Plan-It 7x9 inch planners

You may have seen my previous posts on the Plan-It planners, which are excellent. Now I'm very excited that this year they have added a new, larger size planner to their lineup!

Click here to see my review of the 5 1/2 by 8 inch Plan-It planners. The new larger planners measure 7 by 9 inches, with the same great layout.

These planners go from August 2011 through the end of July 2012. They have the same great layout and features of the other Plan-It planners, with more space to write.

Below are the Plan-It 2011-2012 (7"x9") Fashion Day Planner with the Paisley Bird cover
and the Plan-It 2011-2012 (7"x9") Fashion Day Planner with the Black cover

Inside the front cover there is a 2011 year at a glance reference calendar. The first page has spaces to write your contact info and where to find Plan-It online including their website www.plan-itplanners.com, Facebook and Twitter.

The next page has a list of holidays during the school year, then a page to record your class schedule:

At the beginning of each month, embedded in the weeks are monthly calendars with the month across the two-page spread. This has loads of great features like space for notes, holidays printed on the days, and monthly tabs to help you find the month you're looking for when planning ahead. We all know how much I love monthly tabs!!

The weekly spread has loads of room to write, and the weekend days are big!  Hooray!

At the back of the book there are a couple of pages for addresses and notes:

The last page is a handy place to write frequently used numbers.  Inside the back cover is a reference calendar for 2012.

The book measures only 5/16 of an inch thick, so even though the pages are larger the book is still extremely lightweight and portable. The rounded corners make it even more streamlined so it will have no problem going everywhere with you in your bag.

So, if you are looking for a planner with a large weekly layout, months on two pages, in the academic year format with pretty covers (and at a GREAT price) you'll definitely want to check out the Plan-It 7x9 inch planners!  Well done Plan-It!

Many thanks to Plan-It for sending me these products as samples to review!

What's your most treasured planner?

Today I was reading through my Ghost of Planners Past series and looking at the planners themselves. These are some of my most treasured planners along with my Septanote, my French Textagenda I used in grad school and my day per page planner I used the year my daughter was born.

Steve wrote a couple of posts on Philofaxy discussing the value of using your planner as a diary and showing some pages from the Filofax diary inserts he used during the year his son was born which contain some very special memories.

Do you have planners from times in your life that you treasure?

Have you chosen your 2012 planner yet?

'Tis the season to get next year's planner, if you haven't already!

Students or parents with kids in school probably already have next year's planner, or an academic-year planner to be able to plan the entire school year all in one book. 17 or 18 month planners are especially useful because you can use them to plan the school year and the rest of next year too.

Folks who use calendar-year planners are buying next year's now as future appointments start popping up into the new year.

Do you know what planner you will use next year? Have you bought it yet? Will you use the same planner as this year or are you looking for something new?

If you need some help deciding what planner to use, you're in the right place! I have lots of suggestions.

Take a look in the sidebar under Helpful Posts to see tips on choosing your planner. These posts will help you decide what format (daily, weekly, monthly), size and layout (vertical or horizontal days) will work best for you.

If you want to see reviews of specific planners, look at Browse Planner Brands and Formats.

And if you have any questions or want some advice, please leave a comment! I'll be happy to help.

So, what planner are YOU going to use in 2012?

Monsieur leather notebook

When I opened this handsome notebook, my husband immediately said, "That's mine."  He's normally a Moleskine man so I was a little surprised when he was so adamant about this notebook! Except not really. I should have known he would nab this one because it is Just. That. Cool.

Monsieur Notebooks (http://monsieurnotebook.com/)  are hand bound in India from a single piece of vegetable-tanned leather.  The leather is thick and soft with natural markings on it and has that great leather smell to it.  I'll show you the other great features of this notebook in a sec but first I want to point out the price of these notebooks: In the UK these are priced at 9.99 pounds for the A6 size, 12.99 for A5 and 21.99 for A4!  Those are spectacular prices for real, handmade leather notebooks!

Here is the back of the notebook where you can see more information on the band.

The cover is flexible without being floppy:

Here is the cover without the packaging. The color and texture of the leather are amazing. There is an elastic closure.

On the back cover you can see the only branding is the logo subtly embossed in the bottom right corner.

Inside the front cover there is a place to write your name and any other information you like such as contact information, contents etc.

Inside the front cover is the brand marking:

The pages are lined with 6 mm ruling (same width as Moleskine ruling). The paper is very light ivory, lighter in color than Moleskine paper.  There is a real ribbon placemarker which is color matched to the cover, a very elegant touch.

The entire look of the book is sophisticated and luxurious. And again I just can't get over the price! You get an amazing notebook for the money.

My husband took this to work with him before I could do any ink tests on it, but you can see how it performs with a variety of inks in these excellent reviews by Ms Logica and Notebooktivity.  The paper in this notebook is 90 gsm, thick and smooth.

Starting this month the Monsieur Notebooks collection will include fountain pen friendly notebooks with 100 gsm paper! The notebooks are available in a variety of sizes and papers, portrait and landscape layouts. The leather covers come in this brown color as well as black, green, pink, turquoise, navy blue and red.  Click here for more information on the selection available.

Monsieur Notebooks are available at PaperNation.co.uk and you can also click here to see more retailers. There are stockists throughout the UK and Ireland, and even in Hungary!

Many thanks to Monsieur Notebooks for sending me this excellent notebook to review. From my impressions and my husband's immediate reaction, I'll say you have a winner here!

Philofaxy All Stars Guest Post: Imy's Filofax Flex!

