A few weeks ago I happened to win a journal, kids, and a raffle at my mom's group, and I decided to use that journal kit to make my April pages.

It's really a random bunch of supplies. There's washi tape, stickers, memo pads, a little journal with grid pages, and just lots of different ephemera. The best way that I can describe the theme of this kit is "orange sunset". There are lots of clouds, lots of orange tones, and honestly, some actual oranges too.

But by far my favorite parts of this kit are the quotes scattered throughout on these supplies.

I found some real gems, some in English, some in broken English, and some in Japanese, and using Google Translate to translate those Japanese quotes has resulted in some marvelously hilarious translations. Here are a few of my favorites.

​After making my way through the translations and deciding to still use them, I had no idea where to actually start with this kit. I don't usually use a bunch of random things to stick into my notebook. So to simplify, I decided to just start with the calendar pages because one of the supplies included in the kit are stickers for each day of the month, and I decided that that was an easy way to start.
To be honest, it's probably going to be a little bit difficult to write all my appointments in and to read them on the cloud background. It might look really busy and maybe terrible, but that's okay. We're just going to try it and see. It's only for a month.

​The next spread was my habit tracking setup. I created every-other-line highlights,both vertical and horizontal, making a grid for ease of readability and use. I have the days of the month across the top and the habits will be listed down the left side. To track, I make a circle in the intersection of habit and day. It's either a hollow circle or a filled in circle, depending on how much of the habit I accomplish.  The hollow circle represents my low (micro) habit and a filled in circle means that I've accomplished my high (optimal) habit.

And since this is a spread that I use every single day, I wanted to make sure that I really liked the decoration on this page, and I picked some of my favorite pieces from the kit.

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Next up is my finances spread on the left and my journaling space on the right. But what I did not initially realize is that I actually turned to the wrong page to put these in. This is the first spread you turn to after March, so ideally this would be my cover page, and not my finances page. Oh well!

I used some shopping list memo pad pages and glued them together to make two columns that have enough space for all the categories that I track, and then just added a few circle stickers at the top for some extra visual interest.

And then for the journaling side, mostly I just need a blank space, but I wanted a little bit of decoration. So, I found a few images and stuck them down the right side of the page. I love that they're all moody sun and shadow pictures. And then at the bottom, I simply wrote in the word "journal".

​Now onto what was supposed to be the first spread in the journal.

On the left is the actual cover page. I glued in a few of my favorite pictures, which included this gorgeous sunset and a fake music track image. Added in some stickers above and below, and then covered up the original song title so that it looks like "April" is the title of the song playing.

For the aims page (on the right), I usually write out different things that I want to do throughout the month, broken out into different sections like goals, tasks, things to clean, things to buy, etc. and usually I create a few boxes for them. This time I decided to just use the boxes of the these faux paint samples, label them, and then add decoration behind it.
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Next up is the monthly review on the left. It's also a pretty simple spread. It has a title in the middle, and then I used stickers all around, and a few highlights from my Tombows. At the end of the month, I'll add in the titles of the stats I want to track on the stickers, and then fill in the stats below them. These reviews make it easy to compare some of my tracking on a month to month basis.
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​​This page to the right of my monthly review is actually a weekly spread, but only half a week since April starts midweek. Sometimes I include a split week in the previous month or the upcoming month, but this time I decided to actually split it between the two months. So this is just the second  half of week 13. I have included my rolling tasks list menu section, a tracking section, and the schedule at the top, but no room for notes in this one.
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​My full weekly spread looks more like this, with a whole week of a schedule along the top and a half page of blank (or decorated) space in the bottom right to jot down any notes or reminders I may need throughout the week.

​For my final spread of the month, which is actually my final spread of the entire journal. (What?!) I wanted to just have a fun collage, using some of the extra pieces, and some of the fun quotes that I translated.

This was intended to be just a very quick, fun throw together, but ended up being my favorite page of all the spreads.

There was a lot of back and forth in this designing this month, because I really didn't have a plan going in. I ended up just making it up as I went along. I kept going from spread to spread, adding a little bit there, a little bit here, progressing in a very non linear fashion.  If you'd like to watch me put together these spreads, then check out this youtube video below.

