Decor, cooking, organization, all the pretty things
Happy Fourth of July (one day early) everyone! If you are in the US I hope you have safe and fun activities planned. We are going to watch a parade and some fireworks the city will be setting off and enjoying a bbq with our family.
If you have pets keep them inside and try to minimize the stress for them as much as you can. Our cats don’t seemed to be bothered, luckily, but I know other pets can be very sensitive to all the noise.
It’s that time again! Continuing with the free desktop calendar downloads for July. This month features a soft bokeh background in shades of opal, green and silver.
These are all rendered in 1920 x 1080. To save the image click on the link and the image will open in a new tab. Right click on the image and select “Save image as…” and save to your computer.
I’m not sure how to update a background on a Mac but on a PC you right click on your desktop background and select “Personalize.” You can then browse to the file location of the picture you want as your background.
I hope you enjoy!
Hydrangea 11 / おたふくあじさい, 2. spring is coming earlier than you think, 3. Violets, 4. Ribbon
Happy Friday! High five – we made it to the weekend! This week was unusual for me in that Rick was out of town for the first half of it. I’ll be honest – at first I thought I would enjoy some alone time but to be honest after the first hour or so I was over it. I did make good use of his time away and did some major cleaning of bathrooms and polishing silver tea sets. It’s just weird being on your own when you spend almost 24 x 7 with a person. It’s hard to relax. And forget about sleeping properly. I don’t think I fell asleep properly until about 5:00am all the nights he was gone.
He’s home now so all’s well in my world.
We had a fun Thursday night evening because my niece and her two boys were in town so we had them (and her parents) over for dinner. I made the best eggplant dish that I will share in the Fall because it really is a Fall dish. Luckily we had very modest temperatures today and could eat outside and enjoy the lower temperatures.
Have a wonderful weekend!
I haven’t done a bullet journal post in a minute mainly because of my ongoing struggle with keeping up with it since I’m no longer work driven. I’ve tried new layouts, tried old layouts that worked in the past, gave it up completely for a few months and now, finally, I have come up with a system that has worked for about a month or so.
The main thing is I stopped designing and hand drawing my own layouts and instead I’m using a store bought system.
I ordered the empty notebook from Amazon (great quality and very inexpensive) and I bought the insert from Joanns. It is divided by month and I started mine at the end of May but the pages aren’t dated so I can use Jan-Apr next year (I looked for a link but too many results came up – just go in the store if you have one nearby and you’re certain to find something that works for you).
The weekly layout works just fine for my current needs. I have enough room for each day plus there is a section for notes. I added a small box for each day’s date and I added a monthly stamp in the lower right hand corner.
The notebook came with the little ruler/book mark thingie which is handy to open right to the current week. It also came with some emoji stickers which I put aside for my granddaughter.
When I bought the insert at Joanns I also picked up a hole punch so I can add additional pages. My notebook really won’t accommodate many more pages but I did start a new thing for helping me with housework.
You all remember the FlyLady don’t you? She has been around forever and if you aren’t familiar with her she essentially provides a guideline for keeping on top of your house keeping. First is decluttering, then an ongoing method for managing various parts of your home. Honestly none of it is rocket science but it’s nice to have a check list to follow. I’m great at keeping a tidy home but certain areas get neglected. I’m looking at you baseboards and curtains.
After your general decluttering you define your zones where you give extra attention on a weekly basis in order to deep clean those areas. You may not get to each item but you can just catch it on the next round. For instance, if shampooing your carpet is on the list you may not get to that EVERY month but every six months or so you check it off your list.
I took the measurements (loosely) of our house and assigned zones to each area. Look at how LOOOONNNNNGGGG our house is. I followed FlyLady for the most part but made adjustments that work for our layout. It made sense to me to have the entry, hallways, dining room and office be one zone. Same with the other areas of the house. The beauty of the FlyLady system is you just tailor it to your own situation.
Once you have defined your zones you then create a checklist for that particular zone.
I’ll be flat out honest with you. The reason I started this is because my baseboards are defeating me! If you come to my house your initial impression would be “Well she keeps a nice, tidy home. I think I like her.” But if you start scrutinizing, you see the cracks. You see the greasy build-up on the kitchen fan, you see the cobwebs in the corner, you see….the dust and crud that colonizes on the baseboards. You start to judge. Hmmmm. Maybe she isn’t quite the tidy person we thought she was. Maybe she IS a secret slob.
I can either hire someone to come once a week and dust my baseboards or I come up with a system and do it myself. System it is!
Take a look at her detail cleaning lists and adapt them to your situation. I ended up removing about 30% of her suggestions and adding back about 30% of my own. After a couple of months I’ll revisit and update my list.
I’ll keep you posted on how I do. I am someone that just does really well with a list to check off.
