The week I tried to have it all (and why it sucked)

Today is International Women's Day, so I thought this was the perfect time to discuss being a woman. I know it isn't something I'm forbidden to speak about the other 364 days a year, but I recently tried an experiment, and its findings seem relevant on a day like today.

If you ask a woman what the three most important things in her life are, she'd probably have a hard time answering you. We all have so much going on, it's sometimes hard to put a number on anything in our lives, but I'm going to hazard a guess and say a pretty popular answer would be family, friends and financial security. That's just a total stab in the dark (and probably what I'd say if asked). But these are three very big things, and they can be hard things to juggle. Some women have an ability to do just that, and make it look easy too, but I don't think I've ever been that woman. If my career is going well, my housework is suffering, as are my friendships. If my family life is taking up my focus, my work ethic goes out the window, along with my cleaning schedule. (Let's face it, I'll take any excuse not to clean up after myself.) I've never been able to find that perfect balance, and I will quite often choose to sit on the couch and drink coffee rather than actually do any of the things on my mile long to do list. I'm an expert procrastinator, just ask me. (But not right now ok, I'm too busy staring at my eye worms.)

But recently I wanted to find out whether or not it is indeed possible to have all the things. I wanted to know whether there was a way to be the perfect woman we always see in the media. She's impeccably groomed, she has time for coffee with the girlfriends, she has wholesome home cooked meals on the table every single night, and I'm sure she's a tiger in the sack too, but they never really show that part during prime time television for some reason... So I decided to become that woman for a while, to step into her shoes and find out exactly how the hell it is she does all the things the television says she does. I was hoping that I'd find some secret formula to all of this, which I could then rush off and share to all of my female friends who at the end of the day always look the same as me; exhausted, overwhelmed and not a little bit crazed. So for one week I decided to become the "perfect" woman, I was going to be everything for everyone. I was to be the perfect mother, the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect housekeeper and the perfect employee. I'm sure you've all already guessed how this turned out.

In order to be the perfect mother, I decided I couldn't reprimand Miss K too strongly. You would never see a TV mum calling her kids bone headed for sticking their finger in the fan, so neither would I. (I did giggle while I was comforting her though, which is also something you'd never see a TV mum doing.) You'd never see her sending her kids off to school with junk food in their lunch boxes or serving convenience meals for dinner, so neither would I. All meals for the week were to be healthy and well thought out. There was to be nothing artificial pass our lips at all during this time. And all this meant was a lot more time spent in the kitchen for me. Of course there were some moments of pride like the night my carbonara fettucini turned out really well, or the day Miss K and I made popcorn for her lunches (no salt or butter though, that's just too unhealthy) but for the most part all I remember is pruny fingers from having my hands in dishwater, and sweat pouring off me while I slaved over the stove in 30 degree heat (86 degrees farenheit for my American friends) which immediately made me regret not trying this experiment in the winter when my kitchen is my favourite place in the house simply because of all the heat I can generate at once. I will say the time spent with Miss K at the end of the day as we ate our dinner without watching television, and cleaned the kitchen together were pretty pleasant when I wasn't stressing that she wasn't eating her vegetables, or was taking too long to dry the dishes (mainly because she was turning the cutlery into people), but listening to her constant chatter was always guaranteed to make me smile.

Being the perfect daughter was more of a challenge for me, because I'm pretty much perfect already. (I can hear my mum laughing at this statement already.) but I figured that given I know one of mum's biggest pet peeves in the world is a dirty kitchen, all the time I spent in there keeping it pristine would have made her pretty happy. Plus she had a whole week off from having to cook food, which is something all mum's dream of. (Trust me, I know.) I felt bad that I couldn't think of anything earth shattering to do to assert my role as the perfect child, so I had to take comfort in the little things like a (mostly) edible meal sitting in the microwave every single night, and a block of cheese in the fridge for her midnight snacks at all time. It clearly worked though, because she literally just called me a dick, so I'm obviously the favourite child right now.

