I love finding things like this around the house, showing my little girls been happy playing a little game with her toys, finding new uses for things...I had to photo this as it made me smile xx

Diet starts Today!

Not the best day to start as we are going to an all u can eat place tonight for my dad's 73rd birthday!!! however I love the carvery area so am just going to opt and have one plate of gammon, roasties and veggies. Soup for lunch. Will try and get myself weighed this morning in town and take my measurements. Felt motivated after watching the Bounty hunter with Jennifer Aniston and making myself sick with chinese and haribos last night. What I wouldn't give for a figure like Jennifer Anistons... think I may need some kind of help though (i.e. tummy tuck, boobs done, u get the picture).

I printed up an august and september calender yesterday by the way with a column for each member of the family in my organisation planning.

Get more organized = more time for the stuff that matters

I came to the conclusion if I can blast through the house, if I can get it decluttered and organised then I can keep on top of it and it will give me more time for the kids, for play time, for cooking, scrapbooking and enjoying ourselves. I would love to get to the point where housework was a 10min breeze each day, instead of an all day storm that never gets finished.

My book on getting organised I ordered arrived and it looks great. I have to start an organizing journal, answer questions and work through projects and tasks so I think i'll use this blog for this.

First one is looking back - When I think back to my parents and parental home my mam and dad were both very organised and never ran late for anything. My mam would always set a time to leave the house and then 10minutes before that stated time would say right it's time to go, when u replied and said but we have another 10minutes she would always say 'well, by the time we get our coats on and get into the car...' Growing up in my teenage years I was always late, the car would always be running outside and I would get several warning beeps. However now I am never late, I may run scatty whilst getting ready and rush like crazy to get there but I'm rarely late, I would love to have a calmer more organised time though and not be rushing all the time. Being on time now is my way I think of trying to be more like my own organised punctual parents, because now in adulthood I appreciate them and want to be more like them. I definitely changed my ways after my mam died, I think I might make her proud if I'm organised and live a fulfilled life because of it. I don't like being late, I feel like I'll get wrong if I am, and I don't like upsetting or annoying anyone ever so I try not to be late.

• My Goals - I will continue to be on time for everything but I will be able to get ready slowly and calmy instead of rushing and panicking having first got things organised
• I will free up more time for the children, their learning and fun, and my hobbies, so I can pack more 'life' into our lives
• I will be so organised I will have time to start up a career in writing and make enough money so that norman can work less

Where my time goes: looking after children, school runs, reading, spending time on hobbies, time on internet, housework, shopping and errands, entertaining children, cooking meals.

I need to spend less time on the internet and doing housework, and spend more time with norman and doing things I enjoy. Have time to do my writing course I started years ago. I would like to have earlier nights because I feel like I've had enough 'me' time instead of staying up late to try and feel like I had time to myself today. I need norman and libby to help around the house a bit. I need to make mondays and tuesdays writing nights as norman is at football those nights.

Tomorrow I have to create a calender (the one we have is not helpful) and find an accessible place for it. Then I'll be working on the kitchen, but for today that's a lot of things analysed. Indeedy.

I actually did it...

I have a list as long as my arm of things to do this week. Now in my procrastinating days I would have put the list off and then when I eventually went to do the shopping I would put off getting things, get flustered with making decisions and come home with nothing and a big old list still. Today however was different, I just zoomed through my list (because I had the list I didn't forget anything), I still have some things to do but a lot of it I got done today (and with two kids in tow). I felt so good I had time for this photo below in a photo booth, which meant pulling baby out his pram and toppling the pram over it was so overladen with bags. I'm sure some onlookers would have been tut tutting at my chaos but I didn't give two hoots cos I know better. Behind this one chaotic moment is an organised woman beginning to come out. Ha Ha!

Julie and Julia and a lovely tea x

Last night I watched and loved and was inspired by the film Julie and Julia.

I was inspired to cook but also I was inspired and excited by the challenge that Julie had set herself (I love challenges) and am busy thinking of a challenge for myself. I would love to be a perfect house wife/mother/home maker, I would love to be like bree from desperate housewives or like anthea turner or hey let's go all out here...martha stewart!!!or even be more like my super organised mum( I can hear my mam now 'Ruth you have no systems in place, you need to have systems', I cringe to admit I now agree with her on this and most things to be honest!) hee hee at the moment though most days I feel more like waynetta slob.

