It's the most wonderful time of the year....and I don't mean Christmas! It's back to school time and Erin Condren has got you covered with an all new Academic Planner and tons of fun accessories!

One of my favorite things this year are the Planner Packs! The Planner Packs are Available in three options: School, Junior High and High School & College .

The Planner Packs are a perfect jumpstart to the new school year and a great gift for a new student! I was sent two Planner packs to review, one for my son, who is starting his Sophomore year of High School (He's a little hesitant about using a planner, or being photographed....lol) and one for my daughter, who is starting her Sophomore year of College. My daughter Kayla absolutely loves the Planner Pack! She's a planner at heart, just like her mom;)

Kayla loves that the new Academic Planners are undated! Being a college student her schedule varies and this gives her more flexibilty . Undated means no planner space wasted and she can end and start as she chooses or how her semesters start and end.

Whats's inside the Academic Planner? 12 months of undated Weekly and Monthly pages, tons of notes pages along with project and exam pages and of course those signature quotes the Life Planner is known for.  It's all on the gorgeous Mohawk paper, perfect for all the pens, markers and highlighters students use.

The Academic Planners are the same size as the Life Planner so the covers are interchageable!  And of course, it wouldn't be an Erin Condren Planner without stickers in the back!

There's even a section for Projects and Exams. Perfect for managing deadlines and details of what's needed to complete a project or prepare for an exam!

Let's talk accessories! There are tons of new accessories to help make the Academic Planner even more fun AND functional! One of our faves is the Stylish Storage Box! Its the perfect size to slip into your back pack and and take your favorite stickers sheets with you.

The new Tabbed sticky notes are also perfect for marking pages with notes that are important and easy to find. And because it's a sticky note, it can be moved around easily!

The designer flash cards are also a huge fave! My daughter uses flashes cards all the time for studying so these are perfect! The come on a ring to keep your cards together and more portable. You can also order additional cards on the Erin Condren Website!

So now that we are all ready for back to school....even I want to go back now lol, how are you prepping for the new school year? What are your new faves from the Erin Condren Back to School line?

​Ours kids have already started school here in Coastal Georgia, so weather your summer break is over like ours or you're lucky enough to have a few more weeks off, I hope you and your families all have an amazing school year!

I thought I'd start this blog off with the basics. So let's get started!

​It's a simple question with a simple answer: Why do I plan?   The truth is, planning is just a tool I use to plan for what may happen,  but not always what will actually happen. It's way to track my progress towards my goals....even if the goal is just folding the laundry.

I've always been a planner, even if my "planning" consisted of the dry erase board on our fridge or whatever cute post-it notes I could find at the store. I've always written things down and sort of mapped out my day or week as best I could. 

One of the things that lead me to using a "fancier" planning system was looking around online and researching different systems that may work for me. And of course websites like Pinterest lead me down the rabbit whole that is the creative planning community and that lead me to find Instagram accounts like  Jen Dufore's and many others! Inspiration was everywhere.....and even a little overwhelming. It was great because it took this idea of planning the day to day tasks and being more organized to a new, creative level, mixing the cute (the things I enjoyed)  with the functional. Adding in stickers, washi tape and the occasional photo actually motivated me to keep using my planner, so I had a book full of memories at the end of the year to look back on.

As a wife and a mom of two teenagers, with a full time career, there's a lot plan. Sports, Driver's Ed, school schedules , meals, family trips, medical appointments, household chores...... this list goes on. I even plan the mundane tasks like vacuuming because the satisfaction of checking it off the list makes the pain of actually vacuuming hurt a little less lol.

So why not just use my phone to schedule and plan out all my tasks and appointments? Because I don't want to. It's as simple as that! I look at my phone enough: reading emails, texting, watching videos, and countless hours scrolling Instagram and Facebook. Also because paper. And pens. And stickers!
Pen to paper is something I truly enjoy. It's more satisfying to look at when all the tasks are complete (or not completed, let's be real here), when I can look back at my planner and see how on our vacation week, instead of lists of chores, I squeezed in a picture: a rare moment when all 4 of us are in frame.

Do you plan? What's your favorite thing about planning? Leave a comment below! I'd love to hear from you!

Happy Planning!