As for perfect sister and perfect employee, they kind of ended up being rolled into one, as I spent the week helping my big sister who is trying to get a business off the ground. I'm hoping that by getting in at the ground floor, I'll be in for easy money once she's a millionaire. So for this part of my role, I spent my week studying up on contract law, and drawing up terms and conditions as well as a refund policy for her new business. I also drew up a business plan for her, and got started on the registration process for taxes and other boring stuff. Believe it or not this was actually the most fun part of my week, which makes more sense when I tell you I do my budget for fun, and I can write up legal documents in my sleep. This was also the area where I felt the most useful. There are definitely times where I miss being in a work environment, so having a chance to play secretary for the week was rewarding.

One of the things I learned throughout this week is that it takes a hell of a lot of organisation just to be remotely proficient in more than one of these areas. I had more lists running through my head and written down in my organiser than I knew what to do with. I would almost be happy never to see another list again. I also learned that when you're doing everything for everyone else, it is very easy to forget yourself quickly. My own needs eventually became low priority, simply because I can forgive myself for forgetting to shower more than once a week. (Another reason why this would have been a better experiment to do in the dead cold of winter.) I also became very protective of time I put aside for myself. Texts and snapchats suddenly became an intrusion during a time I wished to speak to no one, whereas once upon a time I was happy to be reachable right up to and even sometimes after bedtime. When you put so much of yourself into working for other people, those three hours at the end of the day when kids are finally in bed but you are not become a revered time that you spend all other waking hours dreaming of. When someone dared to take up that time by making me look at photos of their latest trip to the pub I started to feel just the tiniest bit stabby. I could have turned off my phone, but a perfect person probably wouldn't shut themselves off from the world like that.

But where did all of this leave me at the end of the week? It leaves me with a sparkly clean kitchen, a freezer full of pre-prepared meals I can pull out and defrost, it leaves me with lots of lovely memories of times I didn't lose my temper at Miss K like I normally would, and it hopefully leaves her feeling a little bit more secure about her place in my world. But most of all it leaves me feeling over tired and under appreciated. It's not like I went into this looking for praise or accolades, or even that people didn't recognise the hard work I put in during this week. My big sister even forced me to take the weekend off from working for her, simply because I was starting to look like a zombie by the time Thursday rolled around. It was more the feeling that what I just spent a week doing is expected as the bare minimum for women these days. We're expected to go find work outside of the house, plus keep doing the work we've always done inside the house, and look like a million dollars the whole time. I simply couldn't keep this up for much longer before I needed a week at the local psych ward. I definitely understand why women turn to alcohol.

 I certainly don't feel perfect right now, if anything I feel less perfect than I did before I started. It served to highlight all of the areas in my life where I don't balance things properly when I'm not watching myself, which is always a cheerful thing to think about. But I definitely came out of this with a newly found respect for women everywhere who do this for more than one week at a time. For the women out there who this is necessary each and every single day. Be it because they simply don't have the support network I am fortunate to have around me, or because they find doing all of this rewarding, instead of exhausting, or even simply because they want to prove that it can be done; I still think you're slightly mad, but I salute you anyway.

Now if you'll excuse me, this perfectly imperfect woman has just earned herself a perfectly long nap.

A Scrooge's Christmas planner

Hello again my lovely friends, I hope that you are all well and healthy. Don't I just sound like a sappy motivational speaker right now?? Just wait a second and I'm sure I can find more platitudes to throw at you while confusing you with my vocabulary of large words...

Or I could get right down to the heart of what I've come here to share with you wonderful people today. Now as I promised right before the batteries in my camera died, I am going to share with you all my version of a Christmas planner. But as always because money is more of a rumor than anything around here, it will all be done on a budget, using things that I already had lying around the house.

