Gecko got a Girlfriend!

Meet gecko:

He is a bookmark.

But he also likes to go exploring while we read:

He is a year old now, and maybe he'd like someone to hang out with. So I made him a girlfriend! 

They like hanging out in books: 

And see the little corkscrew tail sticking out?

I made the blue one in an evening, it's a very quick and satisfying project! The crochet pattern for it is free, you can find it here. Note that the pattern uses US abbreviations, so an sc is a single crochet stitch, which is called a double crochet in the UK. Not entirely sure why! oh and a half double crochet and double crochet would be a half treble and treble crochet in UK terms respectively.

A couple of changes I made to the pattern: 

When I made the legs, they felt a bit flimsy just stopping when the toes are done, so carried on and did single crochet stitches (double crochet in UK), all the way along the length of the leg, one sc in each chain, and then fastened off when I got to the body of the gecko.  

For the tongue I used a strand of yarn threaded through the very end of the head, and just did simple knots in it. I can't for the life of me get felt to stick to yarn. I suspect that is due to a lack of a glue gun. I bought sew-on googly eyes because again, I can't get normal ones to stick on yarn with glue.

Also, I used a 4mm crochet hook and DK weight acrylic yarn. You could also use cotton yarn and a different size hook. Just whatever you have in the house. The gauge doesn't matter, but the size of the gecko will depend on the hook size and yarn weight.

I'm excited to use my new little gecko for my reading. I wonder what adventures she'll get up to? They always go exploring when we open the books! 


Happy crocheting! 

Linking up to:

 

Stationery is my biggest weakness

Close second comes fabric and craft materials. Colourful things make me swooooon.

Remember this list? 

************************************** 

Here is the list of areas that I need to work on so far:

1.  Books

2.  Stationery

3.  Paperwork 

4.  Clothes - attempt 33 items including outerwear and accessories

5.  Craft materials

6.  Tools and electricals

7.  Decorative items

8.  Bookcase in the study

9.  Crates on the floor of study

******** original post here ********


I knew number 2 would be most difficult, because I've been pretty much addicted to stationery, pens, pencils, crayons etc., since I was a child.  I didn't have loads of dolls or Barbies (I had 5 when other kids had 50), but I always had multiple colouring books and lots and lots and lots of crayons. I loved it. Now it includes every type of folder, notebook and pen imaginable!

The dilemma here is that I'm also trying to simplify my life and eliminate as much of the visual clutter as possible. I finally psyched myself up for the challenge of de-cluttering the stationery. My reasoning was that if I succeeded at this challenge I could do anything.

I began by going through every room and collecting every pen, pencil, folder, scissors, etc. that I could find and dumped it all in the living room. 

This is what I ended up with (*hides behind the sofa in shame*)

Now, I reckon that must be half a car load right there. Or close. Erm yeah. That lot doesn't really fit in with the lifestyle I'm trying to achieve, so I started going through it. It was a lot harder than I thought. Turns out I'm attached to my stuff. 

The challenge took a long time (I struggled with it over 2 days). I managed to let go of this stuff: 

Folders, pencils, pens, coloured paper and so on. It's a start, but I will probably have to do it again in the future. It made me realise how hard it is to declutter an area that you still value, or is somehow part of your upbringing/childhood. 

The things I kept, I was determined to display. I wondered why I'd kept all the lovely colourful pencils hidden, when they could be displayed and enjoyed, even just by looking over at the shelf!

So I set about collecting some glass jars, and chose the items that were colourful in my remaining collection.

Here they are in their new home: 
  

I look over at my shelf lots of times every day and each time, it makes me happy to see the lovely jars with all the colourful pens in them!  The leaves at the back of the shelf are a result of a random evening of watercolouring. It definitely brightens up the shelf.

I'm done with stationery organisation for now so that means I can cross it off my list!

1.  Books

2.  Stationery

3.  Paperwork 

4.  Clothes - attempt 33 items including outerwear and accessories

5.  Craft materials

6.  Tools and electricals

7.  Decorative items

8.  Bookcase in the study

9.  Crates on the floor of study

I've conquered a couple more on that list, but the fun bit is writing about it!


Anyone else been de-cluttering an area that's difficult, for any reason? I'd love to hear about it!

To the Greengrocers We Go

I have to admit that we've succumbed to the junk food a little bit lately. No wonder, since our fruit bowl looked like this today:

One sad, lonely little kiwi all on its own in the big fruit bowl. Today, I thought I'd go and get him some friends to keep him company, and satisfy my craving for fresh fruit. We had the best peaches we've ever had from the Bristol Harbour festival the other week and I wish I'd got more.

Here's hoping that this lot will be just as tasty! 

Little kiwi doesn't feel quite so lonely anymore :)


This time, I've restored some beauty to the fruit bowl. Now to eat them!


 

 


 

Morning biscuits

 or cakes, or cookies, or fruit parcels. Whichever you prefer! 

Welcome to my first recipe post! 

