Brush Dance 2016 wall calendars

Last week I reviewed the 2016 weekly planner and date book from Brush Dance. Today I have a large wall calendar and a mini wall calendar to show you. Like everything from Brush Dance, these have gorgeous art and wonderful quotes throughout.

First up is the whimsical Silver Stars mini wall calendar.

Every page has beautiful artwork with a new quote every month. Holidays are printed on the day spaces.

At the back there are reference calendars for the first four months of the following year, and information on the artist.

The mini wall calendars are great for small spaces like above your desk. You can see the entire collection here.

Next up is the Hello Love wall calendar. This calendar has images of Paris and is great for anyone who is romantic at heart.

The images are decadent and beautiful.

At the back are forward-planning reference calendars and information on the artist.

The wall calendars are large and great for hanging up in the kitchen or wherever you want maximum visibility. There is a huge selection of wall calendars, you can see them all here.

Brush Dance has a great selection of calendars, planners, journals and other stationery items. You can see their entire selection at www.brushdance.com.

Many thanks to Brush Dance for sending me these gorgeous calendars to review!

Bound planner work-arounds series: Monthly calendars booklet

In my new series on bound-planner work-arounds (as suggested by Mstraat in in the last Free For All Friday) I'll be showing you ways to add features to your bound planner.

In this post I'll show you how to make a monthly calendar booklet to add to your planner, notebook or Bullet Journal. This is especially good for people who go through more than one notebook per year, so you can plan your whole year in the one booklet and move it from notebook to notebook.

You can put this booklet in the back pocket of your planner/ notebook, or if your book doesn't have a pocket you can add an Insta-pocket (which I reviewed here).

To make this booklet I used an address booklet that came in the back pocket of a large Moleskine planner. I chose this booklet because it is very slim. You could also use a Quo Vadis booklet or similar slim notebook.

To start each month on two pages, I made 5 rows of 6 lines each.

Then I drew vertical lines:

I kept the vertical line measurements within the edges taking into account the cut-out areas for the tabs. That made each column 2.75 cm wide.

Below you can see the A-Z tabs:

Here is January filled in:

I cut sticky flags and used them on the A-Z tabs to color code and label the months to find the month I'm looking for easily. Also here you can see the first page and inside cover are available to use for anything you want to reference quickly like goals or emergency information.

There were just enough pages for 12 months of monthly calendars plus a two-page spread for the future year:

The back page is available for any information you want to keep all year, like your contacts backup:

Below you can see how slim the booklet is in the back of my large Moleskine:

Several months ago I made a similar monthly calendars booklet by printing out month pages and taping them into the booklet, but I didn't like that as well because the taped-in pages added a lot of bulk to the booklet.

What's great about making your own monthly booklets is you can make them start any time, so the months can go January-December, on the academic year, starting at the beginning of a project timeline, etc.

You can draw your months any way you like: month on two pages like I've drawn here, month on one page with the opposite page open for lists and notes, or the simpler monthly index like the Bullet Journal style.

When you move this booklet from notebook to notebook, it lets you plan the whole year at a time and also serves as a quick reference of your entire year so you don't have to dig out your old notebook from earlier in the year to check a previous date.  I'm using this monthly booklet as my daily index in my notebook.

Look for more bound planner work-around posts soon!

Bound planner work-arounds: Adding Monthly Calendars to your Planner

Several people have asked me if this or that planner has monthly calendars. Personally I wish every planner did, but some don't. Luckily, there's a way to fix that.

Moleskine Templates (http://mymoleskine.moleskine.com/community/msk_templates.php) are free and just require you to log in (which is painless). They have monthly, weekly, and other templates available to print and stick into your planner or notebook of choice.

I did an experiment with the Moleskine monthly printables and taped them into the address booklet in the back of the 2013-2014 Moleskine Turntable planner that I reviewed here, which does not have monthly grid calendars (only the monthly columns). The result is pretty good.

I'm sure someone else could do a tidier job than I did. But, it solves the lack of monthly calendars.

2013 WeekDate Monthly wall calendar

Here is the 2013 Weekdate monthly wall calendar, I really like the cheery green background this year!

The WeekDate wall calendar uses WeekDate's genius Only Write It Once system. You write your monthly recurring events in the top section, your weekly recurring events in the bottom section, and your current month's appointments in the middle. You never have to rewrite anything, even when scheduling into future months. Everything is in front of you all the time so you never forget appointments or events!

