Posted in bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, goal setting, planner girl, planner lifestyle, Planning and journaling

Setting up my Bullet Journal for October 2024: Autumnal Vibes Theme

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.

Happy October everyone,

Posted in bullet journal, Bullet journaling, creativity, Planning and journaling, Setting goals and intentions

Setting up my bullet journal for October: Autumn theme

Hi everyone, hope you are all well. This month, I’ve gone for an Autumn theme featuring brightly coloured leaves and acorns. I really enjoyed practising my drawing skills and I’m pleased with how the pages have turned out. I hope you like my spreads and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone else’s chosen themes for October.

For my cover page, I took inspiration from @lilbrownjournal on Instagram who created a wonderful circular design. Before starting, I spent some time doodling different leaf shapes using a variety of tutorials and images I found on Pinterest. I decided not to use my circle drawing tool this time as I wanted the outline to be quite big, so I took out my compass instead. To ensure that I didn’t end up with a hole in the middle of my page, I placed a few post it notes over the area before making my two circles.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative

The leaves and acorns were drawn in pencil and then outlined with a 0.2 Pigma Micron. I decided to use pencil crayons to shade them in to avoid ghosting. The only problem with this is that when you write on the page overleaf, it tends to transfer onto the previous page. It’s easy enough to remove with an eraser though.

Although I enjoyed using my circular month at a glance, I went back to a two page calendar for this month with 6 dot by 6 dot squares again drawn with my 0.2 Micron pen. Again, I decorated with lots of bright Autumn leaves and acorns.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative

October is a busy month for tidying up in the garden so I spent some time researching what needs to be pruned and then created this spread as a reminder of the benefits of pruning and the plants which need our attention.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative

The final page for this month is my habit trackers. I enjoyed the format I chose in September so I kept the layout the same but changed the decoration. I kept some of the same habits and added a few new ones focusing on getting outside for my walk every day and making sure I do my yoga consistently. I added some lovely Autumnal washi at the bottom which was gifted to me by my friend Bev and I think it finishes things off nicely.

Photo credit: Laura Jones for Keeping It Creative

That’s it for this month. I’m getting really low on pages in my Leuchtturm so I think I will probably be moving in to my next BuJo before October is over. I’ve gone back a Scribbles That Matter again as I’ve decided I prefer the thicker, white pages.

Thanks for reading,