darktea

January 2013 photo moments

2013-05-24T15:37:42Z

As well as producing a year book of Project 52 layouts I want one collating my layouts of individual moments. As I usually include journalling and more photographs these layouts tell a fuller story than one picture a day. I particularly like the pages at the end of the month showing the random pictures that might otherwise be forgotten. I’m hoping 2013 is the first year I complete the year, although as I’ve just finished January I’ve got a bit of catching up to do.

I’ve arranged the layouts as they will appear in the book (notice my second ever double page spread) a few of the photographs also appear in the January Project 52 pages. I’m a member at ScrapGirls so several of the layouts were the result of some of their forum challenges (shown in italics), plus the majority of my supplies are from there. I enjoy taking part in the challenges because it gives me a deadline and often results in a different style of layout.

January 2013 moments in scrap pages

B trying our her first bike (Supplies ScrapGirls, Peppermint Creative, SpeedScraps)
B with Primrose the snake (Supplies ScrapGirls)
B and M at the park (Supplies ScrapGirls)
Cinderella pantomime (Supplies ScrapGirls)
Snow (Supplies ScrapGirls)
Painting the bath (Supplies ScrapGirls, Peppermint Creative, RPENN)
Random shots of B (Supplies ScrapGirls, Peppermint Creative)
Random shots of B and M (Supplies ScrapGirls, Word Art World)
Random shots of M (Supplies ScrapGirls)

What were your key moments from January? How do you share your photographs?

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Learning the art of shopping for jeans

2013-05-20T21:17:41Z

Blue jeans are the most beautiful things since the gondola.

Diana Vreeland

I’m not the best clothes shopper. I find shopping exhausting and depressing, because I find it difficult to see through the mass of clothes that aren’t suitable for me. I’ve got better in recent years as I’ve learnt more about the colours and style of clothes that suit me; but there are still so many changing rooms to face…

However, there are times when shopping has to be done; and this time it was an urgent need for replacement jeans

My old jeans

It is great that I got back into my pre-pregnancy jeans fairly quickly after having Matthew. But I knew they were not great for me because the low waist highlighted my mummy tummy and they were too short; however, they were comfortable and I liked the embroidery. Plus I already owned them, so I wore them until I got holes in the seams. Okay I admit I kept wearing them for quite a while after noticing the holes.

Learning to shop

After having a style consultation and reading books such as Colour me confident and Trinny and Susannah, I know I want bootleg jeans to balance my hips. I thought the shape was all I need to know, but thanks to Pinterest I discovered there are many more things to consider when finding the perfect pair of jeans. The two posts I found really informative are both on Grasping for objectivity in my subjective life (Post 1 On the Proper Fitting of Jeans, Post 2 Mom Jeans and the Dreaded “Long Butt”).

I’d never thought about the back pockets before, but it appears they are key; their size, position and decoration. Plus the colour of the stitching and the colour changes in the denim material.

Implementing my learning

There were so many points to remember that I started by browsing online so I could refer backs to the blog posts. This narrowed down the shops to visit and helped me stay focused because I was not going home until I bought a new pair of jeans (or the shops shut).

I tried on jeans in four shops and found it much quicker to decide if they were for me by asking myself a few questions:

Is my tummy coming over the waist band?
Can I move comfortably?
Is the hem down to my shoes?
Do the pockets start on my bottom?
Do they finish below the curve?

The purchased jeans

The pair I bought are GAP Perfect Boot Jeans. I recognise they are not perfect because I’d like the pockets to be a bit smaller and lower, but a big improvement on my old pair; not bad for two hours of shopping.

The key thing I’ve learnt is to check my rear view in the mirror more often!

How do you approach your shopping trips? Have you recently learnt any tips that help you buy more appropriate clothes?

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Keeping on top of repeating tasks at home

2013-05-17T21:22:28Z

Repeating tasks are the key to achievement; either by making sure things run smoothly or by encouraging the little and often approach to completion.

It is over five years since I had the revelation of keeping my repeating tasks separate to my other tasks. Since then I’ve tried a variety of approaches, the most successful being a tickler file in Evernote. It was great being able to access it anywhere on any device.

That was until we moved house and we had no internet for two months. All of a sudden I couldn’t sync and each device had a different list so I started carrying my list on paper.

