The story of my life...

Every day bar Saturday and Sunday goes something like this:

Wake-up.

Press snooze.

Snooze.

Press snooze again.

Snooze.

Get-up... eventually.

Feed the cats... otherwise I physically cannot walk anywhere in the house without tripping over them.

Scoop kitty litter.

Get ready for work. (I am running late because I pressed snooze too many times.)

Before I leave the house, I make sure that all the cats are accounted for (and not trapped in the wardrobe).


Travel to work.  I am a tight arse when it comes to paying for parking, so I catch public transport (which never fails to disappoint me). On some days I could literally walk the 3 km journey to work faster than the time the bus takes. On such days you will find me at my bus stop constantly looking at my watch trying to decide whether to walk or wait. Sooner or later (depending on how late the bus is) you will find me on the bus with my bitch face on, internally cursing the Adelaide public transportation system and thinking I could have walked faster!

Arrive at work.

Drink coffee and eat breakfast while reading news.com.au. I'm one of those people who reads the comments section of news stories. I miss reading the comments by the news troll called Kevin of Double Bay.

Work.

Breathe a sign of relief when it's lunch time. I love to eat, as well as shop in my lunch break...

Work some more and drink some tea.

Breathe a sigh of relief when it is home time. I love going home - home is where my heart is.

Some nights when I'm extra disorganised, I visit the supermarket to buy dinner ingredients. I spend way more money then I should on groceries going about things this way, but my trips to the supermarket hold some of the most exciting moments of my week (yes, really). So I enjoy doing this often.

Walk to the bus stop only to discover that I have missed my bus. The next one is not for another half an hour at this point of the evening... I now have my bitch face on again, internally cursing the Adelaide public transportation system and remember longingly that the trains in New York, London and Paris come every 5 minutes.

Get home finally and check our letterbox. (As I'm opening the letterbox, I pray for my magazine subscription delivery and not more bills.)

Walk through the door. It's quarter past six on a day that I managed to escape work a little early. It's pushing seven thirty if I've been held back a little or I've been to the supermarket. (Thanks go to Adelaide's public transport system for failing me yet again... I only live 3 km from work for God's sake! It shouldn't be this late already!)

Cuddle the cats (and my boyfriend if he happens to be home before me, which is hardly ever).

Scoop kitty litter.

Feed the cats a little bit of raw meat - I believe it is important for their teeth that they chew, but one of my cats 'Mishka' swallows pieces whole...

Cook dinner.

Load the dish washer. (I love this machine.)

At this point I look around the house and depending on the day of the week that it is, I either lament how I didn't do a good enough job cleaning the house over the weekend or how much cleaning there is to do next weekend.  Things do not seem to matter much on a Wednesday... I make a bigger mess.

Play with the cats.

It is late in the evening now.  This is when the realisation that it's almost bedtime sets in. It's funny, I'm still like a kid - I dread going to bed... (but the adult in me loves to sleep in late.)

Waste time - either mucking around on the internet or watching some TV.  Our favourite TV shows at the moment are Game of Thrones (my boyfriend regrets reading the books because at least twice in each episode I'll turn to him and ask "did that happen in the book!?") and Hannibal (so gripping, I'm pleased to read that it has been renewed for a third season). We are still watching Californication, although I really think this show is beyond dirty now. Surely people in real life do not converse like the characters on this show?!

Prepare breakfasts (yogurt, rolled oats and berries EVERYDAY) and lunches (leftovers EVERYDAY).

Get ready for bed.

Feed the cats (just a sprinkle) because at this point they are behaving like I've been starving them for a week. I know for certain now that this is the reason why they are fat, but I can't help myself.  I also change the water in their water bowls - one less thing to do in the morning... one extra minute of snooze time!

Go to bed.

My boyfriend and I discuss hopefully winning the lotto the next day so that the next morning is the last time we have to get up for work. EVER. (*Insert sarcastic laughter here* because we hardly ever buy lotto tickets.)

Turn off the lights (and annoy my boyfriend with the glow of my i device).

Fall asleep... eventually.

Do it all again the next day.

I sometimes feel a little jaded about my life, but then I remember that my boyfriend and I have our health, food on the table and a roof over our heads, not to mention very nice stuff and two very beautiful fat cats.  We are very lucky and I need to remember this every day.

Children should make things a little interesting... How do people do it?

Hello again...

I have decided to resurect this blog and although it is now apparent to me that I may be culling my wardrobe for the rest of my life (ho-hum), I'm not sure that it's the only topic that I want to be writing about.

So, what other things will I write about?

