Pass the caffeine

Going gluten free

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

To see how this journey started, read my previous post on going gluten free here.

Yesterday we went gluten free!

Yes we have finally reached the moment. Mr PTC has been religiously eating lots of gluten every day for 4 weeks, and I have to say, he was not very happy about it. He had to include a larger proportion of wheat in his diet than he is used to in the run-up to being tested for Coeliac disease. Before all this we frequently had days where we didn't eat any wheat or gluten and I think this may be why he was not showing even more extreme symptoms before. To eat the equivalent of two slices of bread a day for the last four weeks was quite hard for him. He got sick. By Sunday evening he was exhausted and had had three weeks of constant stomach cramps. Poor guy!

So yesterday morning (Monday) he had is blood test at 8.45am and he didn't even have wheat for breakfast. It has now been nearly 48 hours since his last wheat containing meal, and so far not a lot has changed. However, this is what happened during our dietary test at the beginning of the year that made us think we needed to cut wheat/gluten out of his diet. I think it takes him a long time to get stuff out of his system (doctors are always astonished that it takes him 4 hours to react to eating dairy, because apparently it should only take 1 hour). So we will wait and see.

However, there has been one surprising development in this four weeks of eating wheat for me. Mr PTC was away last week on business, and while he was away I went super-healthy, eating lots of fruit, veg, fish and meat, but not a lot else. Basically carbs went to zero. I find this easier without Mr PTC around because he loves starch! Mr PTC arrived back home on Friday and to ensure he got his gluten quota over the weekend we treated ourselves to a few things he thinks he will miss (though I'm sure I can figure out a gluten-free recipe given time). So we had pancakes, yorkshire puddings and scones. All fresh, all delicious, and all full of starch, wheat and gluten. This was more wheat than I normally eat by a loooong way, and infinitely more than I had eaten for previous last 7 days.

Yesterday I felt terrible.

Really terrible. I had stomach cramps all day, and not the type I am used to. I don't know if it was the change in diet, wheat or just bad timing. However, because of it I am also strictly following the gluten free diet for the first month, even though before yesterday I was wavering (I'm sorry, but I love bread, biscuits, pastries and all those terrible bad wheaty delicacies). However, I would prefer to know if I am causing myself damage and change my diet.

So we are both gluten-free, for now at least. After a month, I will allow myself a treat. If I get sick, I will go to the GP too and ask to be diagnosed. That will mean a month of eating gluten followed by a blood test, but I would prefer to know, have it on my doctors notes now, rather than collapse in 20 years time.

We now wait. Mr PTC for his blood test results, me for my body to sort itself out before trying gluten again, and us for the house move in two weeks time. Whatever happens we will remain gluten/wheat free. The contrast in Mr PTC's health was so extreme after being wheat and gluten free for three weeks that I can't see us going back to it permanently. I'm also fairly convinced that too much wheat will exacerbate any hereditary pre-disposition to gluten-intolerance that I may have from my mother, so even if I'm 'fine' I will remain gluten-free most of the time and have the odd treat when out and about. I would prefer to be able to keep on eating wheat every now and then than keep eating it all the time and end up developing Coeliac disease in 10 years.

So watch this space for gluten free recipes winging there way through the internet to you! Oh and did I mention we are moving house in two weeks, and I'll own my first ever home in 9 days? I did? Oh. Well, I'm still excited!

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Moving house guide: 1 month to go

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:00:00 +0000

So it is one month until moving day. I am definitely behind on my packing schedule, but in all honesty, it isn't the end of the world yet, because I am ahead in other areas.

Things to do with one month to go are:

1. Design, print and address moving house notification cards for family and friends.
This is simple and easy and it is a great task to get done now. I've even left you a template for three different versions:

A6 template version 1

A6 template version 2

Third of A4 template (fits a DL envelope)

Modify, print and address those envelopes now. All three are designed on an A4 template, so you get four per page for the A6 versions and three per page for the DL versions.

Don't post them yet, but keep them in reserve. That is one chore ticked off the list, ready for the post box a week or so before your moving day!

2. Start notifying authorities/companies about the house move.
Remember that mail-tracking sheet that we've all been filling in for the last few weeks, now is the time to start tackling it. You may not want to notify all companies right now, but certain things such as utility companies need a while to get everything sorted. You will also appreciate having as much done as possible well before moving day. The last few weeks are always busy busy, so get stuff done now. In particular contact the following:

Gas/electricity companies. They won't be able to take over the supply at your new address until you move in, but letting them know in advance that you are moving means that they are ready for your final meter reading at your old address, and that they will be ready to take over the account at the new address the moment you get those keys.
Phone/broadband/TV. Telephone and broadband can usually be organised to be taken over on the day you get keys. The only issue (in the UK), is if the line has been disconnected, in which case an engineer needs to be called out. Unfortunately, unless you have cable and therefore can get your telephone line through a company such as Virgin Media, you will be relying on a BT engineer. Don't worry, your phone company will organise this for you, but BT charge a fee, which some companies pass on to you. Ask your company for details.
Council/Local authority. Now is the time to tell your council you are moving. Even if you are staying within the same authority, there will be a change to your status, so get them notified now. Council's are notorious for taking ages to sort these things out, but be careful about cancelling direct debits without the councils agreement because otherwise they may charge you a fee. If you are moving outside your current council, hold off notifying the new council until you move in as nothing can be done until that point anyway.

Unfortunately most of these companies still rely on telephone conversations to get this sorted, which is a real pain, because who has time to be on hold for 30 minutes over a precious lunch break? Most councils now provide an email address thankfully, though it is all a bit hit and miss whether they get read.

3. Organise your mail re-direction.
This can be done anywhere up to 6 weeks before moving, but should be done at least a week before. In the UK the Royal Mail offers a service to redirect mail, charged per surname, for anywhere from 1 month to 12 months.

Royal Mail's redirection service

4. Organise home/contents insurance for your new property.
You may choose to stick with your current provider, but don't assume this is the cheapest option. Check out price comparison sites to figure out what is a sensible price, and don't forget to include plenty of contents cover as most people underestimate how much their belongings are worth. Once you are armed with information, call your current provider and find out what they will do for your new property. The benefit of staying with your current provider is that everything is seamless, the transfer will be painless, and they should waive the cancellation fee on your current policy (yes you will be taking out a NEW policy). However, remember that they might not be the cheapest. When they provide the quote, if you are not happy tell them the price you could get it for and see what they will do. If not, while on the phone cancel the old policy for the day you move out, then organise a new policy from a price comparison site.
Some useful comparison sites:
http://www.moneysupermarket.com/
http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/
http://www.comparethemarket.com/
http://www.uswitch.com/
http://www.confused.com/

5. Buy birthday cards and presents and any other gifts/greetings needed in the next 6 weeks.
You will be far far too busy to do this around moving day, so get it done now. Write, wrap, address and stamp and put in your moving box (see below), with a note in the calendar of when to send the item. If you are ordering online for delivery to the recipient, bookmark the item you intend to order and write yourself a note in your calendar. Doing the legwork now will make everything a lot smoother later.

6. Contact your solicitor/estate agent/letting agent on progress.
OK, so you are probably on top of this, because this is the exciting bit - the people that actually make sure you get that lovely new house! But make sure you have arranged a date/time that suits you for signing documents, rather than leaving it until a week before and the agent choosing the time because of their limited appointments. Also figure out where you will collect keys from and organise a time for this.

7. Create a moving day box.
This box will stay with you at all times during the move. Right now it should contain your moving-house folder, a calendar with key dates in it (such as when to post those cards you've organised) and any important documents for the new house such as the contact information for your solicitor/agent in case their are problems on the day, your lease (if you have one), the inventory of your old property for comparing at move-out (if you have one). In the run-up to the move you will add other items, such as the kettle and food for moving day, ID (don't trust that to a removal company!) and similar items.

This list should keep you (and me) busy for the next week, but continue filling in your mail redirection check list and eating all your food up!

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Why I need a financial safety net, and why you should have one too

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Wow. Well the beginning of 2013 has been a rollercoaster and a half. Life has, in general been good. I am happy, excited about moving house, and despite being properly ill for the first time in years for half of January, feel like things have been quite good here.

But. Oh you knew there was a but didn't you? 2013 has been expensive. Mr PTC and I both kept on saying that our good luck just could not continue (I don't really believe in such things, but well, we seemed to be riding high at the end of 2012). We were aiming to be frugal and cheap and mean for the first three months of 2013 to make sure we were in the best financial shape possible at the beginning of our new life as home-owners. Most of our savings are going straight into the house as a deposit, so we wanted to make sure we had a financial security belt, and the bigger the better.

Then 2013 came along. I broke my glasses and ended up buying two new really quite expensive pairs (its an investment). I needed some new work clothes, Mr PTC needed new shoes. Small items, but they add up. I also broke my laptop - thankfully it is my work laptop and therefore that was paid by work. I need a new phone - did I mention the camera stopped working (again this is on hold). Then when I didn't think I could break anything else (I'm now officially a bad penny round here), the car went in for a service.

Oh yes. The car…. its always cars that break the bank isn't it?

Today was our dear little car's third birthday, which means by UK law it needs it first MOT. It also happens to be the end of the warranty period and because of that we decided to take it to a Volvo dealer to make sure that anything that could be done under warranty is done under warranty. Dealers are never the cheap option, but sometimes a short-term sacrifice is worth a big gain. Well the service came back as a fairly expensive one. Totally justifiable £480 - ouch! We thought we did well out of it thought because sure enough the crank shaft (what the?) and something else had oil leaks.

