Well laid plans.....

Isn't it typical, you ave all these plans and then something gets in the way to stop it happening.  I have been looking forward to half-term for ages, it's been so chaotic at work recently plus on top I've been struggling to fight off a cold, so the thought of half-term getting organised has been my dream.  Well on Wednesday evening last week I started sneezing, by the morning I was suffering with the blocked nose, sore throat and a temperature, but I was determined to keep going and not give in, I succeeded and managed to finish the week. Saturday and I hit rock bottom, the sofa beckoned and the cat stapled me to it.  So feeling poorly for valentine's day and also my birthday was tough, but I've got to the age where I can celebrate later without worry. I found a pad of paper and started a todo list, well I might not have been capable of doing anything physical, but the brain was working (if a little slowly).
Well Wednesday morning and I was feeling much better, so the organisation has begun, lots of junk cleared out, paper burnt up, hoovering, scrubbing.  Guess who over did it?  So I'm back on the sofa wheezing, but feel chuffed that my husband noticed the difference.
Organisation happens in small or large amounts, the little bits build into larger amounts.
 I now have a todo list for the rest of the week, I can start ticking off items, that means, I've made progress.

So much achieved, I'm happy

I've had a lovely day, first of all I put on over 3kg of seville oranges with a couple of lemons to soften. With the help of my daughter we then shredded the skins (once soft), removed the pips from the pulp, and then boiled it all down with some preserving sugar, really pleased as we ended up with 11.5 pounds of seville orange marmalade (rustic style).  I also used my new hand mixer and made 18 chocolate cupcakes. Put a loaf in the breadmaker and rustled up faggots with peas for dinner.

It's going to be a very busy week at work, so I've taken time to relax and recharge my batteries, my poor hubby has a nasty cold, I thought I was getting it, but with echinacea, vitamins, brazil nuts and healthy food from the farmshop, I'm managing to keep it under control.

To keep organised, I just need to type the letter for school giving permission for my daughter to be absent when she doesn't have a mock exam.  Poor thing would have to sit in the examination room if she couldn't escape.

A whole lot of logs

Bless them, Mum and Dad hadn’t realised how low their oil was for their heating, the red light started flashing 2 days ago, they have tried to book a delivery and been told 10-14 days. They’ve been and bought some electric oil filled radiators, but that’s going to be expensive.

Luckily they also have the option to have a real fire in the lounge, but Dad is beginning to feel his age and can collect logs and bits of firewood, but isn’t upto sawing or chopping the logs up if they are too big.

Let my darling hubby and daughter loose and 3 hours later we have managed to produce a huge stacked wood pile to hopefully keep them warm for 2-3 weeks.  Dad was a sweetheart, he grabbed the chainsaw from the shed and was going to use it until I took it and said, “time for me to start using it, now teach me”, so I have been a brave Mum and with Dad’s direction have been happily sawing up a fallen tree into logs, feel really chuffed that I’ve done it.

I had bought a new saw and axe for hubby along with some wellies for his birthday and Christmas pressies, you can hear the tune “I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK” ringing out as he started singing it.  Really happy family atmosphere, daughter started using the axe to chop the large logs into smaller chunks and was amazing. I was in charge of stacking it all under the woodstore in neat rows so that it will dry out and be easy for Dad to get at.

Well we are now ALL organised, team spirit is oozing, I’ve found muscles I forgot existed, we are all going to ache tomorrow. Who needs a gym, we have had a fantastic workout today that was far better for us, lots of fresh air, the odd snowflake too. We were amazed at the number of robins that were around us, they normally fight, but we’ve got about 6 that must have been from the same brood, they were scratching and picking up any bugs they could around the woodpile.

We’ve filled all the bird feeders, bless them, the birds are starving and they can’t get at the grubs in the soil, so we’ve put out a complete range of different types of bird food.  There was a redwing in the garden yesterday, it was so pretty, a much more striking version of a thrush with pink on the chest (just under the wings), lots of blue tits, great tits, coal tits, long tailed tits, goldfinches, greenfinches, dunnocks, greater spotted woodpeckers, nuthatches, robins, blackbirds, doves, pigeons, thrushes, chaffinches, wren, oh, and the odd squirrel too.

Going to settle down for the evening with some muscle lubricant (can’t decide what to have in my glass tonight but it had better be strong and effective).

