Hello, hello! This is seemownay (or in real life: Simone) here with my very first blogpost for Cocoa Daisy on the Cocoa Daisy blog. I have been pondering many ideas on what to write about, but finally came to the conclusion that I would show you how I set up my new personal Traveler’s Notebook for April with my Cocoa Daisy supplies.

My TN (= traveler’s notebook) has four inserts: a folder, the April DaisyDori, a monthly insert and a bullet journal insert. I actually made the green TN myself using some leather scraps that I had left over from making moccasins for my sons when they were little. And I was really surprised at how easy it was to sew the leather because I remember that being so gruesome. I even added pockets where I now store all of my Cocoa Daisy planner stickers.

When you open up the TN, you will be greeted by this dashboard. To my own surprise I fell in love with having a dashboard as a title page in my TN. As you might know, I am more of a functional planner girl, that’s why you never see planner charms or a lot of decoration on and in my TNs. Since I did not have a plastic folder with pockets for this TN, I decided to make my own with the supplies I had on hand.

While I worked on creating the folder, I filmed the process. If you want to follow along, this is what you need: cardstock and/or patterned paper and a page protector. I sewed along the edges but you can easily swap the sewing out for washi tape. You can find the video on my youtube channel here: Making a folder with pouch and clear pockets.

I even repurposed the packaging from the Planner Addon kit. My initial idea was to have a place for my dashboard and the Cocoa Daisy Planner stickers. However, the stickers had about 1 cm overhang, so I put them in the pocket in the front of my TN.

Then I decorated the cover of my April DaisyDori with a Cocoa Daisy dashboard, some exclusive paper, the April sticker from the sticker sheet and this beautiful puffy butterfly sticker. Yes, I know: there is a huge contrast between my colorful, mixed media-rish dashboard in the front and this very clean and simple cover. That is exactly the way I like it! This photo is from a couple of days ago and that is why the DaisyDori is sandwiched in the folder. I have since moved the DaisyDori to its own elastic because it was moving when I wrote in it. That bugged me. A lot.

Before I’ll move on to roughly show you what I use the other two inserts for, I want to give you a closer look at my DaisyDori setup. I am using the monthly calendar in the front to record my step count in April and if this works out, I might continue to do so in the following months. I layered a piece of washi from the Addon kit and a tab sticker to create a title.

Then on the first two pages I have -and always had ever since I started using the DaisyDori- my meal plan for the whole month on one side and on the other my monthly goals. This month I only chose three goals because it is Baseball season and two of my sons play. So I am very busy and don’t want to overwhelm myself with too many goals. I have learned this the hard way and put myself up to failure last spring. Again, I used the tab stickers from the planner kit for my titles and layered some washi tape.

One of my goals is getting back into a cleaning routine. I have had times when I cleaned the whole house in one day and it worked well, but since starting my youtube channel, creating for Design Teams and volunteering a lot at our elementary school, I didn’t want another full day blocked and not having time to be creative. So I am trying to clean one room each day, leaving Saturdays for Baseball and reserving Sundays to supervise the kids when they do their chores. To keep track of my success I cut down one of the weekly pages from the personal planner pages to fit into one of my folder pockets. I added a tab and a “clean” sticker from the functional sticker sheet and can now check off my tasks every day. I really like to have this on a separate paper, so I can check my progress after the month. Since this is not a routine yet, I make sure to add it to my daily to do list as well.

I use the rest of the DaisyDori as a daily planner where each day is on one page. The DaisyDori has 36 pages. When I subtract the first and last page as well as the two pages I use for meal planning and goals, it leaves me with 32 pages to be used. I don’t pay any attention to the page design, some of my daily pages are divided in sections and have a grid, some are lined, some are blank and some are sectioned. Since April has 30 days I will end up with two spare pages in the back. I haven’t thought about a use for them yet. But I am also not concerned if they will be left blank.

Here is a look at my MO2P (=month on two pages) in my monthly insert. When I used the DaisyDori in standard size for March, I actually used the calendar in the front of the DaisyDori. In my monthly spread I indicate birthdays, doctor’s appointments, lunch dates, school breaks and any other activities that aren’t regular activities.

Finally, the last insert in my TN is this bullet journal insert. This is where I house all of my lists and collections that I want to keep separate from my daily and monthly planning, mostly because I need to refer back to them all year. Since I just moved from a standard size TN to this personal size, I still need to move some of my lists over.

In case you want to find out more about me, here is how I introduced myself on the Cocoa Daisy Planner Fans Facebook group: Introduction. I have been subscribed to the DaisyDori since January 2016 and if you want to see how I started my DaisyDori journey, I am sharing them on my youtube channel here: Throwback Thursday * Planning 2016.

Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to read about my April planner setup, I hope I was able to inspire you to get creative and approach your planning in a new way. If you want to know more about my change to a personal size Traveler’s Notebook or how I use my standard size DaisyDori, make sure you check out my youtube channel and follow me on instagram.