Dear Planner Community (and anyone that wants to know more about me),
Where have you been all my life? But really though.
While I was scrolling through Instagram one day, I saw someone post the cutest little planner layout (I don’t even remember who it was, or else I would credit them), with the cutest stickers, washi tape, paper clips, and everything, and thankfully, they hash-tagged about 30 different things, so I could pretty much stalk each one of them. Let me just say: instant obsession. 
Now let me trail off for a minute and give you some insight on historical me.
Flashback to 16-year old Lynda when I was first able to drive without a chaperone in the passengers seat (aka mom or dad), I would head to the closest little scrapbooking shop (which was, and still is, located on Emerald Isle), and ogle over all the pretty scrapbooking things. I purchased quite a lot of things from there as well as at Michael’s over the years while I was in high school, and I loved making scrapbooks. So much so, that in my biology class in 11th grade, I went all out for our project on the different trees in North Carolina, and I still have the scrapbook I made for it (with all the dried leaves still in it) because I really did think it was the bee’s knees. I’ve always loved scrapbooking, however, in college, it fell to the wayside for many different reasons. 1. I just didn’t have the time anymore. 2. Everything was much more digitalized and I just started saving my memories on my computer. 3. I was a poor college student and would stress out if I purchased un-necessary crafty things. And 4. One of my degrees was applied arts, so I spent many hours already using my creative outlet on the vast number of projects and assignments I had for school. Not to mention, I was also in a sorority, and spent countless hours decorating things for my 2 littles, etc.
And then I graduated. And all of those projects and assignments didn’t exist anymore, and my forced creative outlet was gone. That’s when I started making stationary, and baking a lot (sometimes just to decorate the cakes, cupcakes, cookies, etc.). I wanted to go back into scrapbooking, but I felt like I didn’t capture enough life moments to do that. Not to mention, I’m almost always the one behind the camera, rather than in the picture, so it isn’t always fun to make a scrapbook about your own life that you aren’t even in!
And then it happened. I found the planner community. I’ve gotta say, I don’t know what was wrong with me in that I didn’t figure out on my own that I could be decorating my planner this entire time and journaling in it in a way that makes it a scrapbook in itself! I mean, I already made myself a customized planner with things I found at The Container Store and Staples that many people that know me were practically drooling over. I was satisfied with it, but still wanted that creative outlet. And that’s where the planner community comes in. It’s showed me that I can keep myself [overly] organized, while also recording things that happen in my everyday life in a fun and creative way.
So thank you planner community. I am now addicted to both Kikki K and Erin Condren and I don’t even have them yet! But stay tuned, because you’ll definitely be seeing more about my organization style now that I’ll have these bad boys girls by the end of the day!
Bows and Arrows,
Lynda
abowandarrow.wordpress.com 