At Chez Stutters lately

I don't quite know what happened, but I've been neglecting this blog in a way I never meant to.

On the other hand, I'm almost totally up to date with Project Life - okay, so there's some journalling to do here and there, but in general, I'm up to date.  (So up to date that I actually did last week's spread on Sunday, when the week hadn't even finished yet.)

But here's some news and photos from around the place.

Cats
It was our Bion's first birthday yesterday - he is officially no longer a kitten!  I love this photo of him, even though it's a few months old.

The Garden

OMG the garden!  Beans are sprouting, the zuchinni has the beginnings of flowers, the snow peas are growing like crazy, and even the cucumber has finally woken up.  

These photos were taken a week ago: the lettuce has grown *lots* since then.  We're able to make a salad every night now, I'd say.  And the perpetual basil is almost enough for a pesto.

Craft
I'm working on a purple and black skull slouch hat for M for Halloween.  She found the pattern and asked if I thought I could make it: it looked a little complicated, but it's turned out to be mostly straightfoward, and I'm really enjoying it.  It's actually much further along than this photo would suggest: I'm onto the fourth row of skulls and the first decrease.  It's a fascinating pattern because it begins at the brim and works up to the crown, where most hats I've seen work the other way.

And on Sunday I got out the sewing machine and started working on some Halloween bunting.  I'm planning a blog post on the bunting itself, but I'm now away until the 25th of October, which won't leave me much time to get it done (the bunting, not the post) before Halloween.  There are many more flags than I had kind of thought - which was my fault for the choices I made - but still.

Meanwhile - I'm at a work conference this week down in Melbourne.  I'm hoping to finish the hat and a bunch of poppies this week, as well as start working up some blogposts for the future.

The Chez Stutters Garden - September 2014

Since the beginning of September, we've really kicked into gear with the garden.  In the ordinary course of events it's possible that we may have started too early with some of the planting, but it's so much warmer than "usual" earlier than usual that I think we're beyond the threat of frosts.  (It's now almost October, so maybe we weren't quite as reckless with planting things like tomatoes as some people may have thought us.)

Anyway:

This is the Chez Stutters Mk 2 garden.  Three vegetable beds, two citrus trees in the ground, and lots of pots.

If you follow me on Instagram you will have met Groot, the raspberry cane.

This is Groot on September 25th

This is Groot on September 28th

 You can see why he got his name.

We also have an Imperial Mandarin called ... The Mandarin (funny, that) and almost had a Washington Navel orange called Ichabod.  We left him at the store and will get one next week.  Who will possibly be called Ichabod or Ichabod II.  (We are not sure when we became these people.  Apparently our plants have names.)

A selection of pots, containing (from the left) a tomato and basil, basil, basil, perennial basil (M is looking forward to when she can make pesto), lavender and a nastursium.

Sadly that's kind of the extent of the photos of the garden at the moment.  I'll work on some more for next week.

Week 26 at Chez Stutters

Part of my motivation for posting about our week just gone is so that when I get behind with Project Life, I have a way to remind myself what went on.  I've just finished catching up on a number of weeks of PL, and would have loved to have something like this to look back on easily.

It was the last week of the school term, and reports were pretty much done (hooray!).  In house news, we finally got the heater fixed (although that's still worth a post all on its own (OMG saga!)), for half a day thought that fixing the heater had killed the hot water, and generally wanted - yet again - to do violence to the previous owners of the house.

I lost my voice almost entirely, and ended up either working at home or being on sick leave for the majority of the week.  I spent a lot of time in the craft room, but cleaning up for the immenent kitties turned the room messy again, so it's not entirely done yet.  I finished off the Kobo case and a Cat Mat for the new arrivals.

On Saturday we went out to see the yarn-bombed Yellow Submarine, and after that collected our darling delightful kitties, Bard and Bishop-Biondello.

On Sunday I went to church and got elected to the Joint Nominating Committee for finding a new Minister.  We cooked Risotto in the rice cooker and decided we really must make better use of the Risotto function than we do right now.  The kitties settled in gradually...

Currently Creative

Kellie Winnell has said that she's reinstating a regular "currently creative" linkup.  As you may have noticed, I'm trying to be more regular with this blog and to build it into an actual blog instead of just an occasional series.

If you're here from Kellie's blog linkup - welcome!  This is what I'm currently creating:


So, there's the Elphieblanket: I'm at 20 of 27 repeats of the main pattern before I start the multiple rounds that make up the border.  And I've read through the pattern for the border enough times that I think I almost understand how it works.

I'm slowly working on getting my craft room set up properly.

