December Bookish Bullet Journal

I have been keeping a bullet journal for almost 4 years now and even this year I have found it to be extremely helpful, particularly in keeping a work life balance now that I have spent over 9 months working from home. My Bullet journal is also where I keep notes on my reading, book notes so I can write my reviews and all planning for my blog.

My bullet journaling style is quite minimalist. Therefore I don’t do monthly Bullet journal posts as they tend to look very similar just different colours. I will occasionally do a post if I branch out and do something special for the month. December can be a pretty hectic month, My husband and I usually just have Christmas day the two of us so I have to plan all the cooking for those few days, then there is presents to buy, books to read, movies to watch and all those other Festive activities to find time for. I have also decided to do Blogmas again this year, I have my 12 books of Christmas, and the annual blog wrap up to plan out as well so to make it all special I have drawn up some fun festive spreads in my bullet journal.

Monthly spread and Reading tracking

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For my usual December spread I decided to pick the colour scheme pale blue and silver to give it that Frosty feeling. I have been doing the Art deco inspired cover pages all year and I really love them. I am going to have to come up with something equally as pretty for 2021. The rest is fairly standard I have my calendar, two lists for blog posts and events/appointments I need to keep track of, my TBR and books read page next to that then my pages read tracker which I fill in as a graph.

A new addition to this spread is the 12 Books of Bookmas tracker. I am running a fun mystery TBR this month, which you can read more about Here , and needed a way to keep track of the books I unwrap. After that we are on two our weekly spreads. Usually I would not write these all in advance instead I usually create them on the Sunday night before the week ahead. But as I am doing some special Christmas and New year planning spreads I decided to try out writing all the weeks together.

The Week up to Christmas

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I adore the cover page for this section. I modified my art deco inspired design to have the cute Christmas tree element just to make that week feel extra special. I changed the colour scheme to Gold, Green and red (will us a red pen to fill in planning details later) again to add the Christmassy feel to it all. I am so lucky to be off work that whole week. The University I work for decided to close early and give us all a few extra days to chill out after the hectic mess 2020 has been. This means instead of rushing around on the weekends leading up to Christmas making all the various elements of our Christmas dinner, boxing day treats (we have a very unconventional Christmas dinner that combines all out favourites from our two family traditions and some new things of our own and 90% of it is home made in advance so it can just be put in the over Christmas Day) etc I can take my time throughout the Christmas week making something each day and this gives me the space to plan it all out.

I also have given myself space for the ongoing task list of all the things I will have to do and prep. Including a space for gifts. As its a mostly online Christmas this year I have included tick boxes to make sure I have ordered, received, shipped and wrapped all those that need it so nothing gets lost! Finally I have a page to jot down the movies I want to watch, various other activities I want to make time for (zoom calls with family and friends etc) And my Blogmas schedule and ideas page! Its going to be a busy week for sure but I am going to enjoy planning it all out

Hogmanay

Hogmanay is the Scottish New Years festival. It runs from the 30th of December to the 2nd of January. Edinburgh is usually buzzing during Hogmanay with the torchlight procession up Calton hill on the 30th where you can join a huge procession of people with fire torches as they walk through old town and up on to the Hill. The 31st usually has the Street party on Princes St, the Ceilidh on the Royal Mile followed by the lone piper at the castle at midnight with the cannon ringing in the new year and a huge fireworks display from the Castle. There is the tradition of first footing in on the 1st bringing Whiskey and goodies to friends and neighbours, with traditional steak pie dinners across the country and on the 2nd of January we recover! Things will be a little different this year, with only the Lone Piper and the Cannon staying on the Schedule and our first footing being done over Zoom and Facetime!

I will miss the fireworks the most I will miss the fireworks the most as I have the most amazing view of them from my living room in previous years. But I am glad the Scottish Government is being responsible, hopefully most people will do the same.

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This means my journal is a little less busy those few days. I have therefore just added a couple of spreads mainly to help me organise my usual end of the year blog wrap up. Again, I kept the Art Deco style with lots of space in the days to record my reading and then space to plan out my posts.

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So that is my December 2020 Bullet Journal. I will most likely post my yearly set up of my new Journal in January, So you can seem my yearly overview spreads and how I track my reading. I will need to have a play about with what to do for my title pages next year as I am going to be sad leaving the Art Deco theme behind.

Do you have any special plans for the festive season this year?

I would love to chat all things bookish with you! You can comment down below or find me on Twitter or Goodreads!

Happy Reading!