The Brunette Journaler

I find myself wanting to share what I personally do with my bullet journal, from how I organize it, what trackers I use, and my themes. I love to show y'all how I do things and I feel like it might be beneficial to some of y'all if you actually see what I'm talking about in my other posts. :)

Yes, I know that I am very late on posting this since its now almost April, but I still hope you can get some ideas for upcoming moth trackers and layouts.

First up: Trackers for this month

I had a conference with myself at the end of February and decided to cut a few trackers from my monthly bullet journal sections. I used to be using a homework/work tracker, but looking back, I used it and filled it in a few times, at the most. I didn't have a lot of work, and I thought, 'why waste paper if you don't need it?'

I also cut a sleep tracker, because I don't go to sleep that late or wake up that early, and I'm not very obsessed with constantly checking and getting a good nights sleep. I filled it in, but it wasn't a lot of help to me.

So after that little anecdote to myself, I decided to keep the following trackers: Mood Tracker (Love this!!), Gratitude Log, and Habit Tracker.












Great examples by Sheena of the Journal and Erica Fitzgerald



In some of my other posts I've mentioned that I don't like day-to-day or weekly layouts, so let me tell you why. I sometimes had really important events that I needed to plan for later in the month and to see on my calendar, but with weekly trackers I couldn't see what events were happening soon. I also didn't put a ton of stuff on each one of those days, so when I didn't have a very busy week it was sort of a waste of paper.

Monthly trackers make it way easier to spread out your month so you can see it on one page. This helps me, like I said before, to know what events are happening soon and be prepared. Plus, monthly trackers are so cute, and you can do a lot of cool designs with these. For my March Monthly spread I used a St. Patricks day theme and made a calendar sort of thing in green to go with the style. I drew a sort of clover like on the mood tracker, and made little vines growing around sections of the page.







My habit tracker for March is my best yet. It is so minimalistic (Perfect for my OCD gals) and precise, with touches of style and grandeur here and there. I just did a simple habit tracker like my other ones and filled out the usual stuff. But the important part here is that I desized the tracker.

But hey, this is a great learning experience for some of y'all who are just like, 'how'. I wanted to shorten my tracker because it was getting so hard to keep up with.

In February I had like 15 things on there that I had to fill in, from making my bed (Which I never do) to cleaning the room, and some of those things I didn't really need.

So yes, I cut it down. For some of y'all, this might seem hard to cut down some of those things that you think are so important, but I have a solution. Go through each of those things and consider, 'Do I really need this? Do I already do this or do I need a reminder?' This will help you to break things down and make your life easier.

I love my habit tracker so much this month, not only because it is so darn cute, but because it allows me so much room to expand. I added some little "Sticky note drawings" below the chart that make it even more organized, with 'events', and 'notes'. I can quickly jot down those things I need a quick reminder of to help me remember to get myself organized.


The real reason why I wrote this post was because I wanted to show y'all some of my favorite tracker and monthly spread ideas because you can experiment so much with these and really express yourself. I feel like at every start of the month I love drawing and designing my new trackers to reflect upon the month.

This is sort of like my earlier post about influential bullet journal bloggers (Go check it out: Bullet Journal Bloggers: Effective Bloggers who Inspire) but with Pinterest. I happen to know a whole lot of bullet journal bloggers (Including a good friend of mine) who have stellar bullet journal boards with lots of great ideas. At the end of the post I will put links to the blogs or pinterest boards of all these great journalers.


Starting off: Allie LaFeber. She is a great friend of mine and a great bullet journaler and blogger too. She focuses a lot on organization with bullet journaling, and tons of new ideas. Allie puts out a lot of doodles and great techniques for lettering and headings in your bullet journal, which are great to go and check out.

So I've found a lot of posts online about "Crazy Bullet Journal messups" or "Bullet Journal Mistakes to Avoid" and I thought that I would help y'all along to try to help you skate around those things.

Starting right off: I wanted to take a minute to thank another blogger and journaler like myself: The Petite Planner. I get so many of my ideas from her and she is such a great person. She gave me ideas for this blog post and I want to give her credit.

Okay, now that my little spiel is over, I want to explain why I say newbies. Newbies is the word I used because it appeals to people who might need help with their bullet journaling. Not just newbies mess up, though. Everyone does. Even those pro bullet journalers who we all look up to.

So don't feel insulted if I say newbies. This is for everyone's reference, not just those who are new to bullet journaling.