Oh how I wish for some snow, it seems to have been every but here (.5 inch isn’t much), daughter is praying that she can get snowed in and she is desperate for a white birthday on Tuesday.

Going to cook a paella style rice dish tonight with free range chicken from Littlemoors, some chorizo for flavour, red pepper and peas.

Time to relax and put my feet up.

New Year 2010

Wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year.
Well it's all quiet on the western front. Last day of late lie-ins, no more late nights, back to 6.30 alarms on Monday, so need to get used to it asap or will be a wreck next week.
Organisation is beginning, planner is well underway, family are happy to join in, which is a really positive step.
A couple of hiccoughs though, a nasty virus managed to disable my protection software, so laptop is getting a medical at the moment, thank goodness hubby and I are pc bods. Can't print anymore pages for planner.
Day of marking ahead, better to get ahead, could be inspected at any time by OFSTED so need to be focussed and use my task list properly so I stay on control.
Technology is great, I'm still able to keep blogging, facebooking and mailing using my phone.
I'd better get started, 10 digi assignments, then food.
Have fun!

I need a planner

Every Christmas I use my special handmade planner, it is amazing, I have records of all the presents we’ve previously bought, all the recipes I use, my card lists, even the shopping lists (held on One Note on my PC which I reprint every year).  The family are trained to pick it up as we leave the house, if I’ve forgotten it, but it is our lifeline over the festive period to ensure Christmas runs smoothly.  We’ve been using the planner since 2005 and it’s great.

So why do I use the planner, to make sure I do everything and don’t miss anything out. Then why don’t I follow on this idea and create one for the rest of the year. 

This is going to be my first step in my year of “Organisation”, there is no point starting anywhere else, I need to have somewhere to keep the lists of food in the cupboards, fridge and veg box, and to plan the meals for the week that the whole family can refer to. An easy starting point in my mission.  I’ve done some research, found lots of useful sites and will be getting my crafting things out today to make a start. I’ve got new toners for the printer (I don’t want to leave it empty or I will be very unpopular).

I’m going to print my inserts before making the cover, I can then work out the size to ensure that the tabbed dividers fit.

Organised Home

OK, so this is what I need ALL year to keep me organised.  I started looking yesterday and have found a great starting point on the Organised Home website. This explains the Household Planner and everything that could be included, ideas for the dividers, pages to be downloaded and printed.

I also found the planner below with some great pages.

Brenda Arnall’s planner

This is the front of a lovely planner that Brenda Arnall has made on her blog. I love the look of this, there are lots of templates available to download, you need to go near to the bottom of the November pages to find all the details, but very easy to follow.

I want to keep the binder flexible, so will use some bookrings to hold it together and then tie on lots of ribbons (same method as my Christmas planner). I do need to make it easy though to add pages, so will remember this time to use a standard hole punch so that the holes are all in the correct place.

I suppose I could use a standard A5 ring binder, but it doesn’t feel “mine” in the same way.

I will print her pages on paper, I don’t want the planner to become too thick, if producing a bound book (what a great present for someone) then I’d use card and my Bind-it-All.

Martha Stewart

There are also loads of excellent tips on Martha Stewart’s website. I’ve also added her calendar’s into my outlook, so that I can choose to do or ignore her suggestions for the week. Simple things like checking smoke alarms etc.

Time to have some fun at the same time as getting organised.

Enjoy

Technology is the future and boy I love the future

I've been browsing my favourite sites for the last few days, Facebook, UK Scrappers, watching Tweetdeck alerts, keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances, and have discovered some interesting websites, concepts and ideas, plus I've added new applications to my phone (Window Mobile).

So what have I learnt?

