Bullet Journal – July 2017 Set Up

I have missed sharing my bullet journal with you all these last few months, however, I can say I have been using my bullet journal through this long process.  Actually this month will be my last month in my purple bullet journal and next month I will be moving into a new bullet journal.

A while back we were in Target and I saw these really cute stickers and washi tape I just had to have.  I have been saving them ever since then for my July set up.  However, I did realize in the process of setting up the month of July that I don’t use washi tape and stickers very often in my planner.  I tend to prefer to leave things a little simpler with just a color scheme for each month.

I set up my monthly calendar spread just like I always do, except this month’s color scheme is red and blue (of course for 4th of July).  I did include some of the stickers on my calendar page.

I absolutely love my gratitude log and do not plan to change it any time soon.  With all the stress over the last few months its help me find something each day to be thankful for.  My self care tracker has been the same for several months now.  I am thinking about changing it up in August.  I have seen some super cute ideas on Instagram.

I did decide to add an editorial calendar into my plans for this month.  I am working really hard on getting back to blogging here and at Anderson Puppy Palace so I felt like the editorial calendar was very much needed.

I love my social media tracker and my abundance log.  It helps me to track the growth of my shops and my blog and see how I am doing with growing my social media and my shops each month.

Focus and task are something that I picked up from Your Best Year 2017.  I am not sure I will continue using the focus on a monthly basis next month, but I do know the task is really helpful in making sure I achieve what I want to achieve each month, but it breaks everything down into weekly task.

That is my basic set up for each month.  After that I will start my dailies!!  Do you blog about your bullet journal??  I would love to see it.  Drop a link in the comments and I’ll check it out.

Alyssa Turned 13

Happy 13th Birthday to my baby girl!!  How did that happen??  I am telling you that I just brought her home from the hospital yesterday, how is she already 13??  Don’t blink because they grow up way too fast.

For Alyssa’s birthday this year she wanted a Harry Potter themed party and she wanted to have it at the beach (you know since we just moved to a private lake, and we have our own private beach).  So I searched Pinterest to find all the prefect stuff.  I even put together a board on Pinterest that is Harry Pottery inspired.  So if you are planning a Harry Potter birthday party, make sure and check it out.

The first thing that I found that was very helpful (and free) was Harry Potter inspired fonts.  I didn’t use all of them, but I did use several of them in making my invitations and my menu which was inspired by the menu at Kara’s Party Ideas.

Now one of the next things I searched for was free printables for all of my decorating and goody bags.  I found these awesome free printables over at The Quiet Grove.  I tried to get the link from their site and it was giving an error message.  But hopefully it will be back up and working again soon.  I used the letters for the “Welcome Muggles” banner, the school flags on the tables and the goody bags.

Now as far as the table set up, I got this cute idea from this picture.

The food we severed was mostly inspired by the menu I found at Kara’s Party Ideas, with a few changes.  I also added Polyjuice Potion Punch and Butter Beer.  I wanted everyone to know exactly what was in the drinks before they made a decision about what they wanted to drink.  I don’t have a link to the butter beer recipe someone gave me, but it was a butterscotch disk, butterscotch syrup and cream soda.  It was a big hit with the kids!!

Of course we had to have golden snitches!!

The cupcakes were made following Sweetest Kitchen’s cupcakes for her Harry Potter themed party.

I made quills for all the guest.  I just used black pens that we picked up at Wal-Mart and some feathers that I already had in my craft supplies and some black electrical tape to attach the feathers to the pens.  The goody bags included magic wands, levitating lemon heads and jelly slugs which was all ideas I had found on different Pinterest round ups.

For Alyssa’s outfit, she asked for a red and gold swimsuit.  I looked everywhere for one.  I looked for a solid red swimsuit and I would add gold heat transfer vinyl to the swimsuit and I couldn’t find any.  So finally I decided I would sew her a swimsuit.  I used Create Kid’s Couture’s pattern Ursula.  I didn’t make the skirt.  Then for the shirt I used the free fonts I had downloaded to cut out the wording Alyssa wanted on the front and back of the shirt.

I made the photo set up from this idea.  I didn’t get pictures of everyone like I wanted, but I did get one of the birthday girl and a few others.  Keeping everyone out of the water was not easy.

One gift I really want to share with everyone is this Stampy Cat stuffed animal I got her.  I have been asked where I got it so I want to make I share that with everyone.  Alyssa is a huge Stampy Cat fan and has been for years.  I searched everywhere for a Stampy Cat stuffed animal and I finally found one on Etsy.  I got it from Tina Bee and you can find it here.  She absolutely loved it!!  I wish I had a video of her opening it because she screamed when she saw it she was so excited.

Then here are a few other pictures I took of family with Alyssa!!  I meant to get more, but that would have meant getting everyone out of the water and that was not an easy task!!

We Moved!!

Sorry I haven’t been around in a while, we moved and it has been a nightmare!! I think life is ((hopefully)) going to quit kick my booty soon. Well really this house has been kicking my booty.

It all started when we got an offer on our previous house and it was exactly what we need except for one thing…we needed to put an offer in on a new house ASAP and we had been looking for months without any luck. We would find houses we “liked”, but nothing we “loved”.

We finally were able to work out a deal on a house. It had the room we wanted, was in the area we wanted to be in and was in our budget. That was really about it. We really didn’t realize how much this house was lacking that we wanted till after we moved in. Closing was a nightmare!!! We were homeless for about a week, but I’ll tell you more about that later. But we finally moved it!! At like midnight in the middle of the week.
The week we moved in everything went wrong. One of our air units broke (that was 3 months ago and we are STILL fighting to replace it). We have had to gut a closet, build all new duck work and cut new vents in the ceiling. Luckily we do have a unit that is cooling one end of our house and we have window unit in the other end, but it’s still hot on that end!! A window unit doesn’t cool a room with a 350* heat press going!!

Our water pressure is a joke!! If someone is using water in one room no one can use water in the rest of the house. Don’t flush the toilet or there goes everyone’s water pressure. Of course, this is really the least of our problems.

We HAD three bathrooms! My master bathroom is nice, other than the fact we need to run another outlet to use the jetted bathtub because the breaker trips every time I use it. The girls’ bathroom needs a new toilet. It was running all the time and it really doesn’t flush well. The boys’ bathroom needs to be gutted (next big project). The toilet is the same at the girls’ toilet, but the bad part was the shower. It is leaking and we are not completely sure where. Turning the water to the shower off didn’t work, we had to cut those lines and cap them. So everyone takes a shower in my bathroom and it takes FFOORREEVVEERR!!! Don’t even get me started on everyone needing to potty.

We need to paint!! When we worked out the contract on the house our plan was to paint as soon as we were out of school for the summer. However, air in 90* Alabama heat is ranking higher than painting. The walls in this house are closing in on me though. Someone who suffers from depression does NOT paint walls dark chocolate and crimson red and every other dark color you can find. It’s bad!! I’ll show you with my house tour.

But we did finish our school year!! Being settled in our house with all our stuff really has helped me with school a lot. Public school is no longer a thought. We enjoyed the end of our school year and as soon as our dining room/school room is painted I will be setting it up for our next school year!!

But now that we have moved I am back!! I have a house tour coming up for y’all and I am going to start weekly menu planning and weekly to do post.

Oh there is one big plus to this house…we live on a private lake with our own beach!!