I’ve gone back to Evernote for my main task list (using Mark Forster’s Final Version method if you are interested), and I’ve bought a small (very cheap) week-to-view diary specifically for my repeating tasks, and after five weeks I’m finding it very successful.

What is a repeating task

I have many different repeating tasks, chores such as vacuuming; things that happen on a regular basis such as reading magazine subscriptions, downloading photographs from my camera; and tasks that help me achieve my resolutions such as writing blog posts, scrap page layouts. Obviously some are more enjoyable than others, but each repeat moves me closer to where I want to be.

Recording repeating tasks

My method is very simple. But I’ve learnt the hardest part is the correct mental approach; many times I’ve thought because a repeating task is on my list it would happen all on its own! I’m now being much stricter with myself to spend at least a few minutes on each task, because it is the only way I will get change (I know, obvious really). I’m also looking at my list in weekly chunks so I don’t worry if I don’t work on all the tasks each day, but I aim to work on all of them within the week.

Each task is written on the day it is due, followed by O to show it is a repeating task and the repeating period e.g. 3d for 3 days, 1m for 1 month
after working on a task I cross it off and rewrite it the appropriate number of days in the future
Each day I prioritise the tasks written on that day and work backwards completing any remaining tasks from the previous days; only then do I look at tasks on the my normal task list
On Sunday nights I rewrite any unfinished tasks from the week on to the next Monday so I don’t need to look over several pages
I use the Notes space to record any tasks I think of when I don’t have access to Evernote and I transfer them later

This is a small list compared to what I previously had in Evernote; that list was so long it was not possible for me to keep up to date and was not motivating to see a screen of tasks I should have completed. I declared a backlog on my tasks and I’m now working towards a list where there is a good chance I’ll complete it within the week. This means I don’t have all my repeating tasks included yet and explains why the list looks a bit strange, for example I’m dusting but not vacuuming! But I’m getting quicker with the tasks and gradually including more.

And yes, I need to have Pinterest as a repeating task, otherwise I’d be on there every day!

How do you deal with repeating tasks? Do you prefer to use a paper or electronic method?

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Kitchen dining room or lounge dining room?

2013-05-14T12:26:55Z

We’re stuck on the remodelling of our new house. We’ve agreed we don’t want a separate dining room, but can’t decide what to do with the space; make a kitchen dining room or a lounge dining room.

Kitchen dining rooms are in favour

Two architects have seen the house and they both suggested making a kitchen dining room, and almost all the comments I’ve read in forums have recommended a kitchen dining room. In fact in our old house we changed the lounge dining room into a kitchen breakfast room (use the sink for reference as it stayed in the same place). I don’t know how we would have managed weaning with the small kitchen.

Photographs copyright Jones Robinson

But, I’m not sure the answer is that simple in our new house.

Space for both?

We will be making our new kitchen bigger by extending into the downstairs bathroom. This will give us a large front to back kitchen big enough for a table and hopefully a sofa. We will keep the existing lounge which is separated from the kitchen by the dining room (accessible from both but not direct from the entrance hall). Which way should it go?

Possible remodelled layout

The larger kitchen will be used most days for eating as a family, but we also want an area to have larger formal dining, such as birthdays and Christmas, and this could be achieved by knocking the dining room into either the lounge or the kitchen. We had originally thought of having a lounge dining room, but as there seems to be a strong view for kitchen dining rooms, are we missing something?

Taking in to account we will already have a table in the kitchen, here are the reasons we’ve come with up for each option

Reasons for a lounge dining room:

eating area is separate to cooking area (guests don’t see what is going on in the kitchen)
any dirty washing can be shut away while entertaining
can shut the kitchen door if the dishwasher is on, so the meal is quieter
have additional high surface away from cooking (useful for computers, important papers, board games etc)

Reasons to have a kitchen dining room:

kitchen becomes the major room of the house
lounge becomes a room for relaxing
don’t have to clear the table after the meal, can just shut the kitchen door and deal with the plates later
the cook is not shut away in the kitchen and can join in the discussions

It appears this is a fundamental question we have to answer before we can start working on our house, so I’m interested in your thoughts. Which do you have? How do you use it? What would you like if you had the choice? Do you have any other recommendations for me, such as what about a playroom?

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February 2013 review in pictures (Project 52)

2013-05-23T22:23:53Z

It has taken a while, but I’ve finished my layouts for February. Unfortunately because of our house move and then getting a chest infection meant I completely ignored our photograph process and let them get out of control; they were on several cameras and on different computers. It took until the middle of March for me to get them in the same place. It is great to have captured some of the small parts of our house move such as the children playing in the cardboard boxes.