So back to the garage the car went, under warranty to fix oil leaks. It was awkward (we only have one car and live in the middle of nowhere so can't go anywhere without a car), but we survived. Until that is the garage f'd-up (excuse my language, but really they did!). I won't tell you details because we are still fighting for money back, but amongst other things they broke the windscreen (they at least are paying for that), but we ended up paying another £1300 on top of the service.

I should point out we were sort of held to ransom. If we didn't cough up the car would remain in pieces and we needed our car back. Yes, we probably shouldn't have paid, but what can you do when you need your car urgently?

We bought the car last summer, and were so excited, despite the cost, to buy a car that should last us 8 years or so. We are therefore in this for the long-haul. We love having an estate, and in general it drives perfectly. It is an eco-car which isn't just good for the environment (and makes me feel less guilty about being car-dependent), but good for our wallets too. To then be faced with nearly £2000 in service bills only 8 months later is far from what we expected. We also had to pay for our AA renewal and car insurance this month - so in total the car cost us a whole lot of money this month.

To say I'm annoyed is an under-statement. But now I come to the reason I wrote this post. Understandably (at least I hope) I was (maybe am still a little) angry about this situation. However, what is done is done. We are able to cope though because we keep a financial security belt. We never have 'zero money'. The amount we decided to put down as a deposit for our house was our savings minus our security belt. A while back we decided we should keep 3 months worth of income in a savings account for bad situations. In general we save each month, so if the worst came to the worst and we both were out of work we would be able to live for 4 months, possibly 6 at a stretch off our savings. We would ideally have 6 months worth of income, but because we wanted to get into the 75% LTV bracket for our mortgage we won't have that come March 28th.

Many people do not understand why our 'zero-point' when we say 'we are broke and can't go on holiday' still allows us money in the bank. We work hard to get to that safety net - it isn't always easy to get to that level of saving, and I can see why many people feel that they can't do it. But by putting away a little each month, we can deal with these bad times where everything goes wrong without feeling like we will loose something very important to us or fall behind on our rent/mortgage payments. Even as a student with no income I set aside money for emergencies. It wasn't much, but whenever I had some money come in, be it from parents, a loan or whatever, a small percentage was set aside. Now we set aside a larger percentage because our expenses are larger. We never touch this money, except in bad months like February this year. Now we will focus on putting that safety net back to where it was asap to give us financial security once again.

If I have one piece of advice out of this whole affair, it isn't about garages, or being careful, or not spending more than you think you should on an item like new glasses, it is to put a safety net in place. I spent money on new glasses, thinking it was an investment, and at the time we did it, we were financially doing quite well. If I knew we were going to have to spend so much on the car, I would have been more restrained on the glasses. However, you don't know what might happen tomorrow. So put a financial safety net in place.

If you feel that you have nothing left in your budget to put way, start small, heck, start tiny. Take the tiniest bit of money and put it in a savings pot. Do that each month, and soon you'll forget you had that money to spend in the first place. It may be tough if you had to sacrifice something else to do that, but I can promise you, in the event of needing emergency cash you will be grateful. I realise this approach will not work for everything. I have friends who just don't understand our approach to finances and spend every penny each month and are happy. They deal with financial emergencies by using credit cards and loans. I just can't do that. I was brought up to spend only what I have, not on credit. I don't even like taking out interest free credit, knowing that if I leave the money in the bank earning interest I will be better off. It just seems wrong to me to take out a loan (I say this but I am taking out a mortgage!).

N.B. I am not a financial adviser, so if in doubt, talk to a professional when making big financial decisions. This is just my approach to money and my attempt at a frugal lifestyle.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Clutter and wellbeing: owning up to the situation

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +0000

I had a bit of an ah-ha moment last night, on something that for some reason makes me a bit ashamed. I realised that I feel better, like really, properly healthier better, when I am not surrounded by clutter.

Let me explain... This week has been one crazy week so far. Thankfully Friday is calmer. However, Thursday being month-end meant big deadlines at work for both Mr PTC and I. We've been doing loooong hours, on top of trying to pack up the house, have lengthy phone conversations with family who are ill (nothing serious, but enough that we wanted to catch up and let we know we were thinking of them). Fine. We can take this in our stride, especially because we have each other to lean on.

On Wednesday our one non-running-about-crazy item was to watch 'Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners'. Now we don't watch much TV, indeed I'm not quite sure why we watched this, but really it was quite fascinating. Mr PTC and I both saw some of the two extremes in ourselves. Certain things bring out a tiny bit of OCD in us, and other things we can stop looking at and allow the hoarding to take over. I particularly liked the phrase of one lady who realised that her hoarding made her 'anxious', and yet she didn't do anything about it, except put a blanket over things. I watched the programme with a growing fascination on the interaction between the two extremes, but the lesson two days later is actually about clutter in my life.

Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners on Channel 4.

Anyway, moving on from my obsession with watching different people interact (maybe I should have been a psychologist after all!), yesterday was crunch point. I had a phone call from my landlord asking to bring round someone to view the house this morning. I knew we had deadlines at work and I knew the house was in a state, but oh heck, we'll manage, so I said 'that's fine'. 9pm comes round and we are still at work, rapidly running out of steam. We finally got home at 10pm with chicken and chips (not the healthiest option, but there are only a few options that late at night) and we had to clean the house. Oh no.

Well we did clean. Not amazingly - how glad am I that I did a deep clean of the kitchen last weekend! It was more of a pick-up that went on for an hour. When we finally got into bed I mentioned to Mr PTC that although I was exhausted I actually felt really great. This wasn't just because we had both met our deadlines at work, because I felt better when we finished cleaning. I felt better because we had put everything away and the house smelt and looked clean. Mr PTC quickly piped up 'well that's quite an admission'. I was initially upset. I know I am not a natural neat freak, but neither is he! The difference in our behaviour is that Mr PTC notices mess more, but ignores it - I don't notice it. However, I must be noticing it on some subconscious level because I felt so much better, despite the exhaustion after cleaning at midnight!

So there we are. I feel substantially better in a clean and un-cluttered house. Even to the point that when I am exhausted it is still worth doing a quick pick-up to improve my wellbeing. Mr PTC, despite being an openly lazy person (aww but I love him that way!), feels the same way. So we have promised ourselves to try to de-clutter and put-away more.

How does this fit in with Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners? Maybe the OCD cleaners have a point - you get ill and anxious if you live in a messy cluttered environment. Not to mention it makes cleaning a lot harder. I think being OCD just means it is more extreme, but like most 'disorders', it is a sliding spectrum and most people sit in the middle somewhere (that is a personal theory on many mental health issues - not a clinically understood theory you should note!).

Some funny cartoons on clangnuts.com

So the PTC household has agreed to 'attempting' to more regular de-clutters, put-aways and pick-ups. We are aware that with less than 5 weeks until move day life is likely to get more cluttered as we pack up, but in the new house we are hoping to start some new routines and pick ups are going to be one of them. We will finally start giving everything a proper home so we know where things should go, and if I get my way less stuff will be out and on surfaces to make cleaning easier. Maybe we will be making a move towards minimalism - hah I don't think so, we have way to much 'stuff' we can't part with.

Righto, random Friday musings are now over. Normal service can resume.

Happy weekend to you all!

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Targets for the weekend - update

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:00:00 +0000

So how did my weekend go? A little crazy! Nothing new there.

On Friday I shared with you my targets for the weekend. Well, as always, lots of things came up, and I did less than I planned. Here is how my list looks now.

1. Pack away pet stuff, including disinfecting first where appropriate. Started, but not yet completed. Everything is now clean and ready to be packed away, but the packing has not yet been finished.

2. ~~Pack all non-essential books (we have~~ lots ~~of them!).~~ Completed!

3. Pack overflow kitchen cupboard (this mainly contains bakeware for special occasions and should not be needed before the move). Started, but not yet completed. There is more in there than I thought!

4. Find out if we are keeping/leaving the dishwasher (we need to negotiate with our landlords!). Pathetic excuse, but I never went to see my landlord!

5. ~~Check all plants that are being moved.~~ Done!

6. Clean car (inside and out!). Ah, now this is one of the reasons my weekend didn't go to plan - the car is being taken apart by the garage and we haven't seen it since Wednesday last week. So no progress here!

7. Clean windows (inside and out). No progress here either!

So that looks pretty pathetic right? I will however let you know what else I achieved (apparently I'm good at doing stuff, just not what I really need to do!):

8. ~~Check heating oil level.~~
9. ~~Clear leaves from garden.~~
10. ~~Quick tidy up of garden.~~
11. ~~Sort out recycling (this was a big job!).~~
12. ~~Take meter readings.~~

OK, so that still looks pathetic. Oh well, lots to do this week then!

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Farewell my Brambly Apple

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 11:30:00 +0000

I mentioned on Friday that our lives had been a bit crazy recently. Well one bit of news, which I have decided I should share with you dear readers, is the loss of my wonderful little Bramble. Readers first met Bramble last September when I introduced the 'cat kit'. Unfortunately last Friday evening (15th) we came home to find out that Bramble had been hit on the road while we were at work, dying instantly.

Wee Bramble, when he was just a few weeks old.

On the Saturday we made the decision to take our other cat, Lavender, to my parents until after we have moved. We also took along our dearest Bramble and buried him in my parents garden. We planted a tree on top of him which provides berries in the winter for the birds (oddly appropriate because we know how Bramble liked to be near the birds). Unfortunately, Lavender did not seem to be coping very well. When we first got home on the Friday and heard the awful news, we took Bramble into our kitchen and put him on the floor. Lavender came over to see what was going on, and then tried to clean him up. When we stopped her she ran off and refused to go into the kitchen again, even after Bramble had been moved. When she saw us burying him on Saturday, she came over and wailed at us, almost as if she wanted us to stop. She sniffed the box he had been in and wailed some more. I know she understands he is dead now and it is heartbreaking. Thankfully I heard from my parents today that she is now playing with one of their cats, so fingers crossed she will be OK.

