26

 Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children they are all 20 feet tall.

Anon

Posted in A Little Thought | No Comments »

A Little More Thought

As I mentioned in the last blog I attended an Internet Seminar weekend which has really set me thinking about myself.  Sounds selfish? Far from it.

I realised that I now need to stretch myself in more ways than I wasn’t coping with before!  If you are a woman you will totally understand what I am saying.

I came away from the seminar feeling motivated and positve about our future.  But that is obviously not enough. The buzz word from any of these events is that you have to take ACTION.  Quite true, money won’t come pouring through the letterbox unless you work for it.

So now my list of jobs to contend with include:

Providing more space for my husband to work on bringing money into the house.

Keeping our accounts up to date for our accountant.

Keeping the family happy, fed and content.

Continuing with my own web blog (the official site now has to be put back again because of making no 1  above the priority).

Ensuring the house is kept (fairly) tidy and reduce the ironing pile down from an overwhelming 10  feet high (yes, really) to a more manageable size.  And this is without putting it into black bags and throwing it out!

Oversee repairs to the house (having the bathroom done next week, woohoo!!).  If you could see what we have been living with (broken toilet, no bath panel, cracked bath and no flooring you would go woohoo too.  Oh yes and the shower packed in last week as well).

Finding time to learn from my husband to help him sell our new products.

Creating some products for us to sell alongside my husband.

Helping out occasionally on school trips, which the children really, really like me doing.

So that’s all by Tuesday then, job done!!!!!!!!!!!  How on earth am I going to balance all these things? This is without any surprises or set backs that can occur when you have children.

I definitely need to reorganise myself.  It’s within my capability as I used to be very organised, but over the years it has slipped to almost non existent.

I have good friends that I can rely on and my mom and sister are good for offloading to, but it still has to come from me.

What I have done, to help myself is to sign up for an internet coaching course.  It will mean even more work as I need to keep diaries, logs etc but it will help focus me.  It’s with a lady called Diane Corriette who I met last weekend, but knew of her before as she is my husband’s accountability partner for a mentoring programme they are both on.

I have only signed up this week and already feel daunted by the prospect, not least because I am going to have to face up to my ‘weaknesses’.  That’s probably not the pc word to use, but it sums it up.

I will keep you updated on the progress of this as well but if you would like more details then log on to Diane’s website called Inspirational Guidance.

I’ve only got as far as downloading information at the moment and I am still thinking about the goals I want to achieve, but it’s a start.

Anyway, it’s half term and I shouldn’t be sat at the computer, I can feel the bubbling disatisfaction of the children heading my way.  That and cries of mommy, mommy and I want! 

Posted in General | No Comments »

Delicious!

I’m not the best cook in the world, and not the most imaginative if I’m honest, but I can cook a meat and two veg type of dinner and do quite a nice line in salads.

Sometimes when I’m in the kitchen everything seems really in control and the dinