One Lovely Spring Saturday

Saturday here was a lovely day.  A bit of sunshine and a bit of a breeze.  I had loaded up the washing machine with a few weeks worth of dirty towels, with the intention of drying them at the launderette. Instead, I decided to set up the retractable washing line.  First time I've used it this year.  Quite exciting really, which I know is very sad, but it did save me £3 that I would otherwise have spent at the launderette. 

Little Bird was out on her trampoline for the first time this year.  The dog was enjoying sitting out on the decking. 

It was good to see.  Seems like spring has really sprung.  (Please excuse the pun).

Later in the day I decided to get out into the garden and get my greenhouse set up again.  It had been blown around the garden during the bad weather so we took the plastic cover off it and left the frame alone outside.  Now the weather has calmed down a lot it was time to get it up again and OH did the honours of tying it back to the fence so it wouldn't blow away again.

That job done I decided to sort through all of my seeds and pull out the ones I wanted to sow this year and that could be sown now.  A sowing session ensued and I now feel like I'm caught up on the gardening front for the moment.  Sometimes you just have to take the opportunity when you get a good day weather wise and just do as much as you can, while you can. 

I sowed tomatoes, chillis, sweet peppers, camomile, nasturtiums, cosmos, sunflowers, salad leaves, basil, peas, sweet peas, dahlias, oh and some carrot seeds in a tub.  I've given up on growing them at the allotment as they get carrot root fly every time.  Now I just need to sit back and wait for them to grow.  Until next month that is, when I can sow a few more things.

Oh, the simple joys of a sunny spring day!

52 Projects - Week 10 - Getting My Smart Phone Up and Running

This Christmas, I received this lovely smart phone as a gift from OH.  It wasn't an expensive, all singing all dancing phone, as I'm not really interested in having the latest thing, but it was more than sufficient for my needs and I liked the styling of both the phone and the case.  Simple, no nonsense.

 

Fast forward two months and I have almost finally got it up and running and should be able to use it for the internet as it was originally intended in just a couple of days.  I say almost, as we have done all we can do and now just need to wait for my phone number to be transferred over to the new sim. 

 

It has not been a particularly smooth transition.   I have had some teething problems with my original provider taking money off my Pay As You Go account daily when I thought I was using the free Wifi connection in the house.   I think I might inadvertently have had it on a roaming setting, but this was eventually resolved when I finally got my PAC code this week and swapped provider going onto a very simple inexpensive monthly tariff of £7.  (I paid this out in one week for hardly using my phone for internet use outside the house!)  OH arranged this new tariff with his provider so I'm very grateful to him for doing so and helping me with this task.

 

I must admit that I've found it a very frustrating process.  I am such a technophobe and hate dealing with providers etc., so this kind of thing is not something I enjoy, hence why OH ended up making most of the arrangements.    He knows what a procrastinator I am in such matters.  Left to me it would probably never get done.

 

Anyhow, I am looking forward to being able to use the phone on the new tariff, which should give me far more time, texts and downloading capacity than I am ever likely to use per month.  I have already been using the inbuilt camera whilst out and about, which is a real novelty for me.  I have even started posting using photos taken with my phone, which saves trying to remember to take my camera with me everywhere, adding extra weight to my handbag. I'm not quite as au fait as I'd like to be with regard to uploading the photos just yet, but am gradually getting there.

 

I'd just like to add that I have not been sponsored by Samsung in the making of this post. 

 

This was another of the items on my list of 52 Projects.   Joining in with Dreamer at Living a Slow and Simple Life in doing a task a week in 2014.

Kitchen Decluttering - An Update

I don't know about anyone else, but in our household the kitchen is the worst room in the house for accumulating clutter and towards the end of last year it got so bad that even OH was complaining about it, which is not like him at all.

As a consequence, this year I've been trying to resolve certain problems in this regard, by slowly working my way through them one at a time.  I cleared the main windowsill early in the year and then did some work on another clutter spot, namely my kitchen table 'office', by buying some drawers which keep the clutter at bay and so far this new system seems to be working well.

I attempted a February Food Challenge to use up lots of food that had been around for a while and was filling a shelf in one cupboard, in the hope I'd free the shelf to house all the pet 'stuff'. 

Whilst waiting to use up the food, I decanted the dog food, biscuits and treats into jars, that had been languishing unused in another cupboard, creating a much tidier and easily accessible worktop system which seems to work well on a daily basis.  Here's a picture of the jars now in use.

