Okay. So it's the last day of the six week Christmas/summer school holidays. Actually, we were meant to return to school today but it's Australia Day (think Fourth of July but with far less hotdogs - although, ironically, this is what's on the menu for us tonight, LOL - and movies about aliens starring Will Smith) so we're off until tomorrow. BTW, Happy (two hundred and) twenty-FIRST birthday, Australia!
When we walk in the doors tomorrow it will be a brand new school year. Master J is going into Grade 5, Boof to Grade 4 and Moo to Grade 2. The first week is always chaotic. There are more notes home in that week than in a whole month during the rest of the year and the annual struggle with covering the kids' notebooks with contact paper must be attempted and triumphed over. We've got new shoes, new haircuts (Moo has gone quite short!) and I'll be baking up a storm today for the lunchbox fodder.
The kids are another week closer to their puppy. After an initial mix up, we'll be picking up a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel pup from the airport around the second week of March, making it about three weeks old now. We're slowly getting ready for the new addition and the kids are getting anxious. Moo has resorted to hooking the puppy lead onto the little stuffed dog Happy Meal (Hotel For Dogs) toy and dragging that around. We're watching Underdog and the Beethoven movies until we're blue in the face and the kids went completely beserk when we took them to see Bolt in the cinema. You can be sure there'll be lots of pointless (but very cute!) "Charlie" pics and videos up in a few weeks :)
I have a TON of baking to get to, several loads of laundry to finish and Breakfast at Tiffany's to watch for the first time. A rather satisfying day, don't you think?
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Lizzie's Link Love
Woohoo! Time to clear out the Link Love folder!
Craft Table For 4 (Ikea Hacker) - I so badly want to do this. So. Very. Badly...
Small Space Solutions: Kitchen Pantry (Small Notebook) - Be still my beating heart! Does this not make you want to go buy glass jars right this second?
Days Of The Week Tags (Living Locurto) - Everyone now and then I stumble across an idea so blindingly obvious it makes my brain hurt. This is one of those times.
24 Tips To Becoming An Early Riser (Life Remix) - For those amongst us struggling to make the most of the morning hours. Like me.
If My Life Was Any More Humourous, It Could Be A Sitcom (Mom To The Screaming Masses) - Sometimes the best way to feel good about your own life is to laugh uproariously at someone else's ironies, LOL. A couple of months old, but totally awesome.
Cindy's Porch (the entire site) - Have you seen this yet? This has been a fave for ages.
Happy clickin'!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
You Know That Accomplished Feeling You Get When You Actually Complete Something?
Ooooh, I'm so excited.
The hard part of cleaning out the spare/gym/junk room is done. The clutter has been removed, the old home gym dismantled (that alone took me three years of negotiation) and our bunk beds - of which Boof occupied the top bunk when he and Moo shared - have been taken apart and reassembled separately in appropriate rooms. I still have to de-bug the room (over three years of being a junk room made it prone to spiders), store some items in the built in robe, make the bed and move all Boof's gear in but it should be finished by tonight, ready to greet him when he arrives home tomorrow (with Moo and J) from a week at his grandparents'.
I wish I had a photo of what it was like a few months ago...I've been beginning (and then stopping) this little declutter project for a good two years now, each time getting ever so slightly closer - a bag for the donation pile here, a few old items in the trash there. You know that scene in Entrapment where Catherine Zeta Jones does that contortionist stuff through the laser beams? That's what it was like getting from one end of the room to the other...no visible carpet! Before I started yesterday it was the best it had ever been but there were still many, many things on the floor and of course, The Behemoth (home gym) took up the rest of the space. The room has a horribly ugly wall frieze with the logo and name of one of my city's football teams (Australian Rules football that is) but Boof begged to keep it, so there it stays. Decluttering this room was very much my 'elephant' and it proves that just about anything can be eaten if taken one bite at a time.
It is so weird to think I'm going to be able to make a bed normally again. I hate making bunks with a passion.
