VB Close Up: Monthly Overview Set Up

Hi everyone!

Today I’m going to be sharing how I set up my November monthly view featuring items from the October Cafe Papershire VBKit. I’m using a Cloth + Paper monthly desk pad & everything else is from VillabeauTIFFul.

I use a few different calendars & methods of tracking events & important dates. Obviously I keep a lot in my personal planner, but I also have a wall calendar in my kitchen for family things, a school calendar in the virtual learning area, my phone calendar where I mark appointments on-the-go, & then random screenshots & notes of different events happening that I took so I don’t forget to write down later. While I do like to keep some things separate for quickly looking up something specific, it can get chaotic if I don’t also have an overview to go with it. Every month I like to do a calendar sync so I can get a good view of what my month will look like with everything put together.

So to prep this monthly view, I added “November” at the top of the undated desk pad & then used my VBPen to number the calendar for all the dates.

I always start off by marking down pay days & bill due dates. I used the VB Pay Day stickers & some of the circles & icons from the VBKits to indicate these days.

The transparent shape stickers are great for making a calendar key code! This helps so I don’t have to write down recurring items, especially in smaller spaces - I can just add a sticker to indicate what’s happening that day.

Next up are the important dates & holidays happening throughout the month. I used a variety of VB stickers to mark Election Day, Veteran’s Day, & Thanksgiving.

I used some of the VBKit sticker book headers to label the sidebar of the desk pad as “Plan for This” & “Memo.” The transparent word stickers are small so they fit really well in monthly views, as you can see where I marked a vet appointment.

Then, I filled in the writing for the November birthdays. I used the transparent shape stickers for these as well. Shout out to Facebook for having a list of your FB friend birthdays available!

I also used VB stickers to mark a couple of the VB events happening this month over in the top of the sidebar. The VB Calendar is an awesome page to bookmark & reference throughout the month so you can keep up with all the VB releases & events.

I trimmed down a page flag & used a UNI Pin oil based ink marking pen to write “VBKit Extras” & stuck it over at the bottom of the sidebar. This way all I have to do when the VB Newsletter goes out with all the dates is move the flag to the appropriate day!

Page flags are great for pre-planning events when you don’t have a firm date set or for monthly recurring events because you can transfer the flags from one month to the next as needed.

I used one of the large double box stickers from the VBKit sticker book to make a quick To Do list for the month.

Then, it’s time to add your deco! This can be as decorative or functional as you prefer. I added some of the skinny washi to the bottom of the desk pad & just a few deco stickers. Everything else in this calendar serves a functional purpose so I can clearly see what is happening & when.

So whether you’re using a planner monthly view, a desk pad, or a wall calendar, hopefully this gives you some additional ideas for ways to utilize the VBKit & VB stickers to help achieve a functional overview of your monthly plans.

Thanks for reading!