Layouts by Kate Davis
Supplies from www.scrapgirls.com

Key events of February 2013:

The final Christmas present arrived (a giant mug)
We emptied the loft
The children enjoyed playing with the cardboard boxes
We moved house
There was lots of unpacking
Beth got her first princess dress
I built a maze from packing boxes

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Bank holiday weekend = 2 visits to eye casualty

2013-05-06T20:43:35Z

Spring has finally happened in the UK and the forecast for the long weekend was sunny and warm, so we were all off to Dorset with my in-laws. Unfortunately our plans dramatically changed with me taking my husband to eye casualty twice instead.

During the week, ED developed swelling across the bridge of his nose which spread below his eyes and across his cheeks. When a fever developed he went to see the local doctor who almost sent him straight to hospital to go on an antibiotic drip. Instead he decided on strong oral antibiotics and a check up the following day, Friday. The swelling stopped spreading and the fever had disappeared, but the doctor was still not happy as the swelling was so close to the eyes and told ED to go to Eye Casualty department at the local hospital on Saturday for a consultant to assess whether any scans or further treatment were required.

So change of plan. It would be no fun for two young children to be waiting at the hospital, particularly a four year old girl who was excited about going to the beach. Luckily for us, my mother in law offered to look after the children and tried out our Saturday routine while we went to the hospital.

After a two hour wait and a prescription for additional antibiotics we were on our way home; with the knowledge we had to return again the next morning. Kindly my mother in law offered to take the children with her to Dorset so we didn’t need to worry about them if ED’s temperature increased again and we had to rush to get him admitted to the ward. Fortunately that didn’t happen and the Sunday check up confirmed the antibiotics were working and no more check ups for five days.

So the weekend didn’t go as planned, but there have been positives, in addition to ED starting to get better:

We haven’t been woken at 6.30 by the children
We’ve cleaned the landing carpet (impossible with the children around)
We went for a gentle walk through the bluebells which are finally opening
We’ve been able to relax knowing the children are having a great time with their grandparents at the seaside

I hope you enjoyed your weekend and it went more to plan than ours? Did you enjoy the weather?

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Inspired to start sewing again

2013-05-01T22:26:38Z

I’ve been inspired by the BBC programme the Great British Sewing Bee, especially as it has combined with the rediscovery of my materials and patterns during our house move. They were packed up 4 years ago and put in the loft to make room for my daughter. Since then the most I’ve done with my sewing machine is make taggy blankets for my children, as well as for gifts.

My dressmaking skills developed in a very haphazard way. I wanted to make clothes from a young age because I wanted unique clothes that fitted, so I would go through my Mum’s patterns and sewing magazines and just start. I usually ended up going to my Mum for help (fortunately she was a good sewer and made many children’s clothes for my sister and me). She would solve my problem, but I didn’t always learn how to prevent the error; maybe it was a child’s attention thing. I remember making a pair of shorts at school when I was eleven and when I started work I attend an adult education class, where you made what you wanted and the teacher provided advice as you needed it. I made a simple but very useful skirt.

Thinking back over the items I’ve made I can think of some successes. This dress is one of them. Unfortunately this is the best picture I’ve found of it, all the others involve late night dancing (it is also unfortunate that I haven’t been able to fit into it since having children).

However, there are also several things that haven’t worked and I can now recognise three limitations:

I don’t have a basic understanding of dressmaking
I usually want to do things more advanced than my ability
I focus on the end result not the process ( I’m too slap dash and not careful enough)

I’m thinking of a gentle reintroduction, so I don’t take over the whole house with material, and allowing me to gradually develop my skills and confidence. However, I’ve got to work out how to fit this in with digital scrapbooking, working on the house, child care and of course my job. Maybe I’ll start by reviewing my stash and finding what projects I left unfinished four years ago.

What skills would you like to revisit? What are your tips for fitting in crafts and activities around the rest of life? Any suggestions how I implement my gentle reintroduction?

In case you haven’t found them and want some inspiration here are the websites of Tilly and Lauren from the Great British Sewing Bee.

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New Saturday routine; library, park and cake

2013-04-27T15:34:38Z

We’ve only been in our new house for just over two months, but we are already settling into a routine for Saturday mornings, and it is has something for the whole family to enjoy.