 

 

I was still, however, left with the problem of  a trug full of doggy items, toys, medicines, grooming products, etc., that  I needed to find space for.  It had been sat in front of the microwave for ages and required moving every time I wanted to use it.  Not very satisfactory.  In the end an impromptu reorganisation of 3 or 4 kitchen cupboards created enough space for a whole designated pet shelf. 

This has really liberated my worktops, to the point where I may even attempt a bit of baking and bread making in the near future.  Here's the shelf in question, looking especially tidy.  (Not sure how long it will stay this way).

As a consequence of all the rejigging and reorganising, I managed to create my pet shelf and still keep my food overflow shelf, which I must admit is really useful, especially if I get tempted by any great offers from Approved Foods or in the supermarkets.  Here's a picture of it.

Spurred on by my efforts, the other night I decided to tackle the broom cupboard.  I didn't take a before photo I'm afraid so you can't see the comparison. I did manage to re-house a few pet items to the 'pet shelf', remove some paperwork I'd stuffed on the top shelf , get rid of a few unnecessary items, sorted through the bag of cloth shopping bags hung on the door and sent a few to the charity shop, and managed to collapse my shopping trolley so that everything fitted in a lot better.  It looks a lot neater now and is much easier to negotiate on a daily basis.  I'm not sure it will make me do a whole lot more cleaning though!

There are still a few problem areas left to tackle, namely the top of the fridge,  the recipe book cupboard and the baking drawer (for someone who doesn't bake very often, I seem to have an abundance of items in here), but I live in hope of one day having a clutter free kitchen.  I'll keep working on it.

U is for Using Up My Fabric Stash

I've been collecting fabrics for a few years now, probably five or six, if I'm honest.  I don't know how the habit started, but it has seen me stash away quite a lot of fabric over this period.  Mainly eBay or charity shop buys.  Some vintage, some new and almost all now stored in my sewing room awaiting use.  In that time the cost of fabric and particularly cotton fabrics has risen quite dramatically and it is difficult to buy cottons cheaply anywhere anymore.  In many ways, I have bought well, providing I use it, of course.

More recently, the compulsion to buy more fabric has receded, and I rarely add to my personal collection now, save for occasional jumble/car boot sale or charity shop finds, if it is something very special and catches my eye.

Instead, I am now finally getting around to using some of my collection, to actually make clothes or things for our home.  I figured what is the use of a collection, if you merely squirrel it away and don't even look at it, let alone use it?  I was becoming a fabric hoarder, collecting it for the day when I would do some patchwork and use it.  Finally, I am actually starting to do this and I am enjoying it very much.  It feels so much better to have the fabric made into things you can wear or that are visible and useful around the house, where you can appreciate their beauty on a daily basis and benefit from their utility.

Having said this, I must admit that there is something very special about uncut and unused fabric.  It has an untapped potential and it is sometimes lovely to look through it and contemplate the possibilities.  I think there will always perhaps be a few special fabrics I find it hard to use or need to wait for just the right project before I'm prepared use them.  In the mean time, I can keep them intact and indulge in a little quiet contemplation occasionally. 

Joining in with Mum from Mum's Simply Living, in her Backwards Alphabet blogging challenge.

A Spot of Sewing

After finally buying the correct needles for my sewing machine, and spurred on by watching The Great British Sewing Bee on Tuesday night (I'm liking this series even better than the last one), I finally got around to doing a spot of sewing this week. 

Initially, to test the new needles, I made a couple of lavender bags.  They seemed to work fine, so I progressed onto doing some work on my double quilt/eiderdown, by attempting to attach the front of the quilt to the old duvet that I'm using as wadding.

Unfortunately, the duvet is so thick that it wouldn't fit underneath the sewing machine foot, so I took the foot off and tried sewing without it on.  It was a bit of a disaster as I didn't have good control and gave up.  When I went back to it a couple of days later,  I decided to sew the front of the quilt to the duvet by hand.  I then did the same with the back.  It's not particularly neat, but I used a very strong thread so that it wouldn't break and come apart easily.   It will be covered by the binding anyway eventually.  I was really pleased when I was able to use the sheet I originally intended using for the back.  It now fitted as I had had to cut down the quilt front and duvet as it was far too big. 

As a consequence of the above, once sewn and trimmed, the eiderdown/quilt is now taking shape and looks great.  Here's a picture of how it looks before I sew down the seams of the strips of fabric on the front and add the binding to the edges. 

I'm not sure if I'll be able to do this with the machine or not, but if not, I will have to do it very neatly by hand.  I'll post again when it is completely finished.