March is another attempt at minimal decoration for my bullet journal spreads. And they look especially minimal here before the month had started. My quote for this month is "Sometimes that Light at the end of the tunnel is a train."

If you're interested in seeing my February and March setups in more detail, then this video is for you. I go through my thought process behind some of the planner spreads, and explain what alllll the tiny circles are in the picture above. 

Calendar spread.

Finances log and journaling space.

Habit tracker spread.

Weekly dashboard. Complete with hourly schedule, menu, habit tracker, rolling tasks, a weekly reset tracker, and a section for notes.

My weekly reset card, which is stored in the back journal pocket.

February needed a more minimal approach than January. That, paired with the quote for the month led me to a simple circle theme. 
​"Healing happens in circles. You'll return to old places and see them in a new Light."

I also added a bit of color to some of the spreads, like the calendar pages.

Aims on the left, and finances on the right (which get filled in at the end of the month)

The circles theme went along nicely with my circle habit tracking style. Hollow circles represent reaching the low bar of a habit, while a filled in circle represents reaching a the higher standard that I set myself.

Journal circle and February month in review circles.

This month I'm trying a new weekly spread setup. Instead of a small schedule section with just a few reminders of what is on the calendar, I've expanded my schedule to accommodate hourly references. Each dot grid box represents one hour, and each day shows the hours between 6am and 10pm (my normal waking hours). I'm hoping this method will help me to identify pockets of time in my day that I may normally overlook. Kind of a mini time analysis. 

If you'd like to see these spreads more filled in, in more detail, with more explanation, then this video below is for you. It goes through not only the Feb spreads but also my setup for March. Enjoy!

To start the new year off, I decided to go with a celestial theme. I used Tombows and watercolor markers to create the cloudy backgrounds, and used stickers from a Happy Planner sticker book called "Sophisticated Stargazer" as added decoration. My new word for 2026 is "Light" and the quote for the month is "Routines give a Lightness to heavy problems." After a hectic holiday season, I was very ready to start the year getting back to the routines and rhythms of my daily life.

The calendar is actually my least favorite spread of the month. It feels too cluttered and also felt like it took too much effort to make. That's why in the next few months you will see my style being paired back to a bit more of a minimalist approach. (minimalist for me).

The aims page on the left once again uses stickers from the Happy Planner book. The right side is my finances page. To save on time, I opted for a dutch door so you can now see the decoration from the next spread along the right side.

Which is my habit tracking spread. Habits down the left side, days of the month across the top, and a system of "high-low" tracking with hollow and filled circles respectively.

The journal page gets filled in with long form journaling after the end of the month. The right side is my month in review page, where I track some totals for the month as well as reviewing what did and didn't work for me throughout this period.

My weekly spread has space for a schedule, a task list, a habit tracker, a menu, and a notes section. You can see my Cat-stro-bot pattern planning in this week's note section. I'll come back and put a link in when I've finished sewing that one!

This final spread is actually the first of my 2026 pages, this year I've decided to do my goal setting in quarters, and while most of my goal planning happens in my Long Term Collections journal, I wanted a quick reference at the start of Q1 in my everyday journal. I have actually found this spread very helpful for keeping me on track instead of straying off to start (or finish) a million other projects that I have in my head.

Enjoy some simple, minimal planning that I made for my November spreads. I just used a black pen and some watercolor markers in my Tiefossi dot grid journal.

It' s the same story every October. It's my favorite month, my favorite time of year, and there are so many things that I want to do and make and experience. Which means that, historically, my October spreads never get finished. And this year was no exception.

For this month, my quote was "The magic that you are looking for is in the work that you are still avoiding." And while it's not necessarily something I've been "avoiding", I took this quote as encouragement to do something that's been on my creative list for a while now: DIY stamps. I used pencil erasers, and some carving tools I had lying around (you never know what I have in my stash), and created some fun little spooky themed stamps. A book, a crystal, a crystal ball, a test tube, a cloche, and two bottles.​

My habits page ended up being my favorite. It resembles a gallery wall framing all my stamp illustrations. 

Above, you can see the partially finished October review page, along with some extra decoration to celebrate my upcoming marathon in the beginning of November. I also had a spread with our finances, and my long form journaling, but I didn't include them because they would pretty much all have to be blurred out anyway since I didn't snap a picture before filling them out.