And I've created a Facebook Page for this 'ere blog and am working on graphics to use for it.

(For regular updates on posts to this blog, please "like" the Chez Stutters FB page, even though it's currently fairly bare.)

My new favourite home gadget

When I was a kid, I loved staying with an honorary aunt of mine during the school holidays.  She lived right out in the country, and there was a huge yard for me to play in and imagine all sorts of wonderful things.  She was also the local postmistress, so I could help sort and stamp the mail, and all that sort of old fashioned thing that doesn't even get done by people any more.

She was also the sort of person who had a definite routine in the mornings: specific jobs that just had to get done before we were really ready for the day.  One of those was to run the carpet sweeper over all the carpets in the house.  When I was there, that was my chore - that and making my bed - and I loved it.

Okay, so, I'm not *this* old...

 When we moved into Chez Stutters mark 2, and ran my beloved Roomba in the bedrooms for the first time, we noticed a slight problem.  The carpet is a much tighter weave than in the old place, and it has very defined ridges.  And whereas the Roomba could work easily with the old carpet, and could pick up all the dropped fluff from the flannel sheets with no problems at all, the combination of the tighter weave and the ridges combined to leave the majority of the flannel fluff on the floor.

At which point I began to muse.  "Do they still make carpet sweepers?" I wondered.  "Because that's what we need here."

Blow me down, but they do!  And it's just as good as the one I remember from my childhood - and as fun!

So although I don't sweep the carpet every morning, I really should try to do the bedroom and the big red rug in the living room at least twice a week.

Chez Stutters report: the cliffhangers continue

So - when we last "spoke", the dishwasher had quit, taking out all the powerpoints with it.

Thankfully, unplugging the dishwasher restored the powerpoints, and once we'd survived the weekend with my un-laws, we got in the repairperson.

Who told us the dishwasher was old, the seals were failing, and water had got into the electrics.

Long story short, we went shopping for a new dishwasher on the long weekend, and after an unfortunate run-in with the worst record-keeping system either of us have ever encountered, on Saturday (a week after we purchased it) the new dishwasher was installed, and we did two runs with it before the evening was out.

But in a newly purchased house, of course there are ongoing issues. 

And so now we're dealing with the heater.  Or lack thereof.

Last Thursday we got the repairman in, who decided what it needed to be fixed, and came back the next day.  While he was up in the roof on the second day, the GF - who was at home to let him in - heard words you never want to hear:

'It's smoking, God, it's smoking!' and the sound of coughing...

*********

(What?  I promised you another cliffhanger in the title!)


 

Make me happy... BEDiM Day 19

So, this was actually yesterday's prompt... Ten things that make me happy

1.  Top Gear - I hate that this makes me happy, but it does.  Top Gear (the real one, not the Australian one) makes me happy.  Despite the fact that I hate it the homophobia, racism and sexism of Clarkson, in particular.

2.  Pro cycling.  See previous posts.  An additional love is #trolldj on SBS - the people who choose the music for when you come back from the ad breaks. They're snarky and awesome and I love that we get even more #trolldj with extra Giro coverage.

3.  KikkiK - the Swedish design stationary store. It's a very good thing there isn't a KikkiK store up here or I'd be entirely broke and swimming in stationery.

4.  Project Life - even though I'm so far behind.

5. Tea2 - as I write this I'm guzzling down my umpteenth cup of T2's Lemongrass and Ginger tea, made in the Teamaker, which is also awesome.

6. Our new house. It's awesome, and I love it and it's ours. So much love.

7. Cooking. The kitchen of our new place makes me want to cook, which is fabulous, because I love cooking, and the kitchen in the old place didn't encourage cooking.  I may even get around to baking one of these days.

8.  Good coffee. When I have the chance, I go to the Deli Bean for a morning coffee, but I also have the joy of a wonderful coffee machine at home.

9. Flowers. In particular daffodils and tulips. My GF puts up with me planting flowers because she knows it makes me happy, and at the moment we have a bunch of tulips on the kitchen bench for the same reason. Yay!

10.  First and foremost, my girl. She makes me laugh when I'm down; she buys me presents even when she shouldn't; she buys me purple tulips and cooks and cleans the house, and she hugs me and tells me that everything will be okay when I'm being neurotic, which is too much of the time. She puts up with all my faults and foibles, and on top of all these things, she loves me. I don't entirely know why. But I love her too. Lots and lots.

Sunday evening update... BEDiM Day 18

I'm sitting on the sofa watching Masterchef, while the GF works on the second of three Fantastic furniture bookcases, the last furniture-related stage of moving in.

Update on the washing machine: still not fixed. It's an electrical fault that will hopefully be fixed this week. 

