Here we are again: time to get a grip on my head and my heart by auditing the ins and outs of my world. As always please feel free to steal the graphic and do a life audit of your own, or indeed download the Life Audit PDF (it’s free) and get your pencil out…
Today I am…
Organising the Christmas budget on YNAB. Dressed in about thirty layers of thermals and the kind of slipper socks so thick I rather feel as though my feet have gone numb. Drinking Yogi Moon Cycle tea because it helps. Thoroughly unable to catch the cold that has been lurking around my nostrils for a few days now, threatening to floor me but rather pathetically turning out to be nothing more than a very irritating sniffle. Excited because there is finally grass in my garden. (Yay! Thank-you Builder Men!). Fighting a losing battle with the muddy feet traipsing in an out of my little blue-tiled porch. Receiving parcel after parcel for neighbours who never seem to be home.
Feeling…
Embarrassed after nearly knocking a woman out with a cocktail shaker. Don’t ask. Scattered. Immensely frustrated and positively demented by technical issues here at BrocanteHome. You see I just want to write but writing time is lost to endless admin issues and computer problems and I rather feel like banging my head against a brick wall. When oh when did blogging get so complicated? If I could roll back to five years ago I really think I would. I truly miss offering little snippets of daily inspiration and my work-life balance is so skewhiff I feel exhausted so something has got to give though I do not know what yet. One idea I have been considering though is a move away for printables to simply writing for the Kindle then dear old Amazon could handle the relentless trauma of lost passwords and email inboxes that swallow downloads…
Reading…
Ste laughs because he cannot fathom my method of reading: I usually have at least two books on the go (truth… maybe three. Or four. Or twenty-nine if you count what goes on inside my Kindle.): a novel for snuggling up with and some sort of self-help, life enhancing/thigh-slimming/business orientated affair on the coffee table for browsing during elevenses. Tonight’s novel then is The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery, though I have read it before, because this 1920’s fairy-tale is ultimately so life-affirming and it is Lucy Maud for heavens sake: what’s not to like on a cosy November evening? And my coffee table book is Lisa Sugar’s Power Your Happy: Work Hard, Play Nice & Build Your Dream Life because I’m hoping she is a lady who has been in my shoes and cares to share a way through the madness that is online business…
Eating…
Roasted vegetable with halloumi. Or cubes of feta and a splash of balsamic. Roasted vegetables blitzed with a cup full of stock in my Nutribullet for the fastest bowl of soup in the land. Roasted vegetables on a puff pastry base. Umm, yeah: roasted vegetables night after night after night. Roasted at the beginning of the week and stored in an airtight container and used for everything from soups to stews. Oooh and pickled onions. I can’t get enough pickled onions. I’m all sorts of wrong these days. With pickled onion breath.
Planning…
A reversal back to our old routine now Ste’s short dalliance with shift work is at an end and life can go back to normal. A new one-stop dreamy place for my membership groups The Salon and The Living Room. Beavering away behind the scenes to bring it to life as fast as possible. Staying up late with a furrowed brow and the kind of creative inspiration that has got me firing on all cylinders. A weekend away with Kath, Diane and Emma this Saturday to celebrate Emma’s birthday. And gifts for the two “brothers” Finley didn’t have just two years ago – Mark’s son Sam who is so cute he is almost edible, and who will turn two at the beginning of December, and Ste’s son Stevie who will be eleven a few days later and who arrives at my house every second Friday and quickly collapses into Finley inspired giggles that remind me how very blessed we are to be family.
Dreaming of…
A nap. Are you a napper? Oh but you must be! There is nothing quite so wonderful as stealing a geranium scented afternoon nap now is there? Particularly if the house is quiet and you can slip between the sheets for the kind of drowsy, battery-charging slumber one can only really enjoy during the afternoon slump. Pity there is so very much to do today and the chance of a nap is up there with the chance of me re-inventing myself as an Instagram bikini model. Some days dreams will be dreams and simply refuse to become reality, damn them. Speaking of geranium though… I have a new ritual that involves cleansing my face before a much coveted nap and then massaging it with the blend of almond and geranium oil I have come to associate with switching my over-active mind off…
Coveting…
This (swoon) and This and This.
Wishing…
I wasn’t growing a beard. No really. I swear I am growing a beard if seven rather persistent hairs can be considered beardy? Also wishing my bedroom was the sanctuary I need it to be RIGHT NOW -long before in fact I have got to get Ste to understand that cream paint is not just cream paint and there will be a whole lot of dithering before I actually take the plunge and apply paint to the walls. And much more dithering after that as the search continues for suitable wardrobes. For frankly what possessed me to leave my wardrobes with the new owner of my little old house is quite beyond me. I can only surmise it was the hiatus hernia tablets that send me off my head and made me thrust generosity into that young mans face.
Working On…
Everything. No really: EVERYTHING! Ste is working overnight and the plans I had for the evening were cancelled so I am taking the opportunity to print out my Leonie Dawson Life and Biz workbooks, for OH YES the 2017 workbooks are here!! Did you hear me: the Leonie Dawson Workbooks (and wall-planners, and diaries and to-do lists) are here! Roll on my 2016 Closing Ceremony for heaven knows I am so ready to say goodbye to this year and hello to a new one blessed by certainty and security please…
Celebrating…
Ste’s new job with a meal tomorrow night with our boys at a local Turkish restaurant with great hummus, chosen because they have extensive gluten free options for Finn and a meat heavy menu for Stevie who is close to being the world’s fussiest eater but will eat meat until the cows come home. Oooh and did I mention the hummus? Its the best.
Grateful For…
So much on this the American day of gratitude. This house – because it makes me smile when I creep down first thing in the morning and it is warm and welcoming. Finn’s understanding that clutter is the enemy and keeping all the plastic nonsense from his childhood will no more tell him who he was than knocking at the house next door and asking the nice strangers there to tell him who he used to be. For the calm of his almost empty bruise colored room now. For hope. And possibility. For a conversation yesterday that made me howl with laughter. And for pizza delivered straight to the door (It’s a lazy Mama night. Don’t tell anyone).
And finally tomorrow I will be…
Packing for my overnight stay with my bestest friends. Working on sending another lovely Brocantehome PDF in to the Salon Library before I have to get my gladrags on. Worrying that my non-existent wardrobe full of gladrags is much depleted since I got over-generous with the recycling bag too…
On my to-do list this month?
* Christmas. There’s just no getting away with it.
* Watching The Crown on Netflix because rumor has it, it is a little bit wonderful?
* Finding a pair of slippers that don’t threaten to end my life whenever I come down the stairs.
* Choosing between a real and an artificial Christmas tree tall enough not to look daft in this high-ceilinged room.
* And finding a tiny little decoration to hang on it to remember Mum.
Happy Thanksgiving Housekeepers.x