Time to Get My Holiday Planning On

The Holidays have arrived...well they have in my house. Actually to be perfectly honest with all of you the Holidays never really leave our house! I just keep them locked up in my scrapbook room where no one is allowed to make fun of me! You all know by now that I'm a holiday nut so I'm sure none of you are surprised with my newest Pinterest Project!

2012 Holiday Planner

And I'm not the only one! Check out my super cool friend Alycia's Holiday Planner!!

The original blogger actually provides you with printable templates but because we are total slackers and we don't have a printer I got to use all my creative juices and make it uniquely mine!

First things first, get out any and all Christmas embellishments you might want to use! I'm not ashamed to admit I spent 20 minutes going through all my Christmas supplies looking for just the right paper, ribbon and stickers!

Then get out all the supplies you will need to complete this project:

• Composition Notebook
• 2 - 6" x 9" Envelopes with Clasps
• 36" Piece of Ribbon
• Labels (or the printouts)
• Scissors
• Adhesive
• Adhesive Pen Holder (I added this bit cause every planner needs it's own pen)

The first step - glue your ribbon to your composition notebook. Yes this is the very first step! The ribbon is "technically" for prying eyes but since Chuckles and I don't have kids yet I decided it was just a pretty embellishment to have! I used hot glue to get my ribbon on the notebook, and you will want to glue it on both sides, make sure when gluing you have even lengths of ribbon left to tie.

Then take your patterned or colored paper (12 x 12) and cut in half. Then take each half and trace the front and back covers. Your piece of paper will not fit your entire cover, do not worry it's supposed to work like that, but you will want to make sure you trace the length and the corners on the covers.

Then cut 2" strips off your other 12 x 12 paper.

And then line these up close to the black binding on the notebook and cut to the appropriate length. You want it to match the length of the notebook.

And for all of you not behind the times go ahead and ink the edges of your paper. I am still "new" to the inking game but can I say how addicted I am already! Just for the rest of this post assume I inked the edges on every single piece of paper possible!!

The next step requires you to have a 5 1/2 inch circle punch with I did not and probably will not ever own! But I do own my lovely Cricut so I went in search of a circle. Instead I found an ornament, super cute right? LOVE IT!

Now we get down to the nitty gritty. With all your paper cut it is now time to glue everything down! YAY!!

You will first glue down the bigger piece of paper, lining it up with the edge of the notebook, then glue your circle (or whatever shape you'd like) on top of that. You will want to line the edge of that against the black binding, not the edge of the notebook.

Then glue down your 2" strip of paper.

Next up she calls for your attach your cut out tag but I chose to do a different embellishment. Again the whole no printer and I did notice that her most current version has 2011 date and not 2012.

I ended up having a thicker card stock circle and that cute Holiday Cheer embellishment. It needed a little break in color so I cut out (using the Cricut) a circle in green! However you chose to do it, at this point go ahead and finish up your front cover by attaching that. Then of course glue down your papers for the back cover.

After your front and back covers are decorated it's time to create your envelope holders and tabs. I grabbed a package of Martha Stewart tabs in red to use and they worked out fabulously!!

One of the first things you will notice is that ugly black writing all over the front and back covers. Easy solution to cover those up....

Cut out a piece of plain white card stock and glue down! (Quick little side note cause I screwed this up, if you are planning on attaching a pen holder to it you will want to do this now. I was able to peel back the white card stock and slide it at the very end but if you can avoid doing that then you must)

Next you create your two envelopes for receipts and coupons. I just cut out two strips of each patterned paper, glued to the bottom, added a strip of green so that I could write on there and have it be visible.

Then attach those envelopes to your covers. I chose to use hot glue to attach mine.

Creating the tabs is really easy! Lucky for me the Martha Stewart ones worked out well. First I wrote on them then I spaced them out throughout the notebook. Make sure to work your way down and leaven enough pages in between each section!

Ta Da!! Sections are attached, book is looking almost complete!!

Once I had the tabs added it was just a matter of adding little things here and there. First I needed to write coupons (or receipts) onto my envelopes, then I decided a little color on the opening page would be super nice! Also any excuse to use my new last name I'll take!

Awww look at how cute it is!

Not quite complete though. Like I mentioned I completely forgot to add my pen holder until the end, but I was able to peel back the white card stock and attach it. This seriously was a HUGE addition for me!!

Now it is complete!!

There are a few other steps, such as printing out and adding calendar pages for you "Events" section, which I will get printed out and added. We have actually decided we need a printer and am now doing research.

This project was sooooo much fun!! I had an absolute blast working on it!! It was such a great afternoon project! Huge thanks to the eighteen25 blog for sharing such an adorable and helpful project!!