Today’s Good Idea

Although I joined up for some dressmaking classes, unfortunately the teacher is quite ill and therefore they have been postponed until November.  However, desperate to actually do something (and since I bought all the materials) I decided to make a drawstring bag for my daughter so she can put a change of clothes and other things in it when she goes to nursery - they supply all the nappies and food so I don’t really need the whole changing bag and I thought I could do better than just use a plastic bag!

I bought some pink material, pink felt and a cord in order to make it.  I used one of my son’s games bags as a template and cut 4 pieces of material the same size (just smaller than A3 including extra for sewing).  WIth the felt I just out my daughters name in capital letters and also some small flowers with the spare felt, then sewed each letter individually onto one of the pieces of fabric for the bag, along with the flowers to spell out her name in a diagonal on the front of the bag.

Next I took two pieces of the fabric, with the right sides inwards and sewed along three of the sides leaving the top open, and repeating with the other two pieces of fabric.  One of these (with the felt) is to be the outside of the bag and the other, the lining inside the bag.

Now I only have two pieces instead of 4 since they are sewn together - I put the two separate sewn pieces one inside the other (as it would be when finished) and then turned it inside out so I could sew the two pieces together, but leaving a hole to turn the bag the right way round again.  This bit is the complicated bit and I had to rip apart and redo since I did it wrong first time!

Once the bag is the right way and looks like it is almost finished, you need to sew arond the top again (leaving a gap) - about half an inch away from the seam that has just been sewn - this is whether the cord needs to be fed through.  Once this is done, put the cord in the seam and then tie a knot …. all finished.

I’ve avoided Facebook like the plague for far too long now - I’ve always maintained that it’s just something else that will eat up my time without me achieving anything productive, and lets face it, most of us have more than enough stuff that eats our time.

Yet on the other hand I’m also nosy to find out what people I used to know are up to nowadays.  So I bit the bullet and I’ve finally joined the hype…. obviously it’s early days but I have got into contact with some old friends and even been down memory lane looking at old photos of friends from school (there are some scary haircuts going on!), so even if this was my only foray into Facebook, I’m glad I’ve done it …. and I didn’t waste too much time!

I received a flyer through the door last week detailing all the new courses that are on at my local college… for a while now I have been interested in making my own clothes (or at least some of them) but I just don’t know where to start.

My mum has a sewing machine that I can have after she bought herself a new one so I don’t have to worry about the expense of buying one, it’s just the know-how that I am lacking.

Fortunately in the flyer, it listed dressmaking for beginners as on of the courses.  The initially runs for 10 weeks and cost around £60, then there is the option to continue of further courses…. so I pulled my finger out and enrolled on the course.  The first lesson is next Tuesday and I’m looking forward to it - on two counts; firstly I get to learn how to sew and secondly I get out of the house for a few hours on my own so the OH will have to start bathing and putting Bella to bed… should be interesting…….!!

I’ve now started back at work and I can’t believe how fast the time just gets eaten up.  I fell like I just about get enough time to clean the house and sort all the washing out, play with the kids and then amazingly it’s the end of the day and everyone wants dinner!  How does this happen?  Especially when I seem to get so much done when I’m at work.

Take this morning for instance, I decided to sit down for an hour with a cup of tea and the Olympics and check through my emails - Two and a half hours later and I still haven’t moved.  I should have put hte washing on by now and cleaned the kitchen!  Hmmmm, well I thought I best log in because I haven’t for a while…..

It’s all very well deciding that you need to declutter but it’s a completely different thing actually doing it.  Only you know what works best for the way that you work but below I will describe how I set about decluttering a room.

Although I tidy around the house every week, every so often I decide to go through a room completely - usually one main room a month so that every room gets the treatment about twice a year.  When I know that I’m going to attack a room I tend to ignore it in the general housework that week since what’s the point doing housework twice!  This is the reason the first bit includes general cleaning:

1.   The first thing to do is to get everything together that you will need:

• duster
• polish
• bin bags
• recycling bags
• window cleaner
• cloths (for cleaning windows)
• glass of water (to drink!)

2.  Next set a timer for 30 mins and don’t stop until it goes off.  Also, when it goes off STOP - it doesn’t matter if you haven’t finished what you are doing it is important to take a break!

