SHOP THE ITEMS
Summer is here! I have to admit, I know that school essentially makes us look forward to summer for our young lives, but now that I'm in my 30s, I really don't like it. I live in the south, so it's hot and humid and for that reason, I will be admiring summer stickers from the comfort of my air conditioned home.
That does mean that this kit is right up my alley! Even though we have no trips planned this year, this kit brings me back to the trip my husband and I took to the Virgin Islands the first year we got married and I love it!
This theme will be in the shop on Friday5/10 at 12PMcst and officially this challenge will last from July - September
It's a little weird counting September as summer. Even though it will definitely be summer temperatures for me, media has made me believe summer ends on September 1st but well, it does technically end on September 23rd so it counts.
This way we'll be able to keep our challenges going across a single calendar year so Spring was April - June, Summer will be July - September and Fall will be October - December. Then Winter will be January 2025 - March 2025.
We'll be hosting a planning party in the Creating & Co Book club and that will likely be late August or early September, so no worries, we won't be using a tropical kit when a lot of you guys already have fall weather.
(A planning party is when we show off our planners using the theme and chat about the group read. There's threads all week to win shop credit and it's a lot of fun!)
As always, you can do the challenge on whatever dates makes most sense to you!
Anyway, let's move on from all that and start showing off the items! Here's the weekly kit:
I really wanted this kit to feel like a vacation and I think I succeeded! I can just imagine holing up in a beach cabin somewhere while the wildlife frolics around outside and reading to my heart's content!
For our weekly kit, we'll have the vertical option (shown above) and our new deco format. Our deco format can be bought by the page -- so if you don't want a certain page, just don't pick it up. It's the best for making a kit work for your planner.
We'll also have our new mini weekly kit that is perfect for planners that have a width of about 1.0" (or even 1.25" - 1.3" like the hobo cousin or vertical fully booked planners) and we'll have some checklist boxes and extra reading stickers to pick up if you want too.
As for the challenge itself, we will have a group read for it, though if you choose not to read the group read you can count it as a free space. We will start voting on the group read in the Creating & Co Book Club after the theme goes live.
There will be 5 prompts other than the group read. I asked in the book club how many prompts you guys wanted in our seasonal challenges and most of you said six but don't worry, if you're a big reader, I have another option for you too!
In case this is your first challenge with us, here's how it works:
- Each prompt has something that you're going to find on a book cover. Let's say the prompt is "jewel". You'll find a book that has jewels on the cover.
- Write the title of the book on your challenge table and read the book
- Pick up the book sticker and place it over the faded book on the side of the prompt
- Repeat until you finish all the prompts!
Our most common size is our 4.75" x 6.75" dashboard + book stickers -- this is the one shown below! It fits perfectly in our build your own book journal too! I also use it in my a5 bullet journal.
We will also have a couple of other sizes:
- A 7" x 9" version that you can use in most common planners--Erin Condren, Happy Planner, Yellow Paper House, Paper House Productions, etc.
- A "books only" option that has some book shaped labels and a header so you can arrange them however you'd like in your planner
You can also feel free to draw your own layout and join the event and chat with us!
Each of our challenges come with a badge sticker that is handy for keeping track of the challenges you've completed through the year. You can make your own layout to keep track or pick up one of our tracking dashboards (larger size) and fill it in as the year goes on!
So there's no confusion, here's the official explanation of our Summer prompts:
- Leaf - a book that has a leaf on the cover. Like the kit, I'll be looking for a palm leaf if I can, but I didn't want to limit you to a type of leaf when there are so many kinds out there so feel free to use any leaf!
- Water - There's a ton of kits that have bodies of water on them or even just water droplets as part of the design, so that's what we're looking for! I was googling summer covers and especially noticed a bunch of beaches on covers, so those count too!
- Sparkle - Even though this isn't a sparkly kit, I thought we could easily look for some sparkles! This could be actual glitter on the cover or just some drawn on sparkle or star embellishments!
- Transportation - This is represented by a car in the challenge, but I didn't want to limit you here either. You can do a car or a plane or even a boat!
- Drink - We had food on one of the other seasonal challenges, so it's time to look for a drink! This can be a drink being the main feature of the cover or even if a character on the cover is holding a drink or one sitting on a table in the background
- Free Space/Group Read - This one is represented by a few books and we'll vote on the group read, as I said. If you don't want to read the group read, you can always use it as a free space!
I'll be posting threads all week to ask for suggestions for these books, so make sure you check them out in the Creating & Co Book Club to leave your own recommendations or get ideas!
This year, I wanted to give you a few options for tracking your reading over the season. Instead of just being a seasonal challenge and that's it, I thought it would be fun to expand it to cover the whole season, if that makes sense.
First up, we have a bookshelf for summer! We released a general books read shelf last year but I wanted to make them for the seasonal challenges too. This is just for keeping track of any books you read during the summer season, whether you read them for the challenge or not.
One of the other new things is a seasonal book bingo! I thought this would be fun for anyone that reads a lot. I've had quite a few requests for doing more book bingos so I decided to add it to our seasonal line up.
This isn't our official challenge and there's no group read or anything. This is just for fun if you want an extra challenge. You can either do it until you have a single bingo or until you have a black out bingo!
Another idea I had was inspired by my kindle app and xbox/playstation achievements/trophies. Basically, they're just fun little awards you can give yourself as you complete tasks. The idea I had was to just put them on whatever day you do it.
So if I read a book in the bath on Monday, I'd put it at the bottom of my Monday.
Before I show you the rest of the releases for the week, I also wanted to let you know that you'll be able to pick up a bundle of the most essential summer reading challenge items!
All 6 items together would be just over $35 but if you pick up the bundle, you'll get a bit of a discount with the bundle being $32.95. It's mostly just an easy way to get you in and out of the shop if you're in a hurry!
Other than the summer challenges and all of the other stuff going along with it, you'll be able to pick up a few other things too!
We'll also have three new notes pages -- a project tracker, a word count page and a blank pixel sheet much like the pages read pixel sheet but you'll be able to fill it in with whatever you want!
Here's the project tracker in progress so you can kind of see what I mean with how to use it!
Make sure you're in the Creating & Co Book Club to get your vote in for the group read and the dates for the planning party and we'll see you and your planner there!