my first erin condren, a year and a half later...

hi guys! so you know how i published a post around 30 minutes ago about my january (planner), and i mentioned this post would come in a few days. lol. yeah. i'm ready to post this now. lol. so. my thoughts on my first ever erin condren life planner. this is also partially a comparison post of my older hourly against the new vertical planner. enojoy! ~Lindsay ^.~

something you may begin to notice with my end of month planner posts, i've actually been liking planning in the vertical a lot more. i'm not sure if part of it was because most stores design their stickers for the vertical (and some horizontal), but even less so for the hourly? the hourly planner's boxes are a lot wider than the vertical, so i could still get away with using vertical and happy planner kits. another thing too, i'm not huge into the no white space planning, just because i don't think it's practical. that being said, it's nice buying weekly kits and being able to use them for up to two weeks! also, any other straggler stickers i may have, i've been building up my own random stickers kit for those weeks (which remain to be photographed as i pre-stuck a a few of these into my vertical).

as always, i tag my posts. so feel free to check the tags for my hourly life planner or the vertical life planner.

here's what we're lookin like after 1.5 years and stickers. as you can probably tell, and i may have mentioned it in my haul post for the vertical planner, this coil is not big enough for 1.5 years of sticker usage. and they use the same diameter coil regardless if you get one year or 1.5.

what i'm holding up is the first 6 months (June - Dec 2016), and about where that and a year looks like against the coil.

after seeing a video by Kayla, owner of Oh Hello Stationery Co, i got inspired to go ahead and uncoil the parts that didn't belong to 2017. this is a 2 pack of plastic cinch coils that i got at the local craft store for about $3. these coils were a bit wider than i needed, so i fed it through every other hole.

here are all the pages i ended up removing completely, which were sticker and notes pages and the back pocket. notice how many teeth this poor snap-in bookmark has! omg. we lost most of those around the 1 year mark, which isn't too bad.

here's what 1 year looks like in my used in the hourly (left) compared to my new vertical (right) which has maybe 1 month's worth of spreads in it at this point.

erin condren hourly life planner - my december

hi guys! please bear with me here as i catch up on all of my end of month (and end of year) posts! i'm working on getting them done! ~Lindsay ^.~

monthly calendar spread: another awesome one from Dook Plook Designs!

week 1: soo. i got promoted again... how'd that happen?! anyway that was cool. went to teh paul's office's christmas party, and guess what! we won a raffle prize again this year. the value was comparable to what we got last year (a home depot gift card). we ended up returning the item, because it's not something either of us would use, but we definitely used the home depot store credit we got for it! also, if you haven't had a cajun kringle, you're missing out. those things are like $15, and to order one online, it was like $45!! that's crazy, especially considering how far away i live. so i picked it up in person. my team loved it!

week 2: it snowed. like legit snow falling for almost a full day. that. never. happens. here, ever. on a lesser note, due to certain occurrences in the prior week and after several months of being nagged to, someone got our security system ordered and installed.

week 3: so, bubz's book. i read the entire first part one night and loved it so much that i bought 3 physical copies for two friends and a cousin. i have yet to pick it up again -- partially because i got the kindle version, and i've always had problems reading ebooks (and yes, back in the day, i attempted to read a few different books on project gutenberg before smartphones existed). this week, we also had our team dinner, which was pretty fun. it was weird because our manager was out of town at the client site, but his manager came. it was really nice talking with him and reflecting on the good things (achievements) that happened to each of us this year. then for the first time in the [short] history of our office, we had an office-wide off-site after-hours [alcohol-served] party. 😯 one of my coworkers volunteered her new photobooth business to the party and it was awesome.

week 4: to anyone that happens upon this post, no we haven't figured out if or when we're doing a housewarming party. we were waiting til after the holidays, but my grandparents requested it'd be after they return from their vacation, and mardi gras, and chinese new year, and then my birthday'll be here before we know it. so i have no clue how we want to coordinate all that. in other news, harry and david pears are the perfect gift! gotta get some every year! annnd we went and saw star wars..and mixed feelings. i didn't grow up on the series, so i'm not as invested as some people into the franchise, but what. was. that. 😕

week 5: the last week of the year. the last week of the apartment. ten and a half years of my own apartment(s) had ended. wow! but i'm so glad i'm away from all that craziness!

