The Story:

I had been wanting a Midori Travelers Notebook for a long time, so right before Christmas, I ordered one. Not really knowing what I would be using it for, I just started ordering inserts, thinking I would just fill it up and see what happened.

Well, just about everything arrived right before the beginning of the new year. And not being in much of a mood to journal at the time, I just started jotting down snippets of my day

It wasn’t until a few weeks had passed that I had realized I had something here. For the most part, I had been listing out things I was grateful for!

Like the Christmas do-over visit with my daughter and her family just before the New Year!

There were a couple of mundane exceptions to my notes, but those were easy to remove, I use a erasable pens…always! Worst speller ever!

Going back and decorating and journaling was a breeze because all I had to do was refer to the notes.

I just matched up the dates referred to with photos on my phone and printed them up!

The way this whole thing came to me was total happenstance. I just happened to look at my Flow magazine app and there was a quote from Hailey Bartholomew of the 365 Grateful project. She started her gratitude project by taking a photo a day of what she was grateful for.

I thought about all the photos I had in my phone from the last few weeks, and the connections were made!

This is something I purchased last fall, but had not really used it much. It’s a bit pricey, but we made it an anniversary gift. You can find it here.

Here are a few items I use to set my pages up. The clips help keep the pages down while working on them. The plant just makes me happy!

Last week’s page spread. If you can read my chicken scratch, you can see that I came up with this plan on the 27th. I spent the following days re-writing a few of the notes and adding much of the decor.

Every night, I just jot down a few notes before bed, then go back later in the week when I have more time or the mood strikes, and journal and decorate. This project can be done just as well in an inexpensive composition notebook.

Going through all my photos, re-reading what I had jotted down, and pulling this project together has really been a labor of love! Because there is no plan, other than paying attention to the details of my day in order to see things to be grateful for, it’s a very stress free project. And it’s easing me back to journaling, total win!

 I really hope you will visit 365 Gratitude and watch some of the videos, they are truly inspiring! Please let me know what you think.

Thank you once again for stopping by,

Have a grateful day,

~Patty