{GIVEAWAY} – Personal Planner: Never Forget Your Mom’s Birthday Again

Guys, this is not the first time I’ve raved about Personal Planner [ Facebook / Twitter / Insta ] and their dayplanners with incredible customization options. Actually, it’s the third – I was the lucky winner of a giveaway on Andi’s site (and she actually just finished running another Personal Planner giveaway – check out her beautiful 2016 planner she created), and wrote about my 2014 planner here. I also wrote about my 2015 planner here. So I’m sure you can guess what today’s post is about – my 2016 planner!

I figured the last two posts would give you a good idea of what the planner look like in real life – beautiful and glossy, with high quality paper. This time, as I wait for my new one to be delivered, I thought I would show you how I made mine, and all the choices you get as you go along creating your planner.

I took some screencaps as I went through the process to give you an idea of the kinds of things you can choose. First off – VERY important – cover page! You can upload your own photo (recognize mine?) or choose one of their approximately bajillion designs and colors, and then add your title:

After that, it’s time to make a decision about how you want your pages laid out – do you want the days vertically or horizontally? 5-day week or 7-day week? Sunday or Monday start date? You can also choose the banners at the top of the pages – the options have increased significantly from last year and I had a hard time deciding! You can add in detail boxes for each day like exercise or working hours. You can also see that I have my ‘Personal Dates’ added into the book – the very first year I input important birthdays and anniversaries, and now every year when I log in they are all still there with the option to have them printed directly onto the right days in the planner.

From here, you move to the little boxes running along the bottom of each page. I switched mine up a little bit from last year, but I love the dinner planner and to-do list, so I couldn’t get rid of those!

Then I had a big decision to make: the back pages. The backs of these planners are chock-full of extras. Last year I had a next-2-years-overview, maps, and lined paper. I didn’t use the overview much, or the maps, but I used the note paper. This year a coloring book (!!!) was an option so I decided to try that one. I was also happy to see they took many people’s suggestion into this year’s planner, and there is now a monthly overview for each month (see option 3 below).

A fun little quirk that you get to personalize is the owner info page at the front. I left mine exactly the same as last year!

It doesn’t end there – you get to choose the back cover too! Mine was a little homage to my ‘other’ home in Canada – Roatan life on the front, and Canadian life on the back.

As you can see, you get a ton of options and choices and a really well-rounded dayplanner for under $40 (including shipping!) for the larger size that I chose. There are other sizes and prices available as well. They also make customized non-agenda notebooks too. SO MANY CHOICES!!

So I’m sure you want one too now, right? Well, if you just can’t wait for the giveaway, the lovely folks at Personal Planner are offering a 15% discount code for Cubicle Throwdown readers!! Use the code D-BSAL-ASFT at the checkout to get 15% off your order. This code is valid until August 31, 2015.

Wanna try your luck at the giveaway? Personal Planner and I are giving away one free planner of the winner’s choice – any size/style/customization – including shipping!

Giveaway rules: to enter, please ‘Like’ the Personal Planner Facebook page (and you should probably ‘Like’ the Cubicle Throwdown one too while you’re over there), and leave me a comment below telling me that you’ve liked the Personal Planner page, and your best ‘If I Would Have Had A Dayplanner _________ Would Not Have Happened’ story. I have been getting a kick out of reading these stories every year. If you wrote a story last year, tell me a joke this year! [Please make sure you use a valid email address that you actually check for Disqus when leaving your comment, or I won’t be able to contact you if you win.]

Giveaway closes on September 15, 2015.