So anyways I thought I'd go all out and make something different for tea, I bought camembert for starters, made chicken roulade for mains from my mam's old good housekeeping recipe book and chocolate fudge cake for dessert from jamie olivers ministry of food. So here's how it looked

The real plus though was that it tasted lovely too, Libby ate all of it so will definitely be doing this again.
Libby (who since I last blogged has broke her arm for the second time in the space of 9 months) tried her hand at grating the chocolate for the pudding, it looked good, just like the picture in jamies cook book but it was maybe a bit too gooey inside (I kind of like it that way though).

I enjoyed the planning and the cooking but tomorrow I need to concentrate on the housework. I ordered a book about organization off amazon, so I'm hoping that will help me out some. I think I have a.d.d., well at least when it comes to housework I do! I would love to get to the point that the house was so organized and tidy that it just stayed that way and I could spend my days enjoying the kids and doing hobbies instead of panicking about the piles of rubbish and the backlog of cleaning!!!

Right tomorrow = get the house straight for hubby has a whole weekend off and it would be nice if for once he could just relax and have nothing to do. Main aims=cupboard under stairs and living room, oh and our bedroom.

My fave

This is my fave layout, so here's the story behind it. When Libby was about 3 months old I became very ill, so ill that I was in hospital under intensive care for nearly a month. The first week I physically couldn't see her but as time went on I was allowed little hour long visits, but as you can imagine this was not nearly enough. So when I eventually had my surgery and was allowed home I was worried about our bond, I was worried she wouldn't remember me or know me as her mam. I'm so glad norman took these photos as they are a constant reminder that this was not the case, she remembered her mammy, we put her in her bouncer as I was quite weak after surgery still and she laughed and giggled and smiled, raucous laughing, flinging her head back full belly laughs. I was over the moon and norman said she hadn't laughed or smiled like that since I went away. I have this story written out and secretly placed behind the photos, you might be able to see the little pull down tag there. The quote at the top of the page reads: 'A smile starts on the lips, a grin spreads to the eyes, a chuckle comes from the belly; But a good laugh bursts from the soul, overflows, and bubbles all around'. A perfect quote for this layout me thinks. I lifted this layout also from a scrapping magazine as when I saw it I knew it would be a perfect way of getting all the photos on one page, I didn't want to leave any photos out as each one is so special to me. xxx

My newest layouts - scrapbooking, wherein I find peace and solace

Car bootie

Well we made a hundred pounds at the car boot sale and in the rain too. Better still a car full of stuff has gone out of our house - fantastic. Better still again, Libby loved it and had her own little stall of toys and her own bag to collect the money in. Her chatterings were priceless especially when she announced one of her toys was 40pounds!!! and one was 8pence!!!!!!!!!we had to teach her to smile even at the people who passed her as she couldn't understand why some people were not looking at her toys and was giving them very cross looks?!?!? she got into the swing of it anyway and she enjoyed it. I also bought a little activity table for Jack for a pound, they are normally 30/40 pounds so bargain I say. I feel so much lighter now its all gone :-) Clothes and cuddly toys that were left have gone to the charity bins too. A good day and thanks to the men in my life for all their help xxx

Popcorn for breakfast

So I'm not even going to mention how bad I have been at blogging (and prove how bad I am at procrastinating) and just jump straight on in here.
Well we did finish the garden which I will post piccies of later, but we are still waiting on any news of moving...I guess it's a long process. Its starting to get somewhere again now thankfully so I hope it won't be long. Scratch that- I KNOW it won't be long now :-) need to be more positive to bring positive things to us. I'm so excited to be moving soon, I've never felt at home here, and have started hating this house, I hope we fall in love with our new house and have a better time there.
The reason for the title is it's half term and me and my darling little girl had popcorn for brekkie the other day...well why not I say.
When I heard we would be moving I didn't want to get too excited and start packing so I decided to sort the loft, a horrific job, why do we toss things up there, like we think its some sort of Bermuda triangle that the things will just disappear up there and that we'll never have to deal with those things again! So every free moment I have(which are few) I've been sorting, putting rubbish out, I have a load of stuff to take to a car boot and the rest of the stuff I've been taking to my dads to store in his loft until we get moved, therefore less to move on moving day. So hopefully this will be a massive job out of the way which will mean less work for me and hubby.
Ooh and I joined weight watchers and have lost 11pounds in 3 weeks :-)
I think at the end of each post I'll start setting goals for myself and report on them on my next blog post so...today (Saturday) whilst keeping harmony betwixt husband and children in this mad hot heat I WILL finish the loft and have all car boot sale stuff ready for Sunday and I will post pictures of the garden done and the scrap booking layouts I have done lately. AND I WILL NOT PROCRASTINATE X

