Fell of the horse

I totally fell off the cleaning horse sometime just before Easter break, but today I climbed back onto it.

I was up at 6:10am, 40 minutes later than I wanted to be up by, but at least I was awake and out of bed.  The weather is icy here.  It was -3°C this morning and the weather forecast said we would see a maximum of 13°C - and we are still a month and a half away from the middle of winter.  I think this is going to be one of our coldest winters in years.

I did manage to get a load of laundry washed and hung up (indoors) to dry.  I also packed away the dishes I washed yesterday and made the bed before heading off to work.

During my lunch break I went home and packed up 1 box of stuff from the kitchen cupboards.  For those of you who don't know, I'm moving from my 1 bedroom home into a 2 bedroom home.  I got the keys today so I also went to take a look during my lunch break.  These are the joys of living in a city where it takes 20-30 minutes to travel from one side to the other.  It's a 5-10 minute drive to and from work, and my new home is only a few blocks away from my current home.  I'm so excited, I have such big plans for the place - the first one is to take a bubble bath... a nice long bubble bath!

 

However, I got a nasty surprise while looking in the cupboard - a spider, about 10cm big, with lots of hairs on it’s legs.  I left it alone for now, but it is going to be sucked up by my vacuum cleaner eventually.

 

So this coming weekend is move weekend I hope to take some photograph’s before I officially start the move.  Maybe I’ll post them up here when I have the opportunity.

Challenge: Recharging the batteries

Yesterday morning I slept in and only got out of bed at 7:20am.  I had 30 minutes to shower, dress, feed the pets, pack for work and get to work.  At 8:50am I headed out the door ready to start my day.  I needed the extra time to sleep this morning. BUT…

When I turn the key in the ignition of my car, the engine made a Woo-Woo sound, the gages went crazy, the mileage reset itself and I got nothing.  I try again and the same story happens.  So I phone William – he gives me a long detailed explanation on what is wrong, but doesn’t tell me what I should do to fix it.  So I pretend to listen and eventually say goodbye with instructions to send him the dealership’s phone-number. 

Second round of dumb luck, I haven’t driven the scooter for a couple of day’s and the battery of the scooter is also dead.

I phone my mom to get the dealership’s phone-number from her (since she kept the invoice) and she decides I should rather phone my uncle first.  I get hold of my uncle and he phones the place who installed my alarm.  Long story of phoning back and forth, but the end result is that the people who installed the alarm come to fetch my Ford and drop me off at work.  They replaced the battery and now I have a working car.

So this got me thinking about recharging our personal batteries.  Why is it that we usually end up waiting until we are on the brink of going crazy before we recharge our batteries?  While our endurance may be higher than that of machines, we also need our batteries recharged from time to time and occasionally we also need to go in for repairs.

There are many simple ways throughout the day that we can recharge our batteries.  Some of my favourites are to:

~ Lie flat on my back on the floor in a quiet room for 10 – 15 minutes.
~ Sit quietly in a chair with a cup of tea and not do anything except sit and drink my tea.
~ Read a book in a warm comfy bed in the evenings (or occasionally for a whole Saturday afternoon)
~ Take a warm candle-lit bubble bath.

Unfortunately, my current home doesn’t have a bath tub (only a shower), so I only get to have a bubble bath when I visit my mother.  Luckily, my future home (from the 1st of May) does have a bath tub – so you can guess what will be the first thing I do in my new home!

Question – leave a comment:
What do you do to recharge your batteries?

Challenge:
Do something this week to recharge your batteries!

Pot Challenge

William bought me a set of 3 pots.  I love them!  When William wanted to make supper a few nights ago he accidentally burnt the Tomato Soup - badly!  He didn't want to even think about cleaning up the mess, and it took me 2 days to convince him to just throw out what he could and I would clean the rest of the pot.  That burnt mess was standing on my stove for 2 days!  William behaved like a 10 year old being told to clean his room and I was the mom in the scenario.  Looking back it was quiet funny.

So, after finally throwing out the mess together (he held the packet and I scooped the mess into the packet) he left me to wash the pot.  I soaked it with boiling soapy water for 3 days (adding new boiling water once a day) dreading trying to get the layer of black off the bottom. 

When I washed the dishes today I decided that I would just see how much I could get off in 5 minutes then let it soak over night again.  To my surprise, as I started scrubbing the black stuff started moving in one big mass, and I literally was able to pick the entire chunk of black up in my hand and throw it into the dustbin.  Then the pot washed as though the soup had never been burnt!

This got me thinking about the rest of life.  Sometimes we buck God/world/other, or we dread doing things we have to do, or we are scared of change, or we want to wait for the perfect moment, or we come up with other excuses, but what we really need is to just get our hands dirty for 5 minutes.  We need to face our fears head-on, even if it is in small pieces, and usually we'll find that it wasn't so bad.