• Through a post on Facebook from one of my friends, I saw a fantastic idea called postcrossing where you can send and receive postcards to random people across the world, I've just got my first 5 addresses, ranging from USA, China, Finland, Italy to Holland. I've now got to get some local postcards to send off. Once they start getting logged as received, I can then send more and I will then start receiving postcards in return.  I've decided to create a scrapbook of the places and locations.
• Whilst looking on UKScrappers - I spotted a thread about "One Little Word 2010", this is inspired by Ali Edward's.  Well I've done my thinking and my word is "organisation", if I put more effort into getting and keeping organised, my whole life and family should have a better balance, the garden will get planted, our home might be tidier, in my work I will not be overloaded, my time will be well spent, there will be less waste, more money and I'll have more time to play and relax. This needs some more thought and perhaps I need to dedicate some time to putting my thoughts and ideas into a specific blog, pulling together ideas and websites that help me, the ups and downs the successess and catastrophies. My hope is that by this time next year, I have benefitted and our lives are more fulfilled.
• I have signed up to Windows Marketplace and now have some new applications on my HTC phone, (all free so far), I have a shopping list manager (well that fits with the step above), a great weather forecast application and Google Maps.
• I've also started to add tasks and manage my calendar on outlook more efficiently, lets hope I can get a complete list of the tasks that need doing and then start doing them. I've got the rest of the holiday to catch up and get ahead.
• OFSTED - love them or loathe them, we've got to be ready for them, we were told on the last day of term, that they now only need to give between 3 days and 2 weeks notice that they are coming in to do an inspection. I am determined that all my files and paperwork are going to be ready. More to go onto the task list.

There's no point in dwelling on what could have been or how things have gone pear shaped, draw a line under it, move forward and change the future.  I hate wasted energy, picking holes in what could have been, worrying, criticism, all negative entities, that drain energy. This year is going to be filled with positivity, opportunities to be grabbed and used, more forward steps than backward. Things will happen that are going to halt our lives, but they must be taken as small hurdles that need navigating and not huge fences that force you to turn back. We aren't going back, forward all the time, whatever route it takes.

About me

I'm married to a great guy and we have one daughter who loves cooking and eating, thankfully she is very adventurous in her tastes. I'm a real foodie and enjoy all aspects of food, from reading about it (over 160 cookery books), to growing it and above all cooking it and teaching my daughter to cook too.

All of us are very handy in the kitchen, it's how we all relax and we are very adventurous.

We shop at farm shops every week and we love to try out different dishes with the wonderful array of vegetables and meats available.

When time permits, we are hoping to grow as much of our own food as possible, you can’t get fresher or healthier, we aim to grow organically, but the slugs were better fed than us last year, so I may have to resort to organic slug pellets.

When time permits we love getting out into the countryside, geocaching is a great way to enjoy the outdoors with the added fun of finding treasure at the end of your walk.  We also love foraging for free food, I am enjoying the fruits of our labours at the moment, sloe gin.

Links

My favourite links

Dolly’s Dreamings

Ali Edwards

Shimelle

Littlemoors Farm Shop

Geocaching

Postcrossing

Bookcrossing

Caching and hugging

It was a glorious day today, we were inspired by Autumnwatch to go back to the ancient trees we found last weekend in the New Forest and measure them to enable us to log them.  I also did some research before we went as I knew we would be going past 2 war memorials and I was positive that there were geocaches near each. My hubby lost friends serving, so this would be an ideal opportunity to visit and claim the caches too.

The first cache was called “Heart of Stone” and was very near to this memorial near Ibsley.  It was good to get back doing a simple cache and dash. We then continued on a lovely trip through the forest.

  

 

The trees were magnificent as were the  ponies. At least this time we had our daughter with us as she is horse mad. We also visited a Canadian memorial near Bolderwood.  Found the cache “Little Canada”, this was a regular cache, it was good to drop off the Travel Bug I’d collected in Cornwall in the summer, picked up a fantastic Geocoin for us to move on, not going to leave it so long this time before we go caching again.

The trees were huge in the forest near Burley, we’ve recorded the sizes of 4 trees, luckily hubby had a tape measure in the car so we didn’t need to do any tree hugging, but even with our best intentions, we still needed to hug to pass the tape onto the next person. Some of the trees were over 6 metres in diameter, therefore according to the autumnwatch guide, you convert to centimetres and divide by 2 and that gives you the age of the tree, over 300 years old truly ancient trees.

It was brilliant to have so much time together in the beautiful forest together, all that fresh air it certainly revitalises.

 

 

 

 

My intentions for my future blogging/scrapbooking

I’ve just started Shimelle’s latest class “Blogging for Scrapbookers” and I need to define my intentions for this class.

I need to get better at blogging events as they happen, as I easily get diverted onto new and then forget the details that are important and make the memories so special.

