Well Planned Life

I am anxiously awaiting the New Year so that I can put my new inserts in and reorganize the binder a bit. However, this morning I made a small change in my Malden. I absolutely love the Filofax Post-it accessory. It’s the first thing you will find when opening my binder . I use the transparent flags for marking things, whether in the binder itself or in a book or magazine that I’m reading. Whenever I need to mark something, I have these nifty little flags to help me out. I use the big notes for general note-taking and information – I can place the note on my daily sheet and transfer the information to wherever it needs to go when I have the chance. However, the transparent flags are not good for writing information on them. They’re a bit shiny, which makes it a little difficult for ink to be placed on it. It can be done, but not to my satisfaction. Luckily, since I’m such a Post-it lover , I have different flags that I can use. These easily allow for writing on them. I removed th...

I was browsing on eBay for all things Filofax, just to see what’s out there these days. I came across this little listing . Has anyone seen something like this before? Supposedly, if you read the description, it’s a model of the Conduit Street store. For those who have been, does the shop and building really look like this? It’s an interesting piece for those of us who are so enamored with Filofax . As loyal to them as I am, I can’t say I’d want to own this. I’m not a collector of knick-knacks of any kind, so it isn’t for me simply for that reason alone. Also, if I can’t add refills to it and put it in my bag, it does me no good. But I do find it interesting that it’s on eBay, waiting for the right person to come along and snatch it up. Any takers out there?

On this day after Christmas, I was supposed to go away to visit my extended family for a few days. However, much of the US Northeast is under a blizzard warning . Many people cannot get home, so I am one of the lucky ones already home. It stinks that my plans were canceled, but it gives me three days at home to unwind, work on my Filofax projects and post about them. The first project I tackled was my Notes Filo. I am using my brown pocket Kendal for this. This is really just a place to keep certain notes that I might want to see at a glance. It contains information that’s already in my personal Malden (which I use as my daily planner) but it’s more accessible because I don’t have to sift through tons of other daily information to find what I’m looking for. Specifically, for now, this binder holds medical information and a list of the blog posts I’ve written. In the future, I may add to it, but this is what it is as the moment. Thanks to Oni , I have both 2010 and 2011 inserts. I...

It’s Christmas Eve and I have so much to do. But I’m procrastinating getting done all the wrapping, cooking and cleaning that lies ahead of me, listed very neatly in my Filofax . While catching up on today’s posts, I came across this little Christmas Survey on Shazza’s Blog . So at the risk of putting off my chores a little longer, here are my answers: 1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Either, depending on the gift. I prefer to wrap but sometimes the gift fits better in a bag. 2. Real tree or Artificial? I prefer a real tree but have an artificial one – it’s cleaner and cheaper in the long run. Plus, we decorate so early (see below) that the tree would be wilted by the time Christmas Day arrives. 3. When do you put up the tree? The day or weekend right after Thanksgiving (so, usually the last weekend in November). 4. When do you take the tree down? The weekend of or right after New Year’s Day depending on how it falls. 5. Favorite gift received as a child? I don’t know that it was m...

A few weeks back, when I was feeling down , I found something to lift my spirits a little. I read The Christmas Tree by Julie Salamon . It’s a sweet (fiction) story about the man who works as the curator for Rockefeller Center in New York City. One of Richard’s jobs is to choose the Christmas tree that will be displayed. One year, his search for the perfect tree sends him to rural New Jersey where he meets a very special person. Sister Anthony teaches him many things about Christmas and about himself. It is her decision whether or not Richard will be allowed to take his perfect tree. Back in 1996, the book was converted into a made-for-TV special . I remember having seen it when it came out, but before I picked up the book, I hadn’t remembered much of the story. So, upon my mother’s recommendation, I started reading the book. The story is rather short and very easy to read. But it’s the way the book is written that caught my attention – the descriptions of nature are so real, I easil...

Last night, or early this morning depending on your point of view, a lunar eclipse was visible. Here in the US (EST), it started at 1:33 a.m. and ended at 2:41 a.m. While I find something like this fascinating, I’m not much of a scientific person. I was not planning on waking up for this event. However, I was awake at that time anyway. I looked out the window to see if I could anything. With the temperature at around 25 degrees F, I was not about to step outside to look for it. I couldn’t see anything. I heard from most people that it was too cloudy for anything to be seen anyway, so I’m glad I didn’t get all dressed up in my warm clothes to stand outside in the cold for nothing. The pictures of the event from various places are amazing. While lying in bed, trying to get back to sleep I kept thinking about a movie I used to watch as a kid – The Watcher in the Woods . I remember that it was a creepy kind of movie. A brief synopsis: A family comes to rent a house in the country. The ho...

“The season is upon us now, a time for gifts and giving.  As the year draws to its close, I think about my living.” -  "A Baby Just Like You,"  John Denver As we are only a little over two weeks away from the end of 2010, I thought this a good time to reflect on the past year. My first thought was to look at my resolutions for 2010 and give an update as to where I stand with them. Here’s a quick list of what they were: 1. Be healthier 2. Face some of my (ridiculous) fears 3. Be more spiritual 4. Get in touch with my faith 5. Be more careful with my finances Well, looking at this list, I can’t say I’ve accomplished any. I’ve started working on some of them, not by choice, but because I’ve been forced to due to circumstances beyond my control . However, since they are things that I’ve been wanting to work on, it’s good that I was finally forced to start the process. I haven’t really become “more healthy,” though I have been exercising more because the endorphins help me ...

“With moving, I have always been partial to the in-between, the blurred highway outside the window, that suspended time when everything you were lies behind you like a molted skin and everything you might become shimmers at the horizon. You might choose anything and make it happen, constrained by nothing but your own imagination, sure that not even gravity can hold you.” One of my favorite books is The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart . I first read this book when it was published in 2006. It’s about two best friends and their journey through high school and college together and their eventual “breakup.” It rang so true to me because I had a best friend in high school. In college, we drifted apart and didn’t speak for several years. It was this book that brought my best friend and I back together again. When the book opens, we meet Cameron, the narrator of the story. She works for an aging historian, Oliver Doucet, and she has come to love him like a father, maybe a little more so. ...

It’s that time of year again. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to write. I promised myself that this Christmas season would be calmer, more relaxed than last year. I purposely didn’t plan events too far in advance, for fear of them piling up and being too stressed out to enjoy the season. But it seems that between working two weekends a month and planning events with family and friends (and let’s not forget the never-ending shopping and wrapping and mailing), I’ve just been swamped with things to do. When that happens, I often don’t know where to start my to-do list. And since I haven’t been feeling 100% I’ve let some things go, more so than I would have had I been feeling fine. So now I’m feeling the stress. Only two weeks to go and I’ve barely started my shopping. And honestly, if I don’t get a majority of it done tomorrow, I just don’t know when it will get done. I hate doing things like this last minute. Talk about being stressed out. I’m not good under pressure. I like to...