Just some of the things that go into making a Christmas planner

Now if you are like me, you obsessively stalk follow a lot of blogs. And if you're lucky like me, you'll have found some incredibly talented and disgustingly smart people out there who can make magic happen every time they put their hand to something. The lovely ladies at the blog Eighteen25 are three such ladies. So naturally when I saw that they had put together a gorgeous book for organizing all things Christmas, I had to rush over to their website and check it out. (You can do the same here.) They have even been so kind as to offer free printables for anyone who wants to make a Christmas binder in the same style as them. Now sadly as I am currently without a printer, I had to make do with admiring their binders from afar and then use whatever I had on hand to make my own instead. (Sigh) But as you will see, I have managed to create something that is entirely my own, with small touches of homage to the lovely ladies at Eighteen25 simply because some of their ideas were so great, I couldn't not include them.

I have to stop and brag for a second now, because I am pretty chuffed with the finished product here. And the cost of the whole project was pretty impressive too, as the only money I ended up spending was $2.50 on a notebook to decorate. Everything else that you see here comes from what I had in my stash of crafty supplies, making this not only a pretty way to get organised for Christmas, but also a thrifty project. It has the added bonus of making my compulsive hoarding of papers and ribbons now look like an economical plan instead of the crazy actions of someone who just loves shiny things.

The papers I have used come from various places, the red background paper was a freebie with a scrap booking magazine I bought a few Christmases ago, the green paper and the red and white striped papers are offcuts from old projects. The shape of the green paper was made by tracing around a piece of die cut chipboard and then cutting out the finished product. If you are creative enough to be able to draw things free hand (which I am not) then this should be easy enough for you to do without the chipboard, otherwise there are always things lying around the house that you can use to create shapes for your projects.

This metal plate is something I got in a goody bag a few years ago when I went to a scrap booking retreat with my sisters. I have been searching for years for a good use for it, and I am so happy that it finally has a new home. But if you are not lucky enough to have something like this, paper or cardstock is a good replacement. The flower and pearl brad again were items I picked up in bulk packs ages ago and have had sitting around just waiting for the right project. I made the title with my trusty old Dymo labeller and some green Dymo tape that is actually very hard to find these days. Now that Dymo has gone digital my old hand held labeller is looking very old fashioned, but I love the look it gives. 

This ribbon is a recent purchase that I made, it came in a pack of 20 reels of ribbon for $20, but I think I may have been a bit too mean in my cutting because there is apparently such a thing as not enough ribbon to make a bow with. So if you are going to put ribbon on your book to keep it closed, don't forget to be generous with your measurements. Or make sure you have really skinny fingers because already I can tell that bow is going to be a pain in my rear end. Ribbon is one of those wonderful things that can be found absolutely everywhere. I have lots of pieces of ribbon in my stash that were used in packaging, on clothing and even from bunches of flowers I have received over the years. My family know that they are not allowed to throw any pieces of ribbon away as I can always find a use for them.

I only did four sections in my book; to do, gifts, menu and calendar. There are any number of other sections that you can include in your own Christmas planner, like cards, traditions, travel, or anything else you can think of, but really everything you see here is all I need to worry about so I didn't think it was necessary to add anything more. Maybe one day I will have a need for extra categories in my Christmas planners, but for now I think less is more. Again the tabs were made out of card stock that I had in my stash. I made sure to use a folded piece of card stock, and stick one side of the piece on each side of the page, just to make it a little stronger and more durable. If you don't have card stock, cereal box cardboard would be a good replacement, covered with wrapping paper or anything else to make it look pretty. The shape of the card stock came from tracing around die cut chip board again, but I'm not really happy with it, so next year I may have to think of something new. The pages are blank at the moment, but I will be decorating the front page of each section with something cute. For the gifts section, it will probably be a banner with the words "making a list and checking it twice" or something equally Christmassy, and I'll think of something else for the rest of the sections soon, I just couldn't wait until It was completely done to share it with you guys.

And of course no Christmas project is complete without an elf running around and getting into everything so here is one I prepared earlier.

Geddit???

If only she got as excited about the cleaning up as she does about making the mess.

So before I go, a few tips for you guys who are looking to make some Christmas themed projects on a budget.