I must make more use of my camera phone, download and blog.

College smiles

I was so happy today, 2 new smartboards have been installed in the classrooms I use at college. We previously had mobile smartboards with very old pcs and they were so feint you couldn’t see the screens and they took 20 minutes to boot up before you could use them.  This isn’t very good when you teach computer animation and digital graphics, so need memory intensive programmes.

To make sure that they working for my lesson that started at 9am, (I had spent 4 hours yesterday building a Smart Notebook to use), I went to the classroom early at 8.30.  They never seem to leave you instructions, I’m happy to twiddle and had my machine working within a couple of minutes.  It was brilliant, lots of happy students, all could see the board, they loved the Notebook, the lesson went really well. I then spotted that the software hadn’t been properly installed, all the features weren’t there, I couldn’t write over everything displayed on the screen, still these are minor irritations.  It is hard when you share classrooms, I taught 2x 1.5 hour classes this morning, then ended up back in at 3 for another 1.5 hour lesson by which time another member of staff had run an old version of the Smartboard software, so my snazzy Notebook would no longer work. One of our IT support guys worked with me this afternoon and yippee it’s now working wonderfully, just hope that the staff are careful and don’t repeat the error again.

I will take photos tomorrow of the new board and I can then add to this blog entry.

We have open evening next week, so I just need to create a self-running video/presentation to display on the board, no pressure!!!

So much to do, so little time, but I love a challenge.

All things blog

Well I’ve signed up for Shimelle’s “Blogging for Scrapbookers” course and been browsing through Shimelle’s latest class notes on the forum and found some interesting links and materials. I’ve updated the look of my blog and I love the new look and feel. Through the forum, I’ve come across some blogging software call windows live writer.

 

 Windows Live Writer

Thank you to stacey for pointing me in the direction of Live Writer. I hadn’t realised that I’d downloaded this in the past, but never set it up.
This is a great way to create my blog posts without the normal method of signing into blogger.

Halloween Fun

A lovely day here, about 18 deg C which isn't bad for the last day of October. Managed to completely clear out the greenhouse, wash it inside and out, put up the bubblewrap insulation and then put back the plants that need to overwinter. Now I need to pot up some lettuce, rocket and land cress, plus some pea shoots, to keep us going in winter salad leaves. I love being able to harvest our own leaves at Christmas. Might persuade Hubby to buy another box of living salad from Lidl too, about 40 plants in that, they can go in a planter/grow bag in the greenhouse too.

Finally managed to get to steam the Christmas Puddings, all 8 individual ones (much more sensible). They only took 3 hours, so I can now wrap them ready to store.

Still haven't managed to make the Christmas Cakes though, my Kenwood Chef has appeared from storage, but it needs a good scrub before I can use it. I don't fancy creaming all that butter and sugar and eggs by hand.

Did some pumpkin carving last night, didn't realise that my Mum and Dad have never had a pumpkin lantern before, until I put it in their garden, in view of the patio doors. They were amazed. Oh for the internet and downloadable templates. I tried to pick something that wasn't too scary. Must remember to get a new pumpkin carving blade next year, mine is beginning to bend and is going to suffer from metal fatigue before much longer.

No to get the pumpkin back and turn it into a pumpkin pie, soup, muffins............... etc, well it is a huge pumpkin, huge chunk to Mum too for her to use.

We don't get trick or treaters in the country, I do miss the little kids, but not the older ones who can be quite menacing.

New Hair

We went to a friends wedding at the weekend and my daughter read a poem, she had her hair restyled the night before into a modern bob and wow is she stunning.

Here we are having a bubble blowing contest.  The wedding was in Paignton in Devon at the most beautiful place.

The grounds were vast and so picturesque.

 

I also caught a lovely photo of Laura with our cat Boots, who was being very soft and soppy and not wanting to move.  He wouldn’t get off the chair, so he needed lots of hugs so that Laura could stand up and get on with weighing up the ingredients for the Christmas Pudding and Cakes.

He has been a different cat since we lost his brother earlier in the year, a complete personality change. Sloppy as they come, like velcro when he sees a lap available, but does have a tendency to launch himself on us at 3am every morning, just to let us know that he’s in and needs to warm up.

Christmas prep here we come

Ooops, I've been missing in action, poor blog, it's been forgotten and been left all alone. Well it's time to resurrect and get chatty again.

