Cocoa Daisy: April Planner Setup.

I was on the Cocoa Daisy Blog last week, sharing my April Planner Setup. Here it is:

In April I switched from a standard size TN (= traveler's notebook) to a personal size. I have four inserts in my TN: a folder, the April DaisyDori, a monthly insert and a bullet journal insert.

When I made the folder I filmed the process. If you want 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 a bit older that is why the DaisyDori is sandwiched in the folder. I have since moved the DaisyDori to its own elastic because it was moving a lot 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 to record my step count in April and if this works out, I might continue to do so in the following months.



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 chose three 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.



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 and can now check off each week. I really like to have this separate 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. The DaisyDori has 36 pages, minus the first and last page and minus the two pages I use for meal planning and goals, this leaves 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. In my monthly spread I indicate birthdays, doctor's appointments, lunch dates, school breaks and any other activities that aren't reoccuring.



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.

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. 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.