Christmas menu planning

Every year we have the same menu for Christmas Day. We don't always have Christmas on the same day, but we have the same menu. Last year I got organised for this year.

I bought a small plastic sleeve photo album.


I printed out everything I need to get Christmas Day meals on the table:

• Menu

• Recipes - for everything, including the cut up vegetables for the dips

• Shopping list - one for each shop with like shops grouped on one page, so I can send different people in different directions

• List of dishes required for serving

 

• Cut up tags to put in each dish – this way I don't suddenly realise I need particular dish after it's got food in it

• Timetable for preparing the food

The idea behind the photo album is that it's small enough to take to the shops; I change information if I need to (I may one day find a better recipe for crepes or potato salad. I doubt it, but anything's possible); I can use a whiteboard marker to cross things off, then start again next year.

I printed everything on photo paper, because it's nice and sturdy. If I hand hubby a shopping list, I want to know I'm going to get it back in a decent state.

Let it go - The story of frozen (or not) food

It's somewhat amazing that certain individuals in our household have survived as long as they have. In fact, it's amazing the rest of us have survived with them.

Last Tuesday the switch to our full-size freezer was accidentally turned off. We left town on Wednesday afternoon and didn't realise until Sunday night. A costly accident, but more annoying than anything. I'd been doing so well with double-batching meals that we were looking forward to a month of minimal cooking :-(

Rubbish collection is Thursday morning, so the decision was made to switch the freezer on until then rather than have the food sitting in the late-summer heat (which is more like mid-summer) in the bin.

Tonight I've been fielding questions:
"What about ...?"
"Can't we keep ...?"
"Some of it should be okay, right?"

NO! NO!! AND AGAIN, NO!!! (I think the extra exclamation marks are warranted.)

Let it go, let it go
Can't hold it back any more
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door!

Blog planning

I've been so busy trying to juggle a j-o-b (bit of a dirty word at the moment), commuting (oh to live in a small town), a Year 12 student (I remember how dreadful it was), life, house, blah-blah-blah, that fun things have taken a bit of a back seat. I really want to blog on a regular basis. As an editor, I know that good writing comes with practice, and I'm sadly out of it (practice and good writing).
Last night I was tossing up ideas of what post about this week. I couldn't settle one idea because a) I have a heap of them buzzing around my brain and b) they all seem like hard work right now. I thought I'd cheat and simply list all the things I plan to post about ... soon. That is, I'll list them now, I'll post about them soon ... ish. If you check back occasionally I might have gotten around to which one interests you. I'll try to remember this post is here, and update it as I go with links to the finished post.

Pantry - the new walk-in pantry is progressing. We have shelves on the walls. Last weekend we were slated to build the new internal, divider wall/can rack, but it was postponed. (Previous posts here, and here).
FMQ extravaganza - last year I mentioned to my online quilting group I wanted to improve my free motion quilting. One very proactive lady set up the "FMQ Extravaganza" - a challenge to FMQ something twice a month and post photos. I'm yet to actually start :-( BUT I will.
Zoo - over January, as part of our road trip to Victoria, we spent the night at Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo. We had the best time and I wanted to share our experiences.
365 Challenge - I've rebooted my 365 challenge efforts. This year I'm aiming for 365 designs or ideas. They don't have to be complete, worked out patterns or designs. I don't have to ever make them. I just have to draw a rough sketch and make a few notes on my thinking and ideas.
Cheryl's quilt - last year I finished my quilt for my SIL. During our holidays, it was on the wall in our room. I kept looking at it, thinking, "Man, that is some quilt!" I was just so impressed, and simply amazed that I'd created something like that.
Wardrobe modifications - I recently spring cleaned my wardrobe. I'm in process of 'renovating' some outfits that never get worn. I thought I might share some of my success stories.
Cooking roster - due to the j-o-b we've implemented a cooking roster in our house, which seems to be working out okay.
Plan to Eat - I love this website/app. 
Bullet journalling (or not) and Toodledo - my latest attempts to be organised, efficient, and get everything done.

