Sunday, August 25, 2019

Sunday Chat on Knitting and Reading Updates

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I got more knitting done on my spiral sock using the Patons Kroy sock yarn and following the Patons pattern on Ravelry. My goal is to finish the sock this week then get started on the second sock and finish it before the end of the Summer. I can already feel the Fall chill in the air and it makes me excited for Fall. This morning I felt focused on knitting, reading, and making goals. this is the time of year that I get more in touch with my goals and spend more time focusing on reaching my goals and reevaluating how I spend my time.

Progress on the spiral sock 



I have still been reading The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory and What to Expect Before You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff. I am learning a lot about how to get ready for a baby and it is getting me so excited. I am not going to start trying quite yet but it is so interesting learning more about it before the time comes.

What are you knitting and reading this week?


Thank you for visiting and I hope that you have a great week!


Monday, August 19, 2019

Camping at Sauble Beach

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. This weekend I went to Sauble Beach in Ontario Canada. I have gone there for camping once before with my family and it was good to be back. We were camping from Friday August 16th, to Sunday August 18th. It was my parents, my sister and both our partners came along too. We used two campsites beside each other and had three tents and a kitchen tent. It is always a lot of fun spending time together camping and it is a trip I look forward to each summer. We have been going as a family for over 20 years now. It is so nice to be outside in nature and just sitting reading magazines and books,and chatting. The food was so good too. My mom and dad prepared shrimp and potato and onions and mushroom with salad the first night, a veggie hot dog for lunch the next day and a veggie burger for dinner. My dad made scrambled eggs for breakfast Sunday morning. Both mornings we had coffee that my dad made on the Coleman stove. That is very appreciated and it is nice that we still can have our coffee in the morning.



 We went to the beach on Saturday and it was such a beautiful day and we were happy to have a hot and sunny day that we could go to the beach and enjoy it. Many years camping at Craigleith in Collingwood, Ontario we did not get really nice weather to go to the beach and would go when it was cloudy and cool but this year we felt more inspired to go into the water and jump with the waves and just enjoy the day.
Sauble beach
Messy hair don't care

Liam and I got a new tent from Canadian tire for this year for the trip. It is a Coleman 6-person tent and it held up really well on our first night through the thunderstorm. I was really happy with how spacious it was compared to our 3 person tent we had been using before and that was too small for Liam as he is pretty tall!
Our big red tent in the distance
My parents getting breakfast ready and their tent

We went to check out the Sauble Falls and they are so nice and it was peaceful there. There were a lot of people walking in the falls and jumping off to swim which we thought was dangerous to do. In my opinion the falls should just be enjoyed at a distance and not be a swimming pool for people.
Sauble Falls

Sauble Falls

My dad getting shots of the falls

My sister and I snapping selfies 

I didn't bring my knitting with me on the trip which was odd for me I just did not get organized soon enough. I brought my book I am currently reading The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory and it was the perfect book to bring on the trip as it is so fun and light and keeps me interested in what happens next.

How is your summer going?

Thank you for stopping by! Have a great day!


Sunday, August 4, 2019

KonMari Method: Tidying up Komono Items

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. This week I knitted a bit more of the spiral socks, but I was pretty busy and did not finish the first sock yet. I read more of The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory this morning and I am really loving the book and the characters. I decided to continue on with the KonMari method yesterday, I had stopped for awhile in July it was a busy month with going away on vacation and visiting family and all the busy-ness of summer. I brought all my miscellaneous items into the living room and dumped them on the floor. I brought items from the office, my bedroom, the bathroom, and the living room and dining room. I will be tackling the kitchen another weekend because there is a lot in there too and it will take me a couple of days. The cupboards are packed and I have trouble getting to things and need a way better storage system than I have. Especially for chips and snacks right now I just toss them into the cupboard where there is space and it gets harder to see what is in there.


While going through my Komono items I thought about how much stuff I had on my living room floor. It looks like a lot less when items are hidden away in drawers and containers. Bringing everything out in the open onto the floor helps to actually see how much we have. I was thinking how each of us has our own piles of items that we need to make our lives go smoother and we use in order to live fuller and happier lives. I realized in the end how little items I actually need in order to go about my everyday life and the rest is clutter and keeping me from living in a tidy and orderly home. I came upon some items that brought back some memories and said thank you to the person who gifted it to me and gave it away. It was a freeing exercise as this person is not in my life anymore but I held onto the gift because of the fact that they had given it to me.

I organized my yarn stash as well and am going to give away some yarn skeins I won't be using. Before I organized it, there were some tangled skeins and I had some that I hadn't used in a long time...

Before

 Now it is organized and I only have the yarn that I will use.

After

Below is a keep pile of my favorite artists CD's. I am giving away more than half of the CD's I owned. I also kept a couple of tapes I had recorded with my sister when we were younger. I want to try to convert it to be able to play it on my computer someday.
 
Below is a wicker basket where the CD's lived and now it is way more organized now that I am keeping only CD's that spark joy and I feel happy owning. I also kept my Game boy advance and a couple of games.


I had so many pens and pencils and ended up throwing out some that didn't work and giving some away. I had a whole extra Ziploc bag full of pens and pencils as well as those pictured below. As Marie Kondo says you should get rid of the excess now so you can live an organized life then buy them as you need them. I like this mentality. So much of the time we hold onto items that we don't need in fear of not having what we need. I was worried that I would run out of pens or not have what I need, but you can always buy some more pens right before you are about to run out.


I had so many body lotions and body butters and realized I did not need that many. I was gifted  body lotions and body butters a lot last Christmas and still had some from other years. In the end I threw out the ones that had been open as I did not know when I had used them last and kept only a few lotions and butters. These really built up for me and become clutter because I only use lotion in the Winter when my skin is dry and the rest of the year I don't use it. 



I got rid of some products I wasn't using and had more space to set up my nail polish and body butters so I can see them all easy and access them. Before my nail polish was spread out on my dresser and I couldn't see them easily. 


 I arranged some of my planner supplies in this wicker basket and put it beside my desk and my planner is lying in front of it so it is easy to access. The rest of my stickers are in a folder and I am considering putting them all in the basket because it is not easy managing the heavy folder after all.


I also went through holiday stuff and picked out a lot of the decor items that I could give away. Each year I buy something new for Fall and Christmas decor,  so I needed to make choices on what I would be keeping.  I also reorganized my Christmas ornaments so that they are in a container instead of multiple bags where we first placed them in their ornament boxes and put them into the bags but it was not organized in the closet.

In the end the stuff is just that, stuff... that clutters our lives if they don't bring us joy or fill a need. I do feel lighter and better after this weekend of going through more of my belongings. Next step is to work on decluttering and organizing the kitchen, then the final step is going through sentimental items and I am finished going through all the organization steps in the KonMari method. I will be sharing how everything looks after I am finished the steps and which storage solutions I use, and how this process helps me to keep organized once I am finished. I will also discuss how I feel about continuing with this process in the future. I think this has been so good so far and I really think that bringing all like items together from all rooms in the house works for me well. I like it because I can tackle all the items of one category at once and not have to deal with the same items in multiple rooms. I can see myself using this system from now on to keep organized as it has worked really well for me so far.

Thank you for visiting today! have you tried the KonMari method and does it work for you?

Have a great day!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...