So lets get started!

1. Doing too much
When you look at Instagram, Snapchat or Pinterest, it is easy to get caught up with all those amazing ideas out there waiting for you.

You just want to break out your bullet journal and draw all you can and make tons of trackers, lists, monthly challenges, and collection pages.

But you'll find that eventually its hard to keep up with all those trackers. You can't find time to really do them all, and you skip them and begin a burnt out stage. The you feel guilty and try to fix it, but you cant really recount all those days, can you?

How to fix it
Just think about what trackers you really need. If you don't spend a lot each month, do you really need that extra two spending and account trackers? If you drink tons of water in the meantime, whats the point of a water consumption tracker? Record whats best for you, and don't overwhelm yourself with too many ideas at a time.

For me, when I journal I normally prefer to see all of my month or week on one page. If I am having an extremely busy week I'll put it on a few pages and not a monthly spread, but if its a quiet month its just great having a spread where you can see everything in one place.

Let me introduce you to some great ideas from some of my favorite bullet journal bloggers and journalists themselves. Most of these ideas are pretty similar but they give you lots of great ideas to get you started.


I hope y'all were inspired by this art and you make some yourself. With bullet journaling or weekly spreads, you just need to experiment and when you experiment you get better. Just try it!

Bullet Journal Bloggers: Effective bloggers who inspire

The reason why I like Mood Trackers in my bullet Journal is because over the month you can look back on what your month was like in terms of feelings and moods. Sometimes I'm having a really bad week, and I look back and see how that week showed that I was totally stressed out. It helps you to change the way you react to things and how you go about your general lifestyle.

This is the start of a series called ‘Journal Trackers’. I wanted to introduce to y’all another way to organize your day to day lifestyle. One way to do that is through a Habit Tracker.

• Out of bed by ____
•  Bible study
• Homework done (for kids)
• Bullet journal (That one would already be done if you’ve opened your journal!)
• Exercise 
• Read
• Clean room/house
• Check calender 

You can personalize this all you want: I have a few more included.. like practice piano, make bed, clean desk, ( because you know it’s going to be messy) new contacts.. etc. you can tune it to your own interests, and you can combine habits you want to break and habits you want to start all in one chart. I did this back when I was trying to stop biting my nails. I included it with a few more habits I wanted to break along with my day to day tasks.

I hope this helps y’all to organize your lives a little more and than they already are.

Our days are very busy.. caught up with our own activities, and then our kids. Shuttling the family around to each of their activities isn’t easy. With journaling, you can find an easy way to keep track of your priorities and things you need to do. This is sort of like using a calendar, but it produces it in a way where you really plan out what you are doing, and it is really relaxing too!

So for a day to day journaling process, you just have to experiment with it. Is your bullet journal a monthly thing or a yearly journal? Depending on this, you can devote a page to one day, or a page to a week, or even a month! It just depends on you. If you have a very busy schedule, you may need more room to write down your thoughts and plans. It just depends on you.

For me, I have tried a few ways to record my plans and activities and they’ve both worked out fine. But I had a favorite, which was the monthly view. It helps me to see all of my month in one, and if I need to plan something later in the month I can do it there and see it anytime.

Back in January I tried a weekly agenda, but it never really worked for me. I didn’t have a lot going on back then and I didn’t need that much space.

The first thing you want to do as a journalist is to set up your new journal so everything doesn’t get everywhere. I personally have an index so if you get the Leuchtturm 1917 journal you won’t have to do this. Just set up some sort of an index using a ruler and pens and mark the page number, title, and date.

As a journalist I find it necessary to use a few essential tools to help me along the way.

• A Leuchtturm 1917 Bullet Journal
• Tamit fine line drawing pens, 36 ct
• Calligraphy pen
• Felt tip pens by Papermate
  
  As a standard journalist, I like to have the essentials when I write or draw. When you are working in your journal you want to make it look as nice as possible, and to do that you need the right materials. The leuchtturm bullet journal is a really nice journal that keeps everything organized. It has 251 pages and is dotted. It has an index to keep your pages organized if you wish.
  
   The Calligraphy pens help to create nice, smooth lettering to make a beautiful title, page header or decoration.
  The felt tip pens do the same, but instead of being decorative, they can be used as writing tools to spice up your journal and give it some color.
  The Tanmit drawing pens are a fine line pen that gives you a smooth and small line for when you need those tiny details.
  
  With these materials, your journaling can never go wrong.