It's Here! My Erin Condren Life Planner Review

Ok guys so this isn't really a nail design post...BUT my nails are in the photo so that makes it count! Anyway, as you may remember, I was really excited to buy a planner. Yep, you didn't misread that -- I said a planner. But seriously, when you're as Type A as I am and you love planners as much as I do, my obsession and excitement is completely understandable. I bought the Erin Condren "Life Planner" in the Viva Espana watercolor cover and so far I am completely pleased and I don't regret the $50 price tag at all. First of all, how gorgeous is this cover?? I love the shapes and the tessellation and all the stunning colors of it.  

One thing that is great about the Erin Condren planners is that you have the freedom to completely customize the planner's cover to however you want it. There are tons of different options to choose from and you don't have to customize it, but if you think you want to you can always change the covers, add text for free, add a photo for free, or just completely come up with your own. When I was researching the planners, I saw examples of engagement photos used as covers, collages of friend photos as covers, etc. I decided to just get my name "Nicole Marie" in the same colors as the image. I didn't customize the coloring at all because I thought the yellows, greens, and blues were perfect. I may have taken a photo and made it my phone's background too...

The packaging of the planner shipment was also super cute. You might not be able to see it in the photo that well but it's pink and teal and is adorable. The planner was covered in pink tissue paper and had a cute enjoy! sticker securing the top.

Anyway, so let's get into the planner.

 The first pages of the planner are this: You can add your personal details on the left (like your phone number, address, etc in case you lost it). For mine I just added my email address on some washi tape.

Erin Condren planners are chock full of inspiring quotes. In fact, the next two pages have the well-known quote "Work Hard Play Hard" and a chevron design. This planner just makes you smile.

And for the planning part: You have the full year at a glance, monthly views, and weekly views. If you can't figure out how to organize your life with all of those then you have one crazy life!

 See, more inspiring quotes.

 I started to scribble my planning in it so I have to show you a month that I didn't write anything in. You have your month at a glance view...

 ...and then you always have your week at a glance view. I'm not sure how much I like that the month view is separated into unlined "morning", "day", and "night" sections, but I'm adjusting to it. I really do enjoy writing my events, homework, to-do lists, shopping lists, and meetings in a planner so that I can always have everything at my finger tips and ensure that I don't forget anything important.

The planner also included a bunch of lined and unlined note pages for you to use however you want. Right now I just have a list of blog post ideas, some addresses, and wishlists in mine, but people have used them for grocery lists, random scribbles, inspiration boards, etc. There's really no limit.

There are also beaucoup sticker sheets that come attached in the planner. There are two sheets of stickers that you can use both in the monthly views and the weekly views. Some of the words include "Birthday", "Concert", "Doctor's Appointment", "Concert", etc. You also get two additional sticker sheets that are blank so you can write whatever you want. As an added cost (about $3) you can customize your own additional sticker sheets to further fit whatever you've got going on in your life. For example, I customized a sheet of stickers to say "Flight" (because I'll be visiting Andrew in Colorado), "No Classes" (because I'm a student), "Steph's Wedding" (for my sister's wedding events), "Finals" (because I'm a student), and a few others. You can customize the background color of your customized stickers but I didn't realize that so my stickers are the same red, pink, orange, blue, and green in the photo above. I wish I would have known that I could customize the sticker color because I would have definitely chosen more unique colors. :( I know for next time! I also wish I would have customized a bunch of stickers to say Clinic (for the law clinic I work in), the name of my firm for work stuff, etc.

 More and more blank stickers.

And if you youtube Erin Condren planners you will see that people love to use washi tape and sticky notes throughout their planners to bedazzle them and make the planner even more unique. Erin Condren has included an attached envelope to contain the sticky notes.

Erin Condren planners also have a Keep It Together folder to keep stickers and and the custom made sticker sheets with your planner.

A new thing for this new Erin Condren planner is this Forget Me Not Perpetual Calendar and Contacts pamphlet. The idea behind it is that you don't have to rewrite all your birthdays, anniversaries, etc in the monthly views. I still put all the birthdays in the month but I also added all the birthdays to the perpetual calendar.I hole-punched an index card and attached it to the back of the calendar so I could attach it to the coil. Erin Condren makes coil clips for this purpose but they were a bit too expensive and I didn't think I'd use that many.

 So there you have it :) My brand new Erin Condren planner for 2014-2015. I love it so far and can't wait to really get it all set up and start using it!