The idea behind this baking session was to attempt to imitate some biscuit type/cereal bar things we had from Sainsbury's that I really like. I'm keen to get away from all the artificial ingredients that are in cereal bars, and stick to a few natural ones instead. I hate it when seemingly ok products have an ingredients list the size of my hand (in tiny writing). I'm trying hard to introduce some healthy snacks into my diet, and this was an attempt at the first step. Ok, I didn't end up with anything close to cereal bars, but the result is deliciously fruity, and not too sweet. 

I adapted an old Icelandic recipe for these, and decided that I'd do half cinnamon swirl biscuits, and half raisin/apple slices. Since the recipe is in Icelandic, I thought I'd translate it for you! The raisin/apple filling for half of the biscuits is completely improvised, I made it up as I went along with no recipe input at all.

Here goes! Feel free to comment below and ask questions if anything isn't clear. 

Ingredients

Pastry:

250g    plain flour

50g      cold butter (I used salted, but maybe unsalted would be better), cut into cubes

2 tsp    sugar

2 tsp    baking powder

1         egg

100ml  milk

Cinnamon swirl filling:

25g      melted butter

2 tbsp  sugar  

1 tsp    ground cinnamon

Raisin and apple filling:

2         granny smith apples (or other crunchy, tart apples), cut into small pieces      
25g     butter
25g     raisins or sultanas
1 tsp   ground cinnamon (or less, if you prefer - personally, I can't get enough of it)
2 tsp   sugar


Method

1.  Mix the flour, baking powder and sugar together in a bowl

 2.  Cut the cold butter into cubes, and add to the bowl

3. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips, until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.




 











4. Add the egg, combine, and then slowly add the milk to the mix. Knead the dough until it has a smooth playdough-like consistency. You might need to add a sprinkling of flour here and there if the dough is too sticky. 

Cut the dough in half, wrap each half in clingfilm and set aside to cool in the fridge. This pastry can be used to make both types of biscuits in the photo above.


 

*At this point, my camera ran out of battery, so the rest of the photos are taken with my phone. Excuse any reduction in quality :)

For the cinnamon swirls:


 1. First, mix the cinnamon (1 tsp) and the sugar (2 tbsp) in a small bowl.

 2. Take one half of the dough out of the fridge and roll it into a rectangle shape. You want it to be quite thin, about 2-3mm.

3. Melt 25g butter in a saucepan, and brush it all over the flat dough (I only used about half of my melted butter)

4. Next, take your bowl of cinnamon-sugar and evenly sprinkle all of it onto your rectangle. The butter will make it stick.

5. Roll your dough *lengthways* into a long sausage shape.

 6. Cut your sausage shape into pieces, about 1.5cm (approx 1/2 inch) across. 

 7. Take each piece and lay it flat side down onto a greased baking sheet (baking parchment is fine too). Slightly flatten each swirl with your fingers. 



 8. Bake in a preheated oven at 200 C (400F, gas mark 6) for 15-20 minutes, or until the swirls are light golden brown.



Onto my improvised raisin and apple filling!

For the raisin and apple filling:

A reminder of the ingredients:

2         granny smith apples (or other crunchy, tart apples), cut into small pieces      
25g     butter
25g     raisins or sultanas
1 tsp   ground cinnamon (or less, if you prefer - personally, I can't get enough of it)
2 tsp   sugar


1. Cut your apples into small pieces. You could use cooking apples (bramley) for this recipe, but you would need more sugar.












2. Melt the butter in a saucepan on a low-medium heat

3. Add your apple pieces, raisins/sultanas, ground cinnamon and sugar. Cook it on a low-medium heat for about 15 minutes, until the apples are soft, and *I think* have  caramelised. I have never been shown what caramelising looks like, so I'm guessing here. But it goes kinda gooey. Make sure to do this slowly. Hence the 15 minute cooking time.


4. This is what it should look like, roughly, when you've cooked it enough. See the glistening, gooey, yumminess?

My flash went off and I couldn't avoid it. Phone's fault :P






 


5. Go get the other half of your dough, and roll it out into a rectangle. I failed at rolling rectangles today, so I just cut off the wonky sides to get a nice rectangle shape (of course saving the cut off for some odd-shaped parcels at the end!). Then I cut the big rectangle into 5 smaller rectangles.

6. Get your mix, and put about 2-3 teaspoons of it on each rectangle, as shown. Make sure you leave enough space to fold the rectangle in half.  

7. Fold each rectangle in half towards you, and with a fork, press down on both layers together at the edges, to close the pastry. Go all the way round so all the yummy mix is cosy inside! 

8. Once you've closed all the parcels, score the top with a knife, I would say until you see the mix. Don't make the slits too big or you'll get mix everywhere when it cooks. I didn't score mine enough and some of my parcels ended up opening at the sides. If you leave a small slit open in the top, the bubbles have somewhere to go and that means your parcel stays closed!

9. Finally, brush the tops of the parcels with some milk, so they go nice and golden in the oven!




10. Bake at 200 C (400F, Gas mark 6) for 15 minutes, or until golden. This is what they should look like:














Finally, leave them to cool for a few minutes, and open them up to see all the yummy filling! And then gobble it up!

