#2133 Whatever Saturday

You know, that whatever day?

It doesn’t even have to be a Saturday, it could be a Monday, Friday, even a Wednesday… but it’s that day when you have no plans in particular, and just decide to go with the flow.

Now let’s be very clear. I have A LOT of stuff to do and certainly have had a lot on, but I needed this day of no routine, of ‘whatever.’

I easily could have written up a to-do list last night for myself, for today, but I fought the OCD urge… instead I woke up and tended to things here and there, and mostly let the day lead me.

Baby girl wanted to go out for coffee time, and that meant she wanted me to get coffee, so she could get ice cream. 🤦‍♀️🤣🍦 So we went, because a) holidays, and b) like mother like daughter, but even more so like daughter like mother, I agreed with her. 🤣🤣

Then we went to the park, because ‘whatever’ right, and she swung up to the sky, her words.

And I made espresso martinis tonight, both because ‘whatever’ and because I bloody well felt like it.

Doing whatever feels freaking good!

#2022 The box cake

Hubbie had a great family idea for us to do today.

I got the supplies accordingly at the supermarket yesterday, but to be honest I didn’t need a lot.

And after lunch today, we all got together to make…

A CAKE.

But… it was one of those super easy, boxed ones. 😉

He thought it would be a good thing to do, minus the 17 steps I usually take when I get motivated and creative to do something out of a Jamie or Nigella book, or as is the case recently, Marion’s socials.

And had we gone that path, I know my OCD would have kicked in majorly, and I would have been bossing them about and then ordering them out of the kitchen like nobody’s business.

But I let go, and let them decide. This was literally 3 steps.

We all took turns adding the bare basics ingredients to a bowl… mixing them with electric beaters… then pouring it all into the pan to bake.

That’s it!

Less than an hour later it came out of the oven, icing was provided, and baby girl went on a frenzy applying sprinkles.

The end result:

TA-DA!

I thought it might be heavy and sickly sweet, but surprisingly it wasn’t, and tasted quite good.

The only problem now is we have all this cake, and no one to share it with!

Anyone wanna move in next door? We can trade food over the fence. 🤣🍰

#1940 Loom galore

An extension of yesterday’s post.

I think we might have to set up shop soon.

Baby girl is on a loom band bracelet making FRENZY.

• 

• 

When I took those photos tonight she had made 27.

Then she went and made more!

She is finding such joy in it. I can see how happy it makes her, and I love how the thrill of making bracelets of different colour and length is keeping her busy while satisfying some deep creative urge in her.

She even meticulously organised her loom band box with all the different bands, all by herself, so that it is now colour-coded and everything looks perfect.

OCD-central.

That’s my girl. 😉🥇

Seriously, place your orders in! We have a colour for every occasion. 🔴🔵🟢🟡🟣🟠

#1707 Day 209 of getting there: Declutter day

There was nothing else to do on a day like today.

An iso grey day.

But DE CLUTTER.

It wasn’t even planned. (Seriously, none of my days are anymore).

It all kinda flowed. From de cluttering baby girls toys, to attacking closets, emptying old boxes, organising files, and cleaning out drawers…

I did one after another after another. And considering how grey the day was, and how flat I felt at the start… I felt pretty damn productive and awesome after the day’s work.

There’s nothing quite like clearing and organising your external state, to help fix your internal one. Don’t tell me the two aren’t connected – they are.

#1597 Day 99 of getting there: the cat-astic third iso puzzle

It had to happen.

Winter spreading germs, and people are shit.

JUST STAY HOME!

Lucky for me, I somehow forecast this crap ( I have become strongly accustomed to expecting all kinds of shit, yes even for this glass half-full gratitude gal) and last week when baby girl was at school, came across this $16 puzzle at ‘the cheap shop.’

You know, ‘the cheap shop.’ That budget dollar shop where you’ll find onesies, kitchen accessories, cat litter bags, 50 cent greeting cards, 57 different variety of candles, a range of quirky homewares you think you need (but really you don’t) and also, some kind of party/decorating station in one corner of the shop.