My weeklies I did keep relatively simple, with lots of room for sewing notes as I created my daughter's Halloween costume. (She was a bubbling cauldron in case you were wondering).

All the utilitarian parts got done. And even the decoration on those pages got done. But not necessarily in time to enjoy that decoration throughout the month. I think the habits spread decorative edges were officially finished around October 25th. Which means a whole 25 days of it hanging over me as something I wanted to do, and only 6 days of enjoying it in the way I intended.

So once again, I'm resolving that NEXT year, I will go simple, and have beautiful, useful, and FULLY FINISHED pages to help me celebrate my favorite time of year.

My September theme started with a quote (as it so often does).  Every year I have a "word of the year" and for 2025 that word is Still. Every month, I have a quote in my journal that incorporates my word of the year. The quote I chose for September is:
"Serenity is knowing that even your worst shot is still pretty good."


This one really spoke to me because one of my goals for the year was to release a new pattern on September 1. While I did technically do this, (Yay! My tombstone pattern expansion pack is now available!) I did not technically do everything that I wanted to in order to prep for launching this pattern. Ideally, I would’ve had more examples sewn up and more photos and more videos ready to share before releasing it. But nothing’s perfect, I can’t let perfect be the enemy of good or whatever that saying is. And I’m feeling that although this pattern release is not everything that I wanted it to be, it is, in fact, "pretty good" enough.


So long story short, that is why I chose this quote for September. But as soon as I settled on the quote and began to think about how to incorporate it into a theme, I realized that I cannot read the word "serenity" without thinking about the movie Serenity and the TV show Firefly. If you know, you know.

I love this TV show/movie, and I love the idea of having themed journals spreads celebrating this fandom. But also, I’m feeling pretty stressed and burnt out because I've been trying to launch a pattern. So I decided to try to pair it down as much as possible and have a more simplified celebration of Serenity as my theme for September.


So I brainstormed a few different quotes and symbols that really represented the show for me. I decided to just focus on incorporating at least one symbol into each page. It could be in any version: as a doodle, a quote or a printed out sticker. I tried to keep it rather minimal while still honoring the theme and not making it boring.

​Obviously, I had to incorporate the spaceship Serenity into my decorations. Because my quote included the word serenity, I put a sticker of the ship on my quote/cover page. I also added some leaves to represent the whole "I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar" quote from Wash.

The font for September is Papyrus, which is very similar to the font used on the cover of the Serenity film. For the image of the ship, ​I downloaded a free graphic from pixaby and printed it on sticker paper. Here is the link if anyone is interested:
https://pixabay.com/vectors/serenity-firefly-spaceship-6193620/

As for the colors throughout this whole month, I picked out a few orangish reddish rusty brown colors and just used them throughout to add some visual interest. The whole show really feels like these colors to me (people’s outfits, the red engine room, the DVD menu screens etc), and it was an easy way to keep the theme going without adding too much difficulty.

​For my aims page, I couldn’t resist putting the quote "I aim to mis-behave".

​For the calendar page, I decided to use the Papyrus font again on sticker paper. Also, for the days of the week I chose to draw in a font that looked to be similar to Chinese characters. (A big part of the world building of the show is that it's set in a future where the US and China are super powers that merged to form the dominant governing power in the universe) Of course, I know nothing about Chinese characters, but this at least gave the feel that I was looking for.

​For my habits page, I made my usual habits layout but I scooched it to all the way to the left to give me room for a doodle and a quote. Anyone who loves the show knows this quote and I couldn’t resist adding it in. Then I randomly used the colored markers to fill in my habit tracker.

My finance page paid tribute to Kaylee with some strawberries and the title of "Shiny".

My journal page I felt went well with Inara. I put a simple little teapot with cups in the corner to represent her character and left the rest open for my journaling entry at the end of the month.

Fun fact: my robe pattern is named Inara in honor of Inara Serra from Firefly.

​On my September review page, I made a doodle of Jayne’s hat as the centerpiece and created my review sections in kind of a mind map style around it.