I think that's all for the moment. I might add new topics to my list as time goes by. First new post due next week (according to my schedule). Still, not sure what I want to write about yet. Maybe I should just put them all in a hat and pick one out.

2015

So, this is the New Year. Funny, it doesn't feel all that different to the old one. That's the thing about New Years that I don't get. People pin such high expectations on it, endow it with almost magical abilities to transform their lives. But at the end of the day, it's just day, like every other day. The ability to transform our lives lies within us, not in a day.

Anyway, enough of my New Year's bah-humbugging. What have I got planned for 2015? Oo, lots. I started looking at my goals in November. Looked at the ones I missed in 2014, considered why I missed them. Looked at the ones I hit and gave myself a pat on the back, because I think it's important to see what you've achieved more than seeing what you missed. Considered the year ahead and what I want to achieve, and how I plan to do that.

Goal Types
My goal setting process has multiple methods. It's all very well to say, "You should set SMART goals", but some things I want to achieve don't fit the SMART mould. And some things I want to achieve are not goals as such, they're habits I want to develop. My goal setting methods are:

1. Set a specific SMART goal: run a 5km fun run some time after August (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely). These goals then get broken down into monthly chunks and then weekly chunks and then daily chunks. Every month I look at my yearly goals, consider what I need to achieve in the month. Then each week I look at that monthly chunk and work out what I need to do this week on a day-by-day basis.

2. Set a "list goal". I have a lot of projects I want to finish, for example a dozen or more quilts. A list goal is to focus on one project every month from the list that I keep with my goals. My lists grow as the year progresses, as new projects are added. Each month I choose the focus from my list, and decide how much I want to achieve, which depends on what stage that focus project is at, and what sort of a month I have ahead of me. Project lists include quilts, other sewing, holiday scrap booking, house renos, garden projects. I also have a list of people to write to (the goal being one per week); friends to catch up with (one per month) and similar activities.

3. Set a "percentage" habit. Habits are tricky goals to set, particularly for perfectionists. We feel if don't hit them 100% of time we're failing and (more often than not) might as well quit. This year I've come up with the percentage target. I want to develop a habit of taking my vitamins every day. The perfectionist me would say 365 out of 365 days is goal achieved, anything less is not. Reality me knows that just isn't going happen. I track every day that I take my vitamins. Each week I record how many days I 'hit'. Over three months I calculate my percentage hit. My habit goals are to hit 25% in the first three months, 50% in the second three months, 75% in the third three months, and 90% in the last three months. This gives a stretch goal, it gives me a target, and it keeps me realistic.

Putting it on Paper
I mind-map my goals. This year, I've gone back to Stephen Covey's concept of 'roles'. I have four roles: artist, community, care-taker, worker.
I have the year in the centre and a branch for each role. Each 'sub-role' is on a smaller branch. Under 'caretaker', for example, I have 'finances', 'spirit', 'body', 'house' and 'garden'. At the end of each sub-role I list my goals, whether SMART, list or habit.
I keep this yearly mind-map in my diary. Once it's created, I scan it and remove the goals at the end of the branches and the year from centre. I print out the remaining basic structure and use it each month to set my targets for the month.

Blank mind-map for ready for monthly targets

In addition to setting goals for the year, I picked up an idea from a fellow quilter a couple of years ago, of assigning a word to the year. The word I've chosen for 2015 is "harmony". I want to develop as a musician, I want to find balance with all my pursuits, not focussing on any to the detriment of others, I want to develop strong, healthy relationships with people who are important to me. Using a tool I found on-line (http://www.wordle.net/create) I created a word cloud (also kept in my diary).

Harmony word cloud

That's a basic overview of my goal setting process. Although, at the end of the day (even New Years Day) I think there's just three things that are important for reaching a goal:
1. Write it down. Research shows if you write it down, you're more likely to hit it.
 2. Review it. If you write it down and ignore it, you won't hit it. Review each month and each week, "What do I need to do in order to achieve this goal?"
And then, the third important step is simply "Do it".

Sewing Room - re-jigged cutting table.