3.  During the next 30 mins, you want to achieve several things so break this time down even further and alter times as necessary according to the room that is being decluttered.  Don’t set a timer for these sessions, this is just a rough guide so you know that it will not take more than about 10 mins doing each session - for example:

• 5 mins - putting any rubbish in the bin bags/recycling bags.  Ignore everything else, just search out the obvious rubbish that you keep meaning to put in the bin but haven’t!
• 10 mins - putting things back in their place.  If things belong in another room just put them outside the door and sort them out later.
• 10 mins - dusting, dust around wherever needs dusting even the places that don’t usually get done since it with stop the dust flying around later.
• 5 mins - clean the windows.

4.   Once the timer goes off - STOP - it’s time to take a hard earned break and get a cup of tea/coffee.  Sit down and enjoy it (the room will still be there when you’ve finished!)  The main point is that you have started on the room and it is looking tidier even though you haven’t started any serious decluttering at least it is clean and the obvious rubbish has gone.  If you ran out of time, don’t worry, finish off when you’ve finished your drink.

During the last 30 mins your subconscious will have spotted various objects in the room and whilst you’re having a break you will start thinking about these; deciding what to keep, recycle, mend, etc so that when you get back to it you will already have an idea where to start.

 5.  After your break this is where the fun starts.  If you have formulated a plan during the tea break on what to do next then follow this plan.  If you are still not sure then the best thing to do is break the room down into small areas since depending on the room you may not have time to do it all in one day (or however long you have to do the room).  This way if you only have time to do one or two areas then the rest of the room with still be tidy ready for next time.  For example in a bedroom you might have the following areas:

• the bed (storage underneath)
• the wardrobes
• chest of drawers
• bedside tables
• dressing table
• the floor

In this example you might start clearing under the bed and then attack the wardrobes.  If you run out of time then the other areas can be attacked another time….

6.  You should plan for each area to take about an hour.  Inevitably you will come across things that you want to look through (photo albums, magazines, etc).  The trick is not to get sidetracked - make several piles: to keep, to bin, to review and stick to putting everything into one of these piles.  Once the area has been cleared and the piles have been made, then

• To Keep: Put away the items in the to keep pile. 
• To Bin:  Next sort out the to bin pile into rubbish, recycle, sell and donate.  Put the rubbish in the bin, the recycling in the recycling, finally put the to sell and to donate items into different bags ready to sort out later. 
• To Review:  The to review pile is the most time consuming - this might involve paperwork that needs to be filed away, shredded or actioned, items that need mending, magazines that you don’t want to recycle until you’ve had a final flick through….  Ideally you could do with a big plastic box (like a toy box) or a wicker basket.  Put all these items into a box and go through later in a more leisurely fashion.

7.  Before you attack what you have left tidy up where you have just been, unless you have been decluttering your lounge, take the to sell bag, the to donate bag and the to review box into the lounge, or another room where you can sort through them.  Then go back to the original room and ensure that it looks tidy otherwise you will have spend time clearing a room for it to not look any tidier and this will not help your motivation!

8.  Time to make another drink since it’s time for a sit down… If you are planning on selling goods on eBay or similar then if you have time now, go through the to sell bag and spend some time sorting this out and taking pictures, etc and listing your items ready to sell.  If not, then put the to sell and to donate bags where they need to be, either in the car or in the hall ready to take to a charity shop/car boot sale or in the garage.

9.  Next go through the to reviewbox - have a pen and paper handy - as you go through you may find letters or think of tasks that you need to complete so write these down as a todolist so that you don’t forget.  Also have a shredder handy since you may find bills and things that need to  be shredded before disposal.  When going through magazines tear out any pages that are of interest since one or two pages take up less room than one or two magazines.  I find it handy to type out any recipes or tips so I don’t even have the paper lying around.  Also I find that if I can’t be bothered to type out a recipe then I probably don’t want it that much anyway so I don’t keep it (this also works to reduce the about of rubbish that I keep!).  Sometimes you can find recipes on line as well as in magazines (for example with Good Food Magazine go to Good Food - any recipes you like will be on the website and you can save these in a binder for easy referral later) so you can copy the recipes online and recycle the whole magazine.