Update on the garden: things are growing! We could have had spinach from the garden with dinner tonight, but we were too lazy to go out and pick it. We're planning to use the thyme in a tomato dish during the week. 

Update on Blog Every Day in May: I've missed a couple of days, but no more than two, I'm sure. Personally, I feel like I'm doing okay. 

And Cadel Evans is now in the Maglia Rosa at the Giro. :-)

Five things... BEDiM Day 9

Five things I love on a Friday

I love... That our house is slowly, slowly coming together.  We got the desks out of the garage and into my eagerly awaited craft room last night, and the room itself is now clear enough that if I can just manage to print out photos in the next fe days, I should be able to get back to working on Project Life next week. 

I love... That I'm writing this sitting at my favourite cafe, with a fabulous cup of coffee. It's the first day in a long while that I've managed to get here before work to actually sit down and relax, and today I did it after doing dishes, making the bed, and doing some rapid tidying before I left. 

I love... That I just had a quick Facebook chat with a friend bitching about all the ridiculous fads our church keeps running with. Now if they wouldn't force us to run with them, too.

I love... The difference my bullet journal seems to be making to my time management. Long may it last.  I've only been  using it a week and already I want to post about it. 

I love... Eurovision weekend!  We have a few people over here on Saturday night to watch the second semi-final, and we'll watch the final on Sunday even thought it will go ludicrously late even though we have to go to work in the morning.  It's Eurovision. 

Where I write (or don't): BEDiM Day 7

I had planned to write this post at lunch time, when my answer would have been different, but I got distracted by the arrival of four sets of stamps from Kelliestamps.

So, here I sit, on the sofa at home, typing this on my iPad while I watch Spicks and Specks for the first time in the new house, because we finally have TV reception (just in time for Eurovision, yay!) The GF is sorting our ridiculously large DVD collection by movies vs tv, and then alphabetically by title. 

Beginning the Chez Stutters Garden - BEDiM Day 4

I'm going off prompt today, because we've just spent the last hour and a half out in the garden for the first time since we moved in, and this did start out as a gardening blog

Unlike Chez Stutters 1, where it felt easy to just start digging and planting, Chez Stutters 2 has a very small lawn and large patches of concrete.  We've got some raised garden beds to put together that can go on top of the concrete, but today's gardening was pretty much all planting in pots.

We're going to have flowers at the front door and herbs at the back, which we started today with rosemary and a bay tree.  At the front door, along with mostly pansies, there's a pot of nastursium, which counts as both flowers and edibles, obviously :-)

Today we also got three little garden gnomes.  I know - garden gnomes!  But Bunnings had Smurfs and the Seven Dwarves and Beatrix Potter, and once it was obvious that the GF was determined to get Dopey and a gardening Smurf, I figured I could at least get Jemima Puddleduck to join the party.

It was cold out there, and beginning to get dark, but at the same time, it was so very nice to be gardening again after what feels like quite a long time.

Less and More - EDiM Day 3

Today's topic is Less/More, which is something I've been thinking about a lot during this move. I have so much stuff, and do I really need all of it?  Will I ever get around to reading all those books I 'rescued', when Borders and Book Affair and other stores were closing down? Is there any point to keeping things bought on sale for a craft project 'one day' when I've now changed my plans to some entirely different crafts? Do I need any more candle holders ever? (Answer: no, and get behind me, Dusk Australasia!)

Yesterday we finally finished the move and handed back the keys. Chez Sutters Mk 1 is no more, but Chez Stutters 2 is now overflowing with stuff (seriously, in my head it's always in italics). One of my goals, listed in my first post for Blog Every Day in May, was to complete a full closet purge, which I'll be doing as I unpack.  I hope I'll also being doing some other massive declutters as we unpack - we have one whole box of books to get rid of already (don't ask out of how many total. I gave up counting).

I think I'm summing this all up by saying LESS stuff - MORE mindfulness. Live simply, that all may simply live. (It's a goal: I'll probably never get there. The consumerism is strong in this one (ie, me), no matter how hard I fight it. 

[Posting now, but hopefully I'll find a photo during the day to add.]

Every day in May: Day 1, goals

Via one of my new favourite bloggers, Kellie Winnell, comes the "Blog every day in May" challenge from Sunday of Love Happy Daily (I love discovering more Australian bloggers.  I'm getting less and less tolerant of the North American orientation of just about everything - Easter isn't in Spring all over the world, people!)

It probably seems weird to pick up a crazy project like blogging every day for 31 days when I've not been able to blog three times a month so far this year.  But hey, when have I not done crazy projects?  And there are so many things that I want to be blogging about.  Project Life, our new house, the way that we're developing routines in our fabulous new house.