My favourite: Lavender finally accepts that Bramble is staying and is prepared to sleep next to him.

This probably sounds like I am overly worrying about Lavender but we have good reason. The worst thing about this whole situation is that one of the reasons for our move and the location we are moving to is the dangers of the road we currently live hear. 12 months ago we lost our other cat, Smudge (Lavender's brother), to the same road. Afterwards she went into a three month period of what I can only describe as mourning. She stopped talking to us (she meows and chirrups and purrs all the time normally), and wailed whenever we left her alone. We finally got a kitten, Bramble, in May last year, and she instantly perked up. It was very clear to us that she needed cat company, even though at times Bramble drove her mad because he was so boisterous. Thankfully it looks like being with my parents cats is helping this time, even though I miss her like crazy.

Our new house will be 3 miles down a single track, very quiet road, so hopefully a lot lot safer. At Christmas we questioned whether to leave Lavender and Bramble at my parents for the rest of the time in our old house, keeping them safe. We were planning that they would go there for the actual move anyway as it reduces their stress. However, we decided it was kinder to keep them with us until mid-March. Now I am regretting this. I keep telling myself we would do that again. They are our cats, not my parents'. But my heart now aches.

So the house is oh so very quiet now. No Bramble and no Lavender. And I will never again be able to call another cat 'Brambly Apple' .

He was so much bigger than this in the end. Nearly double the weight of Lavender (who is a very petite cat when not in the same picture as a kitten). Unfortunately he was four weeks away from his 1st birthday when he died.

One day we will have more cats again... and hopefully not too far in the future. But first, we shall move home and Lavender will come home and I will hold my kitty once again. Better still, Lavender will get her very first cat flap in her own home, rather than only getting one while on holiday with her grandparents.

To our dearest wee Bramble, we will always love you and you will always have a place in our hearts. Lots of love Mum & Dad x

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Targets for the weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:00:00 +0000

So what have you got planned for the weekend?

After a few weekends being written off by various events in our lives, the PTC household needs to get its act together this weekend to get back on track with the big upcoming move.

So here is my task (or should that be target?) list for the weekend. I'm not going to kill myself getting everything done (along with the usual weekend rush), but I'm going to see what can be done.

1. Pack away pet stuff, including disinfecting first where appropriate.

2. Pack all non-essential books (we have lots of them!).

3. Pack overflow kitchen cupboard (this mainly contains bakeware for special occasions and should not be needed before the move).

4. Find out if we are keeping/leaving the dishwasher (we need to negotiate with our landlords!).

5. Check all plants that are being moved.

6. Clean car (inside and out!).

7. Clean windows (inside and out).

So that's us for this weekend. Hopefully we will do most of this list, but I am already behind on my usual tasks, having been away unexpectedly last weekend. I have a stack of laundry and ironing to do (oh how I hate that iron) and meal planning and such. Nothing like a challenge to get you raring to go though hey?

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Diet and health

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:57:00 +0000

I've wondered quite a lot whether to write this post, but I've decided it is time to share in case this helps anyone else.

You might have noticed that I've been quiet (again) for a few weeks. Well life is crazy, I'm exhausted, super busy at work and running around trying to get *everything* and more done. More than anything though, I'm bone weary tired, and so is Mr PTC. This just gets us down. OK, so now I sound like I'm grumbling, but I promise, this will become clearer in a few moments.

So back to the title - diet and health. My family, and Mr PTC's have a history of dietary issues. My mother is a coeliac, my sister is lactose and cow's milk protein intolerant. On Mr PTC's side, his father is a coeliac, his mother can't have dairy (there is no conclusive evidence as to which type of milk problem it is, or if it is both as full testing has never been carried out), and his brother is in the process of possibly being diagnosed as a coeliac too. Mr PTC himself can't have cow's milk protein (and therefore any product made with cow's milk) - other milk types (goat, sheep, buffalo etc.) are fine. So basically, complicated families!

Now Mr PTC had his gall bladder removed in 2010 after a couple of really painful (are they ever not?) gallstone attacks. Ever since then he has had a 'gloopy' tummy. Now his tummy has always been very communicative (as I like to put it), but this was somehow different. However, we didn't really notice as it has been a gradual decline, with just a gradual increase in the propensity of 'uncomfortableness' since the operation. Nothing conclusive, and he has a loud tummy anyway. There is also always the risk the 'contamination' with milk - he can be quite off-hand in restaurants and with shop bought food about possible milk risks. He has a fairly high tolerance for milk these days so that he just gets uncomfortable if there is a tiny bit of milk product in his food (for example, a restaurant serving buttered potatoes and plain potatoes with the same spoon would cause him to be 'gloopy' rather than full-on 4 days of sick).

The other change, which I have just put down to our lives is his tiredness. Mr PTC is not a natural early riser. He loves bed (hah so do I!). But when we first met Mr PTC regularly got up before me at the weekend (I'm a slob when I don't have to get up). These days he can sleep all day unless I drag him out of bed. He is also more grumpy, which I've put down to work stress, being together for longer (the honeymoon period doesn't last forever, right?) and the tiredness he is experiencing.

So we just continued ignoring all of this. We discussed on and off doing a 'trial' of no dairy at all or going gluten/wheat free, but we just never got on with it. Well January was hard around here. I was properly sick for the first time since I was a kid and Mr PTC clearly had a milder version of it to. We were wiped out. Work was getting on top of us, the house looked like a bomb had hit it and we weren't packing ready for our move. So we decided to go gluten free, I'm not sure why. It just seemed like a good idea.

Well on Wednesday (20th) we stopped after three weeks of gluten free. Now nothing earth shattering happened in those three weeks, and nothing earth shattering has happened since. It certainly is nothing like the experience of my mother or father in law who experienced really quite extreme improvements in health during their first few weeks of being gluten free, or the awful effects of a subsequent 'accident' once they had been glu-free for a few weeks. However, since Wednesday Mr PTC has been exhausted, more stressed and more grumpy. His tummy has also started complaining - oddly though he hadn't noticed it 'clearing up', but having thought about it, he is convinced he had less 'glooping' during those few weeks of gluten free. I also noticed that I was less tired during those few weeks, though things are less clear for me (I was also not as careful about gluten because the test wasn't really for me).

Now I'm not going to jump to conclusions here. This is by no means a massive change in health. We've also had ups and downs at work and in our personal lives (we lost a cat, and our neighbour had emergency surgery - but those are posts for another day), and the change in diet also coincided with me making more home-cooked food (fewer nasty ingredients), and using up the freezer contents, which right now is mainly joints of meat. We have probably therefore, accidentally been fairly close the the 'paleo' diet that everyone is raving about online. See it is murky territory!

So for now, we are continuing with eating an all inclusive diet and making sure Mr PTC ingests some wheat/gluten everyday (as my dad says 'a glu-full' diet). Mr PTC is now taking this to the doctors and hopefully we can convince them to take this seriously given the family history. Diagnosis of gluten-allergy in the UK seems to depend largely on how good your GP is! Unfortunately, for a full clinical diagnosis in the UK a blood test for antigens is not sufficient; instead a biopsy of the bowel is required. This also means that Mr PTC must continue eating wheat/gluten for the time being until the biopsy is done.

Regardless of what happens, we will be changing our diet, at least for a short time. We will wait until the doctors do what they must for diagnosis. If the results come back negative we will still try going gluten/wheat free again, and I might join in properly this time. There seems to be a lot evidence that even if you do not have the autoimmune response that is present in people with Coeliac disease, that wheat is not great for us. While I love my food, I also love having energy and more than that I want Mr PTC to be happy and well. So after doctors appointments and moving house in April we will go on some sort of detox. I'm thinking the paleo diet having read so much about it, but I'm still researching to find out what I think is best. Whatever happens though, I have a feeling that a full re-evaluation of our diet/lifestyle is well overdue and may be one of the best things to start afresh with the house move. We will have space for growing our own vegetables and maybe that is just the incentive I need to move to a healthier, less refined, diet. I love growing things, and I do so love to eat too!

If you have any experience of dietary issues, trying different diets or the paleo diet I would love to hear from you and share your experiences. I am acutely aware that one in three people with Coeliac disease in their family will develop Coeliac disease. That means there is a fairly high probability that Mr PTC and/or I will develop it or even already have it! I'm also aware that my mother and my father in-law were left undiagnosed for years, and in some ways have never fully recovered from the damage done before diagnosis. I don't want this to happen to Mr PTC and me, or anyone else for that matter.

Let me know your thoughts!

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

So how did January really go?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 06:00:00 +0000

So I've given you all an 'update' on January in the form of what I've been telling you about. But how has it really gone? I want to know what you have been up to. So I'll start by telling you how things have been going round here!

1. 2013 started with the big house move news. You can get all the helps and information I am compiling here, but I thought I'd let you know how it really is going.

Well the letters scheme is going quite well, I have written down most of the mail that needs to be re-directed, but I am sure some has fallen through the cracks... I mean who's perfect? Part of the reason behind this blog is to help me hold myself accountable and be more organised! Fingers crossed telling you guys that I haven't been quite as diligent as I intended I will now be guilt tripped into catching up!

Packing has taken a hit. With being ill I did nothing for about two weeks, so I have thus far only completed 6 boxes. Oh dear. That is one task that will be taken up this weekend.

2. I attempted to have a cash-free January. I will admit this was somewhat easier because I spent most of 2 weeks in bed. It is so easy to not spend money if you are in bed - unless that is you use the credit card online. Despite various mishaps 2013 has started out fairly cheap. I'm not sure it will last!

