Cold and flu season

Well, the bug that has been travelling around my family finally caught up with me last week.
I thought I had been doing pretty well not to fall ill, since I'm usually the first in the family to get any bug, but I think it was just biding its time in order to hit me hard. I've spent the last week coughing, spluttering, sneezing, blowing my nose and trying to take it easy to recover. I think the tide has finally turned and I'm on the mend, but still not totally well unfortunately.
I still managed to make some good progress on writing up my detailed timetable (it's so nearly finished). It's been a really helpful process for working out how I actually want to spend my time. I watched a tiny bit of Joyce Meyer this morning, where she made the great point that what we spend our time on is where our heart is. I want my heart to be with God, with my family, with my friends, with my garden, with my craftwork. I don't want to have a heart for TV watching or lazing around, which I feel I've fallen into a bit of late. So writing my timetable has been very timely. I've made sure that I've set aside some designated couple time and family time and my husband insisted that I set aside some rest time so that I feel refreshed and not frustrated when I'm busy with housework or other tasks. Being a submissive wife can be such a blessing at times like this!
I think I should finally finish the timetable today, and am hoping to have some good God-time as well. It's been too long since I've set aside proper time for bible-reading and prayer, but I've got a nice chunk of time set aside each day now, so I'm hoping that will be helpful.

Time to shake it up

I've decided that it's time to change the way I organise my daily routine. I've had a few various strategies over the last year.
My 'lucky dip' housework method worked beautifully, until my gorgeous boy got old enough to stand up at the table where I kept my paper slips and grab them. Very cute, but not very helpful to the organisation process.
I've also had a few timetables, particularly when bubba was small, to ensure that he spent time on all the various activities he was meant to be doing.
Then for a while I used an app called Daily Notes, which was really helpful, however they don't allow you to have fortnightly tasks, and I have lots of these. After waiting over 5 months for an upgrade to include this, I've given up and am embarking on a new timetable.
I spent last night drawing up a grid on A1 paper so I can have all 7 days, with columns for each of us, going from 6 in the morning until 8:30 at night.
Hopefully this will be thorough enough! I'm hoping that having our routines written out will ensure that both hubby and I get some designated down time.
So I'm spending today reflecting on how I spend my time, and what should happen at various times. Wish me luck!

Blessings

Feeling very blessed today to have such a great supportive network of friends and family around me. It's too easy to take them for granted, but I'm really feeling aware of how cared for I am. In-laws to babysit, friends to visit, parents to ring and check how all our various ailments are going as well as inviting us around to tea. Trully blessed.

What a week!

I'm still playing catch-up at the moment. After such a busy, emotional week, both hubby and bubby are down with horrid colds, and I managed to injure my back. So I'm playing nurse as well as catching up on the chores that I missed during the chaos. Yesterday I think I finally turned the tide- the kitchen actually got cleaned and I even snuck in a bit of gardening and sewing as well as looking after my menfolk. Today is such a perfect drizzly, grey, indoors kind-of day. I'm looking forward to a hearty soup for lunch to chase away the winter chills, baking a chocolate and beetroot cake and hopefully finishing off a sewing project.

So tired...

After spending nearly all day at a family funeral yesterday, I'm so tired this morning, but will have to wait a little while longer to get back into my normal restful living, since today is very full with friends visiting and a wedding. All good, enjoyable things today, but I will still relish the rest when it comes. I've found that emotional days take as much out of you as physically active days. Why is that?

Try again!

So, who knew that babies kept you busy? My good intentions of keeping a blog went somewhat out the window once my gorgeous little boy arrived. Coupled with using a different computer that didn't have all my favourite blogs bookmarked, I lost the blogging mood. However, I've just gone through a period of reorganising and rediscovering the blog world, so I'm determined to have another go.
So here I am.
I'm loving doing the mum thing, and being able to stay at home because of that. I've been able to spend much more time in the garden, more time cooking and sewing and just general slowing down compared to work life.
Here's hoping that, this time, I'll be able to keep up a regularish blog!

Long Weekend

It's been a busy couple of weeks for me of late. Work has been quite busy (my fault really as I've been pushing myself to meet self-imposed deadlines) and my "housewife days" have been taken up with appointments and family time. All enjoyable, but it has left me feeling a bit rushed and in need of some slow down time. It's nice to know that the end of my working days is in sight, but I'm really pleased that this weekend is a long one due to Anzac Day on Monday and my usual Tuesday housewife day. I'm planning to take it easy over the next few days; I want to get out in the garden to make the most of this beautiful rain, and I'd like to get back into some craft activities as I feel I've been neglecting this lately. I realised today that I haven't made anything handcrafted for bub yet and there's only two months until he's here (if he sticks to schedule!) so I want to complete a project for him before he arrives. Other than that and a few necessary chores, I'm going to spend the next few days living slowly, breathing deeply and enjoying an un-busy state.

Rain, beautiful rain

There's nothing quite like the sound and smell of rain after days of heat! I can feel my spirit lifting as I listen to the patter of raindrops on our roof and the sound of distant thunder. I'm already reviving from my wilted state!