This is the second year in a row I've ordered the WeekDate monthly wall calendar. Click here to see my review of the 2012 calendar with loads of photos and more info on how it works!

WeekDate is an awesome company and made my (short) list of Planner Companies Who Listen To Their Customers!

Unfortunately this might be the last year these calendars are made because their publisher says there's not enough demand. Let's prove them wrong by showing that we like this unique and helpful format!

Click here to see more about the WeekDate monthly calendar!

Daycraft new Desk Calendar

This is the new monthly Desk Calendar from Daycraft! It's a very nice addition to the Daycraft lineup.

The cover is soft PU and comes in a variety of colors. It stands up on its own:

Each month has a page:

There's also a list of International Holidays:

There are stickers that you can use to highlight holidays or important days:

This calendar would look great on any desk at home or work.

Many thanks to Daycraft for sending me this calendar as a sample to review!  Daycraft now has free worldwide shipping so you can get their cool products wherever you are!

Just for the heck of it, I'm going to give this calendar away to anyone who wants it. The first person to email me asking for it, gets it.  Laurie (at) plannerisms (dot) com  :) 

Congratulations to Libbi, she was the first to email me so she wins this cool calendar!  :)

Using monthly planners

I've had several people ask me how to use monthly planners, so I thought I'd give a brief tutorial.

Monthly planners come in various forms: monthly wall calendars, monthly pages in your weekly or daily planner, or monthly planner books (like the Moleskine Monthly Notebook or Quo Vadis Monthly 4 planners).

Monthly planners are great for overviews of deadlines, bills due, birthdays, holidays and other things that are coming up in the future. They give you a big-picture view of what's going on over the next several weeks.  Monthly calendars are also a great way to plan your entire year.

A question I get often is, what do you write into a monthly calendar that you would or would not necessarily write into a weekly or daily planner? Great question!

I found out the hard way that it was too much to write all appointments, events and plans into a monthly calendar as well as weekly and daily. I just couldn't keep up with that level of detail in all those places at once.

What works best for me is to write fixed dates into my monthly planner. Bills due, upcoming deadlines, holidays, birthdays, travel, etc. Also farther-off appointments like doctor and dentist appointments go into my monthly planner pages.

I don't look at my monthly planning pages every day. I really only use them when I need an overview of what's coming up.

Monthly calendars are also great for easily seeing patterns. Something I've done in the past is to record exercise on the daily spaces in my monthly calendars. I color code exercise (in green, for some reason) and just write C for cardio, S for strength, or A for abs. This gives me a very quick overview on how consistent I'm being with my exercise. A green letter every day means I'm doing great. Big gaps mean I need to get on it.

This technique can be used for anything that you'd like to do regularly: writing, reading, crafting, etc. Marking your activity in a monthly calendar can show you at a glance how consistent you're being with your activities.

Jerry Seinfeld famously uses his "don't break the chain" technique where he marks an X on each day he writes. Not wanting to break the chain is incentive for him to write each day. A monthly calendar (especially one that's on the wall in a place you see often) would be perfect for this.

What else do you use monthly calendars for?

2013 Dodo Planner Calendar

Dodo Pad has a new monthly calendar! The Dodo Planner Calendar is a brand-new product for Dodo Pad, and I'm very excited to review it!

There is a handy forward planner for next year, and spaces to write important numbers:

This is a vertical monthly calendar with five columns for different people in your family, or categories such as work/ school etc.

There's also Notes space to write important reminders, which is very handy.

Each monthly spread has Dodo art, humor, facts and dates of interest. Holidays for the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and moon phases are printed on the day spaces.

This is a very large wall calendar. Open it measures approximately 2 feet/ 60 cm long. The spaces are plenty big for writing in what each person is doing each day.  In fact the daily spaces are big enough to use the Dodo Save The Day reminder stickers.

If you would like to keep a pen or pencil with the calendar at all times you can stick on a Pen Loop (in your choice of color).

Many thanks to Dodo Pad for sending me this calendar as a sample to review! It is an excellent addition to the Dodo Pad lineup.