Talking of mishaps, some of the events that I haven't shared with you in the last week (and hence being so quiet for a while):

a). I broke my glasses. They did so well for 4 years and then I smashed them by head-butting my laptop! Who knew macbooks were so vicious? That was one expensive mistake! I can't believe how much new glasses cost these days.

b). My macbook broke. OK, firstly not 'really broke' and secondly it has nothing to do with item (a) above. In fact it is just really misbehaving and has been since before the glasses incident. There is a CD stuck in the drive and it will NOT come out, however much persuasion is provided. Luckily Mr Lappy is still under warranty and going to the shop tonight. Alas that means temporary laptop and slightly unhappy me. I'm also worried that everything will be wiped, even though I've backed up. Silly hey?

c). I keep loosing and forgetting things! Yesterday I put my handbag in the fridge - which is quite an achievement because the handbag is really quite large. On Monday I tried to fill the food processor with water rather than the kettle. Maybe just maybe I'm not 100% better yet.

So anyway, moving onto more pertinent things.

3). My planner for 2013 is still only in its January states - apparently printing and filing are beyond me at the moment. This might explain why I keep forgetting things (see note above). Sorting out the rest of the planner is my priority for this coming weekend. Oh and packing. I keep forgetting the packing!

2013 Planner Reveal

4). Despite my series on how to deal with housework when you are ill I have a stack of ironing up to the ceiling. OK, not quite to the ceiling, but it certainly feels like it. There are shirts that I washed before going away for Christmas still to be ironed. I'm not entirely sure what Mr PTC has been wearing to work recently, because I'm sure it hasn't seen an iron.

How terrible is that?! I'm actually quite shocked, but between car keys and handbags in fridges and water in the food processor rather than the kettle I think my ability to do housework is just rock bottom. Last night was the first night Mr PTC and I did any form of useful housework except put on the dishwasher and do laundry for about 10 days. Believe me, the house was not pleasant.

Tackling the housework when you are ill

So do I prioritise housework over packing and planners now? Looks like a busy weekend.

5). Anyway, January finished on an up as yesterday our mortgage was fully approved. I do believe that basically nothing can stop us moving now, unless the sellers do something crazy like set the house alight.

Fingers crossed for a calmer February!

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

January highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:23:00 +0000

I thought I would finish January with a little round up of progress around here, and drop in some of my posts from the start of 2013. Indulge me!

Well 2013 started with a big big band in the form of us deciding to buy a house. Hopefully I have convinced you all to organise your house-moves to make them stress-free and calm:

Organised house move: brainstorming what needs to be done.

Organised house move: making sure your letters move house with you.

I then set myself the task of reducing my expenditure in January by not taking any cash out of the bank! This was followed up by the release of my 2013 planner printables.

Cash Free Month

2013 Planner Reveal

I started a new series on tips and tricks by sharing some simple tips on having pets and also how to deal with housework when you are ill.

Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Pets

Tackling the housework when you are ill

The theme of moving house continued with emptying the freezer - or indeed how to just make sure you eat everything up! And then tips and tricks on packing for safe and secure house moves.

Emptying the freezer.
House move: Packing made easy

Finally January finished up with a somewhat belated section on filing... sorry no pictures of this one!

I hope you have enjoyed the start to 2013.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Sorting out the filing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:24:00 +0000

So this post has been a long long time coming.

When we moved into our current house 15 months ago, we finally got ourselves a filing cabinet. Before that filing was a bit hit and miss. We used a combination of methods that Mr PTC and I had used pre-marriage, neither of which worked, and none of which made sense for us as a couple.

Having a filing cabinet I was determined that things would get filed away neatly, regularly and in clearly categorised hanging files. Well, 12 months after getting the cabinet we have finally finished! I started 12 months ago, and then left everything for the best part of a year. We knew where the important stuff was, and we had a pile for filing, and that is how it got left for a WHOLE YEAR! I cannot believe that we let that happen.

Crunch time came with applying for our mortgage at the same time as the tax return becoming urgent. You can tell something is wrong when we normally do the tax return in the early Autumn (about the time we have all the relevant documentation to complete the forms), but this time we waited until January when the deadline is fast approaching. We suddenly needed bank statements from 2011 and proof of all sorts of things from the last 5 years for our mortgage. Eeeek!

So filing became a priority.

Well, we have finally achieved it. I have a huge box full of confidential waste (to be burnt as fire-lighter, or shredded), we recycled another huge box full of paper, and the rest is now neatly categorised in the filing cabinet.

My method.

1. Figure out categories. You don't need to keep everything. Certainly, keep bank statements, anything that proves your address etc, but you don't need to be keeping random bits of junkmail from mail order companies. Do, however keep any mail order company details you might need such as account numbers. Then write a list of categories.

For example

One file for each bank account (we have a joint account, savings accounts etc.).
Credit card statements
Council Tax letters
Tax returns
Warranties
Manuals (this might move to a file at some point).
Car stuff (includes MOT certificates, insurance certificates etc.)
Work (includes bonus letters, contracts etc).
Personal documents (paper counterpart to drivers licences, birth certificates, passports, vaccination records)
Household (includes our current lease, copies of the inventory from when we moved in).
Insurance (contents/home insurance documents

Basically if you have something that doesn't fit, make a category for it. It is a lot easier to find something that is in a labelled file, even if it is all by its lonesome. With our bank accounts, because we have so many, each file actually has the account number on it so I can quickly determine which one is which.

Label each hanging file appropriately, then put in alphabetical order. The exception to that in my book is that I put all of our bank accounts at the front, with everything else behind, but alphabetical.

2. Keep items for the relevant time period. Now for a health warning. I am not a financial adviser, so please take this with a pinch of salt. However, I was completely surprised that we would need to provide the mortgage company with details going back 5 years. This even meant utility bills to prove our address (for some reason bank statements were not acceptable for this for the particular bank we are using). Luckily we had that information, but in the past utility bills have only been kept for 1 year. In general, I would suggest keeping stuff for 5 or 6 years. If you own a business it needs to be longer (I think HMRC can check your business tax return up to 7 years after you filed the return, which makes it nearly 10 years after you actually received the bank statement etc.). If in doubt, ask the advice of a professional.

3. Sort and file. This is the last, obvious, and least enjoyable step. Yes, you really just have to sit there and do it. Once the files are in alphabetical order it is actually quite quick. You just pull out the drawer and sit there and file. Easy peasy. Honest!

That's it. Three simple {ahem} steps. Now I won't kid you this is a boring task, hence why it took me sooooo long. But now it is done I am actually keeping on top of my filing (it has only been 2 weeks). I know myself well enough that this won't last, so I will start using a 'to-file' box at some point. However, hopefully it will never get this out of control again as we now have a system.

To summarise:

1. Categorise: come up with a list of hanging file names and sort alphabetically.

2. Chuck away items that are too old. 5 to 10 years is a great point to start at.

3. Sort and file.

Then sit back, get a cup of tea and glow with joy at having organised paperwork... or is that just me?

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Moving house guide: emptying the freezer

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:00:00 +0000

So on the theme of decrapification, ahem, maybe just instead making sure we don't throw lots out when we move, I want to empty our freezer.

Now we have a lot in our freezer. This whole move sort of happened accidentally. Now don't let me kid you, we will have had 3 months from deciding to buy a house to house move day, which realistically is plenty of time. But I hoard, and this includes food!

Our big chest freezer (a wonderful thing to allow you buy in bulk, prepare ahead, and save money by buying items reduced to clear) is FULL. I mean like properly seriously FULL. And of course, being little Miss Frugal, the thought of throwing any of that away makes me weak at the knees. It would be criminal.

So we are purging the freezer! This should happen once a year anyway, we are just 5 months late! The whole point in having such a large freezer was to save us money, but I am not sure we use stuff out of it as often as we put stuff in! Silly silly us! So here is my method for using it all up!

1. Take an inventory. Yes, I know we should totally have one of these already, but we do now! Better still, Mr PTC helped me and it only took 10 minutes. I had a pre-printed sheet with many of the items listed, then space for items I had missed. Its all pretty coloured, and of course matches my 2013 Planner, and you can download you very own freezer inventory here.

2. Get a list of recipes. I went through my recipe binders pulling out recipes, writing them by category. So for example, I have several whole chickens so I had a category for 'chicken' meals.

3. Meal plan the coming weeks. Of course, you are all doing this already right? Yes, so am I {cough cough}. This new meal plan is going to be aimed at using all that freezer food up! So use that recipe list and the contents list, and have a tick sheet to say you have designated that item for that meal on your inventory. Make sure you include items that can be cooked in advance as freezer meals. So for example I have lots of minced beef which I will turn into chilli con carne, and freeze in single-person portions, as I know we will need ready meals in the run up to the move.

4. Cook eat and be merry. Now there is a clear meal plan there is of course no excuse not to empty the freezer!

So there you have it! The same could be applied to a really full larder/pantry. I don't have that problem, well except possibly for baking ingredients - but that would require a lot of cake in the next two months!

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Moving house guide: the simpler way to pack

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:25:00 +0000

So it has been at least 10 days since I have shared anything house-move related with you, mainly because with my bout of illness things have stood still here for a while. Please accept my apologies, but keep reading if you don't fall asleep too soon.

Packing. Yup, there it is. The main source of trauma for any house-movers. How on-earth do you pack up your entire life into itty little boxes and remain sane? You are expected to cram your belongings, your loves, your memories, and everything you need to function, into boxes, perfectly and to a schedule! Then you trust someone (possibly yourself and a few willing friends), to cart this to a new location, whereupon you need to find each beloved item a new home.

