My 2009 Planner

Every year I have the same issue: no planner on the market fits all my needs.

Once upon a time I was a Franklin Covey girl. This was when my life was a series of meetings and classes and appointments. My employer was so big on the Franklin Covey "method" that we had classes AT WORK and were given our first planners for free.

I'm still a busy gal, but my life is a little less scheduled and a LOT more fun. I prefer a planner than has both monthly pages (so I can get a good look at what's ahead) and weekly pages (so I know what's coming RIGHT NOW). The big issue is that I want a good amount of room for both Saturday and Sunday. Every American planner company I've found likes to give a third of a page to each of the weekdays and split up the last third into tiny little squares for Saturday and Sunday. Now, I cherish my weekends and they are often more planned out than weekdays. Hello? 8 hours of each weekday is just office work!

For the third year in a row I spent way too much time going from store to store and website to website looking for the perfect planner and then finally gave up and went where I knew I'd end up... the Kawaii store.

Yes, apparently I have the same planner needs as Korean school girls because only Yellow Submarine carries a planner that has everything I'm looking for. Unfortunately, it also has this cover:

*le sigh*

I am going to have to do something about this. Ideas? I'm thinking some snazzy contact paper will fix it. That way, it's slightly water-resistant as well. We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm dealing with the girly pages because they DO have enough space for each day and are kinda cute:

See all the stuff on Saturday and Sunday? Yeah. Why can't American grown-up companies embrace the weekend?

The one modification I've already made is turning this little flap on the inside into a cute pocket! It was pretty easy. I just accordian folded a couple strips of coverstock and glued them to the flap with an adhesive runner.

The end result was this cute little pocket I can stick receipts and things into!