For a long time my cutting table has been a gate-leg table, which was great because it folded away to almost nothing, but it was terrible because it was low. When I moved into my new space I plunked a piece of melamine over the top of my two Ikea Antonius basket racks. One cutting space. Again, far too low for comfort. I had the bright spark of putting some chunks of wood under the frames to raise the cutting table to a more comfortable level. And for several months that has worked fine. The board was a bit small (600 x 1,000 mm), but otherwise it was a pleasure to work at height.

Little bit cramped in the corner, but otherwise, worked fine.

With my lovely new floorboards I was concerned the wood might scratch, so I added foam to the bottom of my risers. Unfortunately, that made them a bit unstable. Plus the addition of skirtings meant I couldn't solidly 'anchor' them against the wall. There's quite a bit of weight in the baskets and I was a little concerned about them falling over.

My set up as of this morning.

I did a bit of thinking, and as you do in these things, went about things backwards for a while. My initial thought was to screw a piece of board on top of the blocks and put the drawers on the board - to distribute the weight. While discussing it with a friend I suddenly thought - what am I thinking? Put the frames on the floor, put a board on the top, put the blocks on the board, put another board on top of that. I realised that by doing that, I could separate the baskets, use longer boards, create a larger cutting area AND create storage under it. I wanted to race out and do it straight away, but I had an assignment looming, so I used it as self-bribery. I was not allowed to do ANYTHING towards changing my set up until the assignment was submitted. Well, the assignment is not actually submitted (it is sitting ready for me to proof for stupid mistakes on Monday morning), but today hubby dearest bought me my two bits of melamine, and I now have my extended cutting bench.

My bench is now 1,600x600mm (instead of 1,000mm). I have a storage shelf underneath. The tubs no longer sit out to the side looking untidy, but look like they belong where they are. 

I'm happy to report that this works great. I've been sewing tonight - a piano runner, which is quite long. I've had plenty of space to lay it out and work on it with feeling scrunched up or crowded. Plus, because the cutting table goes all the way to the next bench, when fabric runs off the end it doesn't end up on the floor, gathering cat hair and who knows what.

I am very happy with this set up.

Sewing Room Update - Tah Dah

Let me preface this post by saying I'm exhausted and so my typing, if not my thinking, may be a little incoherent at times. It has taken all day, but I'm almost finished. Just one more modification/improvement, which I only thought of today. But more of that when I actually do it.

At some point, I'll do a side-by-side comparison post, but for the moment, here are some photos of the finished product.

The east end as it looked this morning.

The west end as it looked this morning.

Beautiful new floor boards.

The east end tonight. My "graph paper plan" was to have both desk run along the wall, but I think I mis-measured one as 100cm instead 120cm and I was about 10cm short of wall :-( So, the L shape remains, albeit at the opposite end of the room. The end wall has four shelving tracks. The ones directly behind the sewing machine run to the floor. This lets me put things under the desk but off the floor - such as my Vlisofix, which I keep in a mailing tube with a bunch of moisture suckers.

The west end tonight. The biggest change to my set up is two new peg boards. I do love them. I've hung my rulers on the wall for years, but being able to change them around without leaving any marks - brilliant.

West end, pegboard and ironing corner. I will have to roll the Horn cabinet out to access my overlocker, which is stored in it, but I had to do that anyway, so no biggie.

West end, cutting table and mainly fabric storage (not entirely, but there is no fabric not stored in this corner).

East end, study/writing/crafting desk. A friend suggested putting the desks at this end because they'd be under the window, with more natural light than the other end (where they were). The added bonus is that they're also not as exposed to the lounge room. Apparently it's better feng shui to not sit with your back to an open door.

East end, sewing corner. Self explanatory, really.

I originally thought I'd have enough space to include these on the back wall - if the two desks ran down one wall. But the L-arrangement meant I lost access to the longer shelf track. But that's okay. The shorter shelves work fine here.

And this is the one modification still to be made, but more on that later. One added bonus of moving my desks to the east end, the cat flap is no longer under my feet when I'm sitting at the desk. The cat and I will both appreciate that!