Side note: I noticed, when taking desk photographs, that I have bit of a pen addiction. A certain type of pen. I have an entire pen cup devoted entirely to white ink pens! Ask me how many times I need a white pen? Well Halloween, when I address Halloween party invitations, and the occasional pen pal letter I mail out on a darker envelope. Evidently I need over a dozen white pens to see me through. I should declutter and get rid of 80% of them but they all are still good and spark joy so I’ll just hang on to them for a while.
I just had a thought – the FlyLady and Marie Kondo need to collaborate.
Ready for summer! ◊ Untitled ◊ Pastel Tree ◊ part from my sweet home <3
Hello and Happy Summer Solstice!
No favorites today. The interwebs have not been inspiring me lately so I thought I would just do a little chatty post for today.
I have started walking for 45 minutes every day. My goal is to get up to an hour but I just started and my hips aren’t very thrilled about it so 45 minutes it is for now. Since the beginning of the year I have put on 8 lbs. and I’m determined to bid them adieu along with a few of their friends by the end of the year. I worked so hard to lose all that weight a year ago and I refuse to gain it all back. I need to go back to what was working for me back then which is weighing myself daily (controversial, I know), tracking everything I eat and walking. I was hoping I could get to a point where my eating and exercise habits would just be second nature and I wouldn’t even have to think about it. Unfortunately my natural disposition is sloth-like and to eat all the food so I have to be extra vigilant.
Okay enough of that.
We are toying with the idea of taking a drive to Carmel tomorrow to hit up one of our favorite nurseries (Griggs Nursery). I want to get a geranium and they have the best variety. The only ones I can find around here are hot pink and I want a pale pink one. They also have a great selection of house plants. I’m hoping we can find a nice restaurant on the ocean for lunch. That should make for a nice outing.
Still no news on the job front. I have two fires in the iron at the moment. I’m just waiting for the next round of interviews to be scheduled. It is such a long and drawn out process, looking for work. And even after months of promising leads and interviews it still can end in nothing so while I’m hopeful something will work out I’m also getting quite demoralized by the whole thing. I know I would be a great asset to a company, should one give me the opportunity.
Enough of that too.
I hope you have a splendid weekend!
I wanted to share a quick little project I did last weekend. We celebrated my sister Nicole‘s birthday and if you follow her blog you know she is an avid quilter. Instead of buying her a birthday card I decided to make one for her.
Like a certain someone who has an extensive stash of fabric, I also have quite the collection of paper so I was able to make this with components I had on hand. Which reminds me of a quote I saw the other day:
Ahem.
Equipped with my supplies all I need to do was take a quick look around Pinterest for a block pattern I liked. I thought the sawtooth star would make a nice card and began cutting out my triangles. I wanted the block to be 4″ by 4″ so I first cut out strips of 1″ paper and then cut them into 1″ squares using a paper cutter. I then cut each square into two triangles using scissors. The squares were small enough that I knew I could get a straight cut.
I used four different papers for the block. I had three patterns and one solid, which actually has teeny daisies embossed on it. I needed four triangles for the inner block, four triangles for the corners, eight for the sawtooth part and sixteen for the background (solid) pieces.
I made sure all the paper were the same thickness and I recommend using card stock weight paper because it’s easier to work with. A lot of scrap booking paper is thinner and tends to wrinkle when you glue it, especially if you need to manipulate it into place.
I cut a 4″ by 4″ piece of card stock for the backing and just started gluing on my triangles, row by row. I used a tool called a Quickstik which has a sticky end for picking up small objects. The glue I used, and swear by for paper crafts, is Yes! paste. It is acid free and it won’t wrinkle or warp your paper. It’s not as slippery as regular white glue but you still have the ability to move your piece into place before it sets up. I bought mine over two years ago and use it all the time and still have 3/4 of my pint tub left. It hasn’t dried up or anything.
Once I had all my rows assembled I put a weight on top while it dried so it would stay nice and flat.
To assemble the card I cut a 4 1/4″ square out of glitter card stock and a 4 1/2″ by 9″ strip of pink card stock which I scored down the middle and folded in half to make the card. I then layered the pieces together using double sided tape. I love the bit of glitter peaking out from behind the quilt square. It just wouldn’t be me to not include some sparkle.
You can either stamp or hand write your greeting on the inside of the card.
I made the envelope out of some lightweight card stock. I just bought a new little gadget for making envelopes called an envelope punch board. I’ll share that in a future post. It’s a handy little tool.
It was a fun project and a nice way to add a personal touch to a greeting card. Now I want to go through all my papers and come up with other combinations and patterns.
Before I close out this post I wanted to share a picture of my new desk set up. Which looks exactly like my old desk set up only it’s longer and has another set of drawers. It’s a minor change but I love having the extra storage and the extra space. And it didn’t take me all weekend to assemble like I thought it would! I actually got it all put together and set up on Friday night. Very late Friday night but still it was a lot quicker than I thought.