Not much time to post too much else at the moment - just taking a break then popping off to the supermarket to pick up a few things before Talented Hubby goes to work. The sweet man isn't feeling well today but still stopped to take the gym apart and help me move the top bunk in.
Me? I've got an evening filled with good music and rearranging/organizing to do - amazingly, I'm looking forward to it.
The hard part of cleaning out the spare/gym/junk room is done. The clutter has been removed, the old home gym dismantled (that alone took me three years of negotiation) and our bunk beds - of which Boof occupied the top bunk when he and Moo shared - have been taken apart and reassembled separately in appropriate rooms. I still have to de-bug the room (over three years of being a junk room made it prone to spiders), store some items in the built in robe, make the bed and move all Boof's gear in but it should be finished by tonight, ready to greet him when he arrives home tomorrow (with Moo and J) from a week at his grandparents'.
I wish I had a photo of what it was like a few months ago...I've been beginning (and then stopping) this little declutter project for a good two years now, each time getting ever so slightly closer - a bag for the donation pile here, a few old items in the trash there. You know that scene in Entrapment where Catherine Zeta Jones does that contortionist stuff through the laser beams? That's what it was like getting from one end of the room to the other...no visible carpet! Before I started yesterday it was the best it had ever been but there were still many, many things on the floor and of course, The Behemoth (home gym) took up the rest of the space. The room has a horribly ugly wall frieze with the logo and name of one of my city's football teams (Australian Rules football that is) but Boof begged to keep it, so there it stays. Decluttering this room was very much my 'elephant' and it proves that just about anything can be eaten if taken one bite at a time.
It is so weird to think I'm going to be able to make a bed normally again. I hate making bunks with a passion.
Not much time to post too much else at the moment - just taking a break then popping off to the supermarket to pick up a few things before Talented Hubby goes to work. The sweet man isn't feeling well today but still stopped to take the gym apart and help me move the top bunk in.
Me? I've got an evening filled with good music and rearranging/organizing to do - amazingly, I'm looking forward to it.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
After 3½ Years, It Might Actually Get Done
I'm psyching myself up for a big declutter project today.
We purposely bought this house because it had four bedrooms and there are five of us (thankfully, two are adults and share). But on moving day, we kind of just shoved a bunk bed into the front room and claimed the fourth bedroom as our gym/junk room. It has remained that way ever since.
It was okay for the first couple of years. Boof and Moo get along pretty good despite being brother and sister and Boof just accepted the purple wallpaper as a fact of life and eventually ignored it (it's a very girly room). But in the last year, the cracks began to show. They're 8½ and 7 now, a bit old to be sharing when there's a perfectly good room down the hall.
It's time folks. It's time.
The kids are at their grandparents until Friday - the perfect time to switch things around as a surprise. But to get to that point we first have to uber-declutter and that means making snap decisions. We are not good at snap decisions. Hence a room full of odds and ends and boxes of old clothes! We made a small start yesterday, dropping off three bags of clothes and various small household items to the Salvation Army. But there's so much to do.
Nothing to do but dive in!
We purposely bought this house because it had four bedrooms and there are five of us (thankfully, two are adults and share). But on moving day, we kind of just shoved a bunk bed into the front room and claimed the fourth bedroom as our gym/junk room. It has remained that way ever since.
It was okay for the first couple of years. Boof and Moo get along pretty good despite being brother and sister and Boof just accepted the purple wallpaper as a fact of life and eventually ignored it (it's a very girly room). But in the last year, the cracks began to show. They're 8½ and 7 now, a bit old to be sharing when there's a perfectly good room down the hall.
It's time folks. It's time.
The kids are at their grandparents until Friday - the perfect time to switch things around as a surprise. But to get to that point we first have to uber-declutter and that means making snap decisions. We are not good at snap decisions. Hence a room full of odds and ends and boxes of old clothes! We made a small start yesterday, dropping off three bags of clothes and various small household items to the Salvation Army. But there's so much to do.
Nothing to do but dive in!
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