erin condren hourly life planner - my november

hi guys! so over the past week i've been trying to catch up on making posts and stuff. and since i briefly mentioned us moving into the house and taking video on my october planner post... well here's the video. i edited the october post to mention the video being here instead. anyway, enjoy! ~Lindsay ^.~

also, guess who got crafty in october?! i got inspiration from a wreath i saw online and made a few additions and changes. since the left side is obviously heavier than the right, i glued some fishing line weights onto the back, tucked into some of the branches.

note - the positioning of the H changed a bit on the real thing, because i put the wreath together at my in-law's house. i waited to attach the H so it wouldn't get damaged in transit to our apartment as i didn't have a wreath box for it at that time.

yes, it was still 80+ degrees outside when we took that picture...

monthly calendar spread: love this sticker paper and design from cricket paper co!

week 1: so halloween. we had an office party with costume contest. i just wore a bunch of black and put on some cat ears (like i did two years ago, and i was PTO last halloween), to be something simple..because moving. that's what i'll tell myself, weight gain, work-appropriateness, and broken (needs re-gluing) lolita shoes...no those were not factors for not trying harder. 💁anyway, if you're interested in seeing some of the costumes at the office, check my instagram.
otherwise, notable things of the week, i slept on an air mattress for the first time ever for our first couple nights in our house. and it was an awful experience. thankfully paul went in the other room after a while, because both of us on it if either of us moved i started feeling nauseated and dizzy. so needless to say, i didn't sleep too good for a couple nights straight. not that we had to sleep in the house because the apartment is literally 10 minutes down the street with two real beds in it.......... 😫 but new house...? and then it was the "big" move. probably 90% of our stuff that was not a large piece of furniture made it to the house in my car, believe it or not. and also believe it or not, about 65% of those items were brought in and out by yours truly because somebody had to work not in this state. at least i got my 10-15k steps for a solid 2 weeks!!!
our washer and dryer were delivered, and one of the pedestals we ordered ended up being dented. so based on the options the delivery man gave me, i told them to just install the good one, take back the bad one, and i'll call and request a new one. they were here about two hours for the installation. shortly after they left, i noticed some minor damage on the dryer console, so in addition to the pedestal, i mentioned this to the whirlpool person and accepted a markdown to not waste more time with them coming back and doing all of that over again.

week 2: so! sunday night, puttin stuff away into the cabinets, reorganizing the kitchen...ya know, normal stuff. i hear some weird noises in the middle of the night and i didn't see anything out of the ordinary in my initial glance. i go to work and come back and i'm trying to finish up the organization, and i find something else i wanted to throw into the cabinet over the fridge. ya know, the stuff you don't use very often but still want to keep. anyway, i'm standing infront of the fridge and get on the stepstool, and i can't open the cabinet door because it's hitting the fridge. wtf. i get down and look at the cabinet from the side and notice it looks weird. then i get ontop of the counter and...i'm still too short, so i had to take pictures, lol. anyway said pictures on my instagram, but my cabinet started to come off the wall. i make a warranty request, and the superintendent guy comes over thinking it'd be a simpler fix because there were other recent problems with peoples' cabinets. nuuupe. so he takes some photos with his helper kiddos (interns) and returns the next morning with the cabinet guy to brace the cabinet, so i "can use it until the new box comes next month". like i'm going to put stuff into this cabinet?! so, we will see next month if the new cabinet works out!
next, i was getting conflicting phone calls by the delivery people and the whirlpool people regarding my replacement pedestal. the delivery company thought that they were installing a pedestal and taking a dryer away. and i'm like, what? why? who said anything to you guys about a dryer?! so they advised i talk to whirlpool again, but still scheduled the delivery for me. i call whirlpool and they are like, yes your markdown should be processed by now, no they're not supposed to take your dryer away, yes they're supposed to come and install the new pedestal. so it ended up being several days of phone tag because i called too late in the day and the other's office was closed and whatever. anyway, after about 2.5 days, i got everything straightened out, and all was good.

(ugh, i forgot to fix that... i took cyber monday off too..)

