Plan With me- Strawberries

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Since where I live it is strawberry season I am featuring that in my planner this week. I do love everything about strawberries so it is the perfect theme.

Here are some more photos of the pages, thank you for visiting my blog and watching my video.

Budget Planning- Stars N Stripes

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This week in my budget planner series we are celebrating Memorial Day with a lovely free printable sticker sheet from Vintage Glam Studios.

This is a brand new sticker sheet to her blog and I think it is just sooo pretty and the perfect theme for Memorial Day (at least here in the US)

I am so happy to be doing this first in what I hope will be a long series of videos in this planner.

In addition to the free printables all I used were a roll of Washi type tape from Dollar Tree (I got this last winter) and some star stickers also from the Dollar Tree.

I hope you enjoy this series as much as I am.

If you know of other sites with free printables let me know about them. I would love to find even more sources of sticker for this series.

Planning On a Budget- Intro & Set-up

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This week I am assembling a very inexpensive planner to use in a series of budget friendly plan with me's.

I love to watch PWM videos and I love stickers but I know how expensive this hobby of decorating our planners can become. From the initial cost of the planner to all those beautiful sticker sets, the costs can get really high really fast.

So I have an option for the do-it yourself kind of planner. I am going to delve into the sites that offer free alternatives for us. We are starting out with an inexpensive 3 ring mini notebook from Target and filling it with free down-loadable pages. Then in future weeks in this series I will show you how to decorate it with free down-loadable stickers and stuff from the craft store.

To start we need a “house” for our planner. In the video I show you just 2 of the many options available. I love the mini 3-ring binders because they are inexpensive and fairly easy to find. I got mine at Target but I know that other stores including the office supply stores have them too.

The 3-hole punch I am using I got in the office supply aisle of my regular store I get my groceries at. It cost under $10, if you don't have one you can certainly use a single hole punch that you can anywhere. It will just take a bit more time.

The paper I used for all the printed pages is made by Georgia Pacific and is their Super Premium Bright paper. I get mine in my regular store near the three hole punches. 

Let's start with the weekly pages since that is what we will need to have the most of. I got mine from the site Wendaful, she has some really nice free printable pages as well as some stickers we will be using in future weeks. The pages I used were the “Vertical Boxed Week on Two Pages” These looked the most like the pages that I have seen being used on Youtube by different people doing PWM's so I that is what I chose. Also this was on the of the few week on 2 page layouts that I could get to print with boxes that were 1 ½” wide so that the standard full box stickers made for the commercial planners would fit. She has this same layout on a couple of different downloads be sure to get the one that is set up as an “A5 on Letter Size” paper.

The website has some directions to print the pages successfully. I did find with my printer I couldn't use the two sided printing option and get the pages to come out correctly. So instead I printed page one about 10 times then manually flipped my paper over so that it would feed correctly and then printed page 2 the same number of times. My printer seems to get out of whack when I try to print very many pages at one time especially if I am trying to print on both sides of the paper. Also be very careful to check that you are printing at 100% size so that everything lines up correctly and is the correct size.

I did notice that these pages have the cut lines at 5 ½” by 8 ¼” instead of a more standard 5 ½” by 8 ½” (at least in my mind that is more standard) I think that next year I will add the extra ¼” to the bottom of each page as I am cutting them to give me just a tiny bit more room on the pages.

For the “month at a glance” pages I found some colorful ones a while back at the Scattered Squirrel site. For this I picked the “half size- 2 pages per month” calendar. Then when printing I told my printer I wanted it to print horizontally with 2 pages per sheet of paper. This way I only used 12 sheets of paper for the 12 months.

For the year at a glance calendar I had to do a bit more manipulating to get what I wanted. I am sure there are a lot of other calendars out there that are set up for this size paper. In fact I think both the above sites had some. I already had this one saved to my computer so it is what I used. To get this to print the way I wanted it set up my printer to horizontal orientation and to again print two pages per sheet. I then printed one copy, and since I needed a second one for another project I put my paper back in the printer and printed a second one on the other half the page.

There are so many other pages of printables available to customize your planner with. These that I am using are just barely scratching the surface. There are pages for financial planning, meal planning, wedding planning, school planning, if you can think of it I am betting there are pages that you can print off to add to your planner for it.

Plan with Me- Cherry Blossoms

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Just where did the time go last week??? I didn't even get time to plan until Monday for the week. I hate that I like to sit down on Sunday afternoon and take my time planning and putting down my stickers. Not this week, I just didn't have time.

So the theme as you probably already know is Cherry Blossoms. I had thought of this way back in about January or February but almost forgot to actually do it! This is the last full week in May so I am so glad I remembered in time.

Here are some closer shots of the two pages.

Thank you for watching and checking out my blog too!

