Bullet journal spreads, my experiences of trying out a range of craft activities and lots of wellbeing tips to help you get the best from life.
Author: Laura
A creative planning and journalling addict who lives in the North East of England, My current passions are my bullet journal, my Traveler's Notebook for memory keeping, my DSLR for taking nature photos, my new watercolour paints and my papercrafting supplies. I also own and run LJDesignsNE on Etsy where I sell pretty and functional goodies to fellow planner and journaling addicts.
Welcome to another blog post where I share my bullet journal set up for the month. For October, I went for an Autumn vibes theme with lots of stickers featuring autumnal leaves, fungi, hot drinks, squashes, woodland animals and colourful trees. I hope you like my pages which took me a good while to complete!
Front cover
I decided to do an autumn wreath for the cover and was going to do a watercolour design but I decided to look for something on Cricut Design Space in the end. My thought was that creating stickers would be less time consuming than mixing autumnal watercolours to make my own wreath shape and the colours would be more intense. I was certainly correct about the lovely, bright designs but I spent ages sizing images and making sheets of stickers for all of my pages and subthemes. At least I’m pleased with the effects I’ve achieved.
I selected about 4 different wreath designs in Cricut and asked my husband to pick his favourite and here it is with an October 2024 title added in the centre and a few leaves dotted about in the spaces at the top and bottom.
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Monthly calendar
As is usually the case, I wasn’t happy with my lettering on the first attempt so I practised on dot grid paper and stuck in the title I was happiest with. The paper is from Claire Fontaine and I’ve been using it for years to cover up little mistakes in my journals.
I’ve gone back to my usual 6 dot space grid calendar layout this month as I missed it in September. As you can see, I added tonnes of stickers which are mainly from Design Space but a few are from a mini Carpe Diem book I’ve had for quite a while now.
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Finances
My finances spread is my usual layout with a few autumnal colours, a cute little fox design as some tiny leaves. I like to record my income and spending for each month to keep an eye on my purchases and to check I have a few low or no spend days.
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Monthly goals
This is a fairly new spread for me and it’s a great way to set myself some small goals which contribute to my longer term goals for the year. This month, I split my goals into personal and business. I’ve got a few more on the list than I wrote last month so lets hope I haven’t taken on too much.
On the adjacent page to the monthly goals I’ve created a bright and colourful evaluation space so I can journal about the progress I’ve made and then summarise at the end of the month. I’ve purposely kept the box quite small so writing isn’t such an onerous task.
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Weekly spreads
Preparing all of my weekly spreads took quite a while but I’m sure I’ll appreciate the effort I’ve gone to every Monday morning when my pages are ready to write in. I enjoyed choosing a different aspect of autumn for each week but it was a challenge searching for images that I liked which would be suitable for small stickers to decorate each day.
The autumnal border strips that I used at the top of the pages were from The Range and were a cheap, quick and easy way to add decor above the weekly boxes. The stickers have a transparent background so were easy to align with the dot grid.
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Final words…
I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my spreads for the month of October and they provided you with some inspiration for your own bullet journal planner. In addition to the ones I’ve shown you, I also create a meal plan each week which I photocopy and attach to our noticeboard in the kitchen. Writing the plan in my bullet journal gives me something to refer back to at a later date and it’s a wonderful record of all of the delicious dishes we’ve enjoyed throughout the season.
Let me know in the comments if you have any exciting plans for the month of October or autumn activities that you’re looking forward to trying.
Most of us are familiar with the abbreviation RAK i.e. Random Acts of Kindness and are likely to have given or received one or more of these over the course of the year. Kindness from another, whether they’re a complete stranger, an acquaintance or someone much closer has the potential to brighten our day, make us feel good inside, change our mindset, and even restore our faith in humanity. But, as well as this, research shows that helping others is wonderful for our mental health and wellbeing, so it has huge benefits for the giver too. Today, I thought I’d discuss some of the benefits of doing things for others and also list a few easy and low cost RAK ideas that you might like to give a try.
Photo from a selection on Unsplash
Releases positive ‘feel good’ chemicals
Acts of kindness towards others has been scientifically studied and the research shows that not only do they have the potential to make the recipient feel warm and fuzzy inside, they also release dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin (feel good hormones) in the giver, creating feelings of euphoria which have been described as a ‘helpers high’.
Reduces stress levels
On the subject of feel good chemicals, the release of oxytocin (sometimes referred to as the love hormone) has also been shown to counteract the production of stress hormones like cortisol. As well as creating calm, lower stress levels can also help with physical ailments that are often precipitated or aggravated by stress such as headaches, back pain, neckache, stomach complaints, poor immunity, low energy levels and fatigue, sleeplessness or insomnia.
