Up till now, there's been the rather stark choice of either waiting for Christmas to buy a diary for the next calendar year, or waiting until July when the academic diaries start to appear.
Now I don't know about you, but it's been a long time since I needed to make a note of my lecture times and I have often wished for a diary which would start when I wanted to. There are undated diaries of course but, for some reason, I've never found these quite as exciting.
I have recently discovered TOAD® Diaries who will not only personalise your diary or notebook (on the front and back covers) but will allow you to choose what month and even what day of the week you would like it to start. Sadly you will still need to include Mondays ....
You can spend happy hours on their website indulging your inner diary-geek (or should that be fiend - anyway ..) playing around with lay-outs, covers, sizes, formats. You can have week view, appointments, mid year, academic, family - there are far too many formats to describe here.
There is a range of cool themes such as Molten (which I chose), Retro, Cities and some rather cute Monsters.
Not only is the site's designer tool really easy to use but the diaries and notebooks are reasonably priced and come spiral bound with an extra plastic cover on the front and back to protect them. Happily, they will lie flat when opened making them really easy to write in. You can also choose between yellow and white paper.
Once you have checked your personalised text is OK and that you have chosen the right format, your diary will take approximately 3-4 days to reach you.
TOAD® also do a range of notebooks to complement your diary and again you can choose the format that most appeals. I was gifted a diary and a notebook by TOAD®.
I chose Molten- Rose from the Molten Theme for my diary which starts in August with weeks starting on Monday. It is wiro-bound, covers 12 months and is Quarto size (midway between A4 and A5). I also chose yellow paper.
For my notebook I chose a wiro-bound 120 page A5 journal in Molten-Halycon with lined pages (medium spacing).
Your notebooks can be lined, gridded, blank - again lots of choices.
I really likes TOAD products because they have the odd quirky touch - like how to make an Origami toad and infuse humour into the world of stationery. Apparently not everyone gets as excited about diaries as I do. Weird, eh?
TOAD® Diaries have given me a £25 gift code to give away to one lucky winner so that if you really can't wait till December for a fresh new diary (and let's face it, some of us will want to write 2016 off as a bad job so far), then you can.
Entry is via the Rafflecopter and terms and conditions apply. UK entrants only. The giveaway ends at 11:59 pm on Friday 29th July.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Good luck!