And we are supposed to be calm about this?

Well one approach, that if I had more money I might consider, is the service some removal companies now offer of packing for you. Yes it really is that traumatic. OK. I wouldn't, even if I had the money. But only because I don't want some freaky people going through all my stuff! And that's a lot of stuff.

Having moved many (erm seven) times in 10 years you would think I would find this simple. It never is. Yes I have a system, and yes it gets better each time, but it is still stressful. I am always astonished by how much stuff I manage to fit into a small space. Honestly, when I pack up it is like I'm taking the actual walls with me I have so much stuff. OK, lets cut to the chase, its mostly ~~junk~~ ~~crap~~ stuff I don't need. Well, maybe not mostly, just a large part of it.

So round one in the packing is decrapification. I forget where I first heard this word, and I apologise if it offends anyone, but it totally gets the point. Moving house is a great time to decrapify your life. It does require a bit of extra time at the beginning, but it helps you no end, and saves time and money by the end of the move. Seriously, you will pack fewer boxes, consequently moving less stuff (and paying less for the privilege), possibly do some good by donating to charity/friends/in need at the same time, and have less stuff to find a home for at the other end. It also enables you to be clearer about where you pack the items that you are keeping as you go along, leaving you with a clearer idea of where things are.

So here are my top tips for keeping the packing simple and under control.

1. Start early. I can not emphasise this enough. You may be a last minute person, but seriously, there is so much to do in the run up to moving, that you need to start as soon as you know you are moving. If you have very little stuff, firstly congratulations because you are waaaaaay ahead of me on the decrapification front and secondly, you may be able to skip this step because presumably everything you own is used on a daily or weekly basis. Well done. Oh you have Christmas decorations - yup they can be packed now.

2. Get boxes for free. Now we enter the land of little Miss Frugal. Yup that is me, well sometimes. Like when it is convenient.

Now seriously, you DO NOT need to buy lots of expensive packing boxes. Seriously, they can charge you about £5 a box if you get them from a removal company. We reckon we will need 70 boxes for this move - that's £350!!! Even online in bulk they cost £1-£2 each. No way. When you can get them for free? Yup free. Firstly, try your work. If you work in an office, then believe me there will be regular deliveries of office supplies, printers, cartridges, paper, you name it, there will be boxes. Find out who accepts deliveries and make friends with them. If that fails, try your supermarket. Again make friends! They will be sending lots and lots of cardboard for recycling (well we hope recycling rather than landfill) everyday, and certainly won't mind getting rid of a few. You may need to be picky about the type, but 10 minutes sorting through a pack of boxes is worth the money saved surely?

3. Decrapification. You knew I'd get this in the list right? Naturally! As you pack, please please purge. I have a system when I pack. I pick a room and enter with 4 boxes (or 1 packing box and 3 other things such as washing baskets to toss things in). As I pack I purge into the 'packing box', the 'I'm so old/broken you really really need to chuck me away/burn me' bin, the 'gift me because seriously you will never ever use this' bin and the 'recycle' bin.

We are so lucky that we have a great recycling collection scheme round here that means very little needs to go into landfill, but find out if your local recycling depot takes things that you wouldn't be able to have collected for recycling. You will probably need several trips to the recycling depot in the run up to your move anyway (if you decrapify thoroughly), so just store bin bags of stuff in the garage for a day trip out! I have found I am only packing about half of the stuff I have at the moment, with the other half being chucked/donated/recycled. Fair enough I am right at the beginning and packing the things that aren't really used much, so there is likely to be more junk, but it is quite impressive. I've donated 8 boxes of stuff to charity since Christmas and the charity shop drop-off is now on my weekly schedule! The bonus of course is that I feel great about donating to charity as well as sorting through all my stuff. It is even better that they now legally have to send me a letter telling me how much money they make from my donations (ok, waste of paper, but total feel-good boost). £87 for my old junk? Seriously?

{ Source }

4. Label label label. I cannot emphasise this enough. Unless you are Martha Stewart, or possibly my Aunt, you will not unpack for days or weeks. OK, for me it might be months. Accept this, don't try and be the angel that will not emerge in the frenzy of a house move, and be realistic. What this does mean is when you absolutely desperately need that pitcher, that usually only comes out at Christmas, all of sudden in July, it will be on a list in a labelled box and you will know where to find it.

There are of course quite legitimate concerns with labelling every box with a comprehensive list, particularly if you are using a removal company. Now 99% of removal companies will be fabulous, and should of course be insured, but it is just a little too convenient when your box of valuables goes missing but nothing else? So, label the boxes by number only, cataloguing what is in a box somewhere else.

I use a system of coloured sticky paper (such as this), stuck on the box, colour coordinated by room and numbered. So each room gets a colour (for example blue for the kitchen), and each box for that room gets a number. I label the sticky coloured sheet with the room name and box number. I put identical stickies on the top and side of the box (so that they are easy to identify in a stack of boxes). Then on a lovely printable, I write the box number and its contents. This way I know the contents of box 10, but the removal men don't. To make life even better, when I want that pitcher in July I just look through my contents sheets and find the relevant box number, rather than reorganising all the boxes to find the relevant label, let alone opening 20 boxes to find it first!

Empty packing sheet - ready to be filled.

The key thing here is use a different colour for each room and clearly label the boxes top and side, so you can see the box colour/room/number from a distance in a stack.

Get a copy of the packing list sheet to fill in here.

5. Set yourself a target. Figure out how many boxes you think you will be packing, or perhaps rooms to pack up (we went for boxes, because we needed this for removal company quotes, and every room contains something we will need in the last few weeks/days). Divide this by the number of weeks you have until you move, and that is your target for packing per week. For example, we think we will have 70 boxes of stuff. Very approximate, but its a start. We have 11 weeks until the move date from now, but will be away for 1 week, and I want to assume that nothing useful will happen in the last week before moving (actually there will be a packing frenzy I'm sure). So I am giving myself 9 weeks for packing. That means 7 or 8 boxes per week for the next two months. That is a lot less stressful (at least for me), than 70 boxes in one week! It also means I am not bringing 70 boxes into the house in one weekend. Instead I will be picking up 10 boxes or so from work a week for the next few weeks and trying to pack all/most of them straightaway.

So there you are. That is my packing method. Sorry for all the words... but I hope it helps to keep the peace!

To summarise:
1. Start soon (NOW!).
2. Get boxes for free from work or shops.
3. Declutter as you go to minimise how much you move.
4. Label your boxes by room/number and have an associate list of contents somewhere else.
5. Set yourself a weekly target for the number of boxes to pack.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Tackling housework when you are ill

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:44:00 +0000

I had another post planned for today, but I decided this was more pertinent, so please forgive me!

As you may know from my previous posts, I've been rather ill this week. I've never been off work so long and I keep having to go back to the doctors. It is generally very miserable.

One of the worst things about it all, is that when I'm not asleep I'm bored. I'm too exhausted to concentrate on anything, including a good book or meaningless TV, and it is taking me forever to write anything, but I'm still bored. Add to this that the house has gradually descended into a disaster and I got really irritated yesterday and decided I had to do some housework.

Now, I am not a doctor, and by no means is this medically advised, but if you must, like me, do some housework, here are my hints for tackling these things when you are not 100%. I would also suggest that this is only something you do when you are on the road to recovery!

1. Moderation is everything. Small, tiny little tasks are key. Pick one thing that will make the biggest impact to improve your mood. For me it was clearing the kitchen and filling the dishwasher. it made me feel great that 10 minutes had the kitchen looking (nearly) as good as new. I did have to sit down for a good cup of tea afterwards.

2. Set yourself a time limit. Accept you are ill and realise you are not going to have the house looking perfect by the end of the day. Set the kitchen timer for 5, 10 or 15 minutes (depending on how you feel) and see what you can achieve. You'll probably find you achieve a lot less than you normally would in this time, but it means you don't burn yourself out by setting unrealistic goals.

3. Get help on board. You are ill and you are not perfect (however much we might all want to be). Don't be afraid to ask for help. One thing that has really struck me with this illness is that Mr PTC does actually want to help me but he isn't a mind reader. I actually have to ask him to do certain things, which he is then more than willing to do. It is not his fault that he has a different set of priorities than me. If you have loved ones around believe me they want to help look after you, and if that means picking up the cleaning products, then they will do that. Again, don't be unrealistic.

source

4. Pick ONE thing that is really bothering you and settle at getting that done and nothing else. It is true that by seeing mess and clutter it may well effect your ability to get better, so pick the one thing that will make a big difference to your peace of mind. Tackle it in SMALL doses, or ideally get someone else to do it for you.

5. Take a long rest. Once you have accomplished your task, please don't rush onto the next one. Take a good rest, cup of tea, biscuit, in fact a nap wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Of course, the best advice is to not do anything and concentrate on getting better. But well, we are all too busy for that right?

I'm off to bed now.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Tip & Tricks Tuesday - Pets

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:00:00 +0000

So I have a new theme for Tuesdays starting today! Each Tuesday I will be sharing a small list of tips with you that make my life a little easier or that I have come across and think would be useful, although I might not yet have implemented them.

This has all started because I was astonished at Christmas the lots of little tips my mother and I exchanged. My Mum is a constant source of knowledge on everything for me (with the exception of computers, as that is apparently what I get paid to work with). I am always phoning her for little ideas and tips. If I don't know how to do something, I give her a call! Similarly, over Christmas, it was interesting that this has started going both ways now and just occasionally I have picked a little tip up that my Mum didn't know.