We start by walking to the village library (based in the old school building) where we can change our books, do some colouring and Beth usually borrows a DVD (recently she’s been choosing Angelina Ballerina). We then go next door to the Saturday morning coffee shop for drinks and lovely homemade cake. Finally it is a stop at the park on the way home, so the children can have a good run around before lunch. Although we got caught in a hail storm on our way back today which wasn’t so nice.

We didn’t have any routines at our old house; Saturdays just happened, so it great to have this which the children look forward to, and gets us out into the village. What routines do you have? What do you look forward to doing at the weekends?

Posted from WordPress for Android

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Renovating our new house; where to start, how to organise it?

2013-04-18T21:20:18Z

Eleven months after putting our house on the market we’ve moved in to our “family” house. We initially accepted an offer after 10 days and had already found a house we like so thought it would be a quick process; but it didn’t go as we expected with two buyers and two sellers pulling out on us. Then our third buyers threatened to pull our just as we were approaching the end, so we ended up up moving with less than 48 hours notice.

However, we now have a wonderful house (better than the other two) that ticked all but one thing off our features list and has many benefits we didn’t think of including such as having a library within walking distance.

The really exciting part is it is a project house, so we can turn it in to our perfect house.

The house was previously a residential care home so as well as looking very tired and needing complete redecoration we have some unusual features to deal with ; safety bars in the bathroom, fire alarm system, emergency lighting and a lift. Yes we have a proper working lift; the removal men loved it.

We are all enjoying the extra space, but are having to get used to living in a different way, for example we are used to eating in the kitchen, but are now using a dining room and I am missing a tiled floor under where the children eat! Hopefully soon we will get used to living in a building site as we make structural changes such as removing the lift and making the kitchen bigger and then redecorate every room; there are so many possibilities it is very exciting.

Obviously I’m going to be focussed for quite a while on turning this house into our perfect family home and I suspect it will influence what I write about (it is already influencing what I pin on Pinterest).

We are expecting the changes to take well over a year, so I’m very interested in your experiences of renovating a house. What are your tips for organising the renovation? What are the key features you’d recommend we include in our new home?

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Mysteries of UK telecommunications market (or how long will it take for me to get the internet)

2013-05-03T22:38:31Z

I assumed in our own house we would have the power to decide what we did to it and to choose our own service providers. However this appears not to be the case with telecommunications. Someone has a phone line in our house which we are not able to remove and no one is able to tell us anything about the line including who provides it.

We’ve been very happy with Plus.net as our broadband provider for many years, so chose to bundle in the phone line when we moved. As we moved two days after placing our order we expected to be without telephone and internet for about two weeks. However, after 5 weeks we still did not have either and we were told there was little prospect of getting them, unless we got a new phone line and sockets installed, leaving the existing line we don’t want in place.

The issue appears to be a mysterious black box created to enable competition. As a purchaser your only access to the box is through contact with your chosen service provider. However, in most cases they can’t make the connection so have to contact someone else in the box, who then needs to contact someone else. By this time it is so removed from you as a purchaser that you wouldn’t know who to contact even if they provided a number.

Who is living in our house?

Twice we’ve asked Plus.net to order us a phone connection in our name. Twice it has failed after 13 days, despite the second attempt “definitely happening”. The reason given for the fail was the previous owners still lived in the property. I know our new house is larger than our old one, but I really hope I would have noticed if someone else was it in it! But it didn’t matter, according to Ofcom we have the right to cancel any service in our house; all we need to do is show proof of ownership to the current service provider.

Finding the current provider

BUT no one can or will tell us who the current provider is. We’ve spoken to BT Wholesale, BT Openreach, Ofcom and 19 telephone providers. And nothing. No one want to claim the line. In fact we were told the line is disconnected even though we were calling on it at the time.

So great, we have a phone line we’re not paying for and seems no one will ever bill us. But we can’t access the internet through it and that is a big hindrance; its been difficult to find local services in a new area and I haven’t been able to work from home so my husband had to take annual leave when our daughter was poorly.

It is like a strange two way mirror. Someone in the black box is able to see us and cancel the order in our name. But when we look into the box we aren’t allowed to see anything because of competition or data protection.

No solution?

