No better time to start or expand your journaling than in the summer. Read on for summer journal ideas that’ll capture and preserve summertime moments.
Immerse yourself in nostalgia: the smell of chocolate chip cookies when you walk into Grandma’s house; the incredible picnic you and your best friends threw together on a perfect July evening; the local flavor abundant in that hole-in-the-wall restaurant you stopped in on your European adventure.
Use these memorable meals as inspiration for a food journal dedicated to documenting a lifetime of flavors and cuisines. They can be a base for new culinary explorations and restaurant reviews. Perhaps they’ll launch you into story writing that transforms remembered moments into rich sensory experiences. Re-imagine the flavors you tasted, the conversations you heard, the dining atmosphere you felt. Let the echoes of past flavors ignite memory and inspire new dining experiences.
Your phone can document your travel memories visually, but can it explain the sensory explosion when you looked up at Raphael’s Sistine Chapel? Or the muscle aches after that long day of hiking in Yellowstone National Park? Or the spicy burning in your throat eating curry in India?
No, it can’t. But written memories of those moments can come pretty close. Take one of our pocket-sized journals in your bag and jot down a few notable moments from the day while you’re at lunch or dinner. Need some guidance on where to start? Check out our Travel Journal Tips here. If you are ready to up your journal game, follow our guide to creating a journal with your own unique souvenirs.
Summer is the time we want to be outside and prioritizing our fitness goals as much as possible, right? Why not keep track of your fitness goals the old-fashioned way with one of our journals?
Multiple apps can do this, but writing out a chart will give you the satisfaction of crossing off planned exercises or workouts as you do them. Consider using different colors to denote leg day, cardio day, and your yoga/recovery day. Take some time to jot down your energy levels and mood post-workout as well as your diet throughout the day. Create a visually appealing fitness chart that will make you never want to skip a workout!
There’s nothing quite like nurturing a living thing and watching it grow as an exercise in patience and wonder. Caring for a pot of basil or tending a raised garden bed full of flowers enhances that boost in the energy of life summer often brings.
Use a Leatherpress journal to document your spring planting dreams and your summer harvesting goals. Document each plant variety and record the date of planting, its watering needs, and how much sun or shade is needed. Add some artistic beauty and devote a few pages to each plant and sketches of its growth throughout the season. Whether you’ve already got a green thumb or gardening is your latest hobby, a gardening journal keeps you organized and motivated as you watch your plants grow.
Exercise your creativity and give yourself some downtime this summer by collecting a journal full of sketches and paintings. The high-quality lined pages of a Leatherpress journal are perfect for geometric sketches or watercolor doodles.
Take a journal with you on your summer travels to sketch mountain views or architectural details. If calligraphy is your new summer hobby, a lined journal provides the perfect setting for your alphabet practice. You can even tuck a small photo or postcard to copy in the back flap of an Inspire Journal if you need some direction. Embrace your creative flair and make a personalized collection of art to document your summer.
Lazy summer days, especially summer vacation days, offer gifts of undistracted, unencumbered thinking. Take some time alone with your thoughts and let your mind have free rein. The best part of a mind map journal is that there are absolutely no rules.
Take the big questions you’ve been thinking about and jot them down. Need to do some abstract mindless continuous line drawings? Have at it. Is your brain overflowing with all of your hopes and goals for the next year? Make a list and fill the page in with inspirational quotes to look back on. Or combine visual designs with written notes and create a multi-page collection of your brain dump. Mind map journaling encourages creativity, organizes your thoughts and grounds your mental wanderings. We’ve got some mind mapping ideas for you to try, too. You might be surprised at where your map takes you.
As always, we’ve got what you need to start journaling. Whether you’re looking for a new summer color or classic brown or black, you’ll find it here in lovely leather.
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