Taking photos

Of course when I wanted to get out and DO something with a cyberfriend visiting all the way from Australia, the weather turned nasty - wet and cold. Well - how very different from Australia. We managed to get one or two nice trips in between the deluges.

Here are a couple of friends from Newstead Abbey. The peacock took a real fancy to me, followed me all over! This is what happens if you try to make a noise like a peahen - but he didn't display his magnificent tail, which was what I'd hoped he'd do!

Organisation!

I've already said I'm a perfectionist. I'm also an organisation freak. As someone who is chronically untidy and very much a pack rat, I am forever striving to be more organised, in my time management, in my housekeeping (oh my I hate housekeeping!), in my work life, in my various hobbies and interests and of course in my crafting.

This time, I tell myself, this time I will follow this organisational programme through until my house and life is perfect...

So I'm a bit addicted to organisation websites. Here are a couple of my favourites:

Remember the Milk

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

a web-based to do list and task organiser

Organized Scrapbooks

http://www.organizedscrapbooks.com/

An American site with some good ideas for - well - organising scrapbooking of course!

Check out that fabby scraproom posted on May 22nd.

I'll keep more coming...

Perfectionism?

Inspirational quote of the day:

Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that
perfectly. ~ St. Francis de Sales

Are you a perfectionist? Or do you believe in "just enough, just in time"? How has this affected your life?

I find it's a bit of a curse to be a perfectionist. Everything takes longer than it sometimes needs to and I find I don't want to start a task if I can't be sure I'm going to have time and resources to finish it properly.

This means I have trouble with my scrapping, oh yes. Oddly enough, it doesn't matter with cardmaking, making cards is the one area in which I allow myself to experiment and fail. They are small enough to throw away if it doesn't work and I haven't lost much. But a scrapbook page is important - it's our family's memories, I'm keeping it - and if it isn't quite right it will annoy me not only every time I open the album but probably at assorted random times in the dead of night when I should be asleep and instead my mind will fill with the knowledge that I did not do that one thing perfectly....

Journalling - why is it so hard?

I often see beautiful scrapbook pages with quotations that seem so apt... so how do they match the pictures and the quotations?

Have you ever thought to do the journalling FIRST and then look for the pics to go with it?

I have done that a couple of times.

Last night I was helping my son turn out items he's grown out of. It's so difficult throwing away his childhood - last night it was Thunderbirds - he LOVED Thunderbirds (the SF puppet programme): he had years of magazines and loads of books and even wrote his own books about Thunderbirds - how can I throw all that away? And that's not even starting on the full set of episodes and films on DVD, and the vehicles themselves - oh and a Hood puppet!

It all meant so much to him - once. And that's what's important - the memories of what it meant to him. I need to do a LO on what Thunderbirds meant to him. There must be a photograph somewhere with him playing with/dressed as a Thunderbird character, all I have to do is find it.

Meanwhile, both he and I should write our thoughts about this aspect of his childhood, so it isn't "thrown away".

Thought for the day:

"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about."

Persil's 33 things

Persil, the washing powder people, created their own blog-tag like list of things for kids to do before they are 10. They are things calculated to make sure their clothes will need washing! But that's not surprising. Still, it's a good list, and everyone of these would make a fabulous LO. Build them into your next 6 months (even if you're NOT a kid!) and don't forget the camera!

How many have you done?
How many have your kids done?
My tally is higher than my kids' - more freedom in my day...

33 things kids should do before they’re 10 – the official list:

1. Roll on your side down a grassy bank Y
2. Make a mud pie Y
3. Make your own modelling dough mixture Y
4. Collect frogspawn
5. Make perfume from flower petals Y
6. Grow cress on a windowsill Y
7. Make a papier mache mask Y
8. Build a sandcastle Y
9. Climb a tree Y
10. Make a den in the garden Y
11. Make a painting using your hands and feet
12. Organise your own teddy bears picnic Y
13. Have your face painted
14. Play with a friend in the sand Y
15. Make some bread Y
16. Make snow angels
17. Create a clay sculpture Y
18. Take part in a scavenger hunt Y
19. Camp out in the garden Y
20. Bake a cake Y
21. Feed a farm animal Y
22. Pick some strawberries Y
23. Play pooh sticks Y
24. Recognise five different bird species
25. Find some worms Y
26. Ride a bike through a muddy puddle Y
27. Make and fly a kite Y
28. Plant a tree Y
29. Build a nest out of grass and twigs Y
30. Find ten different leaves in the park Y
31. Grow vegetables Y
32. Make breakfast in bed for your parents Y
33. Make a mini assault course in your garden Y

Ali Edwards Ezine

I can't recommend this highly enough

Aezine

It touches how I often feel about my life, work and creativity.

Back at the beginning of the year she encouraged everyone to pick a word to be their theme/beacon for the year. "a word that I can focus on, mediate on, and reflect upon as I go about my daily life."

My word for this year was

tranquillity

And more recently, she has been looking at work-life-creativity balance and shedding layers. That's what I need to do - shed layers. I need to realise that I WON'T ever use those anthropomorphic mole stickers - even if, as is likely, I do a LO on how much my son liked moles at one time. And there are other layers of my life that I need to shed - old hang-ups, hesitations, negative feelings and memories. I can only achieve tranquillity by junking the things that hold me back...

Time I did a bit more recrafting of my life by starting with the scissors and the rubbish bin!

7 random facts

Nicki tagged me to write 7 random facts/habits about myself.

OK I'll do it

1 I play the guitar
2 I have terrible hair
3 I can spell!
4 I once drank in the same pub as Lemmy from Motorhead
5 When I was a girl I wanted to be called Alexandra
6 My favourite colour is turquoise
7 I once lived in Newcastle

Unfortunately all the people I know have already been tagged - so where do I go from here....?