Today’s post is all about my Mid-Year Bullet Journal Setup! Every time I start a new journal, I have to re-setup all of the initial pages- things like my Future Log, Media Trackers and Tennis Calendar. This new journal will cover July through to December (though, seeing as July is already nearly over, I won’t be making a July setup this year- we’ll just skip straight to August instead, and that post should be coming soon!).

A quick note as well for anyone waiting for the 6th and final instalment of my Bridgerton House Baby Blanket Pattern: it’s on its way! Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten- I’ll be getting that post, as well as the Ravelry pattern page, out as soon as possible.

Table of Contents

• Journal
• Inspiration
• Equipment
• Cover + Quote Page
• Future Log
• Tennis Calendar
• Medical Notes + Prescriptions
• Blog Planning
• Ideas
• Bullet Journal Theme Ideas + Wishlist
• Finance + Knit & Crochet Tracker
• TV + Reading Tracker
• Final Thoughts

Journal

As I mentioned, I’ve started a new journal for the rest of 2024. I recently purchased some journals from Coral and Ink, one of my favourite UK-based stationery shops, so I had a few options to choose from! I actually purchased these journals as part of the company’s B-Grade journal sale, where they sell any journals with slight imperfections at a lower cost. It’s a great way to save money and still get a beautiful, perfectly useable journal (honestly, the imperfections on mine are barely even noticeable)!

Anyway, I selected this lilac bullet journal to use for the second half of 2024. It has a cute, gold polaroid and sunflower motif on the front, plus gilded edges, two ribbon bookmarks, a back pocket, a pen holder AND an elastic closure. I mean, what more could you want?

Inspiration

For my initial pages in a new journal, I always like to choose a theme that reflects the design of the journal itself. Unsurprisingly, then, I went with a sunflower theme this time around, using a purple and yellow colour scheme (that’s right- I know all about the colour wheel). I think it’s a really cheery theme, and the colours remind me a little of Tangled (my favourite Disney film!) which makes the whole thing even more perfect.

Because I was already so behind with my journal, it was really important to me that this setup be quick and easy to create. I decided to go down the doodle-y, ‘perfectly imperfect’ route, so the majority of the spreads are created with coloured pencils only. I know, I know- no ruler? Blasphemous. But it really sped up the whole process, which was exactly what I needed. I did also use a fineliner pen to write in some of the smaller headings and details, like the numbers, but I opted to use a brown shade, instead of my usual black, to keep things soft and a little more natural-looking. Also in the interest of keeping this setup simple and quick to make, I opted to forego my usual tab sections and scale down the number of spreads I had to create.

Equipment

As I mentioned, I kept my equipment list super minimal for this setup (no, like, for real this time). The only materials I used were:

• Coloured pencils (3 shades of yellow, 3 shades of purple and 1 shade of brown).
• Uni Pin fineliner pen, brown.
• Scissors.

That’s it! See- I can be minimal sometimes!

Cover + Quote Page

To decorate my Cover Page, I doodled some quick sunflowers, alongside some two-tone purple branches, which I scattered all over both pages. I wrote both the quote and the heading in my darkest purple pencil, in an intentionally messy, block capital font.

Future Log

The Future Log is a vital part of my bullet journal. I find that this particular layout works the best for me: I have a mini calendar for each month along the top, so that I can see the ‘shape’ of each month at a glance, then I have vertical calendars beneath them, where I can write in any appointments, plans or events. I’ve highlighted the weekend dates on my vertical calendar in a different colour, to give myself a clearer idea of which day I’m on.

I’ve actually included two double-page spreads for this Future Log: the first runs from July-December (i.e. the months covered in this bullet journal), then the second (pictured above) covers the first 6 months of 2025. I like to include a spread for these months, too, because I sometimes have appointments that are made a long way in advance and I need to be able to keep track of them too!

Tennis Calendar

Next up, we have my beloved, if slightly over-the-top, Tennis Calendar. I use a whole 6 pages for this spread, but it’s soooo worth it. I love being able to whip out my calendar and let everyone know (whether they care or not) what tournaments are coming up next.

I followed the same layout for this calendar as I’ve done in my last 2 setups: the middle two pages are trimmed down and house the heading, along with some decoration (in this case, more sunflowers and branches).

The remaining pages house the calendar itself, which I separate into months, then weeks, with ATP tournaments on the left-hand side and WTA tournaments on the right. I include the start dates of each tournament and use a little symbol to indicate what level of tournament they are: a full circle indicates a Grand Slam, a 3/4 circle indicates a Masters 1000, a semi-circle indicates a 500 event, a 1/4 circle indicates a 250 event and a star indicates a group or other event (such as, in the case of this year, the Paris Olympics!). I also have space on each side of the table to fill in the winners of each tournament.