Other resources:

• Organise It
• My House and Garden
• Zen Habits
• Fly Lady

Ok so I missed run #7… Second (proper) ru with micoach.  Now apparently you hit it (not that hard!) twice and it gives you an update of your mileage, pace and time - or whatever you have set it to tell you - unfortunately this didn’t appear to work today although it did yesterday.  I ended up having a sore arm because I couldn’t get it to work… so I took it out of the armband to see where I was up to and managed to stop the music (when I started it I managed to play the same track over and over but that’s another story), when I attempted to get the phone back in the armband it decided to update me on my progress… duh.  I guess I just need to get used to all the functions and whih buttons do what so I can use it inside the armband but it was only the second run with it.

Having said that the detail that it gives me is great, previously I used to have to memorise my mile splits and write them down as soon as I got in the house but now I don’t have to worry about this and can check when I synchronise with my laptop.

My plan today was to run 5 miles, starting at 9km/hr and increasing by 0.2km/hr every mile - however I didn’t realise that I set it to run 5km instead.. again more practice required I think… Luckily I did only run 5km since just before I went upstairs to get showered I noticed my sister walking up the drive - I had completely forgotten that she was coming round to see me.   If I had on run 5m I would still have been running when she came around  :o!!

* Distance - 3.11m
* Time - 00:32:13
* Pace - 10:13
* Route - Treadmill, 0% incline
* Stride Rate - 176 steps/min
* Steps - 5472

I treated myself and bought an Adidas micoach phone, otherwise known as the Samsung F110.  It arrived this morning and it looks fab.

Obviously I couldn’t wait to do a training session and so I put my trainers on, attached the foot pod thing, attached the HRM and pressed start to an assessment run - at this point I was still in my jeans and a jumper, sat down in my lounge….

So I quickly jumped up and started running around the coffee table in the lounge.  The dog wondered what I was doing and started barking at me and got in my way, so I ran into the kitchen, opened the back door and started running up and down the garden.  The dog prefered this but still got in the way and I nearly fell over him several times!  Still I eventually managed to run a mile up and down the garden, but the unusual circumstances led my to have a time of 11:04 which is a slower than I would normally expect and it decided I was a beginner.

I plan to have another go this afternoon when I am better prepared……………

How to live simply in a 39 foot RVis a fascinating article and just shows how some people have embraced the simple life.  I really like the idea of using wicker baskets to store items that are in constant or frequent use and I do have some around the house but they hold the items which are used infrequently and are hidden in various places.  I guess my task is to clear these out and recycle the items I don’t use and then fill with the things that I do use

bathbomb 00011

Originally uploaded by qotd

Picture of the finished bath bombs. One is odd shaped since I ran out of molds and had to shape this by hand!

I haven’t really done well with today’s tasks, I had planned on sewing a button on a blouse that came off on Sunday (yes, the same blouse as the other day but a different button, I have to say - in fact I want to ensure that they are all sewn on properly!), sort out and wrap a birthday present for my niece (who I’m seeing tomorrow) and dye my hair.

Now I have managed to sort out the birthday present but the other two haven’t happened as yet.  Having said that my MIL rang and said that if I fancied a few hours to myself then she would look after Bella.  Now I said to my OH that I would make him a coffee cake today and completely forgot to add that to my MIT’s so I took my MIL up on her offer and make a coffee cake. 

So I used the time wisely and made the cake without any interruptions, and I also thought it would be a good time to make some bath bombs - both tasks that once your hands are dirty (or full of flour or bicarb) you don’t want to clean them until you are finished!  So I did two alternative tasks since I was given the opportunity.

It is the first time I have made bath bombs although I bought all the ingredients before Christmas, but I never got chance to make them with having to move house.  So as my first attempt I am very impressed.  I used a mixture of lavender and rose together because I couldn’t decide which I preferred, but next time I will make separate ones and also I hope to add some colour.  Also I now know that I will get approx 8 bath bombs from the measurements I used (1 cup of citric acid to 2 cups of bicarb of soda - an actual cup measure instead of a common cup since I have these as stainless steel measures).

Still I hope to sew on the button tonight and if I’m really lucky I’ll get some time to dye my hair tonight as well - I don’t want to to it now since I know that my MIL will be Bellas back as soon as I start!