August has been a busybusy month! Between wedding invitations, envelope addressing, custom Etsy orders, and getting out in the hot sun, there aren't enough hours in the day. I'm also working on getting more product created, calligraphed, printed before the end of the month. phew! I've never needed to plan and organize my days as much as these past few months. There's just so many things to keep on top of- the jumble of work orders, appointments, tasks. Since I have spent a good amount of time thinking about and working through this, I thought I would share the ways I (try to) stay organized.

My moleskine planner is my WORLD. Many who know me can attest to my inability to retain stuff (anything) if I haven't written it down. Which is why I need a good old fashioned planner. I'm usually making my weekly plans on a Sunday or early Monday morning, and then check out my planner everyday to see what I want to tackle that day. I also add more notes and appointments in the daily section.

It's not just a planner to me; it's where I keep track of books I want to read, birthdays, and awesome quotes I've come across. It's my treasure chest!

My only complaint about this planner is that it can't handle any ink much thicker than a ball point pen. Major bummer for a calligrapher! But I found these amazing pens in Japan that have been making me so happy everytime I use them. They are Pilot Frixion pens, and they are ERASABLE with the little plastic ball on the end. It's the coolest thing ever, and of course, I bought it in every colour.

I manually 'sync' (ha-ha) my planner with my google calendar. I use this online calendar for when I'm out and about and need to keep track of something, add a meeting or appointment, or add a note. It works pretty great, and bonus! I can add cute emoticons to events and meetings.

I've tried using some online applications previously but haven't been successful at updating it (how many organization methods can one use??). Trello is a really great online tool which I've tried to use in the past; I might give this one another try because I love the idea of having all the updates from one project in one place (rather than rummaging through a file or emails, which is my current, super inefficient, method).

This week I am re-printing my business cards on some nice stock I found at Aboveground, and printing some linocuts that have been sitting around for ages. Excited to get that done and up on my Etsy shop soon! Also got a lot of custom invitation stuff going on, I'm looking forward to sharing some of that work soon! I've started keeping a little journal by my bed- with the crazy busy days, it's hard for me to shut off my brain immediately at the end of the day (it's been a shocker to my typical asleepin30seconds self!). The stuff's pretty illegible because of my half closed eyes operating in bad lighting, but it's so great to get it out of my head! And who knows, maybe there's something there!

I'd love to hear about other organization methods- please feel free to drop in a comment below on your favourite way to make sense of crazy busy days!

Have a lovely, productive week!

Pri