I will be the first one to admit that I very much enjoy the conveniences of technology when it comes to travel. Gone are the days of standing on the street corner with a giant map to navigate. When you arrive at a new city, especially one where you don't speak the common language, you now just look like every other person you see staring at their phones.
However, this has not kept me from using a little pocket notebook to keep track of my plans for the day, my thoughts while traveling, and in some cases little bits of paper memorabilia or maybe a pressed flower. The truth is that my brain is like a sieve and although we do have all of these fun ways of making plans, like google maps and bookmarks, I personally lose track of all the tabs I have open which inevitably causes me to miss things. Unless I write something down it is likely to slip my mind and get lost in the vastness that is my internet browsers.
By the time you are reading this I will have enjoyed a visit to South Africa with my husband's family. This trip is a gift from my father-in-law which we could not be more grateful for although it is a bit different travel style from what we are used to. Let's just say it will be fast paced and packed (and it was). Two of my nieces will be on the trip so I had the fun auntie idea to create little packets for them to do some journalling while we are traveling.
I enjoyed collecting some stationery goodies from the shop and also shopping with another stationery shop to support a small business in the process of gathering the supplies I wanted. Given that I do have a quite large collection of washi tape I decided to utilize one of my favorite ways of sharing and traveling with washi tape by making little washi tape cards. Because washi tape is removable it is quite easy to roll some onto a little card. I do this a lot with kiddos in the shop and to send to friends in letters.
I will say that I did create a google document for this trip highlighting all of the food options that I was interested in visiting. My husband and I often say that when we travel we "chase food" and this trip will not be an exception. Because there is a large group I wanted the others on our trip to have access to my findings to help us better plan meal times.
But don't worry. I will have my pocket notebook on hand each day with my handwritten notes of where I would like to go because I want to keep a written log. Over the years these logs I have kept, once a necessity, have come in quite handy. I have repeatedly opened them to offer suggestions to friends who are traveling to parts of the world I have visited. They each serve as a time capsule of my travels.
I am really proud of the notebook collection we have going in the shop right now. We have anything from grid, to blank, to dot graph, and lined paper. There are refillable notebooks and day-free scheduling notebooks. All sizes from the tiniest pocketbook to the standard Decomposition Spiral Notebook. One of my favorite features in a notebook is to have printed images on the inside pages which you can also find in the shop at the moment.
As summer travels continue and the school year approaches consider checking out our supply of notebooks! There truly is something for everyone. You can find them all here!