Many thanks to Imy of Imy's World for this Philofaxy All Stars guest post of her Filofax Flex!!! I haven't seen any of the Flex products in person so I was very interested in her post!  Here's Imy:

I am doing a guest post for the Philofaxy AllStars Tour!

I wanted to write a review on the Flex by Filofax for a long time then I offered to do it for Plannerisms and luckily she said YES!



I have it in the LOVELY Magenta, it also comes in Black and Slate!

Mine is A5 but it also comes in Pocket and Slim, the range of sizes Is very similar to Personal, Pocket and A5 Filofaxes!

The cover is priced at £27.00 which comes with a Pen Holder and a Jot Pad!

I ordered the Note Book, Pull out 2011 Diary and a 2011/2012 Diary!

The Notebook comes in different thicknesses a layouts, you can choose between plain or ruled. The thicknesses you can choose from are either 80 pages or 256 pages! I only have the Ruled 80 Pages, as you can see its just the right thickness as it is!

If you want to replace the Jot pads after using them, it will cost £10 and you get a set of 3 with ONLY 16 sheets, they do tear off but this feels like quite a high price for what it is! It may be very nice paper but still I find it far too expensive!

To get extra pen holders its £3, but you can only get extra ones in GREY! There is one other thing you can do with them, and that is hole punch them, and put them in a Filofax so you can have extra pen loops, also once you have done that you could stick post its on the card! Well that is a small idea I have!

So I will now compare it to my A5 Adelphi to show you the size comparison, which to be honest isn’t too much different!



The only difference really is length they are virtually the same width!



As you can see its actually thicker than the Adelphi, which is a Slimline A5, there both the same width.



Here is the pen loop and the Jot Pad which I REALLY do not like because of the price, its just so ridiculous! But I’m sure you can find a similar note pad! But still I was not happy with the width and the cost of it!

I find that the pen holder is really tight tho and it struggles to put thicker pens in even though its elastic, its not very stretchy elastic!

There are plenty of pockets inside the Flex there are 6 credit card slots and a larger slot below!

There are 4 slots for diaries and notepads, contact pages etc, what ever you want to put in!

You can also fit different standard A5 notebooks in!



I love the colours of the covers for the notepads and diaries it goes so well with the pink.

The inside of the notepad.



I love the inside coves to the notepads too, it just reminds me of something from school!





The paper inside the notebook and diary and all the other paper used for these books is beautiful! There so lovely to write on, there like the Cotton Cream paper, its so nice to write on and feels very nice and smooth for writing on!

But then the majority of the paper in the normal Filofax is lovely like the colour but obviously the diary paper on normal Filofax pages are a lot thinner and not very nice, I think Filofax should really start to make pages using the paper in the Flex!

It would be great if the diary had holes in and also so you are able to rip it out! I know that a lot of other people have had that idea as well! So its obviously a great idea!

I find that when you move the flex a bit it can cause a bit of trouble as the notebooks can slide out and you have to keep pushing them back in!



The diary is just your usually week to view layout, with a notes section which gives you 8 equal boxes, on the pages it shows you the month to view, In the notes section!

It’s the same lovely paper, I don’t need to bore you all with the paper again hehe

The week to view diary I have looks like this: -



it’s the same lovely paper and there is plenty of room to write peoples birthday and other events!

What I would love to see from the new edition of the Flex if they carry on with it is: -

Leather covers
Day per page, but in 12 books, so you only have to carry one month at a time
Month to two pages, with a whole 12 months in
Finance books
Travel book
City planner
Similar things to what you get with the Filofax but set things! It would add so much to it!

Cannot wait to see Edition 2!

But for now I cannot leave my perfect A5 Adelphi!



See are you can see I wrote all this in my Filofax rather than my Flex but I don’t think I will be changing unless they add so many more things!

I agree with what others have said it’s a glorified notebook! But I feel as if it had other things done it may become a great change from a Filofax!

But all the Filofax lovers out there, the one thing that may be useful are, like uni maybe as a notebook as its such lovely paper or college just for making notes outside of your Filofax!

I hope you have enjoyed it!

Thank you so much Laurie for letting me write for Plannerisms!

Many thanks again to Imy for this wonderfully detailed post and excellent photos!

How do you store your planners?

Reader Tina emailed me recently asking how I store my planners long-term.  I actually keep all of my planners and notebooks out on shelves (as shown here) because I refer to them often. I do keep my journals in a fireproof safe though, just in case.

But it's a great question, and I'd love to know how you store your old planners, notebooks and/ or journals long-term. Do you use lidded bins?  A cardboard box? An archival storage system of some kind?

Please leave a comment!

Copyright notice

I hate to do a post about this, but unfortunately it is necessary.

I have discovered that someone (who I will not name here) has lifted text from my blog and used it in their own blog post, then called it a "guest post." I'm sure they meant no harm by it, but please realize this is copyright infringement.  The person did credit me, but because they used my actual text without asking my permission, it violates copyright laws.

I only just discovered this because I follow them on Twitter and clicked on one of their tweets about a new blog post. Imagine my surprise to see my own text incorporated into their post as a "guest post" from me.

If you would like to refer to my posts in your own blog, you can create a link to my actual post. If you would like me to write a guest post for your blog, please contact me and I would be more than happy to talk to you about it.

But please, whatever you do, don't use my actual text in your post without asking me first. Even if you credit me, it's still copyright infringement.

Please respect online authors and our materials.

Thank you!!!

**Note: I previously had my Copyright notice at the bottom of my main page, and I have now moved it up to the top of my sidebar so it is visible to everyone who reads my blog, to avoid any confusion!