For Christmas, my sister-in-law gave me a Happy Planner as a gift. In the gift box, she placed the planner, some additional stickers, inserts, a pretty pen, and a card. She wrote a sweet note in the card explaining the meaning behind the gift. She also suggested that I look it up online to get a better idea of how the planner is used.
During my research about the planner, I found out that there is an entire community of people that use these planners in a variety of ways. Of course, some people simply use the Happy Planner in the traditional manner that it was intended to be used. Other people use it as a planner with a creative twist. Designing elaborate weekly layouts to plan their lives.
As I continued to watch video after video on Youtube, I became obsessed with watching each person design their weekly spreads. Many of them came up with weekly or monthly themes in their planners. Sometimes it made me wonder if they even used it for planning at all because they mainly concentrated on making them pretty. Needless to say, I was very impressed with how the Happy Planner was both useful and versatile. It made planning your life both practical and fun at the same time. Not to mention, the planner itself is very customizable. It easily allows you to add or remove the cover and pages to suit your needs.
I had an incredibly hard time deciding how to use this planner because I already had two bullet journals that served the same purpose. I really didn’t need a third planner to do the same thing. Luckily, I came across a video that showed a vlogger using the planner as a memory keeper for the year. She decorated it with stickers and washi tape, then added pictures and captions to the layout. I thought to myself that this would be the perfect way to document my life this year and use up my scrapbook materials in the process.
I instantly became excited about setting up my Happy Planner as a memory keeper. I purchased an HP Sprocket printer and paper to print pictures from my phone, I gathered materials from my scrapbook supplies, and watched an array of videos for ideas on how to get started.
So far, it has been a lot of fun designing the weekly spreads. Sometimes I worry that I won’t have anything to add to each week because my life isn’t really that exciting. Since I have been home sick, I don’t get out as much, but I try to document my life as much as I can. I use pictures from my creative projects as well as my rare outings out of the house when I’m feeling well enough to leave for a few hours. I think each spread has its own unique look. It makes me smile to look back at them each week. I’m hoping I can keep up with this for the entire year and have a lovely album to look back on for 2018.
Below are some pictures of my layouts for January. I plan to update my blog with monthly layouts for the remainder of the year. So be sure to come back periodically for more Happy Planner updates.