• Get creative with the supplies that you use. Christmas themed wrapping paper is super duper cheap and in abundance at the moment, and it can be just the thing to brighten something up
• Don't feel that you have to go out and buy exactly everything that some one else used to make something, sometimes using the things you have at hand can make a result that is just as beautiful and even more personal to you
• Always make sure you use a good quality glue though because you don't want everything falling apart before you have a chance to use it. (I recommend Tombo latex glue, because it dries pretty quickly, but not too quickly that you don't have a chance to re-position something if you didn't do it right the first time. Plus you only need to use the tiniest amount because it spreads pretty far)
• Don't forget that Christmas is not about spending money, it's about spending time with your loved ones, so don't stress too much if everything has to be done on the cheap. Just remember that it is so popular that these days it's not called being a cheap-ass, it's called thrifting. 

Well that's all from me for today, my little sister Natty has been very patiently sitting in my lounge room for two hours now waiting for me to stop being anti-social and entertain her so I'd better go look like I'm interested. I'll be back again soon with something else super thrilling I'm sure, so stay awesome till then.

*Editors note: This blog post has been linked to the following link parties;

One Project at a Time  

The Creative Spark 

Blissful and Domestic

30 day challenge update

It's past that time of the week again, and I am sorry that this update is late, but I have been so busy making excuses as to why I couldn't do my work, I didn't have time to do my work. But without any further ado let us begin with the pretty banner.

So if the fact that this update is now two days overdue doesn't give you a hint as to how I am progressing, then let me fill you in. For anyone who wants to start at the beginning, check out this post here

While I am still determined to stop being a lazy slob and become the kind of person who doesn't have to worry exactly how long that bottle has been sitting there with dried milk inside it, putting my plans into action is proving to be just as hard the second time around. Just as a reminder, here are the jobs I set myself for this week.

Day 1 - Create a cleaning schedule for every job that needs to be done around the house. Organise the jobs into ones that need to be done daily, weekly, monthly etc and nominate a day that each job needs to be done

Day 2 - Get rid of at least ten things today. Throw them in the bin or take them to the second hand store, but get them out of the house

Day 3 - Power clean day. Set a buzzer for fifteen minutes and only clean until the buzzer goes off. Take a short break and repeat. Keep going until all your work for the day is complete. 

Day 4 - Tackle my bedroom and get it clean and liveable. 

Day 5 - Find one house hot spot (a place where junk always seems to end up) and clean it thoroughly

Day 6 - Find one cupboard that is full of junk and get it cleaned out and all unnecessary junk ready to be thrown in the bin or taken to the second hand store

Day 7 - Pick a room and wash all the walls from floor to ceiling. 

So as I mentioned on day 1 of last week, that job was easy, and has been done. Yay success! Day two not so successful. I have boxes and bags of things waiting to be donated to the op shop all around the house. But I didn't add anything new to these boxes on day 2, nor did I get the boxes out of the house. I'm pretty sure I threw out ten things while I was tidying up the lounge room on that day, but I think the point of that exercise was more than just get rid of all the wrappers from the chocolates I ate the night before. Day 3 was not a power clean day, I think it was more of a sit down and chat with all of the people who came over to visit day, as that is exactly what I did. All day. Day 4 came and went and my bedroom still wasn't liveable, I can't even remember what I did on day 5, but it certainly wasn't clean out any hot spots. Day 6 is a total blank. Did we even have a Saturday this week? Has someone been stealing my days and not telling me? Well if there was a Saturday this week it wasn't spent cleaning out any cupboards. Day 7 was slightly more productive, but not entirely to task. I managed to go through all of my hanging space in mum's wardrobe and sort out all of Miss K's dresses and my special occasions outfits, and I threw out a lot of things that are either out of fashion or way too big for me now that I have lost so much weight. We also got all of the walls in the lounge room washed, but that was only because we were painting this week and it had already been organised. 

So the first 7 days was kind of a bust. But I think I know why. I have realised I can't sit down a week in advance and schedule things so strictly as plans around here change so quickly it is impossible to know whether or not I will actually have time to do the things I want to ahead of time. So from this point on I won't be allocating a job for each day, I will be allocating jobs for a week, and hopefully doing it this way will promise a little more success. So my jobs for this week are as follows...

