Goodreads have an area where you can set yourself a reading challenge for 2012. I set mine as 40 initially but then realised this was totally unrealistic, since I only read 11 books last year. I have settled on a more respectable 25, being just over two a month. I am already 1 book behind, according to my profile!

2012 Reading Challenge

Kate has read 1 book toward her goal of 25 books.

hide

1 of 25 (4%)

view books

Here are just some books I would like to read this year:

my on-my-bedside-table shelf:

As I caught up with my blog reading last night, I read Caroline‘s post about her participation in Frugal February and I thought that I would jump on board. As part of our new simple living outlook, our finances are under scrutiny and a month (at least!) of very careful spending will be useful in getting us on track to cut debts and increase savings.

The rules of Frugal February are simple:

I vow, for one month from 1st Feb, to avoid shopping for anything other than essentials.

This means that I will not buy any books, DVDs, luxuries, fabric (although I bought some yesterday before I had started the challenge!), music or anything else I don’t really need. I will avoid making any new commitments for big nights out (although my upcoming night out with my NCT girlfriends was already arranged and so I am letting that slide!). I will avoid coffees and lunches out, I will make sure we avoid takeaways and fast food.  I have already done a menu plan and grocery shop which should last us for at least a fortnight.

I will be tracking my spending on a daily basis here.

So I have been working on setting in place a system using Ziplist which will help with the loathsome planning phase so that (hopefully) I wont need to put it off again and again. I have started added any online recipes I like or want to try to Ziplist – it has a nifty recipe clipper which makes it super-easy to grab recipes which link back to the source so you always know where they are from and in fact, usually you need to click back through so that you can see the instructions.  I am also manually adding recipes that I love from my books.

This is fairly laborious but I do have a reason. Ziplist has a great shopping list function. you can click on a recipe, it pulls all the ingredients into a list with check-boxes so you can remove the items you already have in the cupboard and add the rest to a list.

Eventually, once I have a large pool of recipes, I should be able to whizz through the ones I have chosen for that particular week/fortnight and add the ingredients to a shopping list.  It will also mean that all my favourite recipes are in one place AND I will have access to these anywhere since Ziplist do in fact have an iPhone app for that. Finally, you can tag your recipes making it easy to keep them organised so I have a set for dinner, a set for buffet/party food, a set for trying - recipes that sound lovely but I haven’t tried yet and a set for Evelina (although she will be eating with us more and more).

I need to then record the list of recipes I have chosen for any given period somewhere – perhaps I will print this off and put it in my home management notebook. I have already mentioned that I am loathe to assigning particular meals to particular days given that our plans change so quickly so a list of ‘current’ recipes which I have the ingredients for will work just fine.

This weekend, I took a trip back to my hometown, Southend-on-Sea, to visit Sarah and her adorbz daughter, Nancy. With Nancy’s 2nd birthday coming up, I wanted to make her some bunting which I knew Sarah wanted to complete Nancy’s new nursery. But when I realised that Sarah was keen to get crafting herself, I leapt at the chance to visit, reconnect with her and pass on some crafty skills.

The first order of business was to get her new sewing machine set up. Then we started chatting and the rest of the evening was history! This morning, we got all the triangles cut and then we each sewed them up before turning them the right way out. I have left Sarah with a piece of bias binding and a ton of sewn triangles so she can finish it off – I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For some reason, I had high hopes for this book. I expected to be blown away and instead, when I finished the book, I felt decidedly underwhelmed.  This was our last book club choice for sew make believe and we had our book chat meetup last night. Despite not being totally enamoured with the book, I really enjoyed the meetup.

*spoilers ahead*

I hadn’t known much about the book before I started: I was aware of the film’s existence but I hadn’t seen it; I knew there was a sad ending; I had read (and thoroughly enjoyed Nicholls’s previous novel Starter for Ten); I had read the blurb which described the format as visiting these two characters on the same day through twenty years of their lives.

My biggest problems with the book were as follows:

1. I just couldn’t stand Dexter; even his name annoyed me. I was not rooting for him until the very end when I finally felt some sympathy towards him.
2. Whilst I didn’t dislike Emma, I found her rather dull. She came across as a bit whiny and it irritated me.
3. The book was too long for the amount of story. Whilst it is true that years can go by, especially in your twenties, without much changing, it is not interesting to read.
4. I read the book in a constant state on unease, waiting for something awful to happen. Dexter certainly seemed like he was one mistake away from total disaster and so when Emma met her sudden end, it was a shock – I had expected it was something that would happen to Dexter or at least because of his actions.

Despite enjoying Starter for Ten, I can’t see myself rushing out to read more of Nicholls’s work when there are already so many books on my ‘to-read’ list. The next sew make believe book club book is The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue which I am looking forward to getting my hands on, although next in my pile is Saturday by Ian McEwan – can’t wait!