My roll of bag wadding. Awkward stuff 'cause you can't really fold it. Simple solution - one entrance way, two curtain hooks and a rod. Problem solved.

Sewing Room Update - the in between

The sewing room renos continue apace. Yesterday 'those who build' put up new walls (thick ply, which holds shelves and things more securely than plaster), laid the floor boards, and put in all the trims (cornices, skirtings, window frames).

Today has mainly been painting, which takes a surprising amount of time. Still need to do the ceiling, all the trims (which are to be bright green) and one more coat on the walls. Apparently tonight, the first coat of clear on the floor goes down. The interesting thing will be keeping the cat out of the room. We 'think' we can seal it off with a piece of ply, but a determined cat is a determined cat, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were paw prints in it tomorrow.

And for some very uninteresting 'between' photos:

New walls on the left and to the end instead of weatherboards

Wall, which was put in when we did the new doors, now all patched and smoothed.

A hint of the floorboards to be.

Window sill on four edges! Woohoo.

I've also been playing around with the furniture I have, to see if I can make it work better. It works well where it all was, but I think it could work better. Obviously I can't actually move the furniture at the moment. Once I'm free to move back in, where I put my shelves will depend on where I put my furniture. BUT, I have to put the shelves back up first, because all the stuff that goes on them is currently stacked on the furniture. So, I've been playing with graph paper. Graph paper never seems translate to real life as well as I would hope; I'll let you know next week how well it panned out.

Edit: couple of more slightly more interesting photos

Unfinished floor boards

First coat going on the floor

Sewing Room Upgrade (Before)

This post is mainly for those who requested before and after photos of this weekend's sewing room upgrade. I took some photos this morning, before I emptied the room (packing it all with Tetris-like brilliance in the sitting room).

The cutting end. Shelves packed with stuff and a raised cutting 'table' (board over two Ikea basket racks). Rulers hanging on the wall to the right - plan is to put up a pegboard. The bottom shelf is very narrow, on brackets that are wider than the shelf. The shelf itself is used for rotary cutters, scissors, tailor's chalk and so forth. The extra space on the brackets allows me to 'hang' my roll of calico at the back. Originally I was going to shelve the right-hand wall, and make all the shelves on the back only 120cm (like the top one). But now I've decided on a pegboard, I'm keeping these full width .

Same end of the room. Showing my fabric stash in the Ikea baskets. The Horn sewing cabinet is used for storage. Generally the overlocker resides inside; but I've been using it. On top I have my embroidery machine. The drawers are used for all the 'bits and bobs' that go with the two machines. When my cupboards are eventually built in, the cabinet will not be needed. By which stage it'll probably be close to falling apart. For such an expensive piece of furniture, they are only chipboard. I was given mine; it's been a real blessing. To the left is my small ironing board - on a shelf. I'm not entirely happy with the arrangement, but it works for the moment.

The other, 'business', end of the room. This has an L-shaped bench for sewing, writing, etc. The shelves on the left are very narrow (14cm) and perfect for all manner of things. The shelves on the right are a variety of depths. I was originally going to shelve the back wall as well, but I'm thinking maybe just the pin board and perhaps a small peg-board. Or maybe a large peg-board, with the pin board on it. That way if I get rid of the pinboard, I won't have a silly looking pegboard at the bottom of a great expanse of wall.

Narrow shelves holding a wonderful array of stuff. Ribbons on spool holders; jars of zippers, ribbons, bias, lace, yarn; tools; glue - everything where I can lay my hands on it in a minute.

My 'mainly fabric' wall. Top shelf holds a variety of large containers with things I don't use often. The middle shelf is my scrap stash. 5, 3.5, and 2 inch squares in containers; not sorted, but ready to use for something. The large clear tub on the top shelf is all my "can't cut a 2 inch square from it" scraps. No idea if I can use them for much, but I can't justify throwing them out. Again, lots of access to stuff. Pens in jars, cards, stamps, punches.