So, this morning, before I go and get into a full day of final cleaning of the old house, I'm giving myself the length of time of episode 2 of the Jim Henson Creature Shop Challenge (I love this show!) to post the blog for this morning's prompt - goals.

My May goals are

• post every day in May
• get my craft room set up
• catch up on Project Life (the move has meant I've done little to none in April, simply because there's been no time at all to get photos printed)
• get our herb garden planted
• track my spending in preparation for a budgeting effort in June.

And I honestly think that's enough!

Edit: Actually, I forgot a couple. 

* complete a full closet purge

* read the Metaxas 'Bonhoffer' in time for book club, and chase down some progressive/liberal reviews. 

March Goals

I found my draft post containing my February goals sitting here.  I didn't meet a single one in its entirety.  And now, of course, the bulk of March forms part of Lent, and the focus changes.  Looking at things in context, I can't even just replicate my February goals for March, even though they all still need to be accomplished in some way or another.  The goals that were about getting ready to move - well, we're hoping to have moved by the end of this month.  The goals that were about Getting Things Done (the non-trademarked version) seem inappropriate in a season of reflection.

So: March goals.  And this time I'm going to publish them, and report back in April.  And see how I've gone.

Reflecting

• Remember to breathe - 'breathe' is my word for the year.  I think I might design a little "Remember to breathe" card or two for Project Life.
• Implement two or more ideas from "Beyond Busyness"
• Post on WGC.

Other

• Read books by queer Australian women (and review at least one).  For more on this, see the post on my book blog.
• Chapters 3-6 to Ruth 

A lot of my goals at the moment are future-fixed: "once we've moved I will..." keep the kitchen organised; make meal plans; make bento lunches; etc.  There's this annoying state of uncertainty while we wait for the date on which we will be settling the house purchase.  Until then, it just this awkward state of interruption.

Decluttering 52 things in 52 weeks

Because I always join all the challenges, and because I love the Australian-based Organised Housewife, I'm joining her 2014 Declutter 52 Things in 52 Weeks challenge. It's week two five, now, but what the hey.

Step one was to set our goals. Here are mine, according to the OH's rubric, with my additions/changes in bold.

I want to feel relaxed while I’m at home, and I won't while there's all this clutter and mess and disorganisation.
I want to spend more time writing.
I want an area of the home where I can craft, (especially Project Life).
I want to organise the whole house first.  (Yes, I know this is a problem. Let's go with kitchen in the realistic version.)
My partner always loses her keys.
I want to be decluttered by 1st April 2014.
The most disorganised cupboard in my home is the tupperware cupboard OMG.
Something that I don’t need anymore, but am having trouble parting with is random stuff I collected/bought for scrapbooking, which doesn't quite work for the Project Life context.


To be honest, I'm not sure how applicable these are anymore.  We're moving house soon - hopefully in six weeks, assuming the Titles Office comes through for us - and so while decluttering and organising are still major needs, (and April 1 a nice goal) the timetable and the logistics are completely different.

That said, I'm still trying to keep up with the weekly challenges (sort of).  The first couple - at least initially - struck me as not applying to me necessarily.  At some point I need to get back to my pinboard, but it's not that bad for now.

Tasks #3 and 4, however, are entirely applicable AND useful to us right now.  I haven't done them yet (OMG the heat! Means I get very little done at the moment other than work, watch television and attempt to sleep.)  When I get to them I'll write them up and let you know how I go.

New Year, New Plans

It's been a while since I posted here, but one of my goals for 2014 is to post to each of my blogs at the very least once a month.

And since I last posted there's been a lot of changes in my house/craft/garden/organisey life.

In April - hopefully - Chez Stutters will be relocating.  We're in the process of buying a house, which is rather scary, even if I am used to the processes because of the whole used-to-be-a-lawyer thing.  We're not moving far, but the house will be bigger and give us the chance to organise differently and do a lot of things we're looking forward to. 

In the meantime, we need to declutter, sort, and pack up the house, and do a whole lot of work in our sadly neglected garden (poor garden) to get it up to a standard that won't upset our landlord when we leave.  Then we get to move into our wonderful new house and organise it.  I might even be getting a craft room!

This would be good, because, in October, almost entirely due to the influence of my friend Mel at Subversive Reader I got seriously stuck into Project Life scrapbooking.  I really love this method, which is a lot less time-consuming (the way I do it) than traditional scrapbooking, which I haven't done much of for ages.  There will be posts on this in the future, you can be guaranteed.