Tag: reading

Monthly Recaps

June Monthly Recap

floraj5604

Hello and happy Fourth of July, everyone! 

Today, I’ll be giving you my monthly recap for June! 

If you haven’t been to my blog before, a monthly recap is a post where I share the things I accomplished during the month. Today I’ll be sharing info about the books I read, my writing, art progress, blog posts, bullet journal progress, what happened in my life during June, and looking ahead at July. Wow, we’ve got a lot to look at today! We’d better get started!

Reading

This month, I read three books. 

First, I read The Hobbit. This was a really fun read! I really enjoyed the storyline, and I think it was great literature. I hope to read through the entire Lord of the Rings Series at some point (I have a long reading list right now). 

Next, I read the first book in the River of Time Series: Waterfall. Oh. My. Goodness. I LOVE THIS SERIES! This is my first time reading it, and I am SO into it. Basically, a girl and her sister fall through a time portal and get sent back to medieval times. I highly recommend this book if you are up for an exciting read! WARNING: This book does have several intense moments! Living in medieval times was a lot different than living today! 

The third book I read was the second book in the River of Time series: Cascade. This book was even more exciting than the first! This book continues the story of the two sisters and their mother from the first book. I will definitely continue reading through this series!

Writing

Okay, I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t get much writing done this month.

I did start a new story, though, based off of one of the prompts from my post 26 Writing Prompts for You, You, and You! I didn’t get that story done in time for this post, but hopefully I’ll be sharing it with you guys sometime in July. 

Blogging

I did a total of three posts this month. My goal was to post on time each Friday, but I was mostly late each time. 

Here are all of the posts I did this month: 

Art Progress

As you may know if you are a returning visitor to my blog, I recently did a page in my new bullet journal where I could track my progress on all of my art projects (view this post if you want to see all pictures of my new bullet journal). 

I only did two projects last month: my Diamond Painting and my new bullet journal. 

Here are the stats on my new bullet journal: 

  • This was my third bullet journal. 
  • It took me 11 days to complete. 
  • The “Fun Scale” rating was 10/10!

Here are the stats on my Diamond Painting: 

  • This is my first time sharing my Diamond Painting with you guys, so I’ll go ahead and explain what it is. It’s pretty much a paint by number, but with tiny diamonds (not real diamonds of course) instead of paint. Mine is Harry Potter themed!
  • The canvas is sticky, so all I have to do is use my special pen to stick the diamonds on.
  • I got this for my birthday, so I’ve been working on it for almost two months.
  • So far, I’ve really enjoyed doing my Diamond Painting. It’s really easy to do, and it’s so fun to watch it come together! Below is a picture of what I’ve completed so far:

You can find these on Amazon, if you want one of your own.

Bullet Journaling

First, I’d like to show you guys a few weekly spreads I did last month that I’m particularly proud of:

This spread was for the week of June 15-21, and I really like the way this one turned out! It’s supposed to look like a pond with lily pads as the daily sections, and branches kind of hanging over the water. This was probably my favorite weekly spread this month.

This spread was for June 29-July 5 and is sky themed. The daily sections are clouds, and there’s also a rainbow, a sun, and a flying cat (I wanted to incorporate a cat in some way, so I added wings to it. Looking back, it seems kind of weird, but I can’t change it now…).

All of the weekly spreads I did this week were in this layout, with the circles as the daily sections.

Now I’ll go ahead and show you all my spreads for July!

First off, I have my July Monthly Overview. On the left page, I have a red, white, and blue themed popsicle and also fireworks (I used gray as a substitute for white). Next I have sections for goals, memories, books I read, and blog posts. On the right page, I have my calendar and spaces for events and notes. I also added a cat waving a USA flag to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Next up, I have my tracker for how my day went. I wanted to call it my mood tracker, but it’s not really a mood tracker. I’m not really sure what to call it 😉 . It’s painting themed (if you stick around and finish this post, you’ll see why), and all I have to do is color the strip the appropriate color according to how my day was.

I’m having a lot of trouble reaching my water goal each day, so I’m hoping a tracker will help motivate me. Across the top, I have the amount of cups I will drink numbered (1-8+) and down the page I have the dates. I will use a colored pencil to shade in how many cups I drank each day.

Here I have my money tracker, which is the same as always. I’ll do tally marks for how many shifts I work, write down my checks, and the total amount of money I earned. I’ll divide that money into spend, save, and tithe money and record it. I’ve also saved a space for spending ideas.

Finally, I did my habit tracker. This habit tracker is different than the ones I’ve done in the past, but it’s pretty self-explanatory. The habits are written on the left, and if I’ve completed a habit, I’ll circle the date.

Looking Back at June

Looking back at June, I can see where my month went… bad? No, it didn’t go bad. I just mean that things went from super productive to not productive.

I was super motivated the first week of summer, so I got a lot done.

Then, we got a kitten!

Everyone, say hello to Luna! The first week we had Luna was very hectic, as we had to adjust our schedules so we could take care of and play with her. I didn’t have much free time for a few weeks after that, and by then, I unfortunately wasn’t very motivated to be productive any more.

