Hello, my lovelies!
It’s good to see you for our Weekend Coffee Share! How has your week been? Mine’s been chaotic yet again, but a lot of good has happened as well!
If we were having coffee today, we wouldn’t stay at mine. There’s a flea market on the upper part of my street and the Nordstadtfest (a festival for the northern part of the city) in the city centre. While it’s overcast again after we’ve had 33°C here yesterday, it’s dry out and my neighbours are selling a lot of books this year! And we’ll get a coffee and waffles to go from the neighbours – they’re busy baking away at the main intersection and you can smell the fresh waffles all down the street!
If we were having coffee today I’d confess that I already took a stroll across the flea market and bought nine books – some of which are even in English! I knew this is a fairly multi-cultural background, but I expected to see a lot more Turkish and Russian books on offer than English and German.
If we were having coffee today, I’d tell you that I didn’t get much done this week. I’ve been called out repeatedly to help family and friends, I’ve been working overtime and when I do get a free minute my concentration and energy is pretty much non-existent. I guess this has to do with my meal plan as I do no longer take sugar in coffee or tea, don’t eat bread, rice or pasta, I’m not allowed fruit and that means that none of my usual study snacks are available to me. And I notice the difference. While the first two weeks were ok, I’m now struggling. I need to get on with my work for university, but I just stare at blank pages – I’ve got Student’s Block, so to say. I also have to wait at least 3 hours between my last snack and my dinner shake. That may be ok if you go to bed at 10pm and usually have dinner at 6pm, but when you’re up until 3am you end up having dinner extremely early but no snacks before or after to keep you going, or extremely late because you forgot about the 3 hour rule. And with snacks I mean mostly carrots and celery sticks, though on tough assignments the occasional piece of chocolate helped as well.
If we were having coffee I’d tell you that my Midori Traveler’s Notebook arrived and it is a beauty! I’m totally in love with it!! It’s the brown leather version and it smells like proper leather and is the perfect format for me. I’m glad I listened to Corina and splurged! I’m still waiting for craft supplies to make my own notebooks, but I’ve already had a play around with QuarkXpress to design pages. So far, I’ve got an expenses tracker, a weekly planner, and a daily hobonichi style calendar. I’m working on a travel diary.
And this brings me to my next big (potential) news: Once everything is in place I’m looking to open an online shop on Etsy and Dawanda (basically a German Etsy) for notebooks and insert for all sorts of planners from MTN to Filofax and everything in between! I’m crunching numbers and consulting with friends at the moment, but even my tax advisor mum is all for it!
So here’s my question: what do you use your planner / notebook for? And if it’s a refillable one, which sort of inserts do you go for and which ones would you like to see on offer? I’ve had a fair few ideas already, ranging from address book inserts, to study/project planners, calendars and travel journals, but I’d like to know what you lovely creative people use them for!
As you’ll see from my blog posts, for the first time in months I’ve not posted every day. This is due to that lack of energy and concentration I talked about earlier. I sit here and I read and I get distracted and then I check my watch and three hours have passed with nothing to show for them.
But my summer travel planning continues! Next to the unexpected trip to Manchester and the (now fully booked) trip to London, Cardiff and Brighton, my best friend and her husband are coming to visit me at the end of August. That I knew. However, it now turns out they are staying a day longer than previously planned so we have that extra day. I’d also already offered to drive them to their next destination, Amsterdam in The Netherlands, as I’ve never been and driving there will be cheaper than taking the train. So when I told my best friend I’d head home that night she insisted I stayed overnight in Amsterdam (I checked into a hostel 170m from their hotel) and we can spend that extra time together as well. So yes, thanks to my bestie I not only get to go to Manchester, but I’m now also staying in Amsterdam! So in return, next to showing them around Cologne and Düsseldorf, I’ll take them on a day trip to Luxembourg, as neither of them has been there before and I love helping people tick off countries on their bucket lists!