Increases positive emotions and mood
On a similar theme, small acts of kindness towards others can brighten our mood and make us feel much more positive in general. When we regularly engage in good deeds, it increases positive emotions in us such as contentment, happiness and joy. It can also boost our self-esteem and generally make us feel more optimistic.
Reduces negative emotions
In addition, with being filled with positivity will naturally reduce negative emotions and feelings such as anger, sadness, anxiety, depression, discontent and loneliness. Obviously, it’s normal to feel some of the above at times, but kindness towards others can help to put you in a positive frame of mind and stop negativity from taking over.
Creates a chain reaction
When the recipient of your RAK experiences the feelings of happiness it creates, it’s likely to inspire them to do something kind for someone else and this kindness can then be paid forward, creating a chain reaction. Here’s a video you might like to watch which shows a kindness being paid forward – yes, it’s not necessarily a true to real life situation, but I think it provides a heartwarming illustration.
Creates a real sense of belonging and reduces feelings of isolation
Finally, being kind towards our partner, children, other family members, work colleagues, neighbours and even strangers helps us to feel a deep social connection and trust in others. This can lead to better relationships and the belief that we are a key part of the workplace and local community. It can also reduce feelings of social isolation and loneliness in ourselves and the individuals who receive our kind acts.
Some RAK to try today
Some of the RAKs involve a small financial outlay, but there are also many free ideas too. I’ve tried to include a wide mix of suggestions, so hopefully there’s something there for all of my readers.
feed the birds in your garden or local park (please avoid giving bread to ducks though as it isn’t healthy for them)
buy a treat for your pet and watch them enjoy it
hold the door open for someone
help a person who is carrying a heavy load
buy a bunch of flowers for someone who’s having a hard time
thank your server for being attentive when out for a meal
go for a nature walk and say ‘good morning’ or offer a friendly ‘hello’ and a smile to everyone you meet
donate some unused items to charity
compliment someone on their choice of outfit or accessories for the day
leave a surprise somewhere for a friend, family member or complete stranger to find e.g. put a post it note in your child’s school lunchbox saying ‘I love you’ or ‘I hope you’re having a nice day’, paint a pebble with a bright rainbow and leave it at the base of a tree in the woods, hide your partner’s favourite chocolate bar in their bag etc.
if someone is popping out for lunch and it’s raining, lend them your umbrella
put an item or two in a food bank
let someone who has a small number of items go before you in the supermarket
show your appreciation for a fitness instructor whose classes you particularly enjoy
offer to get groceries for an elderly neighbour or someone who is sick
donate old magazines to be put in a waiting room e.g. at a doctor’s or dental surgery
bake cookies for your work colleagues
if someone is new to your gym class, your place of work or somewhere else you go regularly, find opportunities to get to know them and ask them how they’re finding things
when out and about for the day somewhere, offer to take a photograph for an individual, couple or family so that they can all be in the shot
create a wildlife friendly area in your garden, for example, by scattering wildflower seeds, putting up a bug hotel or allowing leaves to pile up in a corner
write a list of things you love about your partner, child, friend or work colleague and share it with them
leave a nice comment on a blog post, YouTube video or picture shared on Instagram
leave a positive review for a small business who have given particularly good service
give a book to a friend you think might enjoy it
send a surprise gift in the post to a loved one
donate to your favourite charity
offer some helpful advice to a member of an online group you belong to
let someone out in front of you when driving in heavy traffic
call or text a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while
send an interesting online article to a friend or family member you think might benefit from or enjoy it
offer a lift to someone
write a summary about a place you’ve visited on TripAdvisor so that other potential similar visitors know what to expect if they go
message an author to say how much you enjoyed their first / latest book
post a good news story on social media
make a self care package to give to someone you think would benefit from it
take part in a community litter pick
stop and take time to talk to a neighbour – even if you’re super busy!
give up your seat on public transport to someone who needs it more than you
volunteer your time for example, to walk a neighbour’s dog, to do some babysitting for a friend of family member, to go to the shops for someone, to help teach someone a skill such as reading, knitting, sewing, crochet or computing
Final words…
As you go about your day today, try to think of at least one way you can make a difference to someone. It doesn’t matter how small your gesture of kindness is or whether it is costly (financially or time wise) or not. One you get started with offering random acts of kindness, you’ll find that more and more opportunities and ideas will present themselves, making it easier and easier by the day.