Uncalendar Monthly planner

I've used Uncalendar Full Size and Half Size spiral bound and ring bound planners, but this is my first experience with their Monthly planner. As usual with Uncalendar, it doesn't disappoint!  Uncalendars stand out from the planner crowd with their excellent Goal setting pages.

The Monthly planner is stripped-down and straightforward, while still retaining many of Uncalendar's excellent features.

Inside the front cover there is open space to brainstorm your goals for the year. The right page gives you structured space to break down those goals by month.

The huge monthly layout (page size 8 1/2 by 11 inches) gives you tons of room to write in your appointments and plans, and the spaces at the beginning of each week are great for reminders.

At the back there is an overview page to write in another year, and handy reference calendars.

Inside the back cover there is space to record contacts or other data.

That's it!  For less than 5 bucks, this is a great calendar. I bought a bunch of them on uncalendar.com.

At only 14 pages it's extremely slim and weighs next to nothing. I plan to magnet it up onto the fridge or pin it to my corkboard. The flexible card cover lets the planner conform to the inside of your bag, but is sturdy and will easily stand up to a year of use.

The undated format allows you to start any month of the year, and goes for a full 12 months. These are great for tracking projects, and each team member can have their own copy so everyone knows deadlines and can track milestones.

I'll use one as a big academic-year calendar to plan out the whole school year and keep track of everyone's activities. I love that I can start it in July, which is hard to find in a monthly calendar, so that it will end in June at the end of the school year.

I'll use another one to track bills due and paid every month, and paydays for myself and my husband so we can budget each month. In the data spaces inside the back cover I can keep monthly totals for savings, checking, and credit cards. I'll paperclip bills to pay onto that month's page so I don't forget them.

There's a million possibilities for this simple but highly functional monthly calendar.

Another great planner by Uncalendar!

2012 Moleskine Monthly Notebook

Huge thanks to my mom for getting me the 2012 Moleskine Monthly Notebook for Christmas!!!  I wanted one of these last year but by the time I got around to ordering one, they were tragically sold out. So I've spent the past year pining for one lamenting what could have been looking forward to trying it out this year!

The Moleskine Monthly Notebook is a monthly planner only, no weekly views. It has all the usual Moleskine features including the international information, ivory paper, placemarker and pocket in the back. It comes in Pocket, Large and Extra Large sizes. Mine is the Large size, approximately 5 by 8 1/2 inches.

The Monthly Notebook only comes with the soft cover in black. I had formerly shunned all Moleskine soft covers on principle. I wanted the durability of the hard cover. But I have to say, I'm loving the soft cover, especially in such a slim book. It makes the book very lightweight and slim, so it easily goes everywhere with me in my bag.  And it feels nice in my hands.  Cover Win!

The planner has a few different types of monthly planners. Side by side reference calendars for this year and next year, very handy:

Months as columns for all of the current year, 4 months to view:

And months as columns for all of next year:

The meat of the planner is month on two pages grid calendars for all of the current year (shown at the top of this post), with a two-page spread of lined note pages between each month:

I use these notes pages for that month's goals, specific things I need to do that month (like vaccine boosters, insurance or magazine renewals, etc), and monthly reviews.

Then after December there are 53 lined pages for notes. Even if you use a two-page spread after December like the rest of the months, that still gives you 51 notes pages, which is enough for one page per week of the entire year (minus one week, and there's sure to be a week of vacation in there somewhere when you won't need an entire page that week).

So here's how I'm using it:

I use the monthly columns for overviews, which is extremely useful to see long-range plans like school holidays and travel. 

I use the month on two page calendars for all appointments, activities, bills due and paid, holidays, birthdays, and any other scheduled details.

Like I said above, I use the two-page spread between the months for monthly specifics. I'll use a notes page per week for my weekly lists and to-dos, notes and whatever else.  I'm not too structured about how I use these notes pages, I love the flexibility of the unformatted pages.

I love the stripped-down simplicity of this monthly planner. The monthly grids are completely uncluttered, so anything I write is very visible. I can use the notes pages in any way I need to at the time, there's no set way to use it.

I'm using this Monthly Notebook as an accompaniment to my day per page diary, which keeps my daily to-do lists and details. So I use my Monthly for the overview and Daily for the specifics.

Because the monthly pages are smack in the middle of the book, it took a little flipping of pages to locate whatever month I was looking for. So I used a Sharpie marker to indicate the edges of each month's pages, running down the edges (as I have done in my day per page diaries *1* *2* *3* years in a row now).  Now I can go directly to the month I'm looking for!

