Just Add Stickers

It is time, once again for my reading journal set up post.  This year I decided to incorporate my reading journal into my daily planner. I ended up with far too many planners last year. By the end of this year I might decide that my planner is far too full and go back to using separate journals. We will see what works out best. I had my last readingg journal for 2023 , 2024 and 2025 . Each year had a distinct sections with reviews and books trackers. For my book tracker last year, I stamped different colored flowers for each book that I read. The end result was a beautiful reading garden of 36 colorful flowers.  In order to add everything into my Happy Planner this year, I purchased a tracker bundle from Etsy. I am very excited to use this new book tracker. I printed out 2 copies of this book tracker page, punching out holes in one of the pages to add it into my planner. I cut out the little books from the extra page and taped them on top of the little books in my planner. Th...

  I am so excited to start my planner for 2026 and to share my new setup! I have been thinking about this planner for months, yes months. I was not happy with my planner from last year. For many years I have used Happy Planners, for 2025 I decided that I wanted to try something different. I chose a planner written and published locally. I chose it for the extra pages at the end of the planner, there were habit trackers, size trackers for members of the family and a whole expense tracker section. The day to day layout wasn't exactly what I wanted, however. In July I ended up switching for a smaller planner and in December I printed out some festive habbit tracker pages and tucked them into my original planner. By the end of the year I ended up with a mish-mash planner. I decided to go back to my favorite planner the Happy Planner classic planner. To make it even more perfect I got the Gilmore Girls Happy Planner for Christmas. With the matching planner stickers. My sister and mom al...

  Well it's here! The final day of our countdown 2025! I opened door #12 today and found the cutest representation of the Stars Hollow gazebo. It's a little jewelery box, so cute and original. The perfect final surprise of the Gilmore Girls advent calendar. All in all I think that the advent calendar was definitely worth the money. The advent calendar itself can be refilled, or just used as decoration. The surprises inside the calendar were good quality and unique. Thank you for spending some time with me during this month. I have enjoyed opening my advent calendars and sharing my surprises and crafts. Thank you for reading along, Happy Holidays!

At the beginning of the Christmas season I bought a Christmas Collage and Sticker book from Grabie. I have just discovered the Grabie craf website. They have beautiful paint sets, paper and stickers. The book I bought was, the Holiday Magic cut out and stick it collage book. We have been using it for so many crafts and with 200+ pages I think we will be using it for years to come, or at least for next year as well.  Some crafts we made are these festive bookmarks. On day December 21st, Little Miss' activity was going to a coffee shop to read Christmas books (definitely her mother's daughter!) I thought that we could all use some new festive bookmarks. We used some of the punch out paper shapes from the book along with some of the stickers with self adhesive laminating sheets. I love how cute they turned out! Only two more sleeps, happy holidays!

We are officially on Christmas vacation! The kids are off from school, all the exams have been written and all the crazy themed days are done! All my Christmas work parties and celebrations are done. It is family time!  The first order of business was to write a Christmas to-do list. Little Miss loves the book 5 more sleeps 'til Christmas (and the show too, but we can't find anywhere to stream it.) In the book, the little boy plans out and countdown the days leading up to Christmas. Our list includes, Christmas baking, reading Christmas books at a coffee shop, looking at Christmas lights, wrapping Christmas presents and our little family Christmas before our bigger family celebrations. We have lots to do in the next couple of days but I am sure that we will enjoy every minute of it! Happy countdown, only 3 more sleeps 'til Christmas!

This week I opened boxes 9 and 10 of my Gilmore Girl advent calendar.  In box #9 was a cookie stamp with a beautiful snowflake carved on the bottom. It says I smell snow on the top with a picture of the snowflake.  I don't think I will use it for cookies because I am not sure if it is food safe. I am thinking that I will use it to make salt dough ornaments.  Box #10, only 2 boxes left! Today I got a pen. It matches perfectly with the Chilton notebook, probably because it's the plaid pattern of Rory's school kilt, which I love! I am very happy with the surprises that I have gotten with this advent calendar so far.  Happy countdown!