Quick and healthy mid-week meals

I work in a corporate environment and attend young professional networking functions here and there (even though I'm not so young anymore). One of the constant topics that comes up when I "network" is food and how no one has time to cook. Rubbish I say! I hope to publish some of the quicker recipes I enjoy making mid-week... No excuses!

Our renovations

We have been in our home for just over a year now.  Slowly we have figured out what we don't like about our place and the changes that we would like to implement.

During my blogging hiatus we had ducted heating and cooling installed (bliss) and also put up a motorised retractable awning in the backyard (we did not want any permanent structures blocking out any glorious Winter sunlight). Although both of these projects have been exciting for us, they do not make for riveting blogging content. The next projects on the agenda, however, are more visually stimulating! We are just beginning to plan an en suite to our master bedroom (STCC) and also a new kitchen.

I hope to share my renovation  ideas on this blog, as well as to get input from fellow renovators who may stumble across these words.

Decorating

The amount of small home projects I have piling up is getting to be embarrassing. I won't list them all here (because then I will feel accountable to you all) but I'll try to blog about these projects as I complete them. At the moment I am building up the motivation to repaint the mantle and fireplace in our formal lounge room.

Minimalism

This topic continues to fascinate me, but because I have now admitted to myself that I have a genetic predisposition to hoarding, I may never be able to call myself a 'minimalist'.  Anyhow, I'm really keen to at least get rid of the unnecessary stuff in my life and also to organise everything in our home.

And I will continue where I left off...

Regardless of the progress I have made with my attitude towards shopping (with mammoth hiccups occurring spasmodically), for me the culling process has been fraught with frustration.  I don't think it makes for good or helpful reading when every other post is about a new culling methodology that I have implemented because the old one hasn't worked for me. Nevertheless, because I like fashion and I enjoy this endless quest for the ideal wardrobe (in a very sick and twisted way), this blog will continue to serve as a portrayal of the battles (some) women (me) have with the contents of their (my) wardrobe.

Thanks for reading and looking forward to your comments.

Happy New Year!

Thanks for reading my blog this year and to those who have made the effort to comment.  I really enjoy reading everyone's thoughts and tips.

Here's to a great 2013!

x

My two fur babies :)

By the way - it is very difficult to take a photo of both my cats without one of them being nothing but just a blur.

Happy holidays everyone!

So we're off to my parent's house to fill our bellies with Barszcz, Uszka, Pierogi, Śledzie and Makowiec... Then tomorrow to celebrate Christmas the Aussie way at my boyfriend's aunt's and uncle's house.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday period!

x

Moved but no settled...

So we've moved into our new place... but we're a long way away from being settled in just yet.

Due to needing to get my boyfriend's place ready to rent out, we have not had the time to unpack and set up much except the kitchen (the most important room in the house in my opinion).  There are boxes stacked in every corner of almost every room and I am living out of various clothing receptacles; suitcases, boxes, department store pillow bags, you name it. I don't even know where half my shoes have gotten to? In light of my comment in my last post about not putting away anything until I determine its need, I have left unpacking my clothing and shoes until such time as I have a solid few hours of spare time to sort it all. Maybe this weekend...

On the shopping front, I am proud to say that it's now been exactly 1 month since my last fashion related purchase.  Sure I want to buy pretty new things, but items for the new place seem more important right now (eg a new kitchen bin, new furniture, a dish rack, new crockery, things for our garden etc etc etc).  Also when window shopping, I think back to the suitcases, boxes and department store pillow bags full of clothes and think to myself that before I buy anything fashion related, the new item must earn it's place in my limited wardrobe space. 

My mind is also bursting full of things I want to do around our new place - some 100% necessary (build and install flyscreens in all windows*) and others 100% conceited (pretty up my boyfriend's old filing cabinet so that it doesn't make our study look ugly). There are honestly not enough hours in a day!

* Not only did we discover that all the windows in our new place had been painted shut (hahahahaha *sigh*) but there was not a single flyscreen to be seen anywhere! The things you fail to notice during open inspections...

Ready, set, Pack! Move! & Reset!

I'm packing in preparation for our house move this coming Monday.

In a perfect world I would have liked to declutter our possessions whilst packing.  Alas, the world is far from perfect, so I will make do with vowing to myself that nothing shall be put away into a shelf/cupboard/wardrobe in our new home without first being scrutinised as to its usefulness.

There are no walk-in robes or built-in wardrobes in any of the bedrooms in our new home (a deal breaker for most, but I maintain that the existence of such features makes rooms less versatile), so as of this coming Monday my boyfriend and I will be back to sharing a 3 door IKEA PAX wardrobe.  The last time we did this I had my boyfriend storing his knits in Net-a-Porter boxes (oh, the humanity!). Welcome to my new nightmare... or should I say challenge?

