Decluttering and Organising - Project 2

The hot drinks cupboard.

 

This one I've been putting off for around two years. This was a 10 minute job. What? I can't believe I look in here at least 3 times a day and didn't just take the time to sort it.

 

There was some completely random crap in there. A broken thermometer, some bread bag tags (?), a little bottle of perfume (??) and face paint crayons that I haven't seen since they were wedged up the back of the top shelf around 3 years ago.

Most of the stuff had to go back in and I migrated some other things from the adjacent cupboard, but all in all a success. Hurrah!

As a side note, my wonderful sister in law Paula made me these awesome "shoe" cupcakes for my birthday. She's not only a great sister in law, but a truly amazing friend. They were very yummy....all gone!

An update on the baby that's nearly one. She's a climber. First of my three to climb at such a young age. But wait, she's a genius too, will make steps by pushing toys around to achieve getting to her location of choice. Clever cookie.

Decluttering and Organising - Project 1

The Wardrobe.

Bearing in mind the following "before" photo is condusive of what happens at the end of Winter and again at the end of Summer every damn year, I'm only expecting the "after to last maybe another 4-5 months. However, I will enjoy my little organised wardrobe whilst it lasts.

There are a couple of people that I could call upon to testify that I've always been lazy unorganised where my clothes are concerned. But I'm sure just by showing this next photo you'll get the gist of it yourselves.

It didn't take as long as I thought to get it sorted out, probably an hour and a quarter max. Why I haven't done it before now I don't know. That box of clothes on the left has been lying there for weeks.

Don't get too excited, but here is the after.....*drumroll*......

I didn't have a purge of clothes like I probaby should have, nor did I sort through my numerous shoes - many of which I haven't worn for years. But a girl never knows when she'll need a fancy pair of heels again does she?

One day, I'll get rid of all the shoes I haven't worn for a long time, but for now, I'll allow them to continue collecting dust.

Keep checking back for Project 2 - I may just be on a roll here.

Some long overdue organising...

I'm back. Life with three kids so hectic that you think you haven't blogged for two weeks and realise it's almost two months!

I've been inspired by this blog Raising Colorado to get my a into g and sort out those little areas of the house that piss me off on a daily basis, but never get around to blowing up sorting out.

I'm not saying I'll blog on a daily basis and this might be very boring stuff for you mum those who read this blog. But I am commited to starting something that I can be proud of.

Here's a list of the few areas that currently annoy me and need some attention;

• My walk in wardrobe - between seasons, messy, almost embarrasing; but I'll show you and I'll get it sorted out.
• My freezer - Would. Gross. You. Out.
• Numerous drawers around the house.
• Kitchen areas - namely the plastics drawer. More like a Tupper-night-mare-ware
• Master Leo's Wardrobe
• Miss Cora's Wardrobe
• Too many to mention corners of the house that have dust accumulating.
• My washing machine drawer for powder. Seriously, I don't think I'll even show you a before photo.

So you get my gist?

I'll do a before photo, if I'm brave enough and the after.

I know these little jobs won't take very long. But I think when the sum of the parts is HUGE then the jobs appear insurmountable.

I'll be back tomorrow. I think i'll start with my wardrobe. Yuck Yay!

p.s. If you look up procrastination in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of me.

Getting over the bugs...

Of course I succumbed this week to the sniffles after the kids having a fortnight of coughing, sneezing and such. The crappy weather didn't come to much, bit of a hail storm and an overnight frost, so thankfully the garden's looking okay. Sun out today and I'm doing the first watering of the Spring.  Off to have a lie down as I think I'm getting a migraine ;(

SO, hopefully back to my bloggy self in the next day or so. 

Got some lamb shanks braising in the oven for tea, hoping Master Leo will eat dinner tonight. Having some battles with him and this meal at the moment.  Back to sticker reward charts. Hope it works...promise of a McDonalds for 7 stickers. We'll see!

In the meantime, here's a song and video that I've been loving this week...I think this guy's just so groovy and he just makes me smile. Dance like nobody's watching ;)

Catch up soon.

Stef

Typical!

What usually happens where we live in NZ is that you get some lovely start of Spring mild weather where all the plants, flowers, trees and bulbs go "yipee" and start to burst into flower and growth.

What also usually happens is that we will almost always get a late frost or cold snap and they don't recover.  So for tomorrow we have this forecast....

Tomorrow 11 Sep

High 11°C

Overnight 2°C

Sleety showers, snow to 200 metres. Cold southwester.

Given that we are at sea level we may escape the snow, but there's equally as much chance that we will get it.  And for Wednesday that lovely overnight frost......

Wednesday12 Sep

High 9°C

Overnight -1°C

Sleety showers clearing. Icy southwester dying

This is how our garden looks today and if the forecast is correct then they may not be quite as perky after Wednesday.

 

Lazy Sunday...yeah right!

Having the in-laws over for dinner and after flicking through my folder of recipes I thought I'd make a super simple and easy lemon roulade. My friend K gave me the recipe and I've made it a few times, it's pretty foolproof and very yummy! 



 

The lemon curd recipe makes 3 cups and you only use 1/2 cup for the filling so plenty left over for the fridge. The sponge only takes around 8 minutes in a hot oven and cools pretty quickly too.  No creaming butter and sugar.

Lemon Curd

200g Butter
1 cup castor sugar
Juice and zest of 3 lemons
4 eggs

• Melt butter on medium high heat
• Whisk in sugar, lemon zest, juice and eggs
• Whisk continually on medium heat until it just begins to boil and remove from heat immediately.
• Cool

Sponge

4 eggs at room temp
1/2 cup castor sugar
1/2 cup SR flour

• Beat eggs and sugar until thick and creamy.
• Sift flour into mixture and fold together.
• Line a 25cm x 35cm jelly roll pan and spray with a light coating of oil
• Bake on 200oC for 8 minutes or until risen and toast coloured.
• Turn out onto a clean sheet of baking paper and cool completely.

To put together

150ml cream
1/2 cup lemon curd

• Whip cream until thick, fold in lemon curd.
• Keeping sponge on the baking paper score approx 1cm along the long edge of it.
• Spread cream mix over entire surface of sponge.
• Fold in the scored edge and use paper to wrap your sponge into a roulade; using the paper to roll it like you would a sushi roll.
• Dust with icing sugar.

Yum!

This is in the oven right now and I'm just chilling with a cup of coffee before my in-laws arrive.

Are you having a relaxing Sunday?

A rough week...

It's been a bit of a tough week. Ella was vomiting on Sunday night with a raging fever and off school Monday and Tuesday. Leo was up on Tuesday night with a raging fever in the night and we played musical beds for most of the night. He's very off colour with temperatures and up and down in temperament too. Day off pre-school today. Cora been coughing all week and off her food a bit. Thankfully, still sleeping through the night.

 

So needless to say, I'm a bit buggered!

 

We've been negotiating and coercing our big girl to brave it out and pull the front tooth and wiggly number three, out by herself or by me, but to no avail.

 

Until last night.

An hour and ten minutes from bedtime at 7pm she finally yielded and started flicking it with her tongue, which progressed to touching with her finger, to finally pulling the damned thing out!  There was much begging and pleading from us as she has been coughing so much that you could see when she was breathing in, that tooth flicked back quite spectacularly. We thought that rather than having to visit A&E with her having aspirated a tooth, that we'd persevere and it worked.

The tooth fairy was very generous with lots of coins, a hand written letter and a little pot of bright pink nail polish.

She did write a wee disclaimer at the bottom to say that this was the first and last time she would be so generous...coins only in future!

I'm looking forward to next week in the hope that all the kids are well again and I feel more rested.