Planner Share: August-September 2015

Welcome to my first (hopefully monthly) planner share! Now that my planner set up is pretty much a well-oiled machine (which, granted, I do keep tweaking, because I'm obsessed), I'm dipping my toes into the planner decorating world. I certainly do not have plans to start covering my weekly pages in stickers, putting washi tape all over every page, or painting nature scenes with watercolors around the page borders- I honestly don't have the time or the funds to do that, nor is it really my style- but I have always been a bit of an artist at heart and am definitely a lover of color.

My secret love is watching videos on YouTube of people sharing their planners, or doing "plan with me" videos where they decorate their planner pages on camera. Most of the people who do these videos regularly are using their planner as more of a scrapbook (and, as I've come to find out, many of them keep a separate paper or electronic planner that is their actual/practical planner), but it is amazing to see what they come up with- if you're a planner addict like me and you've never seen any of these videos, go search for "plan with me" on YouTube. Just make sure you have a few hours set aside of this purpose (don't say I didn't warn you!).

For now, my idea is to try to add a little color and fun to my monthly calendar pages and share those with you each month. After trying it out for the first time this summer, I've already discovered some things that I thought I would like that are definitely not my thing, but I'm going to share them with you anyway so we can learn together. Alright? OK!

The first month I attempted to decorate was August (I've hidden some of the information but you get the idea):

So yeah, you can see I was going for a summer theme and a back-to-school theme in one... I do kindof like the cute little teacher owl in the corner but I do not love the other flower sticker. I actually had some other ones on the sides too that I didn't like- I managed to get those off without ripping the page but that flower was pretty stuck so it stayed. I'm also not a fan of the fact that you cannot read a darned thing I wrote on the patterned washi tape. I won't be doing that again. What I do love are the little banners/flags, which I made myself from scrapbook paper (here's my tutorial for making your own sticky notes), and the strip of scrapbook paper that I put at the top of the month to write down a "summer bucket list". I also like the little icon stickers I made (here's a tutorial on how I made those), but I'm not completely thrilled with the larger stickers, like the green one you see towards the bottom. I use different colored pens for different categories- one for the girls' schedule, one for social events, another for appointments, etc. In the past, that was pretty much all the color that I had on my monthly pages, but it does help me quickly find the information I need when I am looking for something.

Here's what I have so far for September:

I decided to do the scrapbook paper strip again, and I also stuck a few stickers in, just to give them another chance (by the way, the stickers in both month's layouts are from the $1 sticker books at Michael's). I'm still on the fence- they're definitely cute but it feels too cutesy for me. I might just give the sticker books to my girls- we'll see. I did switch to using only plain colored washi, with a black sharpie pen, for longer events I need to note, and I like that much better. The yellow strips are sticky notes, just because I wanted to try it. I think I like the washi better.

That's it for this month- I'm hoping to share the previous month and the upcoming one at the end of each month. I'm enjoying the creative process of figuring out a way to add some more color and fun to my planner in my own way. Have any of you tried to decorate your planner? What do you use?

I'm linking up with Keeping Up with Mrs. Harris for her Plan With Me Sundays linky! Make sure to click on the picture below to see all the awesome planners :)