Well, this concludes our circuit of the festival and flea market. You’re welcome to come inside for another cuppa, but if you want to move on to Part Time Monster and the other Weekend Coffee Sharers I won’t hold it against you!
I’ll be here, trying to get some studying done.
Thank you for having coffee with me. Same time, next week?
Study. Read. Write. 
I use notebook inserts for blog planning. 🙂 (I like to print them out on 8.5″ x 11″ paper and keep them in a three-ring binder.) I’d also love to find some good financial calendar/tracking pages for my finance notebooks. I use three-ring binders for just about everything now, so printables are fantastic. I’m also on Etsy, so I’d be happy to throw some Etsy love your way once you get started. 😀
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Oh, blog planning! That’s good. I thought about doing notebooks and printable downloads in a variety of sizes. Do you have a link for your etsy?
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It’s a bit of a hot mess right now as I’m in the midst of updating products (which is taking me forever), but here it is: https://www.etsy.com/shop/NerdintheBrain
If you have any Etsy questions, feel free to ask! 😀
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I would not be able to survive on your diet. I can do without sugar, grains, pasta, bread and rice, but not without fruit. I eat several kilos each day. I can’t imagine not having them at all. There are days I eat more fruit than anything else.
Your summer sounds fun with all the travelling. I bet it’ll be fun.
BTW, I love DaWanda. I recently bought a beautiful and very flattering dress on there.
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From today onwards I at least get 1 apple per day. But yeah, it’s been hard! We’ll probably see each other at the blogger meet up in London if you’re still going. I got my tickets and I’ll be staying pretty much opposite the British Library 🙂
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So what do you do for snacks? Just veggies?
I’m still trying to figure out where to stay when in London. I have a few options, but nothing is for sure until the tickets are bought. I’ll be going with my husband and son.
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Mainly carrots and celery, yes, though I did recently find them veggie crisps/chips which are really low in fat so they’re an alternative.
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Exciting that you get to get even more traveling in! I only use my planner to write in the occasional appointment, so I’m probably no help to you 🙂
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Hi Sabina, believe it or not, you are help to me! So if I understand correctly, you’d go for a simple calendar with enough space to fill appointments in?
And yes, I am so excited that I get to travel again! It’s been too long!
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Correct. My planner for school is small (about 3 in. x 6 in.), so it’s all important due dates and appointment times. I use a notebook as a to-do list and cross off from there.
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I use my planner a lot, but I haven’t really gone for the refillable ones yet. I’m considering. If I were to, some things I’d want would be specific blog planning calendar pages and pages for the Little Jedi’s stuff so that I can have them all in the same place but not all on the same calendar.
Hope this week is a bit more relaxing for you!!
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Thank you for your input, Diana! I really appreciate it! For a long time, I used stand-alone planners and notebooks, but they added up in my handbag and I couldn’t replace the parts that filled quickly. I’m quite glad I switched to the refillable ones as I just replace what I need when I need it and keep the rest in tact.
What sort of calendar would that be for the Little Jedi? Simply a calendar you can keep his appointments in, or more like a planner with To Do Lists, friend’s addresses etc?
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Maybe a combination of the two? I have to keep up with when he’s going to his dad’s or his grandparents, and then of course there are play dates and school functions and snack days. He likes to see that stuff too, to see what’s going on in his little world, so an insert that he could look at too would be good—bright colors and plenty of space, easy reading.
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Thank you! I’ll have a think about how best to put something like that together 🙂
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thanks for the coffee, and wow are you busy! I do miss German bakeries and coffee shops, Starbucks is not the same, which is why I am looking forward to moving to LA (among other things), at least there they have discovered what a coffee shop should be like.
Notebooks? Well, I have one huge binder for everything, and it is getting thicker by the minute, I think it is four inch in width? Think the standard thick binders in German offices for “Akten”, I hope I got that right. Enjoy your visits and travels!
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Hi Claudia! Thanks for having coffee with me. I understand completely, German bakeries and cafés (not chains) were among the things I missed the most when I was living in the UK! And yes, you got Akte right. 🙂
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