Category: Blogging challenges

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#blog12daysxmas Random thoughts Work

Day Two and I’m on track…

Well after a bit of a mixed-up start, it’s still Boxing Day for a few more hours, so I’m managing to blog Day 2 of #blog12daysxmas on the second day of Christmas. Which is cool – but I doubt I’ll be writing much. I’m exhausted, (courtesy Master Two and a 4.35am start,) but trying to stay awake by watching The Glades while waiting for Harry’s Law at 9.30. But it’s tough – I keep on yawning, nodding off etc and I’ve eaten too much.

Last year’s #blog12daysxmas, I wrote about the song. This year I plan on being more reflective – something I’m learning, though slowly, to enjoy. And today was a perfect day to reflect. The kids and I went Boxing Day shopping early, and left by 10 from a very full car park, to explore the wonders of “Wet Side” at Hervey Bay. For those of you who’ve been there, you know how fantastic it is for kids. For those of you who haven’t, it’s like a fountain. On steroids. Lots and lots and lots of steroids! Unfortunately though, Master Two took a bit of a stumble, and clonked the very base of his nose (as in, where it meets his upper lip) so hard that his nose kept bleeding for some time. Poor kid. So we retreated to the safety of the adjacent beach. Which started at low tide, and kept getting lower and lower and lower. So mud flats and rock pools kept the kids busy for the rest of the day. Leaving me time to crotchet. And think.

I like being self-employed. I like being “Mistress of my own destiny”. I absolutely LOVE the fact that hubby has a brilliant, well-paying job that allows me to experiment like this. I’m enjoying the independence. The responsibility. The challenges. The learning curves. Thirty-seven-and-a-half and I feel like I’m finally “growing up”.

It’s taken a while!

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#blog12daysxmas

Not the best start

It’s Boxing Day. Early. Courtesy Master Two in the next bedroom who decided to wake up screaming at 4.35. Thanks, little man! Not exactly what I was hoping for when I finally crashed at just gone midnight. (I thought I’d better have a *fairly* early night as the two previous ones were the ‘past 1am’ variety.) So I was hoping for at least another hour or so, but instead I got to time to think. Reflect that another Christmas is over. Write a Boxing Day shopping list.
Plan my day.
And then I decided to check my HootSuite streams. (Am REALLY starting to like the convenience that my iPhone brings!)
And a conversation between @fionawb and @katiejf made me realize that I missed #blog12daysxmas yesterday. Whoops!!! Somehow in the busyness of the day, I didn’t even turn on my computer! So here I am, tardy but apologetic and raring to go.
I’m starting to notice that that’s actually my attitude to a lot of things in life, actually. “Bring it!” enthusiasm, perseverance, “get it done, and do it right” kind of thinking. Which I guess I’m kinda happy with, cos it gets things done.
Case in point – my son’s scarf. (Wha – huh??! It’s summer, silly!!! 25 degrees outside!! Yeah, I know. I’m getting there!)
I blogged some time back about the happy completion of my eldest’s crocheted blanket. It had taken five years, so finishing it was rather noteworthy! But to appease Miss Three, I immediately started (and finished within a few days) a scarf for her. It used the identical pattern to the scarf I had made for Miss Six some time earlier, so she was rapt.
A number of months later now, and I’m about a fifth of the way through her crotcheted blanket. (Not bad going, if I do say so myself!) But I’ve made nothing yet for Master Two. And I like to be fair as much as possible, so I decided late Christmas Eve to try making him a scarf too. Had some spare blue wool with me, so thought I’d give it a go. Try and finish it in time to get it into his stocking on *the big day*.
And I did. Considering I’m single-mum-ing it at the moment (the surf’s going off its nut back home, so hubby’s enjoying it for a day or so) with three kids under seven, I’m pretty stoked with my efforts. (Admittedly, he didn’t finish unwrapping the gifts in his stocking until early evening, so I had yesterday to work on it as well! But it got done. Tassels and all!)
So that was my Christmas. Scarf-making at the beach, at home in the bedroom, in front of the TV and at the meal table, in the midst of dressing, cooking, cleaning, treasure hunting, arbitrating, negotiating, and all of the other ‘ing’ stings I did yesterday. Phew!
So now it’s on to Boxing Day, and I’m up for another day packed full of fun and busyness. How ’bout you?

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#blog12daysxmas Uncategorized University studies Work

So it’s been a while…

I knew I hadn’t blogged in awhile. I just hadn’t realized that it was three months worth of ‘while’! I guess it’s a bit of an indication of how busy I’ve been. Busy with kids, with hubby, with growth in my business (which has its own name now, rather than being just part of my own personal ABN,) busy with the 7th (of 12) course in my Masters, and other general stuff at home – cubby house movement and garden bed rearranging being the main focus of the September school holidays.
On the work front, I’ve created a campaign for the St Paul’s Christmas holidays, a campaign for the expanded St James Kindy, and compiled a 2011 yearbook that was twice the size of its 2010 counterpart. And I’ve also started (almost daily) blogging for Bloxham Marketing, which has been fun. Phew! Nuff said.
And that brings us to the Christmas holidays, and the memory of last year’s #blog12daysxmas – which was my real foray into the world of blogging in the first place.
So now I’m wondering if I’m up for the challenge this year. Or even if there IS a #blog12daysxmas challenge this year!

