As much as i love buying planners, i rarely use them. The main reason i buy them is because of their design. Whenever i’m in a bookstore, i’m tempted to buy every notebook that pleases my eye.  I know this sounds weird but I also love the smell of pages of a new book or notebook! When i was organizing some stuffs in our house, i found three different planners dated 3 years ago. It was  2 Starbucks Planner and a Belle De Jour Planner . I stopped fixing things in a minute and took a look of my old planners. It made me smile as i browse them because it was a sudden flashback of everything! Like the plans of what will i study tomorrow or my grocery shopping list every week! I also jotted down my memorable moments with my different people i had crush on that time lol. There goes the candy wrappers i pasted on one page of my planner (it was given by my crush hahaha) There’s a reminder of every game that i should play and what time should i start (Cafe World and Farmville) There goes a receipt that only God knows what is it because it was totally washed up. I think it was a half – planner, half – coloring book! Literally. You can see different shades of color pencils in every dates! Being artsy is fine but i think I went overboard with that one lol. Well, there are some days on my old planner where it was written boringly with just a pen or pencil. But most of the dates it was written in color pencil.

What a sudden flashback it was! Now, i’m back to organizing my stuffs and i was thinking i cannot let go the memories of that planner. So i released my inner artsy side again. I brought out my sister’s acrylic paints and paint brush. (She owns different coloring and drawing materials because she’s taking up architecture. Someone can feed my need to draw or doodle. Lucky me!) I peeled of the pages of my old planner, I kept them in my memoribilia box and for the cover of my old planner, i painted it with different kind of ideas like a man’s head with a screw. Flowers. (I clearly don’t know what to do so whatever comes in my mind i just paint it.) It was an old Starbuck Planner so as you can see at the lower left of the planner cover, i painted it resembling to the mermaid’s face of Starbuck’s  logo. I did this because it was hard for me to tamper it because it was carved. I tried to re-carve it with a cutter but i accidentally made a mistake so i did not went through.

Afterwards, I bought a simple notebook with the same size with my old planner at the nearby store. It was thick though. I ripped off the whole notebook cover of the new notebook and glued the remaining pages of the new notebook to the old planner’s cover. It was a new usable notebook again! For now, i use it as a diary slash journal slash love book for my partner.  Sometimes, i use it on doodling too!

I really love writing. Before this blog was created, i used to write everything in my notebook. I am also fond of making poems though i’m not that really good in making one. It’s a nice way of expressing your inner thoughts. it’s like you’re having an internal monologue. It sounds crazy but i’m sure everybody needs that “me – time” or some lone time.

I’m glad i did this to my old planner. I keep it and value it so much because i put so much effort in making it. I haven’t used all the pages yet but i’m hoping one day i’ll be able to use them all up and find myself again organizing stuffs and bump with this personalized journal again to recreate my memories and reminisce moments of my life.

Are you fond of keeping journals too? Tell me your thoughts!