• Take all of your clothes out of their drawers and cupboards and sort them into piles to be thrown in the bin, donated to the second hand store or kept. Only put away the clothes in the keep pile
• Empty the freezer and throw out food that you no longer want
• Wipe down every appliance in the house
• Pick one room, wash all windows
• Clean the hallway completely
• Find another cupboard full of junk and empty it out
• Pick a room and wash all the walls from floor to ceiling

So thanks to my spur of the moment wardrobe clean last week the first job is already partially done. I just have one chest of drawers to go through and empty out and the first job can be ticked off. Mum also got rid of a heap of the old food in the freezer yesterday, so that job should be fairly quick and easy too. The big jobs like windows and walls can probably be done tomorrow or the next day as we are meant to have some lovely weather coming up, so perfect excuse to start sloshing water around the house. 

So fingers crossed doing it this way is a little bit easier for me, and I'll report back to you guys again next Monday. (Unless I get distracted by something shiny again)

Well that's it for now, I'm off to bed finally, and I'll try again tomorrow.

30 ways in 30 days challenge complete

So apparently my 30 days to get organised finished on the 12th of this month. Of course you can probably guess that the entire project wasn't completely successful otherwise I would have known this little bit of information well in advance and had a blog post ready to publish on that day. But while I am still not the Martha Stewart of Australia, I have learnt a lot this month and I'm going to share my new nuggets of wisdom with you. (Mainly because I like using the word nuggets in a sentence that isn't related to food.)

Rome wasn't built in a day

So the first thing I learnt was that things like cleaning a house from top to bottom, or learning how to be better organised take time. And a lot of mistakes. And a lot of forgiving yourself for being human and needing lots of Tim Tam and Facebook breaks. There is also the frustration that comes with realising that 30 days is a long time and you will need the full 30 days just to scratch the surface that is your lazy slovenly personality, and that can be very boring and time consuming. There are also days where the work exceeds the rewards by one hundred to one, where you've spent the day washing dishes and doing vacuuming only to see the sink is full again and there are fresh crumbs on your newly cleaned carpet. Waking up the next day can be very hard to do after you've come to the realisation that there is no end to your work. But then the days where you get to sit in a clean lounge room and enjoy your coffee knowing that your vulture of a daughter can't find anything to eat off the carpet, nor can she find any pointy things to jab in her eye can feel pretty good. So can the realisation that if a friend pops in for a surprise visit, you won't be ashamed to let them in the door.

To do lists are an organised person's best friend

So I started out writing myself a new to do list every night before I went to bed, and on the days that I did this I accomplished a lot. Of course having a list of tasks in front of you prevents you from forgetting anything you need to cram into your day, and it also forces you to realise you don't have enough hours to sit around and drink coffee (like you want to) and get everything on your list done (like you need to). You also have no excuse to say your bored if you have a to do list staring at you everywhere you move, daring you to ignore it. Now of course after a few days of using my to do lists, I made the mistake so many rookies make, I felt that I was now experienced enough to remember absolutely everything I had to get done in a day so I got rid of my trusty to do list and things very quickly fell apart. So my lesson has been learnt, and I now know that I need to jot down absolutely everything I think I might want to get done the next day, right down to getting dressed in the morning. Because apparently if it's not in writing, I don't have to do it.

Don't take on too much at once

I learnt this one on about day four when I decided that our pantry and cupboards needed an overhaul. Now we have a huge double door pantry that is used for food storage, as well as a quick hidey hole for anything that doesn't have its own home. As a result any decisions to tackle this cupboard usually take an entire day. Now I decided to get started on our pantry at 8:30 at night. After a full day of cleaning. Needless to say I lasted half an hour before I realised there wasn't enough coffee in the world to get this project finished before breakfast the next day and promptly gave up for the night. (Right after I carefully put everything back into the cupboard to save myself more work the next morning) Now I did go back to the kitchen cupboards, but I did them over several days. And even then there is more that could be done in the pantry as I really only focused on the food storage area. But even just getting that section organised and easier to use was a good feeling. Now that I am on top of my school work again I may schedule some time in the coming weeks to tackle a different shelf, and see if I can't get the whole thing looking pretty by the end of the year.