Monthly Round Up

February was a reasonably straightforward month financially, in which I managed to meet my financial goals of paying another £100 off my overdraft and continuing to pay off my credit card balances on a monthly basis.  I wasn't quite so successful with regard to the no spend days I achieved, as I only managed 3 this month, which is pretty poor, mainly due to dribs and drabs of spending throughout the month  The total for the year now stands at 12/100, so I need to try much harder next month.

I attempted a February Food challenge, to try to use up lots of food in the cupboards and freezer that needed to be used and thankfully I did manage to use quite a bit of it, but will need to continue with this challenge in March, to use up as much of what is left as possible.  I didn't managed to save any money on food as I'd hoped, but it wasn't the main purpose of the challenge, so I'm not to worried.

Aside from this challenge, I have been continuing to join in with Dreamer's 52 Projects challenge, Mum's Alphabet Backwards challenge, Laura's (Circle of Pine Trees) The Year in Books, plus several other challenges and as a consequence, I feel like I've been getting lots of things done and making progress on lots of fronts.  The book pile is slowly going down, as is my outstanding to do list, and I feel like I'm moving forwards.

In March, I'm hoping the weather is going to improve, so that I can make more visits to the allotment and carry out more sowing and planting out for the new growing season ahead.  I want to also start thinking about making some new clothes for the spring/summer, take a good look at  my wardrobe and reorganise it for the (hopefully) warmer months.  I'm hoping that not too many gaps will appear and that I won't need to spend much money to fill these. 

I've got tickets to attend the Ideal Home Show and the Knitting and Stitching show at Olympia in March, so I'm looking forward to these days out and we are having visitors towards the end of the month, so I will be doing an impromptu spring clean in preparation.  There's also Mother's Day and a couple of family/friends' birthdays coming up, so March should be an interesting month.  Feels like I'm slowly coming out of hibernation.

The Year in Books - March

Joining in with Laura at Circle of Pine Trees and many other bloggers for The Year in Books challenge, to read at least a book a month for a year.  Last month saw me reading Women, Work and the Art of Savoir Faire by Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women Don't Get Fat and other titles and former CEO of Veuve Cliquot Inc.   I really enjoyed this book.  I love her no-nonsense approach to life and business and her views on one's conduct in the workplace.  There were ideas in there about mentoring, manners, eating and drinking, dressing for work,  finding a balance and acting with positive self interest when making decisions and career moves. 

It was incredibly interesting to read the views of this remarkable woman, who wants to encourage women (and men) to succeed at work and do well in business.    There were even some recipes in the latter chapters that could be used for business entertaining at home, which might be useful for some.  I'll now be looking out for future titles by the same author and other titles of hers that I haven't already read, such as French Women For All Seasons.

As I finished the above book before the end of February, I started to read this book in February too.

The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton by Catherine Alliott.  I started it whilst we were away for a week in the Yorkshire Dales and I was able to indulge in a bit of reading on morning lie ins.  Since we've been home, it's been more difficult to find time to finish the final few chapters, but I have finally done so this weekend.  It's a funny and entertaining read, but with incredibly tear jerking moments too.  I borrowed it from this Little Free Library down the road.

This particular branch was opened by someone in our neighbourhood, and it is a wonderful socially conscious idea.  I took this book back on my Monday morning dog walk this week, but I didn't pick up another book as my book pile is still piled far too high.  Better to leave them there for someone else, who will probably get around to reading them sooner.  I must admit I've had this one a while, at least now someone else can enjoy it too.  Check out this website to find out more about the little free library initiative.  littlefreelibrary.org.

My first and foremost book for March is going to be this one.  The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend.

As I've spent the first couple of months reading self-help type books, I've now started to enjoy reading fiction again, which is good, as the majority of my pile waiting to be read, is fiction.  This one sounds funny and I always appreciate a giggle and a bit of absurdity.  I read a couple of the Adrian Mole books when I was younger and I can remember enjoying them, so this caught my eye in the charity shop and captured my curiosity. 

I've made a start on it and I am enjoying it so far.  If I manage to finish this book before the end of March, I will then be starting on the book pictured below, as I've been looking forward to reading it for a while and at the moment I'm in a bit of a knitting phase.  I've not read any by this author before, but believe one of her books has been serialised for TV.

You'll note that many of the books I read are quite light hearted.  I do find it quite hard at the present moment to get stuck into more serious titles, but you never know I might just surprise you one of these days.