Rather dark photo of my window to the world. What you can't see is that this window only has framing on three sides. I'm hoping by the end of the weekend that it will have a proper frame - on all four sides. How novel. The fabric 'blind' (piece of fabric, safety pins and cotton tape) has been an okay temporary measure, but I'm thinking wooden blinds will work better. And if I get "those that build" to create a pelmet shelf over the top, all the better. The white running across the top right hand side is my roll of bag wadding (also shows in the top photo). It's on a too-long curtain rod, which is balanced on the window frame and exposed wall frame (just off shot). A pelmet and a small ledge on the opposite wall will give me great storage for these awkward sort of things. We've got a dozen or more curtain rods in the garage. I hate curtains on rods; much prefer tracks.

Half way through my Tetris stacking in the sitting room.

Same end as the very first photo, with everything cleared out. The front door used to be where the dark patch on the floor is. By the end of the weekend the floor will wooden and the 'seams' in the walls will be invisible. I hope.

The 'business end' with everything cleared out. The room was originally an outside porch/landing, which the previous owner enclosed. Hence, the weatherboards. I've now removed those - one less job for "those who build" tomorrow. So satisfying ripping them out.

The current floor - the old concrete sheeting from the exterior landing. Painted before our time and since ignored. By next week it will be lovely floorboards. The bright square on the right-hand side is the cat flap. I'm a little concerned it might be too low for her with the new floor.

Entrance to the lounge room. Missing bits of wall are from where we moved the wall in while renovating the lounge room. The gap was a full sliding door width. It's now wider than a normal door, but considerably smaller than a double door.

Well, that's the before photos. Hopefully by Monday I'll have some after photos.

Tissue box holder

I found a hanging cover for a tissue box on Pinterest (http://www.apalog.com/studio-clip_craft/archive/76#BlogEntryExtend). There is a PDF of instructions how to make it on the website. One small issue - everything is in Japanese.

I decided it wasn't too difficult and I could probably fudge my way through it. To be on the safe side, I chose a piece of scrap fabric with a bit of a stretch. I won't attempt to give you a full tutorial, but perhaps just a brief overview.

The features of the bag is that it holds a normal size box of tissues, has a flap at one end to change the boxes when empty, and a strap that buttons on to enable it be hung. It's the hanging that appeals to me. I like to keep a box of tissues in the car, but they're a bit awkward to stash. This bag will allow the box to be hung behind a front seat.


The seam of the main body piece will form the opening for the tissues. I stitched normal from the end to the beginning of my opening; lengthened my stitch to 6 for the opening, and reverted back to normal for the other end of the seam. I made the lining and outer exactly the same.

The flap is slightly rounded on the front. I really wasn't sure how to tackle the flap, so I don't know if this is the best way. I sewed a flap piece to the outer and to the lining of the body, opposite the seam for the opening. That is, the opening is in the middle on the front, the flap is on the back. I sewed the lining to the outer around the flap and the three sides of the top.

I then sewed the base out to the outer. I only partly sewed the base onto the lining - so I could turn the entire bag in the right way. Later I realised I could leave the base of the lining until the end.

With the bag in the right way, I top-stitched around the flap and the top.  To create the opening, unstitch the basting on both the outer and lining, then topstitch the outer to the lining. This is where I realised that after unstitching the basting and before the topstitching, I could sew in the base of the lining - because you can pull it out through the opening.

Last step is add a strap at the top. It's sewn onto one side, and buttoned on the other. The button allows you to use a shorter strap and still get over the car seat headrest.

Clear as mud? You can always try the Japanese instructions (which do have some very helpful diagrams).

I haven't attached the strap on this side yet. It is for hubby's car, and it's not here for me to check just how long it needs to be.

With the flap open, to show how easy it is to change boxes.

Storing fabric

Every quilter loves fabric. Every sewer loves fabric. Not so sure as many love storing fabric. There's lots of theories as to the best way to store fabric. I don't think any of them are particularly wrong, just some work better for some people than others. For example, I know some people store lengths of fabric on pants' hangers. That just isn't going to work for me. Firstly, I have too much fabric, secondly, I have too little hanging space (actually, none), and thirdly, I can't even use these things for pants without making a mess. However, I know this would work for some people.