All at below reasonable prices.

It was here I went “a puzzle might come in handy soon.”

And I had to get the most trickiest one yet.

A billion cat faces, mwa ha ha.

It meant that today, we had to pack up the completed Frozen puzzle that’s adorned our dining room table for the past several weeks.

If you find and follow me on Insta, you’ll see the delicious anti-OCD video action.

(Psst, @smikgwriter)

Anyway, we learnt upon opening it tonight that it’s split up into 6 categories… that is, A, B, C, D, E and F. Those letters are at the back of each puzzle piece, so by sorting them alphabetically, well half the work is kinda done.

Such a great idea. Well, we better get cracking then…

#1459 The book to remove clutter

I was looking up books of interest at the local  library a while ago, and when I came across a particular title I thought “I must have it.”

I put it on reserve and was happy to finally go in and pick it up today.

Although it says it’s about de-cluttering (and it is) it’s managing clutter based on the principles of feng shui, a topic I’ve been looking into a lot lately.

While baby girl was at school, and Hubbie was beside me watching basketball, I got through about 80 pages of it… sure it’s a small book, but I think I’m making up in my lack of fiction reading by overdosing on non-fiction (that and the subject matter is so intriguing to me).

There’s a lot of psychological issues tied up in accumulating items, being unable to throw things away, and allowing dirt to build up in your home, as well as not tending to things that need repair in the house, all things I’m discovering as I turn page by page.

I’m going to have most of the book read by the end of the week I’m sure, and along with it I’ll have a sure-fire plan to organise and throw out heaps of unnecessary stuff in our house. Watch this space!

And just, not-so-quietly… how great are libraries? Like, you borrow something, enjoy it, and then return it for somebody else to gain satisfaction from…

And it’s all for free! 😁👍

#1457 The diary

I have a PLAN.

There are so many of you that will roll your eyes here… and I DON’T CARE.

Because today was the first day of implementation, and already things are working.

I’ve worked out how to succeed.

How to get ahead in life.

How to make your dreams come true.

And all you need, is…

A DIARY.

(Along with a hefty dose of passion, determination, and resilience, but eh).

I needed a place to organise my writing goals and thoughts. I realised it was all in my head, and my 58 to-do lists were not quite doing their job. Sure they reminded me of what I had to do, but they weren’t really making me accountable and tracking what I did each day.

Insert, the DIARY.

I bought the above ‘buffalo diary’ from Typo a couple weeks back. It displays a week per two-page spread, and my plan is to look at my week ahead from my fridge monthly planner (planners EVERYWHERE), see what days I’m not travelling or with appointments, and then slot in times through the week in my DIARY to do writing-related things and work on freelancing.

It is soooo simple. Things like this are the necessary first step to making things happen… it is so clear to me now. Today I opened the week to see what was on today’s page, and guess what?

I actually worked on what was listed for today.

A bloody miracle. No procrastination either.

And another little motivator for me (other than my eventual success and world-wide stardom?)

Stickers.

Each time I complete the task subscribed to me that day, I’m going to put a little star next to my diary entry…

Like in school. Tee hee hee. Maybe a gold one too. To match the front cover lettering. 🌟

 

 

 

#1454 All photo’d up

So this might seem like a boring one to some, but I was rapt to catch up on a lot of photo stuff today.

I am now up-to-date on all my photos (up to the beginning of Feb 2020), meaning they have been uploaded to a digital cloud, downloaded onto my computer, and then backed-up to an external hard drive.

I have to do this you see, this long and lengthy chain of photo organisation, because I have so much.

So many photos.

And I refuse to pay cloud services extra beyond their whatever amount of free GB they give me… so as I approach the storage maximum and start getting warnings, I start –

Download. Back up. Delete.

REPEAT.

I delete the ones I have backed up, and make room on the cloud for more photos to be uploaded.

