Plum Paper Designs Review and Coupon Code

I'm not quite sure when our life got so busy-- I guess I could say that it was after we had kids, but we were also incredibly busy before kids as well.  Just a different kind of busy.  I'm so appreciative that Daniel and I both have work (mine of course varies), and that we have a wide range of extra curricular activities for the boys and for the 4 of us, but it can be a whole lot to keep up with!  Enter our new "family planner" from Plum Paper Designs.  I think I might be in love with it!  Finally a calendar that is not only customized, but is able to completely meet our needs so that we all know what's coming up and we can all be on the same page.  Don't get me wrong, I love our Chick-Fil-A calendar that hangs in the kitchen... I love it mostly for the free coupons, but those little boxes get so crazy, especially with a husband who has a rotating schedule!

So today I'm going to share with you some photos of our new family planner, give you an idea of how each section will be used by our family, share some cute accessories I've found, and if you stick around to the end, I'll have a coupon code for you so that you can order your very own Plum Paper Designs planner!

Here are some pictures of the front and back covers-- there is a wide variety of covers to choose from, and all colors can be customized with a simple message to the seller.  I chose this super cute bunting print and had "The Kroh's Nest" printed on the front cover.  There's also the option to have a photo added, which I will definitely consider for next year.  The cover is a solid card stock and is protected by a frosted plastic piece on both the front and back so here are photos with and without the frosted cover.

Once you open it up to the front after that, there is a space to fill in your personal information should it be lost.

And after that page is a layout of the full year in calendar form.  My planner has 4 pages total to cover both 2014 and 2015 because my planner runs through both years.  When you order, you get to choose your start date for your planner (mine will begin in September), and the default is to order 12 months, which is what mine is, but you can order up to 18 months. So my planner runs from September 2014 to August 2015.

Once you flip past those year views, you get to your first divider page for your first month.  Again mine is September, and then also each month includes a note page at the beginning so once you flip past the divider, you will see a lined note page. I plan to use this note page to Dave Ramsey it up!  We are finally getting back on our Financial Peace plan and so I want to use this page to keep us on track and on the same page as far as what is being spent, bills being paid, and checking off our "baby steps".  Each month will be updated and include information for that particular month. 

Flip another page and you get to the full view of the month, which has US holidays already pre-typed in.  And the left margin includes spaces for "birthdays", "events" and "notes".

Flip another page and you get to your weekly layouts.  The weekly layouts are dated at the top from left to right.  The left margin includes a small glance at the month, a weekly checklist, and a notes section.  I plan to use the notes section to write in my weekly Bible memory verse.  And then since, I got the family planner, for each day of the week, I have 7 fully customized rows!  No other calendar/planner (at least that I'm aware of) offers this and I absolutely love it!  So I have a section for each of us (Daniel, Dana, Leeland and Hayden) and then I have a section for "Events" which will include all of us, a section for "Fitness" to keep track of work-outs, and a section entitled "Dinner" for meal planning. 

Customized planner is pretty cool, huh?  Once you flip through all of your weekly layouts for whatever month you are in, you get back to another divider page for the next month and another note page.  Again, my planner contains 12 months.  Each month has a different color theme to it (this part of the planner cannot be customized, the colors of the months are standard.)

... And lastly once you get to the very back of the planner, there are a couple blank note pages, a page to write in "special dates", a "contacts" page, a page of "US Holidays", a single page of 2016, and a little card stock folder that has pockets on both the front and back.

Now for the fun part-- the accessories!  People are crazy about their life planners.  I had no idea what I was walking into when I began researching these family planners.  A lot of people scrapbook their planners and turn them into sort of like a "Smashbook."  It's very cool!  I don't know the extent of decorating I will be able to do, or how practical it will be for this current stage in my life, but I definitely wanted to get just a few cute things for my planner, so this is what I've got so far. 

The most adorable sticky notes ever, which came from Pikwahchan on Etsy.  She included the little squirrels and apples as a freebie in my order which was such a sweet surprise!  And do you see the donuts-- the donuts are actually 2 sticky notes, you can write on the donut and then cover it with the frosting!  Leave it to the po-po family to enjoy the donut sticky notes! ;)  The yellow dotted and the aqua floral washi-tape are from Pretty Tape on Etsy and the mustache washi tape is from Office Depot, along with the Wite Out.  The binder clips that have attached dividers are from Wal-Mart and will be used to keep my spot in my planner, and lastly the post-it pockets.  I picked up the post-it pockets from Office Depot.  I have attached one to the inside front cover and one to the inside back cover.  The front cover pocket contains my sticky notes for now, and the back pocket is currently holding my coil clips and I plan to get some cardboard embroidery bobbins to wrap small samples of washi on so that I can keep some washi tape in that back pocket as well. 

Lastly is the coil clips.  For those not familiar with the world of life planners, coil clips are used to attach loose papers into the coil of your planner.  They are sold here and there on the internet, but I got thrifty and made my own coil clips using this DIY Coil Clip YouTube video.  I do not own an "EC ruler" so I just used my Fiskar hole punch, the divider tabs by post-it which I picked up from Office Depot, a pair of embroidery scissors that I already had and I used the coil from my planner as my template to mark where the holes needed to be.  Slightly tedious marking and punching the holes, but really easy and they hold surprisingly well.  I went ahead and punched out 25 of the 50 tabs and have them stored and ready to use in my post-it pocket in the back.

And that's it!

I feel like I just threw a whole lot of information at you, so your treat for sticking around is a 10% off coupon code to use in the Plum Paper Store on Etsy.  Just use the code DANA10 which will be valid until September 15, 2014.  

I am super thrilled with this planner, I LOVE the way that it turned out, very impressed with the quality of paper and card stock, and like I said, it is customized to meet your needs and that is just super cool if you ask me!  I can definitely see a planner like this carrying us through the years, and I even see it being perfect for lesson planning for our homeschool as the boys get older as well. Now I just get to anxiously wait for September so that I can really start putting it to work!