View all my reviews

Season One – Episode 11 Double Date

Synopsis:

Dawson and Jen double date with their respective partners to the carnival fair thing even though Dawson blatantly is interested in Jen and as a result he treats his date appallingly. Meanwhile, Pacey and Joey end up in detention together and as punishment (for Joey at least), she is forced to help with with his marine biology assignment. We never did any of this stuff at school! Anyway, naturally, they end up having to wade in the creek to find snails and must MUST take off their clothes to prevent hypothermia. Pacey notices that Joey is hot stuff. Joey notices that Pacey is too and is less hateful than she thought.

Highlight:

When Pacey tries to kiss Joey.

Lowest Point:

Dawson getting annoyed at Pacey liking Joey even though he isn’t interested himself.

Quote:

Joey: Let me get this straight. You’ve tried to create some sort of a snail menage-a-trois? Pacey: Well, it sounds stupid when you say it out loud, but I just saw this really pretty snail in the tank over by the window, and I don’t know. Last night it just seemed really brilliant. Joey: Let me fill ya in on something here. You know this pretty little snail over here by the window? It’s what you call a carnivorous snail, and do you know what carnivorous snails eat?Pacey: Other snails. Joey: Yeah, other snails. Other snails such as our snails, such as the snails we are desperately relying on to raise our marine biology grades.

Why I love it:

Pacey and Joey have their first kiss and Pacey realises Joey is a cool gal way before Dawson gets with the programme.

The next chapter of Organized Simplicity is about savouring the little things. It is about using all the fantastic organisational tools set out (i.e. the home management notebook and all that entails) and reaping the rewards through enjoying simple pleasures with your family. Tsh suggests some things to do with your time that will help you live the life you want and set out in your family purpose statement. These things include crafting (well, that’s fine with me!), cooking from scratch, and entertaining and socialising.

I was surprised by the third item on the list – the first two seem pretty obvious if you are trying to live a simpler life. The type of crafting she is talking about is making things from things you already have or can acquire cheaply and using creativity to transform them into something pretty or useful, involving the kids if they are old enough. Cooking from scratch is about eating better quality food for less and this is something I am working on all the time – although my latest bout of illness has brought out all the worst kinds of eating: convenience, take-aways, etc. I can’t wait to get back into home cooking and meal planning so that we can start eating more healthily and more heartily. However, I hadn’t really thought about how entertaining could form part of simple living. For some reason, I put entertaining and socialising into the ‘luxury’ category.

However, one of the advantages of having a de-cluttered and simple home is that it is easy to get ready for guests – no need for a full day scrub down when friends are coming. More impromptu evenings can occur when you aren’t worried about your house looking perfect and being well-organised means that the store cupboard is well-stocked meaning a quick supper can be knocked up easily enough. I have been so focused on getting organised, I hadn’t really thought about why I wanted to live this way. Of course, I put some thought into the type of family I wanted us to be but I hadn’t thought of the day-to-day benefits of living simply and living in an organised way. In our family purpose statement, I had stated that one of the things I wanted was to make ‘our home a place of warmth and simplicity’. I had been thinking of this from the perspective of our immediate family but of course, I would want our friends and extended families to benefit from our warm and simple home too.

This year, I am determined to tie up some crafty / creative loose ends. Yesterday, I finally printed some photos for Rich’s frame and today, I am sharing with you my latest (if modest) success: felt decoration number 1 from Alicia Paulson‘s Walk in the Woods felt ornament kit is complete!

It was quick and fun and exactly what I needed to get me crafting early in 2012.

I gave this wooden photo frame to Rich for our fifth (wooden) wedding anniversary (ie in 2008!) and I have FINALLY got around to putting photos in it. Using Picasa’s collage feature (the contact sheet option), I was able to quickly collate and print 4 small prints on one sheet of A4 photo paper along with one 4×6 print. I then used double-sided tape to attach them to the glass sheets – something that only just occurred to me today. I don’t know why I had thought this was such a bind to do – it took me all of 10 minutes.

These photos were taken during our 2007 holiday (ie the most recent one as at May 2008!) to the West Coast of the US.

There are also some little things about the house that drive me nuts. Example: in our cloakroom, some wise soul decided it would be nifty to install a light pull that lights up in the dark. On the surface, this seems like a genius idea – in a dark room, who wouldn’t like a little help finding the light pull? Only, the glow-in-the-dark light pull needs light to charge up. So it only glows in the dark after you have been in the room for a bit. I don’t need to be able to see it once I have turned the light off because I AM LEAVING THE ROOM, THANK YOU. Oh yes, and it has a light bulb graphic, how witty. Ugh.

I have started a Pinterest board for our future redecoration of the cloakroom (hardly a big job since the room is tiny; hardly an important job but we have to start somewhere). Eventually, I want to create boards for all the rooms in the house so I can actually plan our redecoration a bit.  It will be nice to be doing it for us instead of being motivated by trying to sell the house. Do you see the Laura Ashley light pull? Much nicer…