In my opinion it is wrong that a service is being provided into my house that I don’t want. I’m struggling to think of any other situations when that could happen. However I’ve been told there is no solution so I’ve given in and Plus.net are installing a new telephone line next week; almost eight weeks since our original order. We may or may not get internet at the same time.

The two things I’ve learnt over the last two months are:

the UK telecommunications market is very confusing and I have little interest in dealing with it again (maybe it is so confusing competition doesn’t work)
there is a big difference in the customer service provided by different telephone providers.
- some really tried to help, going beyond my expectations when I called; Direct Save Telecom, Everything Everywhere, Plus.net, YourCalls, Utilities Warehouse
- some were not helpful at all; TalkTalk wouldn’t answer my questions and just tried to sell me a new line and Sky hung up on my first call, the second time absolutely refused to answer any question and it took a third phone call to find out they did not provide the line I was calling from

I really hope we are the exception to getting a phone line when moving house, and everyone else has a smooth transition.

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January 2013 review in pictures (Project 52)

2013-05-23T22:24:06Z

As I’ve been developing my digital scrapbooking skills over the last year I’ve spent a fair bit of time in forums learning from other people. I’ve been very interested in the Project 52 / Project Life layouts I’ve seen and started collecting ideas in Pinterest.

I wasn’t sure about taking on the challenge because it seemed like such a commitment and I was nervous I would do it ‘wrong’. So I realised I would have to PLAN. I went through all my pins and wrote down what I liked about each one and then developed my own template. I was surprised I ended up with such a ‘clean’ layout because I was expecting to use embellishments such as brackets and arrows to go on top of the pictures, however it is probably easier for my first time to just think about papers.

I am very pleased with how it is looking so far and love how it enables me to capture the small and big details of life. I’m not sure what I want to include in the label box yet so there is a good chance I will change it after I’ve done a few more layouts.

Layout by Kate Davis
Supplies from www.scrapgirls.com

Key events of January 2013:

I had a day at home on my own for the first time in ages (probably years)
Going back to work after 2.5 weeks leave for Christmas
We showed Beth the inside of the house we want to buy
Beth moved from preschool gymnastics to the beginner gymnastics class
Beth went to the cinema for the first time
Submitted primary school application (unfortunately not for where we are planning to move)
Snow
We still haven’t exchanged contracts to move house, but have agreement from the bank they no longer intend to retain any funds
I had a lovely night out with other mums from the nursery

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Recognising completion block

2013-01-10T07:24:38Z

Writer’s block is a known phenomenon and as my last post was in August 2012 it could be assumed that is what I’ve been suffering from. But it isn’t. In fact I wrote the next post early in September; my problem has been completion block.

Completion block: the inability to finish the last few steps of a bigger task

My block is with the images I want to include in the post; I need to edit the photographs and produce a process diagram. I want them to look good, so I haven’t started producing them! And the longer I’ve left it the bigger my resistance.

This wouldn’t be a problem if I was at work. If I’m working to a deadline then I would have to push my way through the block. I would probably chip away at the edges by spending small amounts of time on the task until I had the motivation or incentive to complete it. However, at home instead of being forceful with myself I’ve ignore my blog instead. Obviously this does not help me publish posts so I’m going to leave the troublesome post and concentrate on writing new content; I hope one day I will feel interested in producing the images.

I know in many cases it is necessary to work through a block and leaving the task doesn’t fit with my aim of completing items, but this one post is causing me such a big block to my blog. Plus I suspect the real problem is not having processes to produce the images and once I’ve developed these I am confident I will complete the post.

Do you suffer from completion block? How do you deal with it? How do you produce the images for your blog?

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Keeping your inbox at zero

2012-08-28T21:06:55Z

Email has become an ongoing issue for most people and despite being able to access it just about anywhere any time the problem doesn’t appear to be reducing. It is estimated almost 300 billion emails are sent every day, so although you probably only get a small proportion I expect it is still enough to be a nuisance.

Reducing my inbox from 800 to 0

Earlier this year I used Beeminder to encourage me to gradually reduce my inbox from 807 to 0. It took me about 3 months. Now 3 months later my inbox has increased to 142.

Obviously I’ve kept receiving emails, but I’ve lost focus. When I was using Beeminder I knew I would be recording the size of my inbox everyday, so I sorted some. But I stopped after achieving 0. I thought my goal was to reach zero, where really it should have been to have a zero inbox every day.

My tips for achieving and keeping your inbox at zero

Identify the ‘problem’ emails

Sort your inbox by sender and identify who sends you the largest number of emails. Do you read them?