Okay, okay, I messed up this side of the calendar a little bit. I don’t know how it happened, but my October weeks got out of sync and… I just have to make my peace with that. Still, that mistake gave me space to add some fun sections to the bottom of the page: I’ve included sections to write in the qualifiers for each of the ATP, WTA and Next Gen Finals, as well as the Year-End #1 players for both the ATP and WTA tour.

Medical Notes + Prescriptions

Next up, we have my Healthcare spreads. On the left-hand page, I have a space for any notes from my appointments- I like to jot a couple of things down to keep track of what’s happening and what my doctors are saying. You know, responsible stuff like that.

On the right-hand page, I have my typical Prescription Tracker. This is an essential page for me, because it helps me keep on top of my prescriptions and make sure I know when to reorder them from my local pharmacy, so I never run out! Whenever I get a new delivery of medicines, I count them all up and fill in this table, which helps me to work out when they will run out and, by extension, when I will need to reorder them.

Blog Planning

I’ve created a much more condensed version of my Blog Planning section this time around, using only a single, double-page spread for it. On the left-hand page, I have spaces to track my monthly growth on Instagram, keep a note of my colour Hex codes and record my intended Blogmas At Home projects.

On the right-hand page, I have a larger space to keep track of what I have posted on the blog, along with when I posted it.

Ideas

Typically, I like to separate my Ideas spread up into sections, so I can keep everything organised and accessible. This time, however, I’ve opted for more of a mind map/brain dump style page, with a simple heading in the middle and plenty of blank space around the edges of the spread to jot down any ideas.

Bullet Journal Theme Ideas + Wishlist

Admittedly, these two spreads are completely unrelated, so it’s kind of weird that they’re next to each other, but they’re both super useful pages to have! On the left-hand side, my Bullet Journal Theme Ideas page has a space at the bottom to jot down any generic theme ideas, as well as a more structured space in the top right to note down any theme ideas I have that I would like to attempt for a particular month, or are month-specific.

For my Wishlist, I decided to keep it separated into sections as usual, but tried to keep the amount of sections to a minimum. In the end, I created 6 sections: Hair & Skin (meaning, of course hair products, skincare and makeup- NOT anything Hannibal-y, I swear), Clothes, Stationery, Entertainment, Home and Accessories. I haven’t quite found the perfect Wishlist spread that works for my needs yet, so I’ll see how this setup suits me this time around!

Finance + Knit & Crochet Tracker

Again, two pretty unrelated spreads (though maybe the finance tracker will prevent me from buying copious amounts of yarn on a whim? I’m unsure…) here, but, again, both very useful in their own way! On the left-hand side, my Finance Tracker is where I weigh my costs vs my income and calculate my savings each month, to keep myself (and my expensive taste) in check. At the bottom of the spread, I have a space to jot down my income streams for each month, so I can see where my money is coming from.

On the right-hand page, I have my Knit & Crochet Tracker. I love using Ravelry, but I’m a bit useless at filling it in as I go along, so I’m hoping this spread will help me to remember when I started a project, even if I don’t log it on Ravelry until I’ve finished!

TV + Reading Tracker

Finally, two spreads that have… something in common! Welcome to the abbreviated version of my Media section. On the left-hand page I have my TV Tracker. On this spread, I write out the title of the series I’m watching, along with a little circle for each season of the show. As I finish each season, I fill in the circle. I like doing this in my journal, not so much to track my watching habits, but because I like to look back and remember all the things I’ve watched (it also means, when my dad bemoans the fact I am watching something for the 500th time, I can remind him how long it’s been since I last watched it and feel vindicated).

Finally, we have my Reading Tracker. Here, I keep track of how many books I’ve read so far this year, which books I’m reading and when I’ve read them. I’ve recently got back into reading after a pretty drastic slump, so I’m really looking forward to using this spread again!

Final Thoughts

I really love how this spread turned out- it was so quick and easy to create, which was exactly what I wanted (and needed!) this month, but I don’t feel like I had to compromise on the design side of things to achieve that. These spreads feel cheery and happy, but still kind of… tasteful, I guess? I went into creating this setup without a lot of planning and no sketching AT ALL, which was kind of scary, but kind of freeing as well? There are mistakes, of course (RIP my Tennis Calendar), but I usually make mistakes even when I plan, so I don’t think I can blame the lack of planning for that one!

I hope you love this setup as much as I do! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Gemma

xxx