May 2016 Graze Box

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I am pretty happy with my Graze Box this month. I have been really careful to go in each month and leave feedback on the items I receive and I think that helps a lot. This month I got some repeat items, a couple I love and a few that are just okay.

So first let's just look at how pretty the box is when you open it. The people at Graze do a nice job of putting this box together and the packaging has been thought out so that the items set stay right where they are supposed to be. I also love that the packaging is all cardboard so it is easy to recycle.

The first item I grabbed out of my box was the Banana Cream Pie mix. Normally I love these mixes of dry fruit and nuts. This one is not as good as some of the others I have gotten in the past. I think that is because the dry banana slices are labeled as being “chewy” I think that is reason that the pecans are also rather chewy instead of crisp and fresh tasting. I am sure they chose this type of dry banana slice for the texture but I think a harder banana slice would have preserved the nuts a bit more.

Next up was the Sweet Rhubarb Jam, another dry fruit mixture. I was a bit worried about this one since I am not the biggest fan of rhubarb but I love it! This is now one of my favorite items I have gotten. The mix of sweet and tangy is perfect in this mixture.

This box held another FlapJack, this time I received a repeat of the flavor. I don't dislike FlapJacks I just don't love them either. Frankly there are other granola type bars that I prefer over these.

The last item on the top layer was the Zesty Line and red Pepper Salsa, this is probably my absolute favorite from this box. I love things I can dip, I love spicy foods and I love the savory options in the box. This one was a winner all the way around.

The first item out of the bottom layer was the Vitamin C Crush. This one was another miss for me. Mainly because the taste and smell of the coconut took over the entire package. All the bits in this one tasted (and smelled like coconut) It isn't that I don't like coconut, I just don't love it especially when it over powers the other flavors. I really would have like to be able to taste the pineapple and mango too.

Herby Bread Basket, I was so happy to see this one making a return to my box. I love this one and am going to save it for when I have time to sit and enjoy it.

Another snack to make a return was the Kettle corn Kern Pops. I am on the fence about these, I don't dislike them but I don't really like them either. When I got them last time I decided to give them another try. If I don't like them more this time I think I will mark them as something I don't like so they won't show up again.

Lastly was the Peach Cobbler, normally I am not a huge fan of these mixtures that contain the fruit with the little cookie things. This one is an exception. The cookies in this one not only taste better they have a better texture and they actually add to the mixture. I do love peaches so I am going to mark this one as a favorite.

Plan with Me Fairy Theme

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This week I am using a Fairy theme. It was funny I don't think I would have thougth of this one except I got a newsletter from one of the shops that I purchase my clip art from and this design was featured. I fell in love with the fairies so I had to use it this month.

Here are some closer photos of the pages. 

May 2016 Ipsy Bag

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I have to say I do love the bag this month mainly because it is different! It looks like an envelope (at least to me it does) the design in cool and the color is pretty. The vinyl that it is made of is a bit on the cheap side but I can forgive that. Overall, this is definitely one of my favorite bags so far.

As for the contents of the bag I am pretty happy about those too. So I think that Ipsy hit the mark this month at least for me.

First out of the bag was a tube of Smashbox X-Rated mascara. I am looking forward to trying this after I use up some of the mascara I already have open. If I found the right mascara on the website the full size retails for $22.

I am really happy to get to try the 3 sheet masks from Soo AE. After a bit of digging around on the internet I finally found these for sale at Target.com. The site says they are only available online and not in stores. The 3 in the bag are there along with several other choices. They come in packs of 3 (same variety in pack) for $15.

The Hikari bronzer, I know I totally butchered the name of the company. I have seen this brand on several un-boxing videos but have not purchased anything from them(I think I have gotten some items from them in other Ipsy bags though). I have a couple of bronzers in my collection but it is always fun to try something new. If I decide I don't want this I know of at least 3 other people that will be happy to volunteer to take it. LOL I have no idea if this is a sample size or a full size but the full size retails for $17.

The Inspr 282 Eye Fluff brush is interesting. I have other brushes this shape but they are much softer than this one. Not that this one is not soft, it is firm but soft at the same time. I am thinking that it will be a great brush for applying eyeshadow and I can't wait to try it. Online the brush retails for $12 which I think is a good price for a nice brush.

The last item out of the bag was the face mask from Epice. I totally forgot to see what this one smelled like on camera. I am pleased to tell you it has a nice smell to it. Since my skin has been really dry this spring I am looking forward to some nice me time to try this one out too. Online you can purchase a 1 oz tube for $12 which is what seems to have come in the bag.

I am really pleased with not only the selection of products this month but with the value of the products too. Some months it seems like the bag really isn't worth even the $10 you pay for it but this month there are for the most part all products that I would be happy to pay that much for.

Did you get any Ipsy bag this month?? What did you get in yours? Let me know.