After giving or receiving a RAK, why not do a short amount of journalling about it in a notebook to explore the positive effects it has had. Alternatively, you could create a short post about it on Facebook, explaining how you felt afterwards and celebrating kindness towards others. You might even prompt someone else to think about what they could do to help another person in their life.
Over the last month or so, my husband and I have been sitting down together and creating a meal plan each week. I write the plan in my bullet journal, whilst my husband writes a shopping list of everything we’ll need from the supermarket. Doing this plan has many benefits including developing a broad and balanced diet, less food waste, seasonal eating and picking out some healthy recipes which we’ve enjoyed before or would like to try making.
Although I’m always really tired by the end of the day due to various factors, including my medication and health conditions, I’m trying my best to make sure that my husband and I cook together most evenings. As we’ve been doing this, I’ve noticed so many benefits for our relationship, and this is what has lead me to write today’s Monday Matters blog post. I hope you enjoy reading and are prompted to give collaborative cooking a go. I promise you it can be so much fun, even if you have a small kitchen and have to fight for preparation space!!!
Quality time together
We all want to spend as much quality time with our romantic partner as we can, and cooking together each evening can be a great part of this. Making dinner is a necessary chore but it can be turned into a more enjoyable and relaxing experience if it becomes a joint venture. The whole process of preparing ingredients, cooking, eating and clearing up afterwards not only offers opportunities for mindful activity, it also has the benefit of bonding and strengthening your relationship too.
Teamwork
Creating a dish together is a great teamworking activity where you can share out the preparation, read sections of the recipe out to each other and discuss who’s going to do what to equally divide the tasks. Also, if you alternate who takes the lead, it can boost confidence levels and provide opportunities to practice being assertive as one of you can tell the other what you’d like them to do next, and so on. This can be a real eye opener or learning curve if one of you usually tends to dominate in the relationship in terms of decision making or as the saying goes ‘wears the trousers in the relationship’!
Shared memories
Whether the dish that you’ve spent hours creating turns out to be the most delicious thing you ever tasted, a complete disaster, or something in-between, you can guarantee that many of your shared cooking experiences will lead to fond or funny memories. In fact, according to Meik Wiking, author of The Art Of Making Memories, multisensory activities, of which cooking is a great example, create the most vividly recalled memories of all. Taking the time to really focus on your experiences whilst cooking together – sights, smells, sounds, taste and touch will not only help you de-stress after a busy day, but it will also contribute to positive memory making too.
Encouraging conversation
When following a recipe for the first time, it will certainly prompt lots of conversation about what you’re doing and which tasks you plan to do next. But, as you develop your cooking confidence, learn new skills or make favourite dishes again and again, there’s plenty of opportunity for discussion on a wider range of subjects. Sometimes it might involve sharing stories about your day or talking about how work is currently going, or the focus might turn to making plans for your weekend, an upcoming event or even where you’d like to go to on your future travels. Whatever you end up chatting about, open and meaningful communication is key for healthy relationships.
Developing new skills
There are so many different technical terms and cooking methods that you can learn as you develop your culinary skills together. This week, my husband and I made celeriac soup and the first step of the recipe was to dice onions and thinly slice celery and sweat them in a pan. I had no idea what this meant so I quickly checked on my phone and learned that it involves putting a little oil in the bottom of a saucepan, adding the ingredients and half covering with the pan lid to gently cook them on a low heat. I also found lots of tips for the method such as stirring every now and then and adding a little bit of salt to speed up the process. Next time I see this method in a recipe, not only will we know exactly what to do, it will also remind us of the time we made celeriac soup for the first time (and indeed the first time we’d even tried celery root).
Problem solving
Cooking together can help you both develop your general and cooking related problem solving skills as you make decisions around the preparation of the dish or think about what you might do differently next time. So, for example, you might learn that something takes longer to cook than the recipe said and make a note on the recipe page to remind you next time, or you might learn that your oven is particularly fierce and things get burnt if you stick to the oven temperature or time suggested. Or you might discover that your fridge is directly where you tend to chop all of the vegetables so it’s best to get out all of the required ingredients before one of you gets to work dicing and slicing. For us, we tend to modify recipes either because it serves 4 people or it has strong spices in it, and, as I can’t tolerate spicy meals we might spend some time deciding what flavourings we would use instead, or even if the recipe would work without the spice.
Final words…
In today’s post, I’ve discussed how cooking with your partner is good for your romantic relationship, but the same could certainly be applied to other relationships you have such as a house or flat mate, your children (if they’re old enough and capable of safe basic food preparation) or anyone else you live with or like to spend time at home with. Collaboration in the kitchen, in my opinion, is much better than an hour spent scrolling on your phone catching up on all the various social media platforms you frequent.