Looking Ahead at July

I am super excited for July, because… (drumroll, please!) … I’m starting a new project: redecorating my room!

This project is probably going to take several months, but I can’t wait for the end result I’ve already been dreaming about! We moved into this house last November, but I haven’t really decorated my room much yet.

Basically, I want to paint my room, get a new bedspread, and decorate my walls. This month, we’re going to paint and then I’ll start looking for a new bedspread.

For July, I’ve got several fun posts planned, so stay tuned!

Until Next Time…

Whew, that was a really long post! I hope you guys enjoyed it! Comment and let me know if you did and also tell me how June went for you! I’ve love to talk to you!

Thanks for reading! Happy writing!

Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. (Psalms 1:1-2 NLT)

Monthly Recaps

September Monthly Recap | Review of my 1st Bullet Journal

floraj5604

What!? Another month GONE!? Already!?

I don’t know if that’s how you’re feeling, but it’s definitely how I’m feeling. So, I hope you understand why this post is so late…

I’ll make up for it with the full post I have planned for today. I’ll be doing my September Monthly Recap and giving you an overview of what my first bullet journal looked like.

Books

So, this month I finished reading the series that I started in August. The title of the series is The Golden Filly Series, and it’s a set of ten books about a teenage girl who rides horses. Tricia Evanston, the main character in the book, hopes to become a jockey after high school, but she also has to deal with the fact that her father just found out he has cancer. Tricia struggles with anger at both God and her father. The series follows her horse-riding journey, and she attempts to win the Triple Crown. Tricia learns that she should trust and praise God in everything, and she and her family learn to deal with her father’s cancer.

These books are really good, and they give a good lesson for those willing to listen.

Since I knew October was the next month, I decided to reread the Harry Potter series. I got Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the first book in the series, read before the end of September, and I plan to continue the series throughout this month.

Writing

Unfortunately, I didn’t get much writing done last month, and I probably won’t get much done in October as well. I’ve had tons of tests and studying to do in school, and this month, I won’t have much time because I’ll be packing boxes! My family is getting ready to move to a different house before the end of October!

But… I actually did get one big achievement done in my writing during September. My school has a writing prompt each month, and you can submit what you wrote in response to the prompt to the school. If they like your story or poem, then they will work with you for the next few weeks to revise it, and then publish it on their blog! Well, guess what! I submitted a story based on September’s prompt, and I got chosen!

Here it is if you want to read it: https://enlightiumacademy.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/48000952365-the-final-letter.

The prompt was to write a story of poem about a letter.

Bullet Journaling

I feel like I did pretty well in my bullet journal last month. I filled it out almost every day, and I am proud of the hard work I’ve done to get my new bullet journal ready.

I’ve been working really hard on my new journal for the last couple of weeks, getting it ready for this month. You’ll be seeing pictures soon!

Blogging

So, I definitely didn’t get as many posts out as I wanted to… I only did one… oops… Please, forgive me. I’ve been super busy recently. This month I’ll try to do better.

Goals

My goals last month were:

  1. Fill out bullet journal every day. I did pretty good on this area.
  2. Write every day. Here, I did the opposite of ok…
  3. Be more productive. I feel like I was. I did lots of planning for my new bullet journal, and spent a lot of time studying.
  4. Get A’s and B’s. 95% of my school work was probably an A or B.
  5. Do 3 blog posts. Oops…

My goals for this month are:

  1. Get to where you’re drinking three cups of water every day.
  2. Bullet journal every day.
  3. Pre-plan posts and get them out on time.
  4. Be better about logging exercise.
  5. Read Bible every day.

Review of my 1st Bullet Journal

This is how much time was done in my bullet journal:

  1. 1 year
  2. months
  3. weeks

The following is a list of the pages I used in my bullet journal:

  • 8 habit trackers
  • 8 sleep logs
  • 6 mood trackers
  • 8 different weekly layouts
  • 3 dream logs
  • 2 gratitude logs
  • 4 pages for school: grade trackers
  • A list of birthdays
  • A page for books to read: a list of books I wanted to read
  • A water tracker
  • 3 quotes pages: pages dedicated to quotes or Bible verses
  • A weather tracker (which turned out to be beautiful)
  • A page for books of the Bible: a checklist where I could check off the books I read
  • A packing list: a list of things I always pack on a trip
  • A page for my ideal day: a schedule for a perfect day
  • A cleaning list: a list for cleaning my room
  • A fitness tracker: a place to track the exercise I did
  • A page for New Year’s resolutions: a list of my New Year’s resolutions and a tracker for them
  • A stress tracker
  • A page for Keeper of the Lost Cities: a page where I listed out my Would You Rather questions I had created

And that’s all the pages I did in my bullet journal. A few of them I probably won’t do again, but that’s ok. At least I know what pages work and what pages don’t.

Well, that’s it for this post!

How long have you been bullet journaling? Do you like bullet journaling? Have you tried it? How did your September go? Talk to me in the comments! I love hearing what you all think about what I post!

My next post will probably be next week, and it’ll be all about starting a bullet journal, so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading! Happy writing!

For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Psalm 30:5 ESV