If yes, why are they still in your inbox? Do the emails contain information you may want to reference later, if so store that content somewhere meaningful where you are likely to find it in the future e.g. suitable email folder, word processing document, Evernote
If no, do you look forward to reading them? Can you get the information via a different communication route e.g. subscribe to blog, facebook.

Act on spam

Have you blocked the addresses of all the spam emails your receive? If yes, check whether there is a higher level of blocking provided by your email or internet provider

Maintain your inbox as a ‘to be processed hub’

Your inbox is for unread emails, so you need a process for dealing with emails. I recommend keeping the processing as simple as possible so you remember it and can later find emails.

If there is an action in the email I add it to my tasklist in Evernote and then either file the email under to action or delete it. If it something to keep I move it to my processed email folder.

You need to develop trust in yourself to make decision about emails.

Make a game of it

If you use google mail there is a real email game you can play. However, if you use another programme, like me, you need to develop your own game / challenge. My frequent ones are

when I check new emails I challenge myself to empty the inbox of all emails from the previous day / week / fortnight
I aim to have my inbox smaller each night than in the morning

And it is working because by the time I’ve finished writing this post I’d reduced my inbox down to 81 messages.

Do you keep a zero inbox? Do you think it helps you productivity?

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Get on with it already

2012-08-24T10:26:12Z

Through Pinterest I recently found a new blog that is so where I am at the moment I want to share it.

Get on with it already! is written by Stacey-Lee and she describes herself as a perfectionist and procrastinator. It sounds very similar, although one difference is Stacey-Lee starts projects I often don’t because I worry they won’t be perfect so they just sit on my to do list.

We seem to have some of the same interests in organising, crafting, children and completing projects so I’m hoping I will learn and get motivated from Stacey-Lee’s posts. I’m already reminding myself of her mantra

from Get on with it already mission statement

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Embedding ideas by rereading

2012-08-21T09:01:00Z

Photograph by kikishua

With 2 million blog posts being published every day how do you keep on top of them? Of course you don’t. You probably have a number of favourite sites you follow, but may still struggle to keep on top of the posts. I certainly do.

Sometimes it feels I just scan posts so I know I’ve got to the end, I register there were some interesting points and then I move on. I’ve realised that I’m losing out with this approach because I’m not analysing or incorporating the ideas and therefore restricting my learning and growth.

My new approach is to bookmark the posts, either with a star in Google Reader or into Evernote and when I have more time I reread the post. I admit sometimes the second read is as quick as the first but I pick up different points.

With posts that have a lot of information relevant to me I reread them several times because it acts as a trigger to incorporate new ideas and reminds me what I want to achieve. A recent example is 3 Very Simple and Daily Habits That Help Me to Stay Optimistic. I’m working on being more positive and started writing a gratitude / positive journal at the start of the year, however this post has 3 suggestions to being positive throughout the day:

1. Ask yourself questions that let you see the optimistic viewpoint.

2. Get optimistic support from the world around you.

3. Start your day in an optimism creating way.

When I first read them, I thought they were good points, but didn’t think any further. The second time I thought I could benefit from incorporating them in my life and on my third or fourth reread I’ve started to think how I can incorporate them. It is through this rereading that my mind accepts points as its own and wants to act on them.

What do you reread? How do you assimilate information and incorporate it in your life?

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Complete: gardening scrapbook gift (4 months)

2012-08-13T10:53:31Z

These complete posts celebrate completed tasks that have been on a to do list for a long time, and analyse why they were not completed earlier.

Introduction

When I was discussing ideas for my father in laws birthday present it was suggested he would like a diary to record all the details connected to the community garden where he is chief gardener. For some reason instead of buying a gardening diary I interpreted this as a history of the garden and as my mind is currently on scrapbooking that is what I decided to make.

I intend to make a scrap pages for all my photographs and make them into a book for each year. However I’m not as quick as I’d like at completing the pages and haven’t finished a year yet, so it was a challenge to produce 50 pages in 4 months particularly as the content varied from photographs, web pages and physical documents. You can see a flash version of the whole book below.

