Late November

It's late November already.  It feels to me like the year has rushed by but the natural world is taking it all in it's stride.  Well for the most part.  It is unseasonably mild some mornings and while I walk to the stables in a coat and gloves I'm often too warm before I arrive. But it's dark, so dark in the mornings and going out into the blackness without a coat would seem reckless somehow.

This morning I took the torch but I knew I wouldn't really need it.  By the time I had fed puss and strewn a scoop of nuts across the yard for the ponies to pick at the dense blackness was beginning to lift just a little. But this is November still and the skies have stayed a steel grey with just the occasional glimpse of blue and white on the clouds, all day long.  It's windy too and the clouds scurry ahead of the wind, brushed by the increasingly bare tree boughs.

I am co-inciding with the rooks awakening now and usually half way through the stable routine of filling haynets and waterbuckets, clearing the manure from the field and sweeping, there will be a rush of cawing noise as they erupt from the rookery up the hill and flood down over the field; so many huge bits of black paper twirling and twisting in the sky.  They have an aim.  They are always heading east across the village but they make their way in huge swirls, dipping and rising, chafing at each other as they go. 

The hens are still asleep - their solar powered door not yet receiving enough light to wind up and let them out for the day.  It can be so dark both ends of the day now that I don't see the hens at all so this morning I opened the large door briefly to check they were still there - still ok - no-one had 'dropped off the perch' so to speak.  All were well.  A little huffy at being disturbed though.  An amount of twitching and turning round on the perches and fluffing of feathers left me in no doubt that they were Asleep, if you don't mind.

Tonight when I go back all will be in bed again.  Toby will be the first into the stable to check out whether I have put the hay down yet and should he throw all the hay out of the box just to see if I have put the pony nuts at the bottom today instead of the top.  I never do put the pony nuts at the bottom but you never know and Toby would hate to think he had missed the opportunity of a pony nut if there was one to be had.

And then at the weekend, when work has stopped calling me so early, I will go down in proper daylight and be surprised.  What's happened?  Why does the field look different?  Has someone cut down some trees?  Oh, no, it's just light - daylight - full daylight and my little world will briefly seem a different place.

Amazingly Efficient Email Management

This post was just going to be titled 'Email Management' but that's not very exciting is it - and I have to say I am so impressed with my new system of email management.

I have tried various systems over the years including:

- regular weeding, i.e. unsubscribing, of newsletters that I don't read (I still do this)

- tagging emails

- filtering emails (both of these are part of the new system)

- only answering emails certain times of the day (this really does work but my business being a techy one so much of the correspondence is email and I didn't want to export all of my emails to my project planner and clutter it up)

The new system

What's the new system then? I can hear you asking.  Well it is simply this:

• ensure that you have different emails for work and personal stuff.  In fact I have two main jobs so I have three email addresses that I use regularly - two work and one personal
  
• set up rules within your email program.  All email programs will do this but sometimes they are called filters.  I use Gmail so I set up filters.
  
• filter your emails to go into their respective folders.  So I leave all personal mail in the inbox and work mail is filtered out into named folders.  Then when I am working on a specific job, I can just work from that email box and see emails relating only to that work.

Simple isn't it?  But I am so impressed by how effective it is.  Although I do flip out to look at other emails in other folders, it is much easier to be more disciplined if you can only see emails relating to your current work.  And I have definitely become more focussed by organising my emails this way. And it means I can stay working from my email box without feeling overwhelmed.

Bullet journalling with The Arc

I have really got into bullet journalling this year.  I have been keeping a journal - or diary as I think of it - for many many years now and also a planner.  So I wasn't really sure how bullet journalling would fit in, but I had been working on and tweaking my planner layouts for quite a while.  What I didn't realise was that I was moving towards bullet journalling, almost organically!

What is bullet journalling?

Bullet journalling is a way of keeping a record or note of - well practically anything really.  There is a good introduction to bullet journalling here:  http://bulletjournal.com/  but if you want something rather prettier (and really inspiring) take a look at Boho Berry.  You can use bullet journals for to do lists, notes, tracking various things, ideas, artwork, all kinds of things.

It seems that many people keep everything in their one journal but I am still running a planner and a 'diary' which I use as follows:

What's in my Planner

• Overview of the week
• daily 'to do' list
• appointments
• a 'quick view' of the main events of the day
• a year list
• a six month list
• then various layouts for specific things such as holidays or projects I am working on

What's in my diary

• an overview of the day
• moods and feelings
• mood tracker
• moon and weather tracker

What do I use?

