Monday Musings

Another grey, damp day... We did have a slight reprieve from this weather in the weekend, but yesterday although stayed dry until night time, it was quite chilly all day.  The dogs have been out this morning and I have also been for my group walk.  We pretty much stuck to footpaths today as it is pretty muddy underfoot and went up to the local park and lakes.  It was a pretty fast paced walk today and we only stopped once, which was when I took the following four photographs.

I treated myself to a slice of Christmas Cake (from last Christmas) this afternoon.  I decided I deserved a little treat.  I have to say though that since I have stopped eating things with sugar in, it did taste rather sweet, so I am not sure if I will be eating anymore anytime soon.  I've gone totally off sweet things.

I sold another four items on Evilbay today, not made a lot of money, but they have made someone else happy and it clears a bit of space.  Most of the stuff I send to the charity shop (with the exception of the things my DH (not DEAR in this case!) retrieves.  I just discovered today a couple of items I had cleared stuck back in the cupboard!  Not helpful at all.  Again it is something we have never ever used in the 24 years I have lived here...so chances are we are never ever going to use the item!

Well the day is drawing in, time to start thinking about what to do for dinner.  I think it is going to be relatively simple tonight.  

An Anniversary

Today is an Anniversary of sorts, although I doubt my DH remembers!

24 years ago today I arrived in England to live.  I'd come over in December 1994 to visit my grandparents, stayed until March, came back for a few weeks in June, and then came back permanently October 15th 1995.  I didn't think it would 'really' be permanently, just for a few years, as my husband to be promised me we would return to NZ to live.  Well clearly that never happened, despite many promises, looking at properties over there back in 2005 and several other years.  

So it feels a bit like a strange day to me.

Almost bittersweet in some ways.  I never realised at the time just how hard it would be as I got older, and thus my parents got older.  But that is the way it is.

Sometimes I love it here, sometimes I hate it, and sometimes I am ambivalent.  

It is the winters that get me the most.  Not necessarily the cold, but the long grey, grey, dark damp days.  I find the lack of light really hard to cope with, although have got better in recent years since taking quite high doses of Vitamin D during the winter months.  I actually take Vitamin D all year round now, but lower the dose during the summer, and hike it up at the beginning of September.  It really does make a difference.  Oh and I hate the noise.  The constant roar of the M25, despite having some lovely countryside near us.

I've also felt a bit frustrated today as I had loaded the car up with stuff for the Charity Shop.  Things that have sat up in our loft for the last 10 - 20 years.  Never used, and never will be used.  DH decided to go through it and packed a 'sad' as I call it and basically it has all been hauled out of the car, and will most likely end up back in the loft ad-infinitum.  I sometimes wonder why I even bother trying.

Normally I would have had the car loaded up, and have gone down the road before he was even up...but he delayed me today because he had to take his Mum to the hospital for her physio.  I needed some labels printed out for some Ebay parcels, and he delayed getting those from his office for me.  I swear he did it on purpose!  If he hadn't gone through the stuff, he wouldn't even have remembered it existed!

I've been for my walk with the dogs though, and given Stanley, our Sheltie a jolly good groom.  He is still moulting!  Clearly the colder weather has had no impact on him.  The bird feeders have been topped up, and I've been round the garden taking some photos.  Although I am disappointed with all of them.  I took photos with my 'good' camera and lens, and they were all rubbish, so resorted to my smaller Panasonic camera.  Not sure if it is the light, the memory card, or the camera just isn't what it was (certainly it doesn't seem to have been as good since it was repaired).

I picked up a bale of hay for the guinea pigs, so they are sorted for a while now.  I wish I'd got it earlier last month though as it feels damp now, whereas the hay I had just finished was lovely and dry.  I would have bought it earlier, but I let my DS and DIL borrow my other hay bag, and I haven't got it back so only have one bale bag to use.  I'll have to order another one.

So this is a bit of a strange post really, but one I wanted to record for myself if for no other reason.