week 3: this was an interesting week. the delivery people spent 20 minutes and two phone calls trying to find my house from going to the wrong place about 5 minutes down the street from our subdivision. no, i do not live at the baseball field...what?! but they were super nice and were in and out within an hour once they did make it here. thankfully there'll be no more delivery people until we decide to get more furniture. w00t!
next, i've been trying to figure out how to get a garbage can. like all the neighbors have one, where's mine? i set up our account 3 weeks ago, i should have one by now, right? -- sidenote: my sales lady sent us a list of phone numbers to transfer all the utilities into our name. i call and set up the water and the lady tells me the fee and deposit and that it'll be connected the next day. ok sure thing whatever. then i call the garbage number and they're like, i can't find your house in the system. weird side-sidenote, just based on my name and maybe my phone number, they knew mom's address which i don't see how i would be in the garbage people's system for my mom's condo..? weiiird. anyway, she advises to figure out if they're actually the ones servicing the house or if it's someone else. i text the sales lady, and she's like, oh i hear people set it up through the water company these days. then y u give me bad, outdated info?! i call the water company again and they confirm that garbage is set up with the water. i don't inquire further. fast forward to the 14th. for a few days at this point, i've been looking online to figure out how the hell to get a trash can. i ended up calling a number i found online and they are in fact the people that pick up for our house. so i was able to get a trash can and recycle bin ordered, and got the pickup days, because no one else told me that information either.......
annnd for those interested, i posted a few pictures during the thanksgiving party onto my instagram. we also took pictures and video for the company newsletter, so we were all asked to wear holiday sweaters and accessories. i was not chosen for the dessert contest, (with my 50 bajillion cookies) but there were a ton of good choices!

week 4: i'm honestly really happy that i didn't have anything i needed to go black fridaying for. like almost every year, i buy something from the sephora and ulta doorbusters, online of course, but this year's offerings aren't interesting to me. not only that, i think i got most of the women i'm buying for before or during the all three of the 20% off sales. (why did sephora do the sale twice this year? guess what sucker utilized it both times!) sticker sales on the other hand.... 😉  i also got in on the bioderma sale on beautylish. but aside from that, i didn't buy too much this time around.

notes page: didn't use this page again. this month's quote: dream love plan

erin condren hourly life planner - my october

hi guys! i don't really have much to say about october anymore because it's kind of a blur now... sorry for the delay in posting, but it's been real busy with getting the house settled, cleaned, and moved into. we still have to finish cleaning at the apartment but we've got more than a whole month left to do so.
anyway, here's some photos that i apparently took in a rush and didn't frame super great, and i don't really feel like retaking them since you can see most of the pages anyway. ~Lindsay ^.~

monthly calendar spread: hocus pocus spread from dook plook designs! super cute!

week 1: 

week 2: first house walk through with the inspector!
rant: so i think you guys saw on my instagram..maybe? that walmart sent my email (among apparently only a few others?) into an endless email loop regarding me logging in and ensuring my mailing address for their beauty box was correct. i literally received 200 emails in less than 2 hours, at a rate of 3 emails per minute. my phone was going insane, and it took me about half an hour to find the email settings menu that got buried (in a recent update at the time) to disable the notifications and fetching. but not only am i irritated about the fifty thousand emails (they sent a mass apology email 2 days later. TWO WHOLE DAYS. terrible!), but they did not charge me for the 'ships starting end of september' box until earlier this week. we are freakin in mid november right now, what the hell was the holdup? not only that the a few pictures i've seen online seem like this one'll be lame in comparison to previous boxes--i won't fully complain about comment on the contents until i actually see what i receive--, but don't make promises for something and break them without any indication as to what happened or that there was a delay. i would have been happier about this scheduling if i had known in advance that there would be a delay, over being left hanging for two months. two strikes. ❌❌__

week 3: house closing week!!! did our second walk through with the builder superintendent and took a day off to do closing. one of our friends came over and helped us take our pictures for the change of address / holiday card that we sent out. i got our empty house tour filmed, which i still need to link onto here... and my parents, grandparents, and inlaws came in to see the house and we ended up taping off a tooon of issues around the house that needed fixing.

week 4: ugh i love this kit from my newest addiction! it was actually like an anti-valentines day kit, but i thought it'd be cool for halloween-ish.
that aside, the superintendent guy was cool and had the worker people come through the house and fix all the things we saw. after that i changed the locks in the house, sealed about 2/3 of the grout in the house, cleaned a bit at the house, and started moving stuff over. i say i because teh paul conveniently had to work out of town for most of october and part of november. (for those who don't know - there are a lot of scheduled maintenance outages at plants this time of year and in spring in anticipation for summer/winter electricity usage) thankfully he was home every weekend and was able to help me doing stuff around the house and moving stuff over. i'll probably talk more about the move in next month's post, next week-ish? if i get around to it next weekend? something like that.

notes page: i stuck a few additional deco stickers of the sanderson sisters, a cat, cat pumpkin, and cauldron that came with the monthly kit onto the bottom of the page. otherwise i didn't really use this page. the quote is: be open to whatever comes next

erin condren hourly life planner - my september

hi guys! it's october, and you know what that means? we're closing on our house this month!!!!!!! omg cannot wait! otherwise, i don't really have a whole lot else to say aside from it was a busy month! ~Lindsay

monthly calendar spread: this month, my spread is from TheCoffeeMonsterzCo. sooo pretty!