Image from: http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/reader-space-working-wow-factor.html

You might think fabric is pretty easy to store - just fold it, and stack it in a drawer or shelf or box. Ah, nice theory. My fabric collection is not limited to quilting cotton; it includes an array of dressmaking fabrics. Have you ever tried to fold organza? Or tulle? How do you stack leather offcuts? And if you stack fabric, I can almost guarantee that the piece that you think you want, will be the piece on the bottom.

For the past eight years or so, most of my dressmaking fabric has lived in one of two places. A big plastic storage tub for folded lengths, and a variety of 'stash holds' for everything else. A stash hold is any place where you stash something to deal with it later.

The fabric in the big tub was stored vertically, and to find anything I had rifle through the whole lot, making a mess as I went.

I've slowly gained more fabric in stash holds than any where else. My major stash holds were two large tubs in an Ikea drawer system. I'm hoping to not need the drawers once the sewing space is complete, so I had to deal with stash hold. I thought it would take forever, but it's actually only taken about 24 hours (minus sleep, cooking, taxi driving for the Teen).

I dropped by our local "$2 shop" (ie the cheap bargain place). And I scored! They had small tubs, on wheels, with lids, for $4.50. They're about 11 x 14 inches, by 7 inches high. I decided these would be perfect for separating "speciality" fabrics - at the moment, organza, lace, stretch, fleece, and lining. This dealt with some of the harder fabrics to fold and stack. I may go back and a get a couple more. At the moment they're stacked under a desk, but they're small enough to go on shelves eventually.

This afternoon I pulled out my biggest tub of fabrics and I ran a burn test on each piece. If they were cotton and a quilting texture I separated them out. Anything that wasn't cotton, or was cotton but not suitable for quilting, has now been designated as "dressmaking".

The burn test is quite simple. You burn a snip of the fabric (with proper precautions - use tools to hold it over a fireproof vessel). If it is cotton it will smell like paper burning, the ash will be fine and powdery, and it will ignite when the flame gets close to it. If it is synthetic, it will smell like burning plastic (some bad fabrics smell when you iron them), it will melt near the flame, and the remnant will be a hard blob.

My smaller sized quilting fabrics are all already sorted, but a lot of lengths of cotton were mixed in with the big tubs. These I folded into 6.5 x 6.5 squares (near-ish). Simple process - folded them to a manageable size - no bigger than 1.5 x 1.5m, then wrapped it around my 6.5 inch wide ruler in one direction, removed the ruler and wrapped it the other way. Ideally, I'd like to store these fabrics in smaller tubs, hence the size. In the short term, they're stored in a drawer of the Ikea system.

Told you it was a small stash!

My dressmaking fabric - anything that isn't cotton - I folded the width of the drawers, and a little shorter than the height (to allow for the folding to add to height). Coincidentally, I found a 14 x 4.5 inch ruler in the tub, which was the perfect size for folding around.

I have two of these drawers, full of dressmaking lengths.

After folding the large pieces I was left with a tub of 'bits'. I'm still deciding what to do with those. Some of them are big enough to be useful; if not for clothes, then for things like pencil cases and bags. The best way to store them is a problem for another day.

The last task, and perhaps the most important, was to label everything. I found that labels help me store things correctly. It's not just that they help me remember what belongs somewhere, they also remind what doesn't belong somewhere. I'm far less likely to just 'stash' something if the label doesn't match what I'm stashing. If a label says "dress making scraps", I probably won't think, "Oh, I'll just put this length of fabric in there for the time being."

For anything that's plastic, I love my label maker. For the wire baskets and my storage tubs with handles, card on a string works well. I have corner punch, which rounds off the corners. It's a minor detail, but I think it makes the labels look nicer.

I have no idea what I do if I buy more fabric - I have no more space in the drawers. Mind you, I've got so much fabric in the drawers that should be used, I probably shouldn't be buying more fabric anyway.

If you've got a blog post on storing your fabric, or a favourite system, I'd love to hear about it.