Half-term has been a relaxing time (I normally have to work, first time the college have allowed us to take a full weeks holiday and boy did I need it).

Today is the start of Christmas preparations. I managed to find some tubs of whole candied peel in Julian Graves earlier in the week, my daughter's current sat on the sofa chopping it into tiny pieces. The fruit is being weighed out and ready to be steeped in brandy overnight. I love Delia's recipe, I don't want to change as it is so good. To make it very special, I've put The Santa Clause on to watch and get us in the Christmas mood, I believe the magic of Christmas gets trapped in the fruit, so we start the process by getting ourselves into Christmas feel to trap even more magic in the mix. Going to make 2 cakes this year, 1 for us, the other for my Mum and Dad.

Will mix together the pudding later, it also needs to be left overnight.

I then need to put my planner together, I need to print new inserts and then get the planner back into operation.

Ho Ho Ho

A medieval rsvp

I am delighted to have been asked to create an RSVP card for a friend who has been invited to a Medieval wedding.

I need to find a suitable paper, embellishments and text in the style of the invitation.

Does anyone have any ideas?

A Christmas update

Well a great Christmas was had by all, nice and quiet, lots of chilling. Have just managed a quick cache and dash today to drop off two travel bugs that have been staying with us over Christmas, now they are back on their travels, picked up 3 new ones from the Travel Bug hotel near Hurn. We also dropped a travel slug in to start it's travels. One of the travel bugs is from Christchurch in New Zealand so we took it to Christchurch Priory and took some photos to send back to the owner.

We tried to complete the multi-cache in Christchurch but there was one plaque missing, we think we've worked out the final co-ordinates, but will return when the rain isn't horizontal. It started tipping it down half-way through solving the puzzles, so we finished solving and then headed back to the car.

Hoping for great weather tomorrow so we can go caching again tomorrow.

Geocaching is fab

What a hectic few weeks! Clive's been away loads, so masses of curries, but he's doing brilliantly with his new job. Laura's had fun at rehearsals and has just been told she's going on pointe after Christmas, so great excitement there. I've had a stressy time at work, a 2 week observation window requiring a few trees being used for printouts that aren't necessary normally, staff not pulling their weight and then getting flak for doing what you haven't done, not praise for all the extra you have done. Not good. Now got a stinking cold. grrrrr

The highlight from the last month is "we've found geocaching", a new modern day form of treasure hunting.
As of yesterday, we have now found 7 caches ranging from micro caches to tupperware containers with treasure.

Here are the stats so far.

I thoroughly recommend it, you do need a GPS that's designed for outdoor pursuits, we have a Garmin Etrex (it's old and Clive is now thinking of upgrading).

When we normally go out for walks, we stick to the routes we know, geocaching has introduced us to some wonderful new walks with the fun of finding treasure at the end. I wonder how many times in the past we have walked past a hidden cache without realising it is there.

Part of the fun has been finding travel bugs and geocoins in with the treasure, these are trackables and you can watch them travel around the world. We found a geocoin the other week that started in Texas and has now travelled 4000 miles, it's amazing. So last week I ordered our own coins and bugs, so yesterday I released the first micro geocoin into the wild, we are now so excited about watching it travel.

We have also got our own cache boxes, we're working out where to place them now, a chance to revisit some areas we haven't been to for years. Clive took me on a walk when we were first courting and we haven't been back since, we are now going to go back and see if we can use it for a cache. It's really soppy and romantic.

It is brilliant finding new places, the Wishing Wimborne cache was brilliant, I had never realised there were the most brilliant carvings there or that walk existed, shame we didn't see the kingfisher, but a couple were just coming back along the path who had just seen it hovering over the river.

I've bought an A5 file for the clues and have printed them off (I use the special option for my printer to shrink 2 pages to an A4 page) then fold and punch. Clive then downloads the waypoints to the gps and they then get filed. When we are out, we can then use the GPS to find the nearest cache and I've got the file to get the clue.

We're going to keep the caching bag in the car, so that when we get a moment, we can cache.

I've managed to find a sneaky stats program that lists our achievements to date.

A good excuse to get fit and have loads of fun in the fresh air.

Not forgotten

Hello blog, yes I'm still here, time to put an update on.