week 1: so, fun fact, we did some stuff for the client between the second and third quarter.. the upgrades and go live.. anyway, my manager recognized my coworker and i, and we got bonuses!

week 2: soo.. i suck at words, but less than 48 hours after getting my tires rotated, i got a screw in my tire, which was annoying and sucked, and i most likely got it from parking in front of our house. in other news, it was our 10 year high school reunion at a local bowling alley, which was cool. i didn't end up taking many pictures there because it was kind of dark and stuff, but here's a pic S took of T and I circa 10.3 years ago in our favorite english teacher's class, probably doing some other class's homework that was due that day... lol!

week 3: it took a couple days, but i located the screw. went to get my tire patched and they said that this is considered "road hazard" whatever that means, and they needed to replace the tire. thankfully where i bought it, road hazard protection was part of the installation package, so i only ended up paying for them to install a new tire. but it's still pretty annoying that these tires are just over a year old...

week 4: so. PBC sale. i spent an absurd amount of money on stickers alone...in one shot. (thankfully the charges made it onto the next billing cycle! w00t!) then i also bought christmas presents on top of that. then, T and I went to ulta because the co-founder of it cosmetics, jamie kern lima, was in town!!!! then i went to a not gender reveal party.. the way the invite was written i thought it was, but this was a regular shower and they don't want to know the gender until it comes out and had us take a poll of what we thought it may be! i also really liked the idea of using books as the gift's 'card', writing a note on the inside cover to the baby.

week 5: we both got paid on friday and spent basically all our paychecks on appliances. there was a snafu with the refrigerator we ordered back during the memorial day sale (end of May), and basically the delivery company couldn't hold onto it long enough for us to close on the house. so they ended up cancelling the delivery and we had to cancel the order. long story short, we were able to use my corporate discounts to reorder the same fridge for a grand total (taxes and delivery) of less than the sale price (pre-tax and delivery) that we originally paid! 😲 as well as ordering the washer, dryer, and pedestals i wanted (paid extra for that gray! who wants white?), also for less than the sales prices we've seen. so that was pretty cool! adulting.

notes page: and finally, i've used the notes page before the month was over! i started writing out a list of stuff we need to do this month with the house and the move. i may be filling in a few more items as i think of them, but that's that.

erin condren hourly life planner - my august

hi guys! so august. it's almost over. but in other news, we're one more month closer to closing on our house! w00t! ~Lin-chan ^.~
like last time, i wanted to chat again, but not too much.. i got another interesting email. one where the person found the blog through my instagram, asking about increasing my brand. as an employee in the business world, yeah this is a discussion that happens a lot. how to increase your brand to be more marketable to clients, yadda yadda. anyway, for this blog though....as mentioned last time, this blog is a [not so] creative outlet for me. with that, i don't want to think of it as work. for a little while i did, and when i started working it became too much and i didn't feel like it. but on the topic of brand, i do think that changing the name of this blog and rebranding it would be an option in the future. i'm just not sure when and need to further evaluate the idea. i mean come on, this screenname is something i made up in like 4th grade in the 90s. back then, the internet wasn't so widespread and scams where everywhere. anyway, i got 'scouted' at the mall by a supposed talent agency. i don't know if it was a real one or not, but in hindsight, i don't feel like they did anything for me anyway. regardless, that is the history of my screenname, it was my aol instant messanger handle when aim was where the cool kids were.
on another note, two more of my onboarding people left this month, and i have linkedin to thank for that, or i otherwise would not have known.... anyway, so that brings our numbers down to 9 based out of our office and 1 who moved to a different location out of 20.

monthly calendar spread: this month, i got my spread from MyNewestAddiction. it's super pretty and i love how it has the mini calendar for september.

week 1: we got sides and roof!

week 2: two people from our client's office came to visit for the week, and we ended up hanging out with them for nearly 3 days straight. it was crazy, but it was nice getting to know them and finally meeting them in person. also, since it was crazy birthday madness week, my inlaws decided they wanted to do a combined painting party. so that was pretty cool. also, i forgot to add it to the spread before photographing, but we got walls!

week 3

week 4: forgot to mark off eclipse day before photographing, but soo neat!