So now I will start sharing this love of all things nifty and helpful! Some of them are pretty obvious, but hopefully there will be something for everyone. Many items in the future may come from pinterest or other websites, so please click on any links and make sure other sensible tip-giving people get some internet traffic.

Pets and cleaning

This is a hot topic around here, with two cats, and hopefully more on the way after the imminent house move. How do you cope with pet hair? We also had a bit of a smelly cat problem over Christmas as my parents have a 16 year old who just can't clean herself anymore because of arthritis; so I came up with my dry shampoo!

1. Hair removal from fabric and carpets. To easily remove hair from fabric/carpets where otherwise the vacuum is just not getting them up, put on a rubber glove (marigold etc.) and rub over the surface. The hairs will be quickly lifted allow you to pick them up or easily vacuum them away.

2. Cat shampoo. If you have a smelly cat (such as a very old wee darling, who just isn't able to clean themselves anymore, or a little kitten who hasn't quite learnt all the rules), rather than giving them a traumatic bath, try using a dry shampoo. I use a 50:50 mix of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and talc. The bicarb gets rid of the smell while the talk soaks up the grease and other items that may be causing the problem in the first place. Rub into the fur a little at a time (generally something they love), then use a brush to comb it out.

3. Cat food. Ever have a cat convinced that there is no food left in the bowl because they have eaten the bit in the middle? Rather than giving in and putting more food out, pick the bowl up, shake so it covers the middle of the bowl and put it back down. It works every time!

4. Tablet talk. Have a pet that doesn't like taking tablets? I think this applies to every pet I've ever had (and I had a lot growing up!). Well, responsible cat and dog owners, and possibly the owners of quite a few other pets, should regularly treat for worms, even if they are indoor pets according to my vet, as we carry things in on our shoes.....euh! Anyway, the best thing we have done with our cats, on advice from our vet, is to regularly open their mouths. We have a nightly ritual where we open their mouths and count to five, and then make a big fuss of them afterwards. They are now completely used to having their mouths open and tablets are much much less fuss. There is no wrangling the cat, climbing the curtains, or scratches up and down the arms. Oh and I've never had much luck with the whole mashing it up with the food idea. My kitties are far too suspicious for that!

To start out training your cat (or dog for that matter) to the idea of having their mouth opened, start initially by gently touching the sides of there cheeks everyday. Work up to actually opening the mouth, however briefly, before finally getting to the point where holding the mouth open for a count of 5 is not so bad from their point of view. It takes less time than you think, especially if a treat is received afterwards!

5. Preparing for the vets. On the regular treatment front, another little tip is to regularly play with the pads on your pets feet (be it dog, cat, bunny, ferret... any animal with feet really). The vet will have a good poke around at annual check up time, and in general this is something animals really don't like. Make the trip less stressful by getting them use to it before. We don't do this as often as tip 4, but it probably gets done once a week. It is also a good time to check their paws over for new scratches etc which if they are outdoor pets will inevitably occur.

6. Travelling with cats. Oh this can be a bother! As avid readers of Pass The Caffeine will know, we take our cats on holiday with us. Now this might seem odd, but it has worked out really well. The are so used to travelling now that, coupled with tips 4 and 5, they are so un-fussed about going to the vets that they purr the whole time they are there! It makes for a lot less stress in the house in the run up to vaccinations. It also helped our dear little kitty who needed an emergency operation recover faster as I'm sure she was less stressed than if she wasn't used to being in her carrier.

7. Getting cats accustomed to their cat carriers. The cat carrier comes out and all of a sudden your beloved feline is no where to be seen. Sound familiar? Even if you aren't an avid cat-holidayer, they will inevitably need to go to the vets every now and then, and possibly a cattery. Get them used to the idea of travel a week before by getting the carrier out. You may find that they start sleeping in it anyway. This way it smells of them when they are put in it on the big day and as with tip 6, it all reduces their stress levels. My vet actually recommends leaving the carriers out at all times as part of your cat furniture so they are fully accustomed to the carriers. I haven't gone that far, but have recommended it to my sister as her cats go AWOL as soon as there is a sniff of a carrier.

8. Cleaning up after accidents. However lucky you at some point there will be an accident. It might be illness, old age, kittenhood, puppies, or goodness knows what else. The one common theme is the BAD smell! Getting it out of fabric is a particular night mare of mine. Especially when it happens overnight and you only discover in the morning! NOT nice! Anyway, my failsafe now for pretty much all surfaces is a 50:50 mix of washing-up liquid (I use lemon flavoured which helps) and bicarbonate of soda (baking soda). Mix it up to a paste, apply to the surface, rubbing in thoroughly, but not so much that you damage the fabric or scratch the surface with the soda. Leave to dry then hoover up. I have occasionally needed two applications, but in general this gets rid of the smell every time. There are of course other methods out there, but please be careful what you use, not just because of your furniture, but because a lot of products aren't safe for pets. Always read the label!

9. Stop the scratch. Have cats destroying your furniture? Tape plastic carrier bags against the surface. They hate it! Yes it looks ugly but after a month they will stop being interested and you can remove the bags and have a pretty home once more!

10. Dental health. Many pet owners are now aware of dental hygiene for their pets as well as themselves. As we know there is link between gum disease and heart disease in humans (bacteria enters the blood stream via the mouth which damages the heart), it stands to reason that their may be a link in pets too! If you have kittens start brushing their teeth daily. There are great (fish) tasting enzyme based cat toothpastes, and there probably are for dogs too. We use baby toothbrushes on our cats about once a week. Just remember that a little goes a long way. If you have an older cat, learning to accept a toothbrush isn't easy. There are however some great gels that cats love to lick up which helps to clean their teeth. My parents have had great results with Logic paste which the cats just lap up like it is a treat!

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

2013 Planner and Organiser - finally revealed

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 17:48:00 +0000

Hello! Well I have finally put the finishes touches to my 2013 planner. I have already been using it, but I decided on a few tweaks before I shared it with you. I have played with the colours to get them to look better once printed and finally persuaded my brand new printer to do what I want! No easy task. Its a lovely printer, but apparently double sided A5-printing that is the correct orientation is beyond my capabilities!

So here we are my lovely, shiny organiser. I've printed it A5, as I have a nice (Martha Stewart) binder that fits perfectly in my handbag. Each month starts with a calendar:

Then we get the week in a double page spread, with a notes section, an 'actions' (basically a nicer way of saying 'to-do'). At the top of the right hand side of the spread there is also a nice little section showing the previous month, current month and next month, so at a glance I can tell where we are and what day of the week a particular date is.

Of course, this organiser would not be complete without some other basics. Firstly, a blog planning page, again with lots of space for notes and ideas that might not immediately fit in the current week. There is a meal plan page, with a handy grocery list printed on the back so the whole thing can be taken out the binder as appropriate:

And finally, in attempt to put some order into my chaotic life a cleaning schedule:

I have had an informal cleaning schedule for years, but having it written down will hopefully mean that I finish it more frequently! Fingers crossed!

And dear readers, because it took me sooooo long to make these up, I thought I would share them with you. Hopefully this will help someone else avoid the time it took me.

You can download the January 2013 planner and associated documents here. The rest of the year will shortly follow (once I create the PDFs!).`

DOWNLOAD THE ORGANISER HERE.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Apologies for the silence

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 20:32:00 +0000

Sorry for the silence the last few days, but I've been down with something not nice! I've spent most of this week in bed, and so I am way behind on my plans for the pending house move.

However, hopefully this weekend (bug dependent) I will bring you my first taste of house move packing! Yes it is 3 months until we move (well a bit less than that now), but you can never start too early. I also have a little information about sorting out your study space.

In the meantime, I thought I would share with you a few updates on the house. We have a move in date of 28th March (the day before Good friday). I am not sure we will move *on* the 28th as we are still renting and able to overlap if we want. However, moving on 28th would allow us to be in the house and unpacking for Easter, which is quite appealing, even though it will mean boxes everywhere. But we would be unpacking rather than packing! I'm also pessimistic that things will actually complete on 28th. A couple of our friends were due to move today, and have had to cancel everything because the exchange couldn't happen and it has put them in an awful state of limbo. They have had to arrange another day off work, reorganise the removal company, get someone to take the kids and pets for yet another day. It gets quite stressful. And they aren't the only ones. Selling Mr PTC's old house, that was empty and we weren't living in, failed on the first attempt and was moved from a Friday to the following Monday. So I think we might just hold off until after Easter. Just in case! That means I can go in and give the place a really thorough clean before actually moving if things do complete on time.

We are also looking more seriously at using a company for the entire move because it isn't as expensive as we thought (once you get them out for a piano anyway). So there is lots of news and thoughts and processing going on round here!

So come back over the weekend and hopefully I will have a couple of interesting organisation posts for you all.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Cash free month challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:46:00 +0000

I recently completed my annual spending summary, where I chart what we spent by a set of categories over the last year. We weren't very frugal in 2012 because we both had jobs for the first time ever! However, this needs to change in 2013 with our imminent house purchase!

One of the most interesting sources of spending was that the top three spending categories were:

1. Rent = 27% - good job we are moving then!
2. Groceries = 12% - ok, so we like food.
3. Cash = 8%

OK, so number 1 and 2 are not that surprising. We could definitely do with paring down our groceries, and luckily with buying a house, rather than just rent we will be paying for equity as well (although for the first two years 50% of the money we put into the mortgage will be interest, but gradually the situation will become better).

However, CASH at 8% of our annual spend? I could NOT believe that!

To put this into context, I aim to spend as much as possible by card, simply because it makes it easier to track things. I look at the statements for Mr PTC and myself at the end of the month and enter the numbers into a spreadsheet via categories. So cash should be a tiny tiny tiny bit of our spending, related to places and purchases where it is easier to pay by cash than card.