Clive's got a stinking cold, bless him, he hasn't turned it into manflu but he's really rough. I'm therefore cooking loads of scrummy comfort food to give him the strength to get better quickly. He has been in Edinburgh for 2 days this week (that's when the cold developed) and he's off to Ireland for the whole of next week.

Menu last night - tiger prawns in garlic butter with fresh lemon and parsley (high in vit C and iron), followed by roast pheasant with dauphinois potatoes, organic sprouts and carrots. Phew, were we full, but it definitely made him start to feel better.

Cooking up a sin today, home made steak and kidney pudding. Also bought some lovely cooking apples, so making some small apple pies today too, loads of scrummy cinnamon in them to spice them up. I wonder if there's any vanilla icecream in the freezer, still doesn't matter, have some cream anyway. I know it's not good, but at this time of year you need to give your body fuel to fight the bugs.

I also need to get the ingredients to make the christmas pudding and christmas cake. We always have homemade.

Might make some cookies too, depends on how much energy I have.

I need to sort out my cupboards in the kitchen, do some more washing (where does it all come from).

If I get time, I want to do some crafting too. You can't say I'm not a busy person.

All my own Work

Exciting New Project by Scrapdolly

Welcome to a whole new project

Thanks for this inspirational idea. With all the best intentions I would love to do this project, but knowing how my life falls to pieces in seconds, I'll do what I can.

10 weeks from 2nd July, so that's the whole of July and August, well for 5 weeks I will be on holiday from work, 3 in sunny (yes, that's debatable) Cornwall. The rest is tidying up from one academic year and planning the next one. It isn't easy being an FE lecturer, at least teachers at school know what they will be teaching before they leave in the summer, we have an idea, but it depends on recruitment, if we don't get the students we don't run the courses or number of groups.

We have noticed that those students that have already applied, been interviewed and given places are the ones who are interested. Those that we see during the summer are "last minute wonders" and are either marched in by parents to get them on a full time course to keep them busy and out of their hair or keep the benefits they are currently getting. It's horrid, but some simply have a pulse and are breathing, no urge to achieve. I get them and as a personal tutor have to inspire them to get off their backsides and do something positive. It's draining but lovely when you get smashing comments at the end of their time with us. I've just said goodbye to a lovely student who I've taught for 3 years, he's so sweet, gave me a huge hug at the end of term and was chatting on MSN with me last night (yes I'm a really sad bunny).

I have a reputation in the college for taking disaffected students, and turning them round into high achievers.

Home life isn't good - our neighbour from hell is getting worse, we've now had 2 consecutive horror families in the last 4 years and we are losing patience, and stress levels are very high.
Instead of getting through it, DD dissolves into floods of tears whenever they start their rows swearing at each other. Last weekend we spent and unexpected 4 consecutive nights at my parents, coming home inbetween hoping to be able to sleep in our own beds.
Shame my DD isn't having the same support at school though that I give my students, she could easily become disaffected as one teacher told her on Friday "oh no, why did you choose my subject, have I GOT to teach you again next year, how could you" great inspiration for a 13 year old, then her form teacher (personal tutor) again gave her hell for choosing the subject too, not DDs fault that she has to choose this subject to go with her favourite, no parental checking first either. Am I supposed to write a letter every week saying life is hell at home or shouldn't once be enough asking for support by ALL the teachers during this difficult time. Trouble is this teacher is a firework display waiting to happen, my DD also is easy to spark into sobs, so her classmates know that if they wind the teacher up about her whilst she's at her extra drama lesson, DD will walk back into a highly charged situation and the class sit back and watch the display. This teacher has also lost DDs work twice now, blaming DD each time, what do you do?

Off for another day in paradise.

Bebo skins

I've been so busy recently, I haven't had time to think. But I've been getting up-to-date with using Bebo, loads of my students use it and I've started to get "cool" by using it. I'm supposed to be developing a new unit for college on Graphic Design and I'm hoping that if I teach the students how to make their own skins for Bebo, they may do homework as they get interested in new techniques.

I'm apparently "sad" so my colleagues say as I relax by using the computer, they have "lives". Perhaps though I'm more in touch with the kids of today and understand what they do and how they think, that's why the students are still talking to me after leaving back on 14th June;)

Must get a good nights sleep.