Let me know if you try this recipe and how it works out for you! I'd love to hear about it in the comments!



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On Simplicity

As I said in my previous post, I've been thinking a lot about simplicity over the last couple of months. I think living a simple life has great potential for helping to improve my situation. I've been so overwhelmed with stuff and things to do lately that I've had to cut back drastically so I don't end up running myself into the ground.... again. It's more about making the right choices, and listening to what my body is telling me, than just cutting back on everything altogether.        

In my mind, the first thing I have to tackle is my environment. That includes my flat, my stuff, my clothes. A calm and peaceful environment makes for a calm and peaceful mind, right?

 

As yet, I haven't made any real progress towards a simpler life. I still see clutter everywhere I go, and I don't know how to get rid of it. I've been reading and gobbling up 3 writers on simplicity recently, and am inspired by their efforts. Leo Babauta from zenhabits  gears his writing towards productivity in daily life, but so much of it applies to life in general. The Power of Less is an awesome book. Kelly, who I've been reading for a while now, has just started a mission of doing one small thing every day for a year to simplify and reduce her consumption. On her new blog, the year of less, she posts tasks that she is completing towards consuming less on a daily basis. The latest edition to my reading list "be more with less"  is a wonderful source of inspiration. 

Through Kelly's blog I stumbled upon this website, project 333 which is by the same author as "be more with less", but focuses exclusively on clothing and fashion. I got motivated to try it, but first of all I counted the items of clothing I have. The number came to approximately 140 items. Holy moly. And yet I find myself complaining that I have nothing to wear. Sound familiar?

So off I went when I had a day off, and started building my wardrobe on the idea that I would live with 33 items of clothing for 3 months. I haven't reached that target yet, but I cut it down to about 40-50 items, not incl shoes, outerwear and accessories. I packed up the rest in a suitcase so it's out of the way. The website explains the approach in detail. The amazing thing is, I actually found clothes that I like, but never wear because I always go for the most familiar clothes. Ironically, I now feel like I have more options with less stuff! Brilliant.

LIke I said, the first thing I want to focus on is the visual clutter around me. At the moment, it's everywhere. So, one path towards simplicity is getting rid of the excess.  I will be posting on the topic a bit from now on, because it is important to me, and most of all, I enjoy the feeling I get from it.

I realised with the clothing project that I really need concrete tasks to do, with limits and boundaries. Otherwise, I get totally overwhelmed, racing from one room to another, bits here and bits there, and never accomplish anything. This way, I will write about it and have a list of projects on this blog that I can tick off as I go along.

Here is the list of areas that I need to work on so far:

1.  Books

2.  Stationery

3.  Paperwork 

4.  Clothes - attempt 33 items including outerwear and accessories

5.  Craft materials

6.  Tools and electricals

7.  Decorative items

8.  Bookcase in the study

9.  Crates on the floor of study 

Note that I haven't yet placed limits on these, and I believe that is important. To illustrate, say that I count my books and I have 30.  If I put the goal as "reducing the amount of books", I could in theory just get rid of one book, and that would be my goal completed (and believe me, I find it easy to come up with those excuses). But that doesn't help the overall goal of having less stuff.  On the other hand, if I say "I will get rid of 5 non-fiction and 10 fiction books" then that makes the goal very concrete, and I will know for sure when I have achieved it.  If it still feels like I have too many, then I can decide on a lower limit. 

By the way, I'm not trying to get rid of everything, and don't suggest anyone does. Or even to let go of stuff that is important, just for the sake of the mission. I want to get to a place where I have less visual clutter, less disturbance, and less frustration when things end up on the floor. I want to make it easier to pick things up, and know exactly where they go. 

Once I take inventory, I will update the list with the goals, and then I will be able to cross them off the list once I've achieved them.  

A little reminder, to myself: 

 

 

Until next time!

 

-Linda 

 

 

 

 

 

30 things in 30 days

I've been thinking a lot about simpilicity, decluttering and living a more stress and frustration free life for a while now. I will admit now that I am not the best when it comes to picking up after myself, but I also get frustrated when things are all over the place. As you can imagine this happens a lot. Now I've started making concrete plans to make simplicity happen. I wanted to share the story with you, mainly to make me accountable for it, and give me motivation to carry on! 

The first project I'm sharing here is 30 things in 30 days.  This is based on an idea I found on Kelly's blog, here. During August, I'm getting rid of one item (or a group) every day and posting them to facebook, if they don't get snapped up there, then I will Freecycle them or take them to the charity shop.

This might be a slower process than doing the whole flat at once, but I think it's easier to do it bit-by-bit, and therefore easier to sustain throughout the month.  

This project falls under a bigger goal of mine which is 

getting rid of clutter --> less mess --> beautiful surroundings

and which also fits within the theme of my blog! 

I'm excited for the results, and I know the decluttering will be an ongoing process. Anyone else attempting to banish the clutter in specific ways?