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#blogjune my novel-in-progress Uncategorized

Day 2 post-#blogjune challenge – in which I sleep in until 6.15am

Day 2 since #blogjune and I think I’ll try maintaining this ‘habit’ for as long as I can. The ‘non-assignment writing’ writing that I’ve been doing recently (as I mentioned to BFF -!! – yesterday) has already resulted in more ‘metacognition’ (her word! One of the many reason’s she’s an inspiration…) and re-drafting thoughts in my head once they’ve been thunk. Pretty cool.

So anyway, I also thought I’d aim for morning blogging. Was inspired by a post or two on writing (thanks to @AlisonWnz for the link in my tweetstream!) so for today there’s not a whole heap to reflect on… unless you count the morning sleep “in” until 6.15. At which point I had to get up because Miss 3 decided to remove her nighttime nappy but miss the toilet, spoiling last night’s efforts. But that’s okay. 6.15am for me is 45 minutes later than my normal ‘sleep-ins’!

So now – off to do some writing! See you tomorrow, in which I may (or may not) report on my progress…

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#blogjune momentous events

Blogging June

This is the thirtieth time I’ve posted on my blog this month. I’ve done it! I’ve managed to blog June! Admittedly, not every day had its own post. In fact, well over a third of the month I didn’t manage to post at all. But thanks to an easier workload in this final week, I have been able to catch up, adding numbers of posts per day. (Deciding to finish that short story that’s been bugging me for a couple of months helped, too! Otherwise I think I may have just been filling in countless numbers of memes…)

So, today’s a day for congratulations. My final post in what has been, at times, a bit of an epic challenge. From family illness, through to a massive assignment load, then to worrying over being so far behind with it all, hence to memes, and then to Devilish Detail, it was been quite a bit of a journey! One I’m glad to have taken… but happy also to have finished. And yes, I think I’ll join in again next year – maybe I’ll be more practised in blogging by then, and can aim for greater consistency?!!!

Thanks, dear readers, for taking this journey with me.

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#blogjune

Reality blues meme

Thanks to @jobeaz for inspiring this post.

What I would like to be doing:

1. relaxing

2. writing

3. re-arranging my home to suit my current family life, rather than the family life I like to think I have

4. enjoying being with my kids

5. reading a book while sitting in the sun

What I am doing instead:

1. worrying about money (well, lack of it, actually)

2. yelling at my kids when they interrupt my sitting in front of my gorgeous Macbook Pro, in the sun

3. listening to the birds, and the breeze through the trees (man, it’s wonderful living in paradise)

4. thinking that I may have to get up soon and fix some lunch. And then maybe think about doing some marketing work that I said I’d do today.

5. preparing to console Miss 3, who’s currently on the losing end of an argument with Miss 6 in the sandpit. This could get sandy. I should maybe think about running a bath for them as well (refer number 4)

… actually, I may be one of the fortunate ones, whose “What I would like to be doing” isn’t too far from the ” what I actually am doing”. Thank you, Lord, for that revelation!

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#blogjune Random thoughts

Collage goodness

At 6.15 this morning, I called the childcare centre. I wanted to check what was meant to happen over school holidays.

Whoops. My younger two kids were expected, and I was going to be charged for the day. So what the hey – I’m paying; they like going; so let them go!

Upshot: Miss 6 and I get six hours together. Alone. (Wow. That hasn’t happened in, like, a millenium!) So. Movies? No. Shopping? No. Her choice? “Let’s do some collage, Mummy!!!” (Great…)

I couldn’t be bothered driving all the way home, only to drive back out to pick up the younger two again, so “doing some collage” involved buying cheap craft stuff from the closest $2 shop. We then wandered over to Caboolture Library, where Miss 6 chose for us to sit in side-by-side carrels for our collage creating.

  

Hours later, she was happy. I was happy. We headed off to collect the younger two, trailing paper covered in glue, matchsticks, butterflies and flowers.

What an unusual day. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?!

(All photos were taken by Miss 6 on my iPod. They’re un-edited. Not bad, hey?! I especially like the way she chose to do an extreme close-up of the chair cover. I guess the pattern, and the colour, intrigued her?)

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#blogjune Random thoughts

Weird things that can kill you…

I read recently in a friend’s blog that in France, 1518, 400 people died in a ‘dance plague’. Yes – they danced til they died, of heart attacks, exhaustion, and the like. Apparently they didn’t want to, and were pleading for onlookers to help them. Strange.

