2020 Schedule Book

 

Welcome to my 3rd year of using a scheduler book! 2018 and 2019 scheduler book can be view here for reference, just click on the year to see how it all started and how it has evolved. And you will be forgiving if you think why does the above photo shows a book of 2013 instead of 2020. That's because for 2020, I've decided to upcycle my old half used diary to be my 2020 scheduler book!  HA! Talk about being cheap! Let me show you how I actually do this. 

So I happen to have this beautiful French themed book I once used half way. I guess I knew I wasn't serious about it cause of of the writing inside was in pencil, so I could erase it and reuse. But the problem was, it was based on 2013 calendar. Lucky for me, I got a 2020 Hello Kitty calendar I got from my last trip to Japan. So I used it to paste over the book to make it 2020. Sadly, I could only use half the Hello Kitty Scheduler pages as it was double sided print. So I printed out my own calendar for the other half to make a whole! I only paste over the monthly pages, not the daily ones as I didn't really minded if they were not align. It was just a minor inconvenience. 

The old scheduler book was really beautiful, and with this upgrade, it would look even more awesome. Although Hello Kitty is mainly themed in Britain, I guess you could call it Hello Kitty spend a year in France! Bonjour!

On the start of the book, there is the original page of the globe. I use it to mark all the countries that I have visited, and countries that I have transit in. I guess I should also mark countries I want to visit, but I don't have much ambitious plan this year. I would be instead recycling to countries that I have been before. As I age, I realise I am just happy to going to different part of Japan for the rest of my life :)

Today is actually the 5th day of the year as I blog this, and I have already started using the book daily. As it was kinda plan and booking diary, I am actually customise it to be in line with my previous scheduler book. To be honest, I actually bought a nice Moomin scheduler book last year to be used for this year. But I realise that it was a non-year specific book, so I thought I'll keep it for when I retired since it was such a detailed book. When I am retired, I can document everything with more information. But now since I was probably going to continue working, I decided to use up some of the books I have in my drawer. I actually have a whole drawer full of beautiful notebook that I just buy and hardly use. To see how I document my January input, you will need to wait till end of January as some of the info inside may be confidential at this point of time. 

So above is how I customised it. I recently borrowed a beautiful book on how other people around the world uses their own diary. And it has never occured to me to glue paper on my own notebook. This year was the start, and it was just the right time to upcycle an old book! Basically I wanted to use it to track my weight, my exercise, my finances, my food intake, and newly introduce this year is my monthly challenge! I've planned out 6 types of monthly challenge for each month! Perhaps I will share them in January's entry next time. 

Any extra part of the the Hello Kitty scheduler book are fully utilised. Look how cute Kitty look! I am not a big fan of hers, but I just think it's cute and sweet and just adorable. It makes me happy seeing her everyday anyway. 

As I wanted to track my progress daily, and didn't want to carry the whole book while I travel, I've decided a take out pages to bring along on my trips, and these are also Hello Kitty themed! And for the first time, I finally got the chance to use my stamp set! What I did was cut out all the kitty themed paper (which I happen to have a lot of) to suit the pages on my scheduler book. I stamped the dates and day on it so I know which day they belong to, and just bring those few pieces of paper when I travel and document in them. When I am back, I will paste them back into the book! I predict this year's scheduler book may be one of my favourite cause it is like 80% customised! And I plan to start using all the ridiculous amount of stamp set that I have that have never been used before!

Having a diary, a notebook, a scheduler book is actually a very personal thing. It's also very rewarding at the end of the year when you can see the progress of whatever your goal is that you were trying to tracked. It's like a beautiful piece of your life. And because I am trying to cut down on my clutter, I also document a soft version of them here in my blog so that in the event I have to throw them away one day, I would always have a digital copy of these beautiful book. It is a beautiful habit to have, to write, to document, to make things beautiful. I have plans to start drawing my beautiful food creation one day in a notebook too. But it's kinda hard to do when I am still working cause work takes so much of your time away.... Here's hoping for a near retirement soon so that I can let my creativity just flow!