You can have too many shoes

Or too many handbags, or too many toys. One of the biggest problems in my house isn't the general day to day mess that comes with living in a house, it's all the extra little pieces that have come into the house over the years and have proceeded to make themselves comfortable into any empty space in the house that they can find. These are the things that make a house look messy, and these are also the things that can be the hardest to clean up when you decide to overhaul your house. As I mentioned earlier we have a pantry that doubles as storage. We also have a wall near the laundry, a table in our family room, a cupboard in my mum's room and two cupboards in the laundry. All of these have been filled with things over the years that fall into the I dunno category. The tall cupboard in our laundry is my personal favourite. Among other things, it contains a large box of trophies, a gymnast's ribbon, a printer and a bag full of the little things that used to take up space in my old laundry. Rummaging through it really is like taking a trip down memory lane, but given the sentimental value of everything in that cupboard, it is too hard to throw any of it out, so there it stays, taking up valuable space. Now over the past few weeks I have started going through all of my belongings and Miss K's belongings and throwing out a lot of stuff. Toys that Miss K is too old for, or she has never really taken an interest in, clothing that I no longer wear, because it is too big, or too misshapen or too ugly. things that have sat in my repair pile for months because I can't be bothered fixing them and useless crap that I have bought on the spur of the moment and never used. But there is still so much stuff filling up my space I could probably throw out even more. This is where my little brother excels and I don't. If ever we need a space cleaned out completely we bring him in because he is absolutely ruthless. The words sentimental value mean very little to him so throwing out all of our treasured memories comes a lot easier to him.

So there you have it. I've learned a lot but I still have a long way to go. I may try again, but make my goal a little bit smaller next time, and instead of trying to become super woman in 30 days I'll try having a household binder complete instead, and then move on from there. If anyone out there has any words of advice for me before I move on, please feel free to drop them below in the comments section, I hate to admit it, but I need all the help I can get.

30 ways in 30 days update

So I know I haven't spoken about my aim to get more organised in 30 days lately, between people getting sick and losing all motivation to clean it really hasn't been the foremost thing on my mind lately. And in true lazy person style I now have a week to become the most organised person in the world, so it's time to cram 30 days of organising into 7.

Luckily for me I had made great headway in getting better organised before I fell off my wagon. My kitchen has been completely overhauled and re-organised, my pantry and food cupboards all organised and stacked neatly so all I really need to do in there is keep checking them every couple of days to make sure they are staying neat and tidy. (They usually aren't but checking them at least once a week means that the clutter doesn't get a chance to get out of hand.) The lounge room was pristine for the longest time, but again I stopped caring so it's slowly going back to its old ways, and what's worse, all of Miss K's toys have made their way back in here as she drives us insane when there isn't anything to play with in here, but there isn't any system in place for putting them away. So that's another thing to tackle by adding a light toy box that can be removed at the end of the day to give us back our adult space.

My biggest job that I want to tackle now isn't actually something anyone will see when they walk into the house. I want to create a household binder, where I will put all my to do lists, cleaning rosters, recipes, important dates, and anything else I need to make the house run smoothly. Luckily for me I have access to the internet, where I can get free printable templates for a lot of what I want. I also have a wonderful big sister who has already created a household binder for her house, and is in the process of re-designing all of her files, as she lost them when her external hard drive broke several months ago. So I have called dibs on copies of all of her files too. But given that making these files is a slow process I have decided to have a look online while I'm waiting for my sister's documents. So that is what was doing when I stumbled upon this particular cleaning check-list tonight.