notes page: didn't take a photo this time since i didn't use this space. but the quote for this month is: sometimes you win sometimes you learn

erin condren hourly life planner - my july

hi guys! this one's a little late, but i wanted to take some time to chat a lil in this'a one! ~Lin-chan ^.~
so. i have my blog email address linked on here over in my right nav. and yes, i have gotten emails in the past regarding peoples' interest in my posts, whether it be content or shade dupes. which is cool. but it's interesting seeing the emails that i received this month and knowing, wow there are people out there. some of them read this! or do they..? lol.
the first of which was a, 'hey you've got a site linked that is about to change ownership'. of which, said company website had emailed me about a week prior (because i've ordered from them) to notify me of the change. but to think that someone hyperlinked (or google scanning...?) that particular blog post and this other company took the time to email me regarding my post. i thought that was pretty cool. so i complied and updated the post.
the second company that emailed me offered services for analytics. now, you guys know this blog is for fun and is using blogger as my platform. i am quite aware of the many improvements that could be made here, i'm a web dev too, i totally get it. but remember, this blog is for fun and i don't want to stress myself over it and think of it like work. i do enough of that, spending 9+ hours in the office on the computer then coming home. i get that it wouldn't be relatively much of a time investment to make these changes, but it's time that i could be doing something else.
the third was pretty interesting. the contact person emailed me multiple times over the course of maybe a week or two asking for my opinion about a website. and i was slacking answering, because work life balance and the things i mentioned above.. but it got to the point where this kind person sent two additional emails, and i was like, ok i really should get back to this person. they really want to hear my opinion. so the night that i received the third email, i sat down and gave my honest opinion of the site. as mentioned above, i'm a web dev. in the past 10 years of me online shopping, i know what (at least) i think works or not. [no, it was not for an online webstore.] that being said, i also influenced quite a few UX (user experience) design changes for my client's international webstore which i worked on last year. anyway, back to my email response though. it's been a few weeks now and i haven't seen a response to my email, which ok, i guess, whatever. most of my response was regarding UX improvements and suggestions i had. maybe they contacted a ton of people and are sifting through the responses? i don't know. but i found it fascinating how adamant and excited the person seemed to be to hear from someone like me.
anyway, that's enough of my recent email escapades. as mentioned above, it was a surprise to see a few emails recently regarding lil ol me and this blog.

monthly calendar spread: this month, i got this cute watermelon spread from CricketPaperCo. this page is lacking in Once More With Love wacky holidays. that is not to say that i did not order some, but my package got lost in the mail and she was no longer offering this sheet by the time we gave to replace my order. major sadface.

week 1: so. the code deployment didn't go as planned to it was rescheduled..which i alluded to in my previous monthly post. in other news, house slab! w00t!

week 2: we retried deploying the major code upgrade that i participated in.. so i had a few long days this, making sure it worked out, and thankfully it did!

week 3: it's always exciting when we have client visits. especially when there are pre-client prep meetings for those invited to the special round-table meetings. the only problem with this client though, is that their general market does not involve what i do, so i was the odd man out in the meeting, but i got to represent i guess, lol! and our team had a meeting to catch up my coworker and i to get back on track of what our team is actually doing now that the code deploy is done.

week 4: in house news... WE'VE BEEN FRAMED! lol.

week 5

notes page: didn't take a photo this time since i didn't use this space. but the quote for this month is: follow your heart

erin condren hourly life planner - my june

hi guys! i'm about a week late on this'a one but i don't care! it's a holiday weekend-ish (except i worked today...). anyway, lots of stuff is a rollin with our house, if you've seen on instagram. they poured our slab last week! ~Lin-chan ^.~

monthly calendar spread: this month, i got this gorgeous spread from My Newest Addiction. ugh so pretteh!

week 1

week 2

week 3: i finally hit two years at work! and as sad as it sounds, only 4 of us went to lunch together, lol. apparently i didn't write it onto this page... we had fun though, we went to the breakfast restaurant that opened beneath our office and caught up, since we've all been pretty busy and don't get to talk with each other very often anymore. the count: 11 of 20.

week 4: this was a pretty busy week. there were meetings left and right, a client came to visit, we had our quarterly meeting, i had to work friday night, annnd we had another promotions breakfast, which was weird. i didn't get promoted this year (thus far), but i got invited...so uhhh free breakfast is cool, i guess... and steam sale! paul got me stardew valley! annnnd those omwl stickers for sunday...well fb friends know what happened if they saw my status for that day. in the end it worked out ok so we're not too worried, but it has changed some of our behaviors and habits.

notes page: didn't take a photo this time since i didn't use this space. but the quote for this month is: be strong be brave be you