An Enjoyable Way To Get The Housework Done

I have been wanting to make my own inspiration cards for a while, a deck that´s a little more practical than the ones I´ve seen. I like housework and have learnt to keep my house in order but I leave some things too long and have to do a stressfull whirlwind clean-up when guests are coming over. I made a list of jobs and then cut out magazine and catalogue photos to suit them and glued them onto some thin cardboard. I have a part-time job for which I am quite well-paid and appreciated BUT I spend a lot more time working in my home and, as a lot of you know, this is not a well-paid and always appreciated job so it´s nice to see some rewards for the hard work. Of-course seeing the family happy and healthy is very rewarding but I often find that I´m spending my time and energy taking care of everyone else and forgetting to take care of myself. SO, on the back of my cards I have little rewards for myself. Once a job is done, I can shuffle the deck and pick a lovely treat. I am certainly going to enjoy housework a lot more in future!
To all those hardworking women out there - don´t forget to reward yourselves! You can adapt a deck like this to any chores OR make just a reward deck to shuffle whenever you need a little something to brighten your day.

Sunday Scribblings #52 - In the Kitchen

The kitchen I grew up in was my mother´s and the next 5 kitchens I cooked in were in rented apartments. I learnt to cook for a really big family in my mother in law´s kitchen but I didn´t feel really grown up until I cooked for my family on my stove in my kitchen. I have lived, laughed and cried in this kitchen. I have looked out the windows and watched my children play in the garden, seen visitors come and go and seasons come and go and watched my husband leave for good. In my kitchen I have surrounded myself with things I love and when friends visit it´s their favourite place too.
More Scribblings here,
more photos of my kitchen and my home here.

Sunday Scribblings #51 - Inspiration

The Crafter´s Companion projects : ALL DONE!
The prompt "Inspiration" urges me to talk about the shift in thinking that I mentioned a few weeks ago. The book The Crafter´s Companion came along at just the right time for me and I thought it would be fun to try to make all the projects in the book. I didn´t realise how moving all the stories about the bloggers in the book would be for me and while I went through making each item I thought about the experiences of the person who designed it, which role crafting, selling and creating plays in their life and also in my own life.

When I started this blog I hated my job, I thought that crafting would get me out of the rat race and enable me to earn money from home and have more time with my kids. I was unsatisfied with my appearance and with my surroundings and I felt more like I was "trying" ways to live rather than living. I used to spend a lot more time watching TV, dreaming about a life I could have, a figure I would be happier with and how I could change my job.

The steps I took - with the advice and encouragement of the people who leave comments here - were to try and make my working days more enjoyable by surrounding myself with music and things I love in my office and doing my work 100%. Now I am a lot more successful at teaching and it is such a joy to watch people understand and feel comfortable with a new language. I have made it an aim to help my students become more confident and recognise their strengths and I see that I have made a difference to many people. Now I love my job and I can finally really start to enjoy crafting as a hobby without putting pressure on myself just like many of the bloggers I read about in the book. There are many who have made their craft their occupation but there are also many who have a day job and I have come to realise that this is right for me too.

I look around me and see that the world is made up of people in all shapes and sizes. Taking care of my body, eating nourishing and delicious foods and enjoying eating without worrying about calories or my figure - that is how I have learnt to live. I don´t eat fast food and I don´t diet - over the last year I have stopped eating all those white and empty carbohydrates that had me feeling tired and heavy. I weigh myself only once a week and slowly but surely I am headed for my goal weight of 85kg (7kg to go!). I go for my walk/ride my indoor bike every day and I have found shops which sell lovely clothes in my size.

What I really want to say is that my inspiration is here...you, your blogs, your comments, your books and projects are my inspiration and have helped me to recognise my boundaries, make changes and learn to appreciate so many things that I felt negative about.

Sunday Scribblings #50 - Dream journey

When I was 3 my parents left Austria to start a new life in Australia and although these 2 countries share a similar spelling, they are very different from one another. I was lucky enough to come to Austria on holiday with my family when I was 12, we stayed for 3 months and I got to know my relatives and experience life here. When I was 16 I came to Austria for 5 weeks by myself and it was a real adventure, I felt very grown up checking in at airports and boarding planes alone. I always felt quite comfortable here as things seemed more small scale than in Sydney, it was cosier, people knew each other and everything was very old, there was history everywhere. When I was 22 I decided to come to Europe again on a dream journey, I planned, daydreamed and wrote about everything I wanted to do in Europe and although I travelled around a lot, Austria became the base where I sought refuge when travelling got too much or when I ran out of money. I stayed with my grandmothers who lived in the same town where I was born, I found work, met my future ex-husband and had babies, built a home and settled in. When I left Sydney and started my dream journey to Europe, I suspected that I may not be coming back but it wasn´t a strong thought in my mind. I was a drifter, a traveller, a free spirit. Now I see that I slipped easily into this life, there were obstacles but they seem small now. I live in the village where my father was born, 25 kilometers away from the town I was born in...so, you could say I have come full circle.

A Sunday Walk

We went for a walk around our neighbourhood yesterday, it was a gorgeous, almost spring day with sunshine and a blue sky. It´s starting to get more colourful around here as the greys and dull browns of winter are replaced with the fresher colours that spring brings with it. About half an hour´s walk from here through the forest there are some beautiful old ruins and after passing these you come to a lovely little road called Sommerau which leads you to the center of Reichenfels. Our little village is very small with a population of about 2000. It´s a bit of a ghost town on Sundays as everything is closed except the pubs and our only café. It was nice to take a look at our neighbourhood through the camera lense, it seemed very enchanting and I noticed a lot of little things that I don´t often see when I´m passing through in my car each day.