The details

Task:	Create a book containing scrap pages describing the creation and ongoing story of the Grace and Flavour community garden
Why complete it:	A birthday present for my father in law
Duration to complete:	4 months
What needed to do:	Collate photographs and text from other people Create pages
What caused delay:	I actually think creating 50 pages in 4 months is impressive, however the two activities that took the most time was collecting the information as it came from a variety of sources and working out how to fit a lot of text on to some of the pages
Benefits of completing	Able to give a very personal and unique gift to my father in law at a surprise party in the community garden
Improvements	Using templates, whether I’d created or bought them, helped save a lot of time so I should create templates from my favourite layouts

The majority of digital scrapbooking items came from Scrapgirls with some from Peppermint Creative

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Why I want to be productive

2012-08-07T10:36:09Z

As I get older I’m more aware that I have the same 24 hours in a day as everyone else, so what I achieve comes down to how well I use that time.

My initial introduction to efficiency was from my mother who liked to make things as easy as possible from baking to shopping and this developed into a personal dislike of inefficiencies. However, I’ve not always been good at acting on this dislike, for example for many years I’ve been a mix of loving organisation and systems but also being very untidy.

My bedroom about 15 years old

Productivity is very much on my mind at the moment because I will soon be returning to work after almost a year’s maternity leave and I’m aware that personal time is going to be a luxury. Here are the reasons why I want to be productive:

to complete chores as quickly as possible so I can get on to the fun stuff
so I don’t waste time repeating effort as I’ve forgotten where I’ve got to
so I can find things
to find the time to work towards my goals
so I can be a good example to my children
if I work well in one area of my life such as being productive, other parts of my life tend to come together, such as exercise, sleep and eating habits
so I don’t have to think about what to do when I complete routine tasks

My plan is to spend the next two months getting sorted so there will be a smooth transition once I’m back at work … what do you think, how I can make this happen? What are your reasons for being productive?

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Discovering more about Mark Forster’s Final Version

2012-07-31T14:18:25Z

Finding the perfect productivity system is a goal for many people, including myself. I’ve been searching for the system for many years, as shown by the second post on this blog and think I may have found it with Mark Foster’s Final Version.

I’ve been using his system for about 3 months and have found with one major tweak to include a tickler file I am accomplishing more and have complete trust in the system because it is so easy to manage. However, I have to admit my stats so far are not looking too impressive so before I share my experience here is a list of place you can find out more about the system.

Instructions

Software options (discussion of different electronic versions)

Keep Focus To Do
Wunderlist
Toodledo
Focus Pad
BlancList and a video review on how to use it
Evernote and a video review on how to use it
Workflowy and a video review on how to use it
Accomplist and an introductory video

Have I missed any sources you’ve found useful to implement the system?

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Achieving goals at the beach

2012-07-31T19:59:41Z

The old saying to kill two birds with one stone is a great example of achieving more with the same effort. If you can find these in your life it feels great because you make progress in several areas at one time.

I’ve been on holiday on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, UK. We picked a great week with the sun coming out for the first time in weeks, consequently we spent a lot of time at the beach. This helped me work towards several of my goals:

build strong and supportive relationships – I’ve been spending lots of time with family, particularly my children playing on the beach
have time to spend on the things I enjoy – I had time to relax and read a book
challenge myself by trying new things and through continued learning – I’ve been building sandcastles which I have not done for years
spend my time in pleasant surroundings – Studland beach is always beautiful, but particularly at sunset when we had a barbeque

How do you piggyback your goals?

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Ask Advice: How to productively use book social media sites

2012-07-17T11:39:03Z

Social media has become part of every day web use for most people, whether it is connecting to friends, playing games or sharing photographs. I believe social media should either be fun or useful, but I’m struggling to use book sites productively. I love books and I love book websites, but it often feels that I’m spending time duplicating activities or not making the most of the sites, for example using forums.

My favourite sites are:

enables you to track the books you’ve passed on

is an international book swapping website

is a site for logging the books you’ve read and want to read and sharing reviews and recommendations.

I use each site for a different purpose, for instance now that Amazon have restricted their recommendations I use goodreads to find new book ideas and I’ve used bookcrossing to meet other book lovers.

However there are overlapping features, the main one for me is wishlist, I currently have bits of my lists on each site, especially bookcrossing and BookMooch as it means people may pass on books I’m interested in reading, but I find it difficult to keep on top of two lists.

I know there are other sites out there as well such as LibraryThing and Shelfari but as I’m not making the most of the sites I already use I haven’t investigated any others.

What reading sites do you use? Which sites would you recommend? Do you combine features productively?

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