Many people buy specific bullet journals with the grid background.  My diary is a standard lined notebook and my planner is an Arc folder from Staples.  I have used Arc folders for many years and love the flexibility that you can add, remove and move pages as you clip the pages in on a ring system.  I purchased a punch so that I can print my own pages and then punch them to fit in the planner.  This gives me full flexibility in the way I lay out the planner pages and they do change quite regularly.  Below is my latest layout for Spring.  The grid background is new (today!) so I will see whether that works or whether I prefer a plain background which is what I had before.

My Arc is A5 so the sheet below is printed A4 and then cut in half to fit in the planner - that's why there is a gap in the middle!

Click here to see the Staples Arc folders.

Let me know if you bullet journal and what your favourite page layouts are.

The chickens are out!

No, not out of their run - when not when I last checked anyway - but out of confinement.  Since early December DEFRA (Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) have asked all chicken owners in the UK to keep their birds in covered runs to limit the spread of avian flu.

This was slightly tricky as I don't have anyway inside to keep my birds but I did manage to put a small run together inside their larger run tha had a plastic roof.  The whole idea is to keep wild birds, which might spread the virus, away from food and water supplies for your own birds.

So we have struggled on with this temporary run for the last three months.  Now DEFRA have released a map outlining the high risk areas and protection zones.  Luckily we are not currently in any of them so the birds are free to go out in their big run again - and very pleased they were too!

First eggs of the year

This photo was taken last weekend on 25th February 2017 and is our first box of eggs from the hens this year.  It felt appropriate to make one of the first blog posts on this newly revamped site a picture of new laid eggs - new beginnings all over again :)

Wash Days

When I am busy, which is most of the time, I find it is the smaller things that can really get to me.  One of them is that I like my house to be reasonably tidy.  I would not say we are perfect by any means but there is a certain level of clutter that causes distress.  I can’t tell you what that is exactly but suddenly alarm bells go off in my head and I need to get clearing.  And if our house is in a state then I cannot concentrate properly on work.

One of the things that I find can quickly get out of control is the washing.  So these are my tips for keeping that particular house-keeping bugbear in it’s place:

Do one wash a day

I know people may do many more and if you have small children in the house then you probably feel you hardly ever switch the machine off!  But I try to get at least one wash load in a day and – and this is the key – see that load right through to the end of the cycle.  So, washed, dried and in my case into the airing cupboard.  Ironing I will do once or twice a week.

Have a basket for each member of the family

This simple idea has been a revolution for me.  When I bring the clothes in from drying they are divided out into baskets for each member of the family.  Then when it comes to airing the clothes they go in the airing cupboard in their basket and I take one basket out at a time for ironing.  Although I am still ironing the same amount of clothes for some reason doing them a basket at a time is so much easier.  And you are only going backwards and forwards to one room or wardrobe at a time.

Keep bed sets together

Again such a simple idea but saves so much time.  Keep each set of bedsheets together tucked into one of the pillowcases.  Then you can stack them up in your cupboard or on shelves and when you come to change the sheets just pull out one of the parcels of sheets and there is everything ready.  I used to try to keep sheets in one pile, pillowcases in another.  It never worked as they always collapsed into one another and I spent ages trying to find quilt covers that went with pillowcases etc.  This simple idea saves me so much time and hassle.

So there we are – three quick ways to improve the washing cycle in your house.  If you have any more tips do let me know in the comments below.

If you like housekeeping tips do take a look at the blogs Down to Earth or Brocante Home.

Donkeys, Gardening and my start on the web

It was 1997 when it all started and I first heard about "The Web".  Being of a practical mind I quickly wanted to 'have a go' so I started up my own website.  Looking back at it now, twenty years on, I was ahead for my time really.  Have a look at the screengrab below.  I was updating it monthly, had a feature article, what's new, guest book.  If only I had actually gone on to invent the whole concept of "the blog"!

But I'm still here and still enjoying writing so this is my own blog where I can write about things that interest me and that I want to share with my friends.  I no longer have my lovely donkeys but I do have lovely ponies now instead!  And I still have cats and love gardening.  But now I am a mum too so a whole different side of life opened up.

So here's to a fresh start on a newly revamped blogger site.  Long may blogging continue!

(Amazingly my old site can still be seen, in parts, thanks to the wonders of the Wayback Machine.)