whoosh it doesn't rain but it pours...

Talk about everything coming at once, after two and a half years we have finally sold our house. I can't believe it. Procrastination will most certainly not be staying in my house as I'm so eager to get to where I want to be I've already started planning declutters, car boot sales, storing stuff and packing. Hang on a minute...we need to find somewhere first. It's very exciting but it's early days as well so I mustn't get my hopes too high yet. It's a shame in a way cos this house has had everything done to it and I mean everything...roof, loft, floors, new bathroom, new kitchen, damp proof course, new double glazing...the list goes on, I think the new tenants have grabbed a bargain here but I'm just so happy...I'll be closer to my dad and libby's school, etc; wahoo out with old and in with the new.

Right so better get on first job= systematically sort and empty loft...either bin, car boot or store in dad's loft, lets see if I can get this done by the end of the weekend!! hang on, I can get this done and WILL get this done, there that's better.

Time flies when you're having fun

I can't believe we are at the end of the first week of the kids holidays and I haven't been pulling my hair out yet. Maybe because this holiday I decided to get organised and plan every day as a lot of holidays in the past me and my daughter have just lazed around the house thus annoying each other eventually. We've had a fab time and we have so much more to do next week. One of the things I'm always putting off is seeing MY FRIENDS and this last week I've seen all my bestest friends at least once. Just my bestest and oldest friend left to come round on saturday and I'll have seen everyone. I feel good for seeing them all too cos I have some fab friends, I promise not to leave/procrastinate seeing my friends so long in the future as I don't have my mam around I really need my friends. xxx

Project Easter - Libby's Garden

Right one job that was deeply hidden in the list of procrastinatable (I think I made that word up but I like it) jobs is the garden. When the good weather comes the trampoline goes up which turns the lawn under it to mush. The rest of the lawn is destroyed by the dogs digging,wee and poop which means the bairn can't play on it. I thought we should dig it all up and then cover it with decorative stone which would
1/ save so much time in tidying, mowing, etc (= more time for the kids and scrapbooking!!)
2/would be so much cleaner, the dog can't trail in the mud from her digging, and the poop will be clearly visible therefore will be easier to see and get rid of instead of poop that gets lost in the grass (excuse all the dog poop in this story but it is necessary so u get the full mucky picture).
3/The bairn will actually be able to play on the garden as we normally have to keep her off the dog's grass.

The bottom of the garden is going to be her very own fenced in secret garden where the dog can't get in, and she can decorate it with all the windmills and animals, etc she loves. We get them from home bargains and the pound shop so they didn't cost much either.
Of course this all had to be done as cheaply as possible as I am a budget queen and has so far cost about 70pounds, handy having a husband who works for a builders merchant, discount and expert advice has been on hand luckily.

So following are some before photos to put me to shame and then what we have done so far...it's saturday morning and it WILL be finished by the end of the day








Here's the culprit


So to save money we did all the legwork ourselves, here it is in progress




more photos to be posted later in the day, the stones are down and it's looking fab, I love the feeling you get when a long awaited job is nearly done.

WOO WOO, First post.

Well I told you all I was going to get on with things, I've finally done it. I have finally created a blog, which I'm sure will thrill me very much and probably nobody else but I have procrastinated doing this for soooo long now. So during an unscheduled nap of my 4 month old this very afternoon, I said to myself 'oh, look there's that thing with buttons I waste lots of time on, why don't I do something constructive on it for a change', so I have created my own little page. So raise your glasses to many action packed non-procrastinating posts to come.xx

Projects for this week are...the garden, scrapbooking and easter fun for the kids...watch this space.