of fun planning out themes and ways to use all my stickers and washi tape in my yearly, monthlies, weeklies, and collections.
However now I’ve got yet another dilemma – the dot grid journal I had bought was a Leuchtturm1917. I had done some initial research and it was suggested in some of the communities I followed. As I used it more though, I’ve found that there is a lot of ghosting from the pens and markers I use, and it really bothers me ☹️ Also the paper is a cream color that comes out very yellow in photos. So I did more research this time and found this comparison chart, and now I really want an Archer and Olive journal! They’re a bit expensive, but I would love to be able to use my watercolor markers in it. Sadly I still have a lot of my current journal to use up – I’m still deciding if I want to buy an Archer and Olive journal now to motivate myself to use up the current one faster or wait. I’m just worried that if I get one now, I’ll give up on the current one and waste the rest of it!
In August I had posted that I was going to start specifying a specific project type per day to make sure I don’t get pigeonholed – for instance, Wednesday was for crafts and Thursday was for games and reading. Unfortunately that ended up making me stressed out whenever something altered the schedule, whether it be me feeling too tired to do a technical project on its day or some event coming up preventing me from doing anything at all another day. I’ve now switched to just listing out the project types on my weekly without assigning them to days, leaving myself room to fit them in however they work out. (I probably should have done that in the first place!)
This month has been really busy, so it was perfect timing to be able to do my own layouts. Highlights included a trip to Vegas with friends, two Penguins games, and the NHL Fan Fair at the All Star Weekend 🐧🐧
We just spent the last two days at Vail – it was so pretty!