You may think I sound so super organised, but trust me, months before I got my new phone last year, I was in a 2 month frenzy to upload approximately 8000 photos from mine and Hubbie’s phones.

Then I hadn’t been organised.

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

And it took so long because both our phones were crashing in the upload process. It wasn’t automatic like now. Now I don’t do anything and my phone just magically sends anything I’ve taken into that virtually, almost limitless place in the sky… 😉

My plan is to do all of this at the end of each month. Then I won’t have a massive backlog of 1000s of photos and phones crashing and me stressing I am going to lose precious photos.

I can’t lose photos!

My only problem now is… developing.

Do you still develop photos, so you have them in print? Do you prefer to keep them in digital copy, like on disc or USB to trawl through when you feel? Or are photo books more your thing?

I am genuinely curious, because although I may be up-to-date with the whole upload/download/back-up/delete thing, I can honestly tell you that I am 4 years behind in the OTHER process.

2016. That is where I am up to in developing. I am ‘old school,’ and like to see and feel the photos, but can’t help thinking of my Mum’s words when I think of the lifetime of photos I have and will continue to accumulate… “You need a separate house for all of that!”

Doesn’t mean I will stop taking them.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

#1439 The toy clean-out

Can you believe from the hours of 1pm to almost 6pm, with two breaks for lunch and coffee, I spent the time cleaning out and sorting baby girl’s toys?

Ashamedly, not even all of them. Today we tackled the area called the family room – it has the second ‘kid’ TV, my computer and desk where I do ALL my writing, and to the side of me, her ‘small’ play area.

Only it wasn’t so small when we started today. It had grown huge and out of control.

Baby girl was fabulous. Funnily enough, culling toys and taking everything out of boxes to reassess and work out if it needs to go in the throw, keep or donate pile, is actually a fun task for kids when you get them involved… they end up discovering a whole lot of stuff they’d forgotten about. Throughout the day baby girl ended up playing with new and re-discovered toys constantly while I kept interrupting her with “hey, focus… keep or throw?”

I kept her involved, because I like to keep her happy.

But when she goes back to school, I am going to focus on the out of reach spot in her cupboard and those A-Z drawers in her room that she isn’t as well acquainted with…

And cull it all. Mwa ha ha.

Today she was absolutely brilliant in her brutal ability to say ‘throw’ for things that honestly, I hesitated and asked “really?” about too many times that I care to admit.

And to have gotten rid of so much stuff is honestly liberating… and now, EXHAUSTING. 😴

 

 

#1378 Squeezing in the tree on Saturday night

Today was my off day, my break from doing something, anything.

Actually it was imposed upon me. I didn’t choose to catch a cold just before December. But alas Rudolph nose, flemmy throat and snots galore are here to give me festive cheer.

Let’s not forget the bouts of weakness interspersed with aches and pains. Nooo. 

I would have much rather been entertaining family and friends… but shit happens.

I was, and still am, out for the count.

But I got inspired, for a moment. Hubble was going crazy moving pots and plants outside, and then moving furniture inside the house…

So I asked him to take some big bags out for me from under the stairs…

And we put up the Christmas tree! 🎄🎅🤶🎁

Yes, on the 23rd of November, thank you very much.

Baby girl then told me that her school bestie already had put up her tree, and I was like “shame on us for taking so long!”

😉

Before anyone has a heart attack… it’s JUST the tree. The bare basics. I have all our Christmas bags and decorations in corners of the room to tend to throughout the week.

Because this is, a process. A journey. I like to take my time, put the baubles up with care, hang decorations from the ceiling, and light up the walls wherever I go… to Buble, Mariah and Sia contemporarily caroling in the background. 🎶

It is an experience to be enjoyed.

I don’t do it early, just because I want to. I do it because I’m usually really busy in the first week of December. And having done the same last year and put up the tree in late November, I felt so in front, and so organised with Christmas… that now it’s a thing.

Once the tree was up however, I was on the couch passed out again. Just as well I do this slowly…