Let me know in the comments if you already enjoy cooking with family or friends or if it’s something you’d definitely like to give a try. Or, if not, I would also love to hear why you think it might not work for you personally.
For my September bullet journal pages, I was inspired by a set of washi tapes that I found and purchased from TKMaxx (even though I have literally hundreds of rolls already – you can never have too much right?) They were all in similar shades of purple with some featuring tiny stars, crescent moons, Saturn, the moon phases and text saying ‘the stars shine for you’. In addition, the set included complementary patterns, a watercolour effect design plus a ‘to do’ tape for my running task lists. I wanted to use my paints to create an original piece of art that I could use for my front cover and, after spending a while perusing various night sky tutorials on YouTube, I finally settle on this one which explained the techniques really well and discussed use of colour and contrast as a key teaching point. I decided against adding dark tree outlines to the bottom and chose to add some stars and a moon using white gouache.
The front cover
As always, I used cold pressed watercolour paper and a wet on wet technique to ensure the colours blended seamlessly and there was no buckling of the paper as there would be if I’d painted directly onto my bullet journal page. This gave me a nice, clean design which I could photocopy using my printer and stick in. I wish I’d chosen thinner washi tape as a border because the finished piece ended up smaller than I wanted but I also didn’t want to scan and enlarge the piece as the stars would have ended up too big.
My original watercolour galaxy painting – Laura Jones
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Monthly calendar
I decided to do a different calendar this month and opted for the style originally used by Ryder Carroll who is the creator of the bullet journal system. This involved writing the day numbers and the days of the week down the left hand side of the page, leaving space to write events and or happenings in the space to the write with one horizontal line for each day of the month. This allows the use of just one page for the entire calendar. I’ll let you know how I get on with it next month and whether I’ll continue to use this style or go back to my usual 6×6 dot spaces box calendar.
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Finances
The one page calendar meant I ended up with a spare page to the right so I started my finance pages and then continued overleaf. Again, I’ve been making stickers for this month’s theme to decorate my spreads more quickly than drawing.
September goals
In order to not lose sight of what I want to achieve in September, I decided to create a goals page to refer to throughout the month. I opted to have two types of goal – health and fitness and business as this is what I want to focus on throughout September, aside from my work at the university.
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Weekly layout
This is my first weekly, before the pen and I wanted to keep it simple so there’s plenty of room for events and a few to-dos each day. I’ll probably do a running task list for the week over the page but I intend to add some day specific tasks to the weekly calendar.
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Final words…
Thank you for visiting my blog today to look at my bullet journal pages for September. I would love to hear in the comments what you think of my art work, my theme and set up.
Wishing you a lovely September filled with lots of fun autumnal activities,
Although I’ve finished doing my four traveler’s notebook journals where I documented each season of the year including my bucket list items, I decided to continue making a seasonal bucket list and adding it to a double page spread in my bullet journal as I really enjoy making them. Today I’m sharing my Autumn 2024 list in which I’ve included some seasonal activity favourites and new things to try. I hope my bucket list inspires you to create your own, whether by simple writing them down in your journal or getting creative and adding hand drawn pictures or making stickers like mine which complement the items.
Before I created my Autumn 2024 bucket list, I revisited my autumn 2023 list so I could be sure I wasn’t just repeating last year’s items. I then spent time writing down all the things I love about the season such as seeing the beautiful colours on the trees, spotting autumn visitors at my local nature reserve, making my home warm and cosy and putting out seasonal decor, trying out new comfort food recipes and warm desserts and so on. I also added new activities I would like to try such as making caramel covered apples on sticks and planning out my TV viewing for the next three months so we can have plenty of series to look forward to as we cosy up each evening.
Having made plenty of notes, I turned lots of them into bucket list items on a scrap piece of paper before making stickers for each of them in Cricut. I also used Canva Pro and downloaded images to go with each. For a few of them, I also downloaded mini pictures either using Canva photos or via Google and turned these into little stickers too. Finally, I used Cricut Design Space and Canva to download watercolour leaves to add further decor in the spaces on the spread.
My finished bucket list BuJo spread
Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative
Final words…
I’m really pleased with how my pages turned out and I hope you like them too. I won’t be creating TN journals to record my progress but I might stick a few photos in my BuJo weeklies to evidence the items as I tick them off. I hope today’s post has encouraged you to give making a seasonal bucket list a go and I would love to see your creation if you would like to share yours to your own blog or email me at laura.j.jones77@gmail.com
Keeping it creative 