Although my wardrobe is far less over flowing than when I started in my culling adventures over a year ago, thanks to an overseas shopping spree and a number of momentary lapses of judgement during the Winter sales, again I feel a necessary cull brewing.

In the outset I had hoped to have my 'ideal wardrobe' sorted by the start of 2012, but in reality my wardrobe is far from ideal... So just as the Australian Bureau of Statistics has reset the index numbers for each index series as of the September quarter of this year (which by the way totally caught me off guard whilst doing a calculation at work - I knew something was not right when my calculation indicated that the cost of living had halved in the last year... if only), I'm resetting my cull tallies and hence my ideal wardrobe journey.

Good news!

The last month has been a whirlwind for us... we finally found a house!

Apart from the break we took for our holiday in March, we have been looking at open homes without fail each weekend and participating in auctions with no success for a year now.  We were thinking about giving house hunting a break for a month or so because we had lost our drive and then THE ONE came up when we least expected it. In fact the morning of the auction we almost didn’t bother getting out of bed thinking we had no chance (it was marketed for more than our budget).

Finding the ‘perfect’ home did prove difficult in the end, but we are very pleased with what we found and I truly cannot wait to ‘settle down’ at long last. I have felt like a nomad for a very long time now, knowing that where I was living was not long term.

Settlement of our new place is on 22 October. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly.

So needless to say the last couple of weekends have kept us very busy...  We have just finished preparing my little cottage for sale. We even had to re-build the picket fence as the monkey who built it in the first place used untreated timber so it was literally disintegrating before our eyes (it was so bad that we pulled it apart with our bare hands). I’m so happy with the new fence and that it doesn’t look like a Homer Simpson job that I have to share a picture.

Hopefully potential buyers will fall in love with the fence and submit a nice offer...

Apologies for the dark photo... I literally put the paint brush down after painting the last brush stoke moments before I took this photo with my iPhone at dusk.

Last weekend we worked on the garden and after deciding that I could not afford to professionally style my house and hire furniture etc - I did it myself with the help of my amazing boyfriend. We were working on it non-stop all weekend.  I will do a separate post on that as I am amazed with the results. Our effort was well worth it.

Next weekend we are off for a preplanned mini holiday to Melbourne... Having just bought a big house, we can't really afford to do what I usually do (shop) but we truly deserve it, so I will at least spend my Myer vouchers which I have been saving for a while now :)

Walking through hay fields in Wisconsin...

One of the most unfortunate things about going on a long, wonderful and relaxing holiday, is that one day soon after you return, you will feel like you never went in the first place...

Although before I left I could not contain my excitement about visiting New York City, one of our most cherished memories from our US trip was visiting our dear friends in Minnesota and taking a day trip to stay on a our female host's parent's property in Wisconsin.

Cardigan - MARNI for H&M

Necklace - MARNI for H&M

Jeans - Nudie "High Kai"

Boots - Country Road
(regrettably culled during our holiday to make room for new stuff).

For a while there we racked our brains trying to figure out how we too could lead a simple life on a beautiful property.  Fast forward one month and nothing has changed to how it was before...  We are back to the rat race and I'm listing culled items on eBay *sigh*.

Home sweet home

I'm back from the US.  Happy to be home... Happy to be back in a country where good coffee is appreciated and readily available.

My return on Saturday morning was marked by the usual - doing our laundry and restocking our fridge AND buying a few bundles of coat hangers from IKEA :)

Needless to say, all of my culling efforts over the past 9 months have been undone and my renewed enthusiasm for shopping has caused my past shopaholism to resurface... in my lunch break today I bought two pairs of shoes, even though I originally set out to buy chicken for tonight's dinner.

Back to the drawing board...

I wasn't kidding when I wrote that my next purchase would be a new bicycle...

Ok, ok you got me! I have delineated and bought a few new things to wear before I bought the bike (but no bottoms as promised to myself).  Nevertheless though, and most importantly I did like I said and I bought a bike to help me loose a few pounds (ok, more than a few).

The first ride on the new bike was from the bike shop to home - about 12 kms (that's 7.5 miles). I have a sore bottom now... and here I thought I had a lot of padding in that area! Clearly not enough, so my next purchase will most definitely be a pair of padded bike pants.

my cats say "meow"

I'm a DINKTC - member of a dual income, no kid, two cat household.

Always inspired, but lately seldom motivated... I feel like I'm stuck in a deep creative rut.

After a year in the fashion wilderness (renovating) - this blog is my way to help me find my style mojo again.