Planner Series: Part 1 - A Review of my Year with Lilly Pulitzer

This is going to be a two part series. Part one is this one. It is a review of my Lilly Pulitzer planner. Part two will come soonish. It is sort of a surprise, but as you can see, it is planner related. Enjoy!

So my roommate at school and I had this cute thing where if we wanted to plan something with each other we would say something like "You'll have to check with Lilly." OR "You'll have to check with Vera." I always sort of thought of Lilly and Vera as our own personal secretaries. Mine was Lilly and she had Vera. I loved this and I can't wait to continue it next year.

Lilly was short for my Lilly Pulitzer agenda. Gosh, I wish I had my own personal secretary though! Life would be so much easier! But I am obsessed with this kind of stuff... is anyone looking for a personal secretary? Okay. Anyways, I am kind of going to go through what owning such a fantastic planner is like and how I utilized my Lilly.

So here is Lilly. Isn't she pretty? She has definitely aged a bit, but she has a lot of passion for her work and is still as good as new on the inside. Now this specific agenda is the large jellies be jammin' pattern. I love jelly fish, so this is perfect for me. However, there are TONS of patterns available. I was looking at the 2015-2016 line up and there are a lot of good ones. These run $28.

I had never kept a planner before Lilly. I owned them, but I was so bad at keeping up with it. I knew with my crazy schedule, I needed something to keep track of it all. Enter Lilly. I am going to run through some of the specs really quick then I will dive into how I utilized each one.

This is one of the first things you open up to. There is a plain white double sided folder and a sticker sheet! AHH! STICKERS! 

Here are some close ups of the stickers, but what I really wanted to focus on are the colored tabs. I'm going to be a bore and list them off really quick: 2015 & 2016, Months, Dates to Celebrate, Holidays & Horoscopes, Notes, and then it goes from Aug 14 - Dec 14. I will go over all of these after a few more pictures!

This is at the front of every month. It kind of sets up the theme for what you will be looking at for the next four weeks. EACH month is different. Even if there are two of the same months. For example, August 2014 and August 2015 are both VERY different. I love it. I also love the colors. It really helps add color to my day. 

After the adorable cover page for the month, here is the actual month at a glance. On the side is a to do list and a tiny month at a glance of the previous month and the next month. 

Here is the layout of what you would actually be writing your days and schedules and stuff in. As you can see, it's keeping with the theme, too. 

Here is my color coding system. Just to list off again: Black is for classes, red is for things I need to do, blue is for when I need to work at the honors college, green is for EMU stuff, maroon is for appointments, teal is for my deskie job, purple is for Sigma Kappa, and pink is for any friend related thing. 

So that's finally done. Now I am going to run through how I utilize everything.

The folder and the stickers: I kind of shove everything and anything in there. I still have stuff from when I went through recruitment in there. Right now the biggest thing residing in there are plane tickets and stuff from my recent trip to Arizona with Logan. As for the stickers... I don't really use those either. I kind of just give them out to daycare kids when they help me clean. Not the booze related ones though. Obvi.

Tabs: the 2014 & 2015 tab is nice. It just kind of shows you the years at a glance. I don't really do anything with that though. As for the months, I don't do anything with that either. Especially because I use the months at a glance later in the planner. All I have written in the dates to celebrate tab is "celebrate Emily's birthday all month." I didn't even write it. Hmm... EMILY??? The holidays & horoscopes tab is really cute! It gives you a list of all the holidays on one page. You get a lined page titled party planners notes on another. On another page are horoscopes. It was fun, but not useful. Now the notes tab?? I used that constantly!!! Color codes, lists, passwords, you name it. I had it on these pages. You get quite a few, too. 

The big month at a glance: As you can see I do use this. I mark when there is a Sigma Kappa event or meeting, when there are EMU events, when I get paid, when the NMU payment is due, when we don't have classes (breaks), when I travel, birthdays, and stuff like that. But I NEVER actually "write" anything. I just put indicators. 

The week at a glance: I try really hard to keep everything in order. I learned second semester that it is best to write in classes an work, two things that normally remain the same. one month at a time. That way if something changes, I don't have to use white out. I hate putting white out in my planner. Something that isn't shown in the images above is if something does change. If that happens I will highlight it. It kind of just reminds me over and over again what changed because highlighter draws my attention.

I hope you enjoyed this little review. I totally recommend Lilly planners to any newbie or anyone who just likes the layout! Even though I love Lilly with all of my heart, I think it is time for her to retire. I am ready for a change. A new secretary, if you will. I would love to know what planner(s) you use! Comment below! I may be scouting for a new brand.