A year ago, I started on my Erin Condren Life Planner journey. I first found out about this planner from my blog friend Katie at Good Life Eats. Katie was a food writer of mine when I was an editor at Craftzine.com. I remember her tweeting a few years ago that she just purchased an EC Life Planner to organize her life and I was really intrigued. Last year, I realized I needed to get myself into organizing shape. As much of an organized person I am, I always felt like at the end of the year, I was only scratching the surface of what needed to be done - longer projects or ideas never got written down so I basically lived my life scrambling to finish deadlines, picking up my daughter from school and doing the never-ending laundry and dishes before I could even think about my own creative projects.
This has all changed with my EC Life Planner. I just ordered mine at the beginning of June with the new launch and I treated myself to one with a gold coil! I love it so much!
Here's my first layout for this week inside the planner using stickers from Hello Ashley Ann. I can get fully addicted to Easy stickers so this is the first time trying out a full theme. I do know that I don't like covering up my entire planner with stickers as I like to use the bottom lined area of my planner for food planning or miscellaneous notes. I use the first top rectangle row for appointments, meetings and errands I need to leave the house for. This way, I know what will take me out of the home and I will know how much actual work time I have to work on articles or blog posts on my computer. I don't record down school pick up or drop off, or even after school activities. I have those recurring on my Google calendar. I do note when we have fun outings planned together. Currently she's in camp, so I know that this week, I'm able to do a lot more in terms of work and meeting people in the day. The middle rectangle is for my to do lists for the day - people I need to call, small tasks, etc. The bottoms set of rectangles I use for my blogs and freelance articles I may be working on. This last section gets tricky as sometimes I'm not able to work on something and may need to carry things over to the next day. I may try using the stickers included in the EC planner so I can easily peel them off and move blog posts around but honestly, I like just writing directly on paper so the bottom area can get messy with arrows or cross outs, and for now maybe that is ok.
The planner is really flexible for you to figure out how it can work in your life. That's what I love about it! There's plenty of room for me to write. For me, I use this to organize my blog posts, freelance articles, creative projects I want to pursue, as well as family vacations, days off from school, camps, etc. The possibilities are endless. I know there are a lot of busy moms out there thinking, ok this planner is just a little bit expensive. Does it really work? Yes, yes and yes.
July 6th marks my 11th anniversary with blogging with Coquette. I want to give back to you, my readers with an exciting giveaway!
Erin Condren $100 Gift Card Giveaway
Visit my Instagram page to win a $100 gift card to erincondren.com! If you're a planning newbie, you can pick out the planner of your dreams or if you're an existing planner addict, get some of the cool new 2016 accessories! All you have to do is: 1) follow me @coquettenatalie on Instagram, 2) like the photo and 3) leave a comment.
Giveaway Details
The giveaway starts today, June 26th and will end on July 7, 2016 at midnight PST. This giveaway is open to everyone! (If you live outside of the U.S., please check how much it is to ship to your country and customs fees.) Note: I am paying for this gift card with my own money.
Be sure to sign up for the Erin Condren site through this link --> get $10 off your first order! The newsletter sign up link is the first link at the top bar of the Erin Condren site. When you sign up, there are discounts for each milestone order up to order #20 so you won't want to miss your chance to continue receiving discounts!