For my second decorative cover page (although I know it’s not a cover) I put another picture of Serenity. This time it's one that I drew myself. To make it faster I use my phone as a sort of light box underneath the page to get the initial sketch. Then I simply blacked in and added a few lines of detail on top. And I couldn’t resist the quote "still flying" since my word of the year is Still.

For my weeklies, I kept it basic: using the same basic set up that I’ve been using for the last few months. The left page includes a weekly menu, highlight, routines, an overview of the calendar for the week, and a rolling tasks list. The right page I leave open for any notes, sketches, or dailies I might have. I just ended up using my color scheme at random and also sticking in a printed quote on each of the weekly notes pages. Either another quote from the show or a quote that contained the word Still. There are quite a few great quotes that I know I won’t have time to get to this year since I only have a couple months left. So I sprinkled a few in here.

Overall, I’m really happy with how this month's designs turned out. It even had more of a fall theme than I anticipated with the rusty oranges, reds and browns and the leaves on the cover page. Although really it doesn’t even feel like fall here yet since it’s still been in the 80s pretty much every day. I also had a lot of fun rewatching some the show as I did my journaling and sewing last month.
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The veil is thinning, the nights are growing longer, and Halloween is creeping closer… which makes it the perfect time to raise your stitching from the dead.
You may remember the original Tombstone Pillow Pattern—a creepy-cute sewing project that has become one of my top seasonal sellers. This year, I couldn’t resist adding even more magic to it. So I conjured up something new: the Tombstone Pillow Expansion Pack.

What’s Inside the Expansion Pack
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If you want to add some extra spookiness to the original Tombstone Pillow, this pattern release is for you! The expansion pack includes 40 different options for the face of your tombstone pillow in the form of 40 individually printable PDFs, as well as a "Menu" PDF to help you pick, print, and prepare your pattern expansion.
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Within these 40 options you'll find:

• Punny names and sayings 
• A range of options from funny to cute to creepy
• Bats, birds, spiders and ghosts galore 
• Historical figures, pop culture references, and so much more!

Whether you’re decorating your couch, entryway, or a Halloween party nook, these pillows make a haunting statement. Create an entire graveyard scene with multiple pillows styled together!

​A Stitched Graveyard, Your Way

What I love most about this expansion is that it helps make every tombstone project unique. No two graveyards will ever look the same. You get to play with fabric choices, thread colors, and the new motifs to create something darkly magical.

​Light grey tombstones with delicate flower embroidery? Spooky black-on-black bats? Or how about a pink pastel patch of ghostly gravestones? The choice is yours.
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Ready to Raise Your Tombstones?

The Tombstone Pillow Expansion Pack is available now in my shop—just in time for Halloween sewing. Pair it with the original pattern, and you’ll have endless options for building your own stitched graveyard.

May your stitches be strong, your fabric plentiful, and your graveyard delightfully haunted.

For a look at how to sew your tombstones, you can check out these sewalong blog posts:
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Halloween Tombstone Sewalong Part 1
Halloween Tombstone Sewalong Part 2
Halloween Tombstone Sewalong Part 3
Halloween Tombstone Sewalong Part 4
Halloween Tombstone Sewalong Part 5

My goal for my August bullet journal layouts was to do them all in one sitting. I created them while traveling out of the country, and wanted to keep them low key. So, simple was the name of the game, and that included limiting the number of pens I used too. I originally tried to only pick one marker color. But ended up letting myself use two markers, as well as my black pen.
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I ended up choosing the #912 Tombow dual brush pen for my main color. I actually picked it up while out exploring Toronto. I came across this brightly painted super cool old heritage-building-turned-art-store called Above Ground Art Supplies. I highly recommend giving it a look if you're in the neighborhood. It's also next to a cool park. Anywho.
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​And because I couldn't resist adding a second color in for line highlights, I also used another Tombow dual brush in more of a tan color. Unfortunately the number has rubbed off the side, so I couldn't tell you which one.

For the black, I use one of these Drawing Pens in size 01 for most of my writing. With a few touches of a random thicker black marker (.4 size I believe) for emphasis on some titles.
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I tried my best to keep the spreads both simple, and still visually interesting. 
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While not truly minimal, this is definitely minimal for me, and helped me to accomplish my goal of doing my monthly spreads all in one sitting.
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