I should also point out that I take out the majority of the cash in this particular house! And spend the majority of it. Worse still, most of it is spent on lunches, coffees and snacks at work! We can easily spend £50 some weeks on food between the two of us at work if I don't organise lunches. That is *a lot* of money!

When I realised this I had also just magicked away £100 that I took out in cash before Christmas. Sure enough there were very good reasons to spend that £100, but it is a lot of money to just vanish! So just after Christmas I set a little aim for myself to see how long I could go before having to get some cash out. I am pleased to say it has now been two weeks! Yesterday Mr PTC had to pay for parking in town because I didn't have cash, but other than that I haven't actually missed it. Instead I have focused on making lunch to take to work (I need to empty my freezer asap), and whenever I fancy a coffee and cake in the afternoon I remind myself that first I will need to leave my nice warm cosey building, take a cold 5 minute walk outside to the cash machine and then finally get coffee. Its amazing what the threat of bad weather and dodgy hair does to your wallet!

So to continue in this theme I will try to make it to the end of January with NO cash! I'm quite sensible about card spending (OK I might retract that statement at some point), but cash can just be frittered away. Now if I want to spend I need to ask Mr PTC and deal with the frown and annoyance of him having to get his wallet out! Funny, that!

I fully expect to go back to cash, indeed a lot of the time it is necessary. However, I hope a cash free month will instil some frugalness in me that I apparently need!

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Sneak preview: 2013 organiser

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 04:45:00 +0000

Here is a classic case of how unorganised I am... and why I need this blog to keep me motivated. I wanted to make a planner this year that satisfies my requirements rather than those of some stationary company, and so embarked on a plan to make my own with my humble little laptop.

Low and behold I'm only just finishing it off, and we are nearly into the second week in January! The good news is, that I haven't gone back to work yet.... Organisation? Who needs organisation during the holidsay? Pfft! Ahem. Cough cough.

Anyway, I thought I would share a sneaky peek with you all of what is coming, because it is oh so pretty and oh so simple and yet suits my needs perfectly. I will have a double page A5 spread of a week to view calendar:

There is also a meal plan, with a grocery list to print side-by-side to help me plan our week ahead:

And of course, scheduling tools for cleaning and blogging:

I still have some other odds and ends to add, but I am so pleased with how these look. I've been playing with the format for about 10 days now and I think I finally have it the way I want it! Hopefully having a pretty organised file will encourage me to pursue the organisation I desire!

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Moving house guide week 1: Start tackling the mail

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:00:00 +0000

So I arrived home from two weeks at my parents to find a pile of letter behind my front door which were a prompt reminder of one of the many tasks I need to face up to for a organised house move.

Mail

Heaven? Maybe not... the Christmas cards that we hadn't received before the holiday were lovely. The bills, well, not so much!

However, this has provided me with an opportune moment to start noting all the people and companies we receive mail from. I've created a page to fill in over the next few months to reduce the pain of changing our address.

Of course you can opt for mail-forwarding by Royal Mail, or the equivalent service in your own country. However, it is not foolproof. Last time we moved, I set up mail-forwarding, paying about £45 for the privilege, only to find that about half of our mail went missing. Luckily for us the people that moved into our old flat sent it to our old letting agency who forwarded it to us, but it included items such as a cheque book! I could not believe that both the bank (who were told 2 weeks before we moved house of our new address) and the post office could mess up so badly! So this time I will be more careful.

This starts with filling in my mail-tracker sheet for the next 2 months, composing letters 1 month before we move and sending them off 2 weeks before. The bank will be getting a visit from me the week before I move house this time, plus we will have a 10 day overlap on our properties probably, though this isn't confirmed yet. Luckily I'm also friends with my current landlady, so hopefully she will be kind enough to forward things along to me.

Download the House Move: Letter Tracker.

My top tips for tackling the mail forwarding problem are:
1. Write down notes of the company/contact/membership numbers of all incoming mail as soon as you know you will be moving house. Get a copy of my mail tracker here.
2. Identify sporadic mail. Go through filing to identify companies who write to you rarely, such as banks who you only get online statements from.
3. Stop the spam. Stop as much spam as possible, but don't rely on them stopping. Any mail with your name and address on it can potentially be used to steal your identity. So if you receive an item regularly contact the company and ask them to stop sending, but if you still receive the item, accept it and change your address instead.
4. Write letters. About a month before your move write letters to the relevant companies detailing your move date and new address. Print the letters out, put in envelopes, write on the address, but hold off sending until 10 days before your move date. Remember; letters are your friend. They will save you precious time not spent on the phone or in a shop/bank branch in the run up your moving day. Sometimes personal visits and telephone calls are necessary, but most of the time they are not. Mail merging also saves you a lot of time if you know how to set it up and you already have your addresses in a database.
5. Compile lists. Categorise companies who may/will not accept letters as a change of address notification by telephone/email/online and set aside a time in your move-week to tackle this list. It should be minimal as most companies are happy to deal with a letter. However, never trust a bank to do it by letter, always go into a branch if possible. Remember that you may not have a phone line in your new property when you first move in, so try and tackle this before you move rather than after, even if you have been assured by your Utlities company that they will have the phone operational the day you move (in my experience this is very unreliable!).
6. Set up mail forwarding. Once you are between eight and four weeks away from your move date contact your mail forwarding provider. In the UK this is Royal Mail. You can apply anywhere from up to 3 months before your move date, and the sooner you do it, the less there is to worry about it nearer the time. Royal mail need a minimum of 5 working days to set it up.
7. Print forwarding labels. I don't know what other countries are like, but in the UK if you write 'please forward to.... blah blah blah' on an envelope that has been incorrectly delivered and pop it in a post box, unopened, Royal Mail will forward it to the new address. In fact, it is a criminal offence in the UK to 'stop mail being delivered', i.e. if it is delivered to you by mistake and you bin it! In the past if I have moved out of a property and have friends who still live at the address (this happened a lot as a student) I have printed labels with my forwarding address on and given these to my old flatmates when I move out. This way they just pop it on the envelope, over the original address, and the hardest thing for them is popping it in the post box. As we are friends with our landlady we will be using this tactic once again for this move.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Moving house guide week 1: brainstorming

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:31:00 +0000

First things first, Happy new year! I hope 2012 didn't treat you too badly and that you are all looking forward to a fresh and exciting 2013. If not, don't worry too much!

As promised earlier in the week I am starting 2013 with my guide to house moving. I'm fairly experienced at moving house, having lived at 6 addresses in 10 years. This should make me a pro right? Far far from it I'm afraid. My moves have gradually become bigger and bigger over the years. Gone are the days where everything fitted in a car (Who am I kidding? My Dad hired a van to take me to University because I had so much stuff!). This time I have a real dilemma as to whether we hire a removal company. Its only a 10 mile move, but we have sooooo much stuff... and a piano. My brother in law has kindly offered his services and assures me that he can move the piano with my hubby, but well, I'm not so sure. That's a bridge to cross in the future.

Anyway, to the move itself. Yes it is 3 months away, but given as how we know it will happen (subject to everything going to plan at least), I'm starting now. However hard a try I always run out of time for packing/planning and there is always a last minute rush! I don't know why, but there is. This year, it will be calm (ahem), planned, and vaguely sensible.

The first thing I am doing, as I have the luxury of time, is a plan. I started by brainstorming all the things I think I need to do/remember/organise before and after moving day. This is the starting point for my plan. Because I'm a jotter and an editor, a cross-er-outer and generally don't like mess, I'm doing this electronically. I have been known to throw away and re-write a perfectly good handwritten list because of typo. So electronic saves me time and sanity. However, please feel free to jot down on a piece of paper; do a brainstorm with a big circle in the middle like you did at school. They really do work!

My brainstorm

My brainstorm started out as above. I'm adding to it... slowly but surely, and no doubt I will continue for at least the next month or so.

I now need to turn this into some sort of plan, organised by time and function. For this I am going to create a special section in my home management binder, or possible in a binder all of itself to keep all house-move stuff together. I haven't quite decided yet. However, at least this lays out where I am right now.

There are two things that I am starting right now, before I finalise the move-plan. Firstly, eating my way through our freezer - there is a lot of food in there! And secondly, writing down every little last bit of post that comes through the door. I'll tell you more about the tactics for handling these two things in the coming days.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Exciting update!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 18:03:00 +0000

As promised I have a very exciting new update for you all. In 2013 I will own a house for the very first time!

Yes the pass the caffeine household is a-moving! As you may be aware, this was never really our plan. We had grand schemes for buying a plot of land and building a house. Well after a few years of searching the self-build plan has been put on hold for now. It has not completely left the building, just postponed until the time is right. We have come to the conclusion that given our requirements (rural, large plot for growing veg) we need more money, whereas we can buy a house of the spec we like (rural, large plot for growing veg) right now!

Pretty much as soon as we starting looking at houses we fell in love! We have found a house, too far from work (an hours commute - a lot for me!), and far too big (4 bedrooms - oh yes we will need more cats), but we still fell for it. It is 3 miles from the main road, full of peace and quiet (if you ignore the birds), has only 4 neighbours anywhere nearby, and will be ours! I can't wait.

The move-in date has not been finalised as we only agreed a purchase price with the vendors just before Christmas and nothing has happened since, but it is likely to be the end of March to early April. We need to give 2 months notice on our current house, so this is perfect.

In the next few months I will be sharing with you updates on the move, but more exciting still a guide to moving house! Watch this space if you too are moving house in 2013! I'm also interested in knowing the pitfalls anyone has come across in moving house so I can compile as complete a list as possible of tasks, hints, tips and create a foolproof guide to getting one of the worst tasks you'll ever face completed as easily and calmly as possible!