Apologies if this picture is a bit too small to see, it is actually designed to print at A4, so squashing it into my tiny little blog tends to make it hard to read, but you should be able to get the general gist of what this document wants you to do. What you see here is a DAILY check-list. Obviously this is a cleaning check-list for people who have absolutely nothing else to do with their time other than clean the house. This is the kind of document that makes the housework impaired people of this world (like me) want to burn their houses down after the first day just to avoid having to repeat this process more than once. I just love that it assumes that we have enough time during a load of washing to dust light fixtures, organise a whole pantry or fridge, and polish all of our shiny stuff (as a former collector of shiny stuff, that really was a job that would take a day all on its own). I'm lucky to get half of my dishes done in the time it takes for my washing machine to complete a load. (I still haven't figured out if that means I have a super fast washing machine, or I'm really slow at doing the dishes.)

Of course if you do actually manage to follow this cleaning schedule to the bitter end (including organising all of your junk drawers, organising your backyard items, folding and putting away all of your laundry and cleaning the grill) and you make it to the last step of preparing a celebratory drink, you will most likely need a double shot of whiskey, followed by a double shot of vodka, just to erase the depressing thought in your head that you have nothing better to do with your day other than clean your house from top to bottom.

If of course you are like me, you will bypass all of the cleaning beforehand and just go straight to the celebratory drink at the end. Right after you screw up the piece of paper you printed this check-list on and throw it into the recycling bin. (We're alcoholics, not slobs remember)

Dear Diary the eventful week edition

Well it's that time of the week again, and what a week it has been. There have been some major changes this week for both me and Miss K and I am bursting at the seams to share them all with you.

So today I'm going to start with Miss K for a change, and it has definitely been a big week for her. We are currently trying to encourage her to start walking by herself. At the moment she is happy enough to walk as long as someone is holding her hand. My sister and I sit on the floor with her and we can manage to get her to walk several steps between us, as long as there is chocolate involved. But once the chocolate is all gone her motivation to walk disappears and she resumes crawling everywhere. She shows signs that she is ready to walk, but she just hasn't gained the confidence yet. But tonight was a big night for her, she managed to stand all by herself for a full 20 seconds before she realised that she was standing unsupported and freaked out. Then she dropped onto her bottom like a tonne of bricks. So that was a pretty exciting moment for me. It was also the first time I managed to contain my excitement when she stands up alone, as I usually start making noises which just brings her attention to it and makes her fall down. So a huge step forward for both of us. Another big development for Miss K is that she has finally discovered the word no. Now at bed time or when we share a shower she starts shaking her head madly and yelling no. It's very cute and fun to watch, but with all the jiggling, it is getting just that little bit harder to hold her. She has also started saying grandpa this weekend, but coming from her mouth it sounds like ba pa. Again very cute and I get her to say it as much as possible.

As for me, this week has also been a big week. As mentioned earlier in the week I'm starting a 30 day challenge to see if I can't get better organised and on top of my housework. I won't go into everything on this post because it is big enough to deserve a post of its own, but needless to say this week has been a huge learning curve for me, but I haven't given up yet and I feel that I may be on my way to being a better organised and tidier person. That's not to say I haven't hit any stumbling blocks along the way, for one Miss K is spending more time in her bedroom at the moment, just because most of her toys have been moved in there, but the extra time in her room has come with extra cleaning for me as every time she goes in there she absolutely trashes the joint. And just in case you think I'm being over dramatic when I say she trashes the joint, I actually took pictures of it the other day as evidence.

See? Trashed.

So from being a room that I had to give a small tidy and dust to once a week it has now become a daily job. Occasionally I get Miss K to come and help put her toys away for me, and once I even managed to tidy it up while she was fast asleep in the cot. But I am beginning to feel this is a losing battle, and I'm at my wits end as to how to stop her upturning every single box in the room. It's all good for her as she can't fold yet so I can't get her to help tidy up the bibs and body suits. But I'm now beginning to regret buying so many of them as I have to re-fold each and every one of them every night. 

