Planners and notebooks and journals, oh my!

I love the beginning of the new year. It genuinely feels like  new leaf is turning. I always catch myself thinking what new things the next year will bring into my life. There was a long time when I didn't make any resolutions, deeming them unnecessary and frankly a tad naive. I know I just made some! I also realized that all the hoopla for the new year is not necessarily a bad thing. Granted, waiting for a specific date, like January 1st to make changes in your life is often an easy excuse to postpone doing things, but there's something refreshing about it too.

The most tangible change for me happens exactly on January 1st. I get to start a new planner/diary/journal. I am bias to Moleskine.

I spent a good half hour in the store thinking which one I wanted and comparing the different ones. I've seen plenty of others, but the simple Moleskine books are the best option for me. I'm not going to lie, I kept flipflopping between the simple weekly one and a kick-ass Star Wars one. The only reason why I ended up leaving the Star Wars one in the store was because it was too big to carry around all the time. It was a daily planner, where every day of the year had it's own page. It was a bit too much for me. But, man, was I ever tempted... I ended up choosing the red hard cover weekly planner.

As you can see my 2012 has definitely seen better days. Well, quite literally actually. I carry my planner with me everywhere, so it does get a bit battered after a while. This was the classic soft cover one, which I almost bought again. The reason why I ended with the hardcover, was because it felt sturdier. I use the accordion folder in the back of the book all the time, and in my softcover that pocket came apart a few months into the year. I ended up having to keep fixing it quite a few times. It wasn't too much work, but definitely annoying.

This is not a review of my new calendar though. This is just how incredibly exited I get to start a new one!

I am so looking forward to start filling it out. I get to do some work on it right off the bat, as I'll mark in important dates and already settled plans. I'm also trying to keep up filling in little notes of what we did, even afterwards. I enjoyed flipping through my last years planner so much, that I really plan on making an effort to keep it up. Last year I glued in some little snippets of things we did, like business cards from restaurants...

... cool flyers picked up from places we went to...



... a sticker from a Mexican soda that was very tasty...



...and a collage from leftover wedding invite card stock.


All of these random things brought back some good memories and made me look forward to start working on the pages for 2013.

Do you have a planner? What kind is your preferred one?