Well Planned Life

It’s coming down to the Christmas wire and there’s still so much to do.   So, I have decided to take a holiday hiatus.   I will return briefly on New Year’s Day and will resume regular posts soon after that.   I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year! In the meantime, feel free to enter my celebratory “Boo to the Mayan Calendar ” give-away!  During my recent trip to The Container Store , I picked up another pack of Calendar Stickers .  I gave these away earlier in the year , and there was quite a bit of interest, so I’m doing it again (click on the link to the earlier give-away to see details of the sticker pack). Here are the details: Give-away is open worldwide. To enter, leave me a comment below. All comments must be received by 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 2012, New York time. One winner will be chosen at random using Random.org and audited by my accountant husband. The winner will be announced in a separ

As many of my long-time readers know, I have been working on my very own Happiness Project , adapted from Gretchen Rubin’s best-selling book (you can read my review of the book here ).   A few months ago, Rubin published her second happiness project book, Happier at Home where she concentrated on a number of projects within her own household. While this second book didn’t hold the same meaning for me that the first did (probably because I’m not in a place in my life where I need it as much), I did get several great ideas for small projects of my own.  First and foremost, I want to update my Happiness Binder (which I have done and will reveal here soon).  Overall, I enjoyed the book and reading about Ms. Rubin’s projects—there’s always something to be learned from other people’s revelations and outlooks on life. So here are a few things that are discussed in the book and my take on them: The book starts off with this quote:  "The true secret of happiness lies

I just came across a new book, The Address Book by Sophie Calle .   I am not familiar with this author, nor have I read the book in its entirety; I only skimmed it.   I bring it up because of the premise.   Apparently, the author came across someone’s address book in Paris.   According to the author’s foreword, before anonymously returning the book to its rightful owner, she photocopied the contents and decided to call the people listed to see if they would give some insight as to the type of person the owner is.   Some people refused, but some people complied.   So the book is actually a collection of stories and tidbits from the people who accepted Calle’s invitation to discuss the owner.   She also decided that she would only reveal the owner’s name if he/she agreed to meet with her.   The owner is referred to as “Pierre D.” If you click on the link above, you can see that the book’s cover is similar to a Moleskine in that it has the band that keeps the book closed—I thought

After two different attempts (both of which failed for the same reason), I have finally found a way in which to decorate the tabbed dividers for my compact.   What I came up with is very similar to how I decorated my monthly tabs . First, I found a small calendar with photos that I like. These calendars are easy to use for this purpose—the paper is thin enough that it doesn’t add a lot of bulk to the tabs, and the photographs are small enough that I can crop them to the size I need without losing too much of the original shot. Using the same method of sizing, cutting, and gluing that I did for the monthly tabs, I created these: Contacts Writing Notes Projects Lists Calendar The back of each tab is blank.   I did that because I tend to put sticky notes on the back of my dividers, and to do so on top of photographs makes the sticky adhesive linger on the photograph itself, as well as make it pointless to even have photographs o