Come to Mama! (aka the Heidi Swapp planner post)

Y'all know that I've been waiting impatiently for Heidi Swapp's new line to arrive in stores. I even went so far as to pre-order the black and white striped album from Amazon, but I hadn't even gotten notification that it had shipped yet because the warehouse didn't have it in stock. I've literally been waiting weeks for it to arrive. Well, halleluijah, the new HS shipment finally arrived at my local Michael's!  I had an hour to kill before night class on Thursday and popped over on the off chance they might have something new. Oh, yes they did. And my debit card def did some damage in the process. Here's a look at what I purchased:

I'm super excited about the album, of course, I won't actually start writing on the calendar pages until May, but I may spend some time before then arranging my products and even planning some pages that I want to do. I'll start using it as an actual planner in May and will use it through July to record my trip to Paris. That way, I'll have the month before to use for planning purposes; I'll be able to record the six weeks I'm actually there, and I'll have two weeks once I'm back to reflect on the experience. I think it's a really great way to approach the whole process.

I also snagged some other items to go along with the album. rubons, tiny stamps, a washi tape booklet, tiny acrylic pocket cards, tiny gold foil pocket cards, and paper. Note that the HS paper pad was 50% off, so I snagged it for a little less than $10. I also was able to use my 40% coupon on my planner which saved me $12 as opposed to buying it on Amazon. Of course, I could've gone back each day and bought some of these other items with a coupon, but I was afraid to risk that they'd be gone. I couldn't risk that HS stuff disappearing before I got exactly what I wanted. The only thing I resisted was the tiny number stamps; I sense another trip to M's coming on later this weekend... Beyond that, I bought a small Recollections travel journal that I thought might be helpful in recording some of my longer stories before I transfer them to full-size layouts or to divided pages in my planner album. I also snagged some random yummy $1 embellishments and a couple of clearance items - gold sharpies and another roll of gold foil.

Ironically, my initial Amazon order of the HS memory planner paper HAD arrived earlier in the week, so I already had some of the fab paper. I'm so excited to break this stuff out and start using it! Are you going to make a planner this year? How are you feeling about the new HS line?