I'm feeling better today that I was the last few days, which is good.  The stomach/bowels seem to have settled down, so hopefully that was just a 'blip' or a minor 'bug'.  

Slim Down September

Slim Down - in both terms of slimming down myself and the contents of my house!

September is the month I am really going to try and knuckle down and get some cleaning, tidying, de-cluttering and general sorting done.  I have procrastinated too much the last few months, mostly because of the pain levels which affect my motivation, but enough is enough.  I really do want to move and I think this is only going to happen if I am the one who is the driving force behind it, and of course that means to clear the house and get rid of excess stuff.  We just simply have TOO MUCH. Drawers are full to the brim as are cupboards.  For example in the bathroom - how many flannels does one really need?  Time to seriously think about these things.

Today I started on the bathroom.  I am cleaning and scrubbing the walls, flooring and bathroom ware. 

I took the hanging plant down - removed all the dead leaves and washed the living ones - goodness how the dust had accumulated on them!  Shameful!

Looks a lot better now, even though I have lifted some of the hanging leaves and looped them over the basket.

Before

The shell lamp is going - partly because it fell off the stool I put it on while cleaning the sill it was on, and so  it chipped, but also because we have not actually used in in YEARS.  It is just a 'dust collector'.

After

My little shells have gone into a lidded glass jar - this way we can see and enjoy them, but they are not going to collect the dust like the used to.

I have cleared the toiletry cupboard - got rid of some old out of date items and those that I am not going to ever use.

Before

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After: 

Much neater now.

Towel drawers - I have cut back on the flannels and hand towels.  It is getting ridiculous when it is a struggle to fit them in and now there is just the two of us, how many do we REALLY need?

We had to go out, so my bathroom project was interrupted...

Still to do:

Clean picture frames and glass.
Finish sorting out the bathroom drawers - four still to do.
Clean tiles and wood wall
Clean sink and bath
Mop floors.

These jobs I will tackle tomorrow.

Lastly some flower pictures...it has been rather wet today so they all have raindrops on them.

Smashbooking and Decluttering!

Next month I have a 'big' birthday coming up, although of course I am still only really 36 years old!  At least that is my story and I am sticking to it.  I am away for my birthday visiting my parents in New Zealand so my friend thought she would surprise me with an early birthday present which arrived today.

A scrap/smash booking journal.

She knows just what I like and picked the 'botanical' theme.  

Love this - on so many different levels.  Of course 'Come Fly With Me'  written for Frank Sinatra is pretty well known and I have played it many times with various bands I have played in. 

Books and a cup of tea - the perfect combination!

Butterflies - I love butterflies and we have a couple on our house.

Beautiful pages with flowers and designs.

I am going to have fun with this journal.

It has been years since I have done any scrapbooking, and this is a slightly different, looser approach and might give me the inspiration I need to get creative again.

Decluttering:  

I am taking part in a 'Minimalism Game' for the month of February with some friends.  

The aim is to help them finish their decluttering projects and for me to start, getting rid of at least one item on the 1st, two on the 2nd, three on the 3rd and so forth.

I am finding this very difficult and quite overwhelming and never know quite where to start.  Today I had the 'bright idea' to clear under my side of the bed.  Goodness knows why as most of what is under there has no where else it can go so will need to go back again.    I promptly burst into tears at what on earth I was going to do with it all.  There was music, photo albums, books, and other 'stuff'.  I managed to pull myself back together again and made a start.

I emptied one of the plastic boxes and discovered three of the older albums that had belonged to my grandparents were unused, so they have gone in a box for the charity shop along with a plastic leaf folder and a little pencil & pad 'thing'.  

A load of papers went into the recycling and other stuff went straight into the rubbish.

The music has been transferred from an open top plastic box, to the one with the lid (that held the above stuff), so now it is protected.  The remaining photographs and slides fit in a smaller photo box I already had.  So that is one less big box that needs to go back under the bed.  Only small progress, but progress, so I guess it has to count for something.