Also as I like to do in my day per page diary, I had my kids decorate some of the pages for me. There are so many notes pages, I wasn't at all worried about them using up too many pages. I handed them the book and asked them not to draw on any of the pages with squares (the monthly calendars themselves) and let them have at it. The result, as always, is that now I have original art from my children in my planner, which makes me absolutely cherish it!

"Our house and Christmas tree"

"Walking through the snowy forest"

I am loving this system. The monthly notebook is a great companion to my pocket daily.  It's excellent for monthly and longer-range planning, lists and notes while my daily book plans and records each day's details. They are both light and portable so they go together easily in my bag.

My mom liked this planner so much she ordered one for herself too!

Thanks again Mommy for getting me this planner! I hope this gives you some ideas on how to use yours. Love you!!

WeekDate Wall Calendar

I'm so excited about this calendar! Let me be the first to tell you: you NEED one of these.

Those of you who have read my other posts about WeekDate products know I love the "Only Write It Once" format that allows you to see daily happenings along with weekly and monthly recurring items without having to rewrite anything, ever. This calendar takes planning one step further by allowing the whole family (or alternatively, everyone in the office) to see the entire month at a view, including monthly and weekly recurring items all at once so nothing is ever forgotten, overlooked or double-booked.

Below is the entire calendar open with the monthly recurring section at the top, current month in the middle, and weekly recurring section at the bottom.  Click on any of the photos for a larger view.

In the middle is the main section with the current month. Notice that holidays and moon phases are printed on the day spaces. Each day's square is a generous 1 1/2 by 1 7/8 inches (my measurements). There's also a lined space for Whatever: notes, reminders, etc.  There are also reference calendars at the top of the page for last month and next month.

The days are color-coded to correspond to the recurring monthly section, so you can see which week of the month you're in. This allows you to easily see what events happen on, for example, the first Monday of every month, the second Saturday of each month or the last Friday of the month:

By looking at the color for the current day then glancing up at the corresponding day at the top, you can easily see if there are any monthly recurring events today.

The bottom section of the calendar is the Weekly recurring section where you write your kids' sports and after-school activities, your weekly staff meeting every Tuesday morning, your weekly exercise schedule, rotating dinner menus, and anything else that happens every week or every other week. The weeks in the monthly calendar are numbered so you can note "Garbage pickup even weeks, Recycling odd weeks," for example, and know which to put out today without writing "Garbage" or "Recycling" every week in your calendar.

Each day you look down to the corresponding column in the Weekly Recurring section to see what's on for the day.  So for each day you look up the column to the corresponding color-coded day for monthly, and down the column for weekly recurring events to see everything that happens each day, without rewriting anything ever!

To the left of the monthly calendar is a place to write monthly set days like paydays and bills due, so that these are always visible.

Here is a view of the back of the calendar with details of how the calendar works:

The calendar comes with a magnetic strip along the top and another magnet in the middle of the back, so the calendar can go straight up onto your fridge (where mine lives). It also has a plastic tab with a hole to hang on a nail or thumbtack on your wall or corkboard.

I originally pre-ordered my WeekDate Wall planner from Amazon, but weeks later it was still listed as Pre-Order while it was already shipping from Barnes and Noble. I was very impatient to get it so I canceled my pre-order from Amazon and ordered this calendar from Barnes and Noble. Sorry Amazon!

Click here for the WeekDate Wall planner page to see purchasing options.

This planner goes from August 2011 all the way through December 2012, so it has you covered for the entire school year and upcoming calendar year too.  And I still can't get over the price, less than 15 bucks!  It's more than worth it.

You can see all of WeekDate's products at www.WeekDate.com, including this monthly wall calendar, the weekly planner (which I have reviewed here on Plannerisms), their undated dry-erase WeekDate White (which I have reviewed here) and other products.

I am really looking forward to using this calendar to keep me organized and to simplify my life all year long! I love not having to re-write recurring events over and over on my calendar. I write recurring items in pencil, then if something changes I erase it, just once (without having to erase pages and pages of re-written entries).

Congratulations to WeekDate on another extremely helpful product.  Well done!

Be sure to follow WeekDate on Twitter for time-management tips, and follow them on Facebook too.