On the family front my little sister is settling into her new home nicely, I think she's loving living so close to work as she can now be on call for whenever they need her, instead of needing at least an hours notice to start work so she could figure out how to get there. She has actually moved into a flat very close to where I was living before I moved back to mums house, and apparently my old neighbours in the block of flats next to mine were having a party last night that was so loud she could hear them even though they are several blocks of land away from her. Glad to see some things never change. I've told her if she hears a really loud television set being played it would be my old next door neighbour who is as deaf as a post and used to have her telly blaring all day. I never had to watch telly when I lived there because I could hear hers perfectly, even with all my doors and windows closed.

Well that's me done for another week, my little brother is coming down tonight for a quick visit, and I'm waiting to hear from him as he'll probably be wanting a lift from the train station. It just means I can't get into my pyjamas until they get here. The things I do for my family.

Just a quick reminder as well, you can now find me on Facebook here so come on over and like my page, you'll get updates as soon as I've posted another wonderful blog for you to read, I also get to update on what is happening with both me and Miss K more regularly there so you get to see more of us. Don't miss out.

30 ways in 30 days challenge

So I apologise for not writing yesterday, I had intended on coming on last night and bragging about how good I was yesterday, but after spending the entire day being all busy and mum-like I was so exhausted I didn't even look at the computer. But I had a good night's rest last night and I've not been quite so frenzied with my cleaning today so I still have plenty of energy right now to brag.

After I wrote this post about a blog I found giving inspiration on how to get organised, I decided it was not enough to just write down all the wonderful ideas on this blog and read it every day, it was time to actually do something about the state of my life. So I am starting my own 30 day challenge based on what I read. Yesterday was the first day and so far things are going very well. I can't say that it is a success just yet because it is easy to do something for one day. Trying to keep it up permanently is something that takes determination and will power. And those are two traits that I usually lack.

But that doesn't change how proud I am of my effort yesterday. I wrote myself a huge to do list on Sunday night and made myself work till I managed to tick off everything on the list. There were some things that I didn't actually get to accomplish, but it wasn't because I got bored and wandered off. One item on my list was buy new ink cartridges for my printer, but when I got to the computer store to make my purchase I was told that my printer is an absolute dinosaur, and they don't really sell ink cartridges for it any more. I could have gotten some ordered in specially, but it would have been cheaper to buy a brand new printer, as purchasing both a black and white and colour cartridge would end up costing me around $80. So I had to scratch that one off my list unfinished unfortunately.

Today there was a new to do list  written up, and I managed to accomplish quite a few things on the list. Again I came across stumbling blocks, like a supermarket that didn't sell borax, and a calculator that refuses to show itself, but again many items got crossed off, and those that didn't can just be added to tomorrows to do list, and then any day afterwards until I get them all completed. And on and on it will go for 30 days. And hopefully by the end of the 30 days I won't need to look at my inspiration every single morning before I get going, it will just be second nature for me to get up in the morning and do my job.

I'll be posting updates here every now and again just so you my wonderful readers can know how I'm progressing, but for now I have to get off the computer, as I'm only allowing myself half an hour on the computer at a time, as this is one of my biggest distractions, and I still have lots I could be doing. Wish me luck

Getting organised

So in an effort to find my missing mojo, I am still looking at the wonderful blogs and pins by other sickeningly capable people, all of whom make this stuff look super easy. I have stumbled tonight on a wonderful blog called Clean and Scentsible, by one such capable woman, and she has a post called 30 ways in 30 days to get organised. For anyone who wants to read this little gem of inspiration, you can find it here. I have written down absolutely everything she has written in this list, and tomorrow once I have bought more printer ink, I will be printing these wise words out, and pinning them up somewhere that I will be able to see on a regular basis every day. I'm thinking probably next to the door in my bedroom would be a good place to stick this for now. Hopefully if I can read this list every single day I will be able to find the inspiration to get better organised. Some of the tips she gives are so blindingly obvious you would think I shouldn't need to write them down to remember them, but when your mojo is MIA, then you forget all kinds of things, like getting dressed in the morning. So fingers crossed this is a step in the right direction for me.