In the meantime, enjoy your new year celebrations! I will be back in 2013 with lots of exciting ideas.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Book review: Nigella Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:44:00 +0000

So I'm back!

Its been quiet around here recently hasn't it? Sorry folks - life just ran away with me there mid-Autumn!

Lets do a quick catch up - Merry Christmas, hope December was great (I had so many ideas that I didn't share with you), and hopefully the New Year is looking good rather than bad.

So here we are. It is nearly 2013, and while I have some exciting news to share with you in the coming weeks, I thought I would start my blog-rejuvenation with a simple book review. I hope you enjoy.

Nigella Christmas - RRP £25.00

I received this book, on request, as a Christmas gift. I'm a big reader of cookery books, and in my opinion Nigella doesn't just write a cookery book but a work of literary foodie heaven. I'm not a big fan of Nigella TV, she talks too much. OK that is a strange thing to say, but basically I don't have time to watch much television and as food programmes go, Nigella's are pretty low down my priority list. However, I can read her books over and over and over! I have 'How to eat' and 'How to be a domestic goddess', both of which I have read more as fiction than as cookery books, and Nigella Christmas sits in much the same category.

There is nothing spectacularly out of the ordinary in Nigella Christmas. The recipes are fairly standard, the prose takes Nigella's normal self-deprecating tone, and in general she uses a fairly good stab at common sense to suggest taking shortcuts where sensible and longcuts where necessary for flavour and good old fashioned eating pleasure. Better still her writing appeals to my sense of 'all out Christmas', even if her decor doesn't quite:

"The fresh snowfall of icing sugar on top might seem seasonal enough, but not for me. So I add some edible glitter in Disco Hologram White."

- Christmas Rocky Road

Yup. That's my kind of Christmas decorating.

Another wonderful aspect of Nigella's approach to Christmas is summed up by the recipe 'Fully loaded potato skins'. Potato skins? Christmas? Not an obvious combination, but fully loaded, oh my, yes please! Recipes are quick(ish), given what they are producing, and pretty much always sound appealing. There is a vast array, all the way from really simple party food (potato skins please!) to the full Christmas day roast.

Nigella also sets out a Christmas day time-plan which is essential for any first-timer to the Christmas rush. It should help anyone trying to impress their mother-in-law for the first time, as the advice is simple and neatly laid out. The key ingredient is learning to write your own plan, which Nigella advocates time and again.

OK, so there is nothing amazingly new, astonishing or just completely off the wall. This is not a book for a culinary genius to find new ideas. But with the name 'Nigella Christmas' I hope you knew that already. One downside to all of Nigella's cooking is that I think that anything she does not cook regularly herself could do with more kitchen testing. For example I made some of the cocktails and I have to admit, they didn't do much for me! The bread sauce however is simple to prepare and divine in texture and flavour. The layout is easy to understand, is peppered with 'Nigella prose', and lots of hints and tips on making ahead, freezing and time-saving tips. I think Christmas in the Nigella household would taste wonderful!

In summary - if you are a chef, don't bother. If you aspire to cook, fail completely but like a good read, then this is for you. If you are in the middle, take it if you are a cookery book addict (ahem, thats me then), or leave it if Nigella's style does not appeal.

I'll just leave you with the image of me drooling over the pages.

Happy (belated) Christmas.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

What to do with old magazines

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:05:00 +0000

In my decluttering (that I'm still failing at, but desperately trying to progress in), I have come across literally hundreds of magazines that we no longer have a need for. ~~Some~~ Loads of them even moved house with us last autumn and have been sat in cupboards/under the bed looking lost and unloved. Certainly more than we could reasonably expect to use in lighting the fire anyway (have you noticed that magazine paper is not exactly wonderful for lighting things - total fail here as we don't read newspapers).

So what do we do with them? Certainly they won't get chucked in the bin! In the PTC household throwing anything away that is at least recyclable, and quite possibly reusable is a deadly sin. The few magazines that have interesting items in have been torn up and the key pages kept in punched pouches (I'll do another post on this at some point), but the rest, well we just aren't interested in anymore. So in an attempt to find a use I've done a little bit of googling and come up with a list.

For some great quilling ideas visit Crafting Creatures.

1. Give the magazine away. See if you have a friend that is interested in the content, or perhaps a GP surgery/dentist/hairdresser. All are in need of a little it of paper to entertain their clients. We have the problem that our science and car (why do we have car magazines?) aren't really appropriate for that sort of audience. So we tried freecycle as well, what school-kid isn't interested in a bit of science?

2. Make quilling strips! Quilling paper is expensive, but nothing could be easier (or more tedious perhaps), than making your own quilling strips. Cut them up with a pair of scissors to the width you want and quill away. Alternatively, put them through a straight-cut shredder (not the fancy kind that cross shreds!). You won't have lovely neat edges but you will get strips really quickly.

Create paper decorations: paper star by House Revivals.

More paper decorations - try magazine-origami.

3. Make a scrap book. Cut up all your favourite pictures/tidbits from the magazine and scrap scrap away! That way you don't loose the content you are interested in, but you don't have to wade through an entire magazine, that to be honest you will never do, to find the one item that really interests you!

Make a paper star.

4. Make decorations. This couldn't be easier; cut strips/shapes in all the colours of the rainbow from your vast collection of magazines and be inspired. Pinterest of course is full of inspiration, just search for hand made paper decorations. The limit is endless. Try origami or just good old fashion play around!

5. Use to line envelopes - or indeed make envelopes! For an envelope tutorial visit frugalliving.

6. Decoupage - the options are endless. For a simple how-to visit bhgscrapbooksetc.com.

7. Wrap presents. Oh the options for this are endless. Black and white pages look classic, but the colourful just look fabulous!

8. Cover boxes/canisters in old pages. These from trash2treasure look simply fabulous! I mean why wouldn't you want to do this?

Cover coffee canisters/boxes with scraps.

Rolled magazines into a reed box.

9. Roll up some pages and make a box or something similar! OK, so you could do this the easy-but-flimsy way, where you follow a tutorial meant for card and et voila! one flimsy box. But oh no. There is a better way; try making 'magazine boxes' with The Artful Crafter. These are truly beautiful. Then there is the stunning reed box, colour coorindated too (so you'd need to spend some time seraching the pages for the right look) with craft stylish.

Rolled magazines into boxes.

10. And finally, if in doubt, recycle! Everywhere now has paper recycling, so please if you run out of enthusiasm for crafting, then give a tree a bit of extra life by putting your paper in your recycling box.

There are tonnes of ideas out there, and these are just a few that appealed to me.

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com

Random wordings

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 10:58:00 +0000

I read this fascinating article this morning on the use of British English in America. Apparently it isn't going down well in some areas. Funnily enough the same thing erupted here a few years ago with the large amount of American sitcoms on British TV being blamed for the change in British English. I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss is about to be honest. Language is language. It evolves and changes with the times. If it doesn't, it turns into the dreaded Latin lessons at school - a language you are taught but will never speak. What is the point of that?

So instead of complaining bitterly about the change in our use of language (whichever part of the world you are in - after all Ching-lish is supposedly spoken by more people now than English, or at least according to QI, the source of all knowledge!), I thought I'd share with you some of the words that I love and hate.

Words I love

Train station - an American term, that is oh so much shorter and sweetie than railway station.
Ginger - to indicate someone who has red hair. Often used in a derogatory sense, but often not. I just love it. I love gingers too (living in Scotland and having a family half-full of red heads might have something to do with that). I think I have ginger envy.
Bi-weekly - ok so not right up there on my 'love-list' but what is so wrong with this? Much more descriptive than fortnightly. I'm not saying fortnightly should be abandoned, but what is wrong with a new and highly descriptive phrase?
Closet - I've been using this a lot recently to describe any cupboard/wardrobe or such in our house which needs decluttering or some sort of attention. Mr PTC hates it! I love it because it is all-encompassing (hmmm maybe I should embrace more words that I don't like because they are all-encompassing too).

... and the words I loathe

Pleb - seriously? this is just derogatory and unnecessary. Especially when used by politicians to refer to anybody they believe isn't on the same payscale as them.
Ned - used in Scotland to refer to people who are from Glasgow and just a bit, erm, uneducated. Pleeeeeeaaaaassssssseeeeee. Just because you have a Glaswegian accent doesn't make you uneducated.
Brummie - used in the posh parts of middle England to refer to anyone with a Birmingham accent, in a not very nice way. This was one of the things I really hated about where I grew up - everyone was so stuck up about not being from Birmingham. I mean does where you grow up really make you a better human being? I think not!
Eaterie - now come on. What is wrong with restaurant, takeaway or pub?
Math. I'm sorry, but as a Mathematical Physicist I cannot understand the word math. It is MATHS plain and simple. Maybe this makes me grumpy; I don't know why but it really sets my teeth on edge.

OK, and one more thing, that while not really getting upset about I just don't understand. Why do American's refer to themselves as American-English, or American-Swedish or whatever? I mean I'm Scottish or British no Scottish-Irish-Welsh-English-Norwegian-Danish which is probably more accurate if you take into account the previous 10 generations which is what I believe American's do. I really don't understand! I'd love to be enlightened.

Phrases and words that are British and American, but all just quite fascinating.

Feel free to disagree or (strangely) agree with me. I think one of the most wonderful things about language is its ability to change, evolve and grow. The fact we can be so diverse in our choice of how we explain something is wonderful. So maybe I sound grumpy by having things that I don't like, but this just makes life more exciting surely?

Thanks for stopping by,

Rose,

Let me know what you think... leave a comment or send an email to passthecaffeine {at} gmail {dot} com