It got me wondering. I wonder what other ‘normal’ activities have been known to kill people, en masse, like that? Have there been cases of mass plagues of ‘harvesting’? How about ‘washing the dishes’? ‘Skipping’? ‘Nagging?’ I wonder!

Anyone out there know of any?

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#blog12daysxmas #blogjune Random thoughts

And again…

I find myself unable to blog on a daily basis due to illness and busyness.

What is it about this month that has caused my inability to keep this blog happening on a daily basis?!!! Looking back, I know it’s been filled with both illness (that vomiting bug in the first couple of weeks wiped me out!) and busyness (Uni assignments, work deadlines etc) but has this month been more trying than the others or is it just run-of-the-mill reflection of how my life is at the moment? I’m not entirely sure. Maybe taking this #blogjune challenge was not as realistic as I thought it would be. It’s funny – I did the #blog12daysxmas challenge with no hiccups, in spite of floods keeping my family stranded in 1770 where staples and petrol ran out within days, and prices of ferry rides to Bundaberg (ha! Where THEY were flooded worse than us!) skyrocketed. I even managed the #octshowntell last year. So what is it about this one that I just couldn’t manage it? Is it that 12 days, or one story a week, is do-able, but 30 consecutive days is not? Hmmm…?

Well, I’m not particularly impressed with myself. At church this morning, we were regaled with a delightful reading from “Reuben Ramsay OR The Boy That Nobody Wanted”. A 1849 tale of a boy who looks into the mirror after deciding that nobody wants him, and then realising that he doesn’t even want himself. The Christian influence enters in the form of a lady, who tells him that what he was looking into when he realised that he didn’t even want himself was actually the ‘mind’s mirror’. As in, he wasn’t looking at the reflection of his physical person, but his personality. It was this – his personality – that he didn’t like, and he could change this by giving his heart back to Jesus, who made his heart in the first place.

An accurate reflection of us all, I would suspect, when we truly self-reflect. Well, it is an accurate reflection for me, anyway. I’d prefer to see something a lot nicer in there. Someone who keeps the commitments she makes, for example, to blog daily for #blogjune. Someone who doesn’t keep on stuffing up, publicly, and having to apologise and start over. Wouldn’t that be great. Maybe I should re-read that book, and take the advice offered.

 

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#blogjune Random thoughts

Se7en

And this’ll probably be the last for today, I think… (Disclaimer: the contents of these lists are not necessarily in order. They probably change in priority according to my moods anyway!)

Seven Things that Scare Me:

  1. Australia’s worsening national debt
  2. Preventable mistakes
  3. Becoming the victim of eye-dentity theft
  4. Horror movies
  5. Not being the mum that my kids need me to be
  6. Loss of people / relationships I hold dear
  7. Spiders

Seven Things I Like:

  1. Hubby and our three little ‘uns (d’uh!)
  2. Cheesecake. Oh, and Raffaello.
  3. Holidays
  4. Plane trips
  5. Singing
  6. Teaching
  7. Friends

Seven Random Facts About Me:

  1. I got my motorbike license before I got my car license.
  2. I’m very comfortable sitting on the floor. In fact, I often prefer it to furniture.
  3. I’m rather conceited about the metabolism I inherited from my mother. I show this by eating dessert while watching The Biggest Loser. How bad is that!
  4. I’m not particularly good at keeping fish alive. In a tank, anyway. In the fishpond, they seem to be completely fine. For ages.
  5. I smoked for a while when I was 19. I killed the cravings (when I stopped) by eating a snickers bar each time I wanted to light up.
  6. When I was in Uni (the first time) I wanted to get a large tattoo on my upper arm. A panther. I’m glad now that I didn’t.
  7. I used to be in leadership in a cult. SOOOO happy now that I’m out!

Seven Things I want to Do Before I Die:

  1. Hang-glide
  2. See my favourite places with my own eyes. Israel, Rome, the Kimberleys, the Daintree.
  3. See my kids grown and happy in strong, positive relationships
  4. Be published. On paper. (Better hurry up with that one, hey!)
  5. Ride a camel
  6. Learn to ski
  7. Umm… it was stretching it to get to six!

Seven Things I Can Do Well:

  1. Multitask
  2. Bluff
  3. Proofread and edit
  4. Explain concepts so that others understand
  5. Comfort my children
  6. Play violin
  7. Organise

Seven Things I Can’t Do But Wish I Could:

  1. Turn back time
  2. Forgive myself more easily
  3. Be about a zillion times more patient
  4. Be just a little taller
  5. Break through glass ceilings. Been there, tried that. It hurt my head.
  6. Fit more hours into my day
  7. Win first division lotto. Still trying though…

Seven Phrases I’m Known to Use:

  1. Seriously?
  2. Just wait…
  3. Could you please…
  4. You’ve got to be kidding!
  5. Oh sh*t.
  6. No, sweetheart. It’s not your turn for Mummy time.
  7. Oh my God…