Challenge:

Do something today that you have been dreading doing – even if it is only for 5 minutes.

Budgie Stitch

Here is a picture of the new addition to my budgie family.  Her name is Stitch.

 

Beautiful Kitchen & other

It’s been a gorgeous day so far, I woke up to a clean kitchen for the first time in months.  The reason is that I actually took the 15 minutes to wash up after making supper last night instead of leaving it until this morning.  I had forgotten what a joy it is to wake up to a clean counter ready for making my morning coffee.  I even had a cup of filter coffee today instead of instant coffee.

 

I’ve been recreating my daily routines list.  I am attempting to get my life back into order after being so sick (on and off) for the past 2 months.  I want to get organized again (even if it is marginally).  I also want to discover peace of heart and mind in my home.  To be a proper homemaker, and not somebody who ambles from one moment to the next. 

 

At the moment the washing machine is buzzing away with a load of laundry that I’ll hang up to dry when it is done.  The new townhouse has an outdoor washing line.  I’m so excited about moving there so I can hang my laundry outdoors! 31 days until moving day!

 

My coffee is almost finished and I am ready to start my day with a shower and getting ready for work. 

 

I have 5 things on my To Do List for today, they are:

~ Spend some time dusting the bookcase in the living room

~ Email copy of the deposit slip to owners of the townhouse

~ Get a new bank card

~ Send a work email

~ Fetch my scooter from William’s grandparents house.

 

I think I should be able to get those 5 things done.

 

Yesterday was a pleasant day.  I dressed up smart (all business-like), then William and I went to pay the deposit on the Townhouse at the bank.  Smooth sailing.  Since we were at the bank in the shopping mall we went to Wimpy for breakfast.  I just had White Hot Chocolate and a muffin, William had a full breakfast (Eggs, bacon, sausage, toast etc.) and coffee.

 

We took our time in the shopping mall.  I bought The Sims Medieval from CNA, and William bought a book called “Aquariums and Aquarium Fish” from Exclusive Books.

 

I took the day off work, and we came home.  I spent time playing my new The Sims game (I’m slightly disappointed, I was hoping that there would be more free-play), and William fiddled with my fish-tank, which is now his fish tank.  He wanted tropical fish, so I handed the tank over to him.

 

There is also a new budgie addition to my home.  She is bright blue and I have named her Stitch (from Lilo & Stitch).  I’ll put a photo up when I get one.

 

Now I must continue with my day. May God bless you as you have blessed others.

Moving Plans & other news

It is official, William and I have signed the rental contract for the two-bedroom townhouse.  We can start moving my stuff in from the 1st of May.  This means that my current home is going to be “On Show” soon (for the new tenants).

 

Yesterday I spent part of the day cleaning the bedroom.  William helped me move my bed from the centre of the room to the wall.  It is more convenient for me to have my bed in the centre of the room, but the room looks larger when the bed is against the wall, and that will come in handy when trying to find a new tenant for the house.

 

We also managed to find a larger bird cage for my two budgies, now I won’t be letting them free all day every day anymore.  The new home will have a lot more windows than my current home, so it won’t be safe to let them roam free all day while I am not there.

 

Today is going to be a busy day.  William has a job interview which is currently on the go.  I’m keeping him in my thoughts and prayers since he really needs this job.  Other than that, I also need to stop by the bank and pay the deposit for the townhouse today.  Finally I need to get the license disk for my scooter and fetch it from William’s grandparents house.  I’m looking forward to driving it again.

 

As far as housework, I plan to make sure the kitchen is spotless by the end of today too.  I want to finish getting my home ready for people to look at it.

 

May God Bless you as you have blessed others =)

Recipe: Macaroni Cheese

This is a really easy recipe and because it serves so few people it is easy to double or triple the recipe to serve as many as you need it to serve.  I’ve been using this recipe for Macaroni and Cheese since I moved out of my parents house and I have never needed to try another one.

 

Serves 2 – 3 people my size.

Ingredients:

• 250ml (1 cup) macaroni (uncooked)
• 1ml salt (1/5th teaspoon)
• 25ml Margarine (2 tablespoons)
• 25ml flour (2 tablespoons)
• 250ml Milk (1 cup)
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 250ml grated cheddar cheese (1 cup)
• 1 tomato, sliced

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (360­°F). Grease an ovenproof dish
2. Cook macaroni in fast boiling, salt water until tender and drain in a colander (approx. 15 minutes).
3. Place Margarine, flour, milk, salt and pepper into a microwavable container (a glass measuring jug works well) and cook for a minute on high. Stir and cook again. Repeat until the mixture is thick but still runny.
4. Mix half the grated cheese into the milk mixture.
5. Mix macaroni and cheese sauce, pour into a greased ovenproof dish.
6. Place sliced tomato on top and sprinkle grated cheese over tomato.
7. Place in the oven for 10 minutes. Brown under the top element for 2 minutes. Garnish with parsley.