Full disclosure, I did not expect to like my spring theme as much as our winter theme. I fully designed our Stars Align theme expecting it to be my favorite of the year and while I knew I'd like most of our other themes (there's always a couple every year I don't love as much once I have them done), I didn't think anything else could live up.
Well, my friends, Wild Stories lives up.
I wanted it to have a feel of jumping on a horse and galloping across a field of flowers, of getting lost in the wilderness and discovering yourself along the way.
And I cannot wait to get this one in my planner for spring 2025!
This is our official seasonal challenge for spring and will be taking place from April to June (aka quarter 2) and will be released in the shop this Friday, 1/24 at 12pmCST.
I wanted to make this blog post to go over all of the pieces so you'll be prepared with a shopping list when everything goes live! Be sure you use the code CREATE10 on the order this weekend to save 10% too!
As always, we have 4 pages of our vertical/standard kit. You'll be able to pick up each page on it's own or as a bundle (with a slight discount built in!)
We'll also have our 1.3" skinny kit. This one is great for the Hobonichi cousin OR other planners that have similar sizes! It also fits the Always Fully Booked vertical planner!
Lately, I've really been wanting some extra stickers each week for my kits so I decided to see if you guys were wanting them too. So we have two new sheets that you'll be able to pick up.
You can pick up either one or both and they are great if you just wanted some extra stickers OR if you're wanting to expand your kit themes to go across multiple weeks.
As always, we'll have our regular add ons of checklists, reading stickers, ripped paper, etc.
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 8 other prompts for a total of 9 and as you read, you'll fill up the bookshelf!
In case this is your first challenge with us, here's how it works:
- Take one of the prompts and find a book that applies.
- Read the book and write the title and rating into the table
- Cover one of the books with the full color version from the sheet
- Repeat until you finish all the prompts!
Our most common size is 4.75" x 6.75", which is shown above. 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 7" x 9" version that you can use in most common planners--Erin Condren, Happy Planner, Yellow Paper House, Paper House Productions, etc.
Here are the prompts and what each one means:
- Includes name of flower in title - Find a book with a flower name in the title (e.g., "Rose," "Lily," or "Daisy").
- Reconnecting with friends/family - a character finds their way back to a friend or family member/reconciles with an old flame
- Wandering on a Journey - character travels somewhere or leaves home to start a new life/adventure
- Rule Maker - a character makes their own rules, like the cowgirl heroes of old!
- Storms - a storm happens or a character can manipulate the weather
- Unbelievable odds - a character overcomes or has come from unbelievable odds, like recovering from an illness or devastating life turn
- One Word Title - a title made up of only one word
- Published in April/May/June - published in these three months of any year
- Group Read/Free Space - This will be voted on in the Creating & Co Book club group on Facebook and we'll chat about it in June
As always, you can interpret the prompts however you want, if you have another idea! You can also read one book per challenge or have one book fit more than one prompt.
The second sheet of the challenge has a few other stickers you may want to use in your planner.
The badge sticker is meant to be used for keeping track of the challenges that you complete. We have a badge tracking sheet that you can use or you could just add them to a blanket page in your planner.
If you don't want to keep track, sometimes I think about adding it to the sidebar of the week I start or finish the challenge but it's up to you.
Other than that, we have the book labels that are perfect for adding to the day you finish one of the books for the challenge.
We also have a few reading achievements that you could add to the day you achieve the thing. Usually, these are just silly little bookish things that are just fun to collect.
We also created a dashboard set this year that you can add these to so you can kind of create a single "bank" of achievements that are just fun to look at!
I also made some more dashboards that you can use to track your reading for the season because I love when you can have a whole little section in your planner that all matches.
If you're a big reader, we also have a seasonal book bingo! This way, if you want to really challenge yourself, you can do two challenges for the season (the main one and this one) and if you want even more of a challenge, you can try to get a black out bingo.
These prompts are totally open to interpretation, so feel free to just read them and then decide how you want to use it!
- First up, we have this one that is great for brainstorming for your book list. I don't know about you, but whenever I can't think of a book for a theme, I always want to come up with multiple options so I can pick whichever one I'm in the mood for.
- This sheet is perfect because you can brainstorm three books for each prompt! You can arrange them on a page by themselves or add them as a kind of sidebar next to your reading challenge if you have room or whatever!
- Next, we have another sheet that is great for keeping track of your favorite books. There's two empty shelves and the idea is that you write your fave books on the empty spines and then arrange them however you want on the shelves.
- I added some extra deco so you can do even more with the shelves too!
- The last sheet are some journal prompts! I really want to get back into journaling this year and we used to have sheets of journal prompts, so I thought I'd bring them back.
- The idea is that you pick one of them and lay it across the top of your journal page and then record your thoughts below it. These are cut in rectangle form, so you can trim the stickers if you want!
- If you guys like these, I will definitely be bringing them in for future seasonal challenges, even if they get a slight revamp later!