Hot days and new routines

My year has properly started now (yes I know it's February). I've started my part-time work at the school Library which has been good - very basic data entry which means it's easy on my brain and feet (great now that I've hit 3rd trimester) and my part-time load has meant that I've had my first official house-wife days. I don't care how un-PC it is - I'm loving it!

I'm still using my lucky-dip housework that I mentioned last time and it is working fairly well, particularly on the days where I am home as it gives me something to work through.

The only down-side I'm finding is hot days = no housework. I am such a wimp, but I totally wilt on days where the temperature is above 30 degrees. At the moment our house has 2 air-conditioning units in the bedrooms(which I turn on maybe 5 times a year) but no cooling mechanisms for the rest of the house. I'm hoping that we can get some better insulation with the government's rebate scheme, and this should help a lot I think. The green side of me really doesn't want to have air-conditioning for the house, but on hot days, my pathetic self-centered side says "screw the environment and bring on the ducted air-con throughout the house!" I think I'll manage to resist though... hopefully! At least there's not too much of Summer left this year.

Housework: Mary Poppins Style

Okay, so in writing this post I am revealing myself to be somewhat of a nerd. For the last few years I've been endeavouring to find a strategy for dealing with housework that works for me. Both my husband and I come from homes of hoarders and have resolved not to go down the same path. I was very inspired by Cynthia Ewer's ideas on www.organizedhome.com and have tried lots of different methods that she mentions including scheduling housework into my daily timetable. The propblem for me is I always end up doing the same tasks and leaving out others. I also get into a bit of a funk and just don't feel like doing any chores.
Recently however I've tried to make housework tasks more of a game. In the words of Mary Poppins:
"In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun
you find the fun and snap!
The job's a game"

So I sat down and wrote out all of the housework tasks that I want to get completed every week. I cut out each task and folded them up and put them all in a dish. Now whenever it is housework time I pull out a lucky-dip housework item and go and do that job. I have to finish all the items within a week, but it doesn't matter how many I get done on any particular day. For some reason this is really working for me and helping me to get my house to a reasonable level of clean. My husband thinks I'm very silly and nerdy, but hey, anything that can make housework more exciting is okay by me!

The benefit of this scheme is I think it will also work very well for family cleaning sessions as well as working for individual cleaning (but don't tell Hubby that yet!)

Happy New Year!

Well, the New Year is always a time for resolutions, so my resolution for this year is to resurrect this poor neglected blog and be a more faithful blogger.
I'm also resolving to comment more on the blogs that I read rather than just lurking in the background.
I think I should find this resolution a bit easier now, since this year involves a lot of change for me. I am no longer a full time worker, instead I will be working part time for a few weeks and then beginning maternity leave for my first baby! So I should have a lot of material to be writing about at any rate.

I also want 2010 to be a time of more gardening, more cooking from scratch, learning more crafting skills (I already have some projects on the go) and generally more simple-living skill building.

Still here!

Hmm. So it's been a while since my first ever post.
Because the whole blog-thing is new to me, I feel like I have to have full-blown exciting things going on to be worth posting about. The only problem is, either things are just ticking away on a normal level and thus I haven't felt like they were worth a mention, or exciting things are happening which means I don't have time to post. Dilemma. One that I hope I can resolve, because I really do like the idea of keeping a blog.
Anyway; today I finally got back into the garden after waaaaaay too long. It felt so good to be getting my hands dirty again. I spent a lot of time weeding (one of the outcomes of not spending enough time in the garden) and managed to plant a few things as well; onions, leeks, carrots, rainbow chard and beetroot. Hopefully they will come up okay. I'll need to be a bit more diligent in the future and not just abandon my tender seeds to the mercy of the elements.
So, not huge exciting things, but a start to more regular posting hopefully!

Let's start at the very beginning...

It's a very good place to start!
So... in a way I began this sustainability journey about 2 years ago when I had a bit of a "green epiphany" and found out about peak oil and other such things and realised that I had to do something. Even if it was just 'little old me', I'd rather approach things with a "why not me" attitude than a "why me" one. So I started finding out all I could about looking after this big blue planet of ours.
I thought most of this was going on just in my thinking (indeed I felt like my brain was tripling in size daily with the amount of information I was finding out), but I guess I must have been vocal about it, because I soon became the resident greenie at my workplace, and the resident 'weirdo' in my group of friends. I started making my own saop and using bi-carb for pretty much everything around the house. I started knitting again (even if only very simple projects) and started my much loved (if often neglected) veggie patch. In the last 6 months I've even started spinning my own wool.
But even before that, I think in a way I've always been on this journey. My parents brought me up with a healthy scepticism for commercialism and I never really got into the whole brand-name buying thing (unless Target counts!). Looking at and after this world is also one of the things that brought me closer to God, which in turn is one of the reasons that I think we need to look after this world so much.
So there you go. A bundle of beginnings. A little jumbled and rambling perhaps, but after all, that's what this blog is for. A place for me to ramble and share. I hope you enjoy the journey.