Creatively Flexing My Muscles

This week on the podcast we talked about taking our crafts when we travel. I have to admit, I’m a proCRAFTinator. I just made that word up. I honestly don’t normally craft when I travel. Last summer, when I went to New Orleans, I took my craft bag with me on the trip and didn’t open it once. That being said, I do take some sort of craft when I travel…and that means across town as well.

I am a beast of burden. I carry my backpack with me everywhere, and in that backpack, I may as well have bricks for all the use its contents do for me when I travel. Every day to work I carry my backpack full of crafty things and occasionally I will carry my craft bag with me as well. In my backpack, I have practical things that I need for work such as my laptop and planner but I also have a plethora of other things I carry with me that I don’t necessarily use but hope for a fleeting moment of free time to get a little craft in.

Crafty things I always have on me:

• All three sets of my pens: In my backpack, I carry three sets of pens in three different pen bags in case I need them. I carry my gel pens (Papermate™ and Pilot™) in case I want to write something down in my APN (all-purpose notebook) in many different colors. I carry my flair pens because sometimes you need a bit of flair instead of gel. I also have my Sharpie™ pens because they can be used for a completely different purpose than my other two sets of pens.
• Scissors and glue: You never know when you need to cut or glue something. If I remove either of these things from my backpack, I always find an occasion when I should have had them.
• My list journal: This is a given. My list journal is one of my current projects that I am always working on. I carry it with me if I get to add to it. I also use all three sets of my pens in this journal. I mentioned this list journal on our “Current Projects” podcast.
• My art journal and pastels: I usually carry my art journal with me as well, and if it is not in my backpack, it is in my car. I don’t use this journal regularly, but it is always nice to have it when I get the inspiration to draw or collage (this is where the scissors and glue come in).
• My All-Purpose Notebook: I carry this with me everywhere. Other than my planner and gel pens, this is the one thing I carry with me consistently. I started keeping an APN when I was in middle school but I started carrying it with me everywhere when I was in high school. The full ones are dated, numbered, and cataloged on my bookshelf.
• My Happy Planner™: This is where I do all of my planning. I mentioned my planner and how it transformed my life on my Day Planners blog back in April. I carry my planner with me everywhere and I keep everything I do not keep in my APN in my planner such as my daily activities, my classroom activities, and my grocery lists.  Sometimes I have things in both.

Other things I carry with me everywhere:

• A book: I always have a book in my purse.
• Crossword puzzles: I always have my ColorCross™ book with me.

My takeaway is that you don’t always have time to craft when you travel, but, I have the things I enjoy with me in my bag in case I get those little stolen moments to craft (or read). I want to hear from our readers. What do you take with you for your downtime when you travel? Let’s continue the conversation below or on our Facebook Group: MMC Chat.

Making S.M.A.R.T. Goals Happen: 5 Ways to Track Your Progress

All this week, we’ve been talking about SMART goals and how to make the most of them. We’ve talked about setting goals, making sure they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic/relevant, and timely. One thing we have not talked about is how to measure, or track, those goals.

There are many different ways to track your goals. One of the easiest is to keep a simple list and check off each step as you complete it.  This is a great method for tracking the number of days you got 8 hours of sleep or that you went for a walk every day. But what if you want to get more specific? What if you want to make it more creative or fun? That’s where bullet journals (also called BUJO’s) can come into play.

The most popular form of BUJO is a notebook with graph lines or a dot grid. In these types of journals, the user draws their own trackers and charts. These can be a lot of fun for creative types because you can make them as simple or as fanciful as you like. I thought it would be fun to share 5 different trackers to help you with your SMART goals. You can draw these yourself into any notebook, or you can create them on your computer to print out and add to a 3-ring binder.

Daily Task List

This little tracker is one I made to help me manage my daily tasks. I used an 8.5” x 11” dot-grid paper made for the BIG Happy Planner and cut it down to the size I needed.  After penning in the list items, I laminated it and punched the disc holes again, so it works as a dashboard in my planner. The lamination allows me to use a dry-erase pen on it to check off everything I complete each day. I also did the backside, so my list is visible whether it’s flipped to the right or the left in my planner. You can easily make this planner yourself using your own supplies. I’ve linked what I used at the bottom of this post.

Reading List

I made this fun page to document the books I’ve read (or started reading) this year. The fun thing about a page like this is that you can put as many or as few “books” on the shelves as you need and you can color it or leave it black and white. I like to use either my colored pencils or watercolors on mine. Again, I used the 8.5” x 11” dot grid from Happy Planner, since most of my BUJO pages go into my BIG Happy Planner.

When I’m making trackers like this, I usually draw them lightly with a pencil first, then go over my design in pen before erasing the pencil marks.  I wrote in the names of every book I started and colored in the ones I actually finished. I will keep adding to this throughout 2022 (or until I fill it). The plants and other accessories on the page can also be colored, or used to track something else…it’s entirely up to you.

I’ve linked my preferred supplies below. 

Work Week Tracker

This versatile tracker is laid out to document or track 20 facts or details like tasks associated with work/school days or something similar. You can also add more hexagons or make them larger or smaller to accommodate whatever number of data you need to track. You could even make 365 little hexes to track something for an entire year. I haven’t decided what to do with mine yet.

Household Projects List

This is more of a list than a tracker, but I included it to show you that, oftentimes, they can be the same thing. By simply changing the bullet points into checkboxes or blanks, any list can become a tracker. A small blank could be a spot for a date, or a box could be a space for a checkmark when the task is completed.

Monthly Task List

This task list is probably one of the most complex I’ve ever used. It took me several months to perfect the design and get the order of everything exactly right. I use this tracker every week to log all my household and business-related tasks as well as a few personal goals (please don’t judge me by my failure to clean out my fridge all month!). 

I draw this one by hand onto the opening page for each month in my BIG Happy Planner. The page is pre-printed with some dot-grid, lines, and graphics.  I just use correction tape to “white-out” any parts I need to cover and then draw over it with my pencil/pen as if it wasn’t there. 

As you can see, I have used several different sections and styles on this same page, and I love having all my trackers in one central location.

There are also lots of ready-made worksheets, goal planning workbooks like PowerSheets®, and stickers and add-on pages for the various brands of planner notebooks.  Whatever style you like, we’d love for you to share your SMART goals with us over in the Facebook group. Let’s set some goals and carry on the conversation with some mutual support for one another! I’ve even posted a BONUS tracker idea in the group for you!

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Here are some of the products I use to make my trackers:

• Tombow Mono Eraser
• Fudenosuke Hard Tip Brush Pen
• Bic Velocity HB#2 Mechanical Pencil
• Bic White-Out Mini Correction Tape
• Happy Planner Dot Grid Paper

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