Bonjour BuJo (n°6): Setting Up the Future (& Birthday) Log

Rainy Saturdays call for time to slow down. With the Gilmore Girls keeping me company, I'm wrapped up in my favorite soft blanket and journaling away. In case you are spending your Saturday similarly, I wanted to get the next step in the BuJo set up series up on the blog. 

My goal today was to share my future log, but then a happy accident occurred. As I finished drawing out my future log spreads (intended for pages 1-4), I realized I had accidentally skipped pages 1-2. Now my future log was on pages 3-6 and I had two hanging pages. I told you, these things happen constantly. No worries, though, because there is always a creative solution. I had been wanting to include a birthday log in this journal anyway, so rather than place it after the future log I used those two blank pages and placed it before. Problem solved, and now you get a bonus BuJo feature! 

(Future Log)

The future log is not something that all journalers have found useful. I, however, used this tool regularly in my first journal and knew I would want to incorporate it again. The purpose of the future log is to have a space where you can jot down events & important dates that are occurring in the future. This is handy because the bullet journal is created as you go. When I'm creating pages for June but make a hair appointment for August, I want to be able to get that date down so I won't forget later. The future log is just the spot. 

(Future Log - This cute washi was purchased at Hobby Lobby.)

The future log begins the month your journal begins. Because I will be starting to use this journal in June, my future log starts with June and runs through January. I set it up for eight months in my first journal and that was just about perfect (I ended up squeezing in one more month). I went with eight months again here. I was inspired by a layout I saw on Pinterest and decided to carry out the color scheme & theme I had use on the rest of my "set up" pages. Schemes & themes keep me from getting lost in all of the possibilities. I will talk more about this when we set up our monthly and daily spreads. I'm not exactly sure what I will do with the "notes" section, but I like how it visually balanced out the layout. If I don't use it, I won't include it next time. It's that simple. 

(Birthday Log)

And now to make those two blank pages look like they had an intended purpose all along! They made the perfect home for this simple but handy birthday spread (which uses a Create 365 stamp set purchased at Michael's and Versa Magic ink). I love doing small, fun things for my family and friends to make their birthdays extra special. This will help me keep track of all of those very special dates. (The cake stamp pictured is from a set I found in the dollar bin at Target.) 

I hope you are enjoying your Saturday, rain or shine. Whatever you are doing, I hope it is exactly what you needed. :) Happy journaling, and please share your layouts and designs with me. I would love to see! You can tag your photos with #fdstlbujosetupseries on Instagram. Thank you for reading and sharing!

Warm wishes from me to you,

Lauren