The 5-Year Journal

If you've got some time off this holiday and are looking for something creative and crafty to do, check out the 5-year journal. It's a fun way to record your thoughts, goings-on, and other information throughout the year for the next five years, and then you can look back and see how things have changed from year to year!

the cover of my journal

I started mine at the beginning of this year, and so 2015 will start my second year/round of answering the 365 questions in the journal.

You can find more information about how it all works and the journal questions for each month at Tiare Smith Designs, the creator of this cool idea. You can see samples of Tiare's journal pages on her website or you can just make up your own journal however you want. That's what I did!

I had a bunch of blank journals just wasting space on my bookshelf, and my mom had given me a chipboard album kit that she wasn't going to use. So I combined all these supplies!

I had to buy large binder rings so that all the pages in my journal would fit. Then, I tore out the pages of the blank journals, cropping the pages to fit in the chipboard album. Then I punched three holes in the pages so I could slide them on the binder rings. Each month, I wrote out the questions for that month in advance. My hand would have been hurting something crazy if I had written out all 365 questions at once!

I'm excited to go through my journal again this year and see if anything has changed. I'm not sure my weight has changed (despite the multiple zumba and yoga classes I take every week), but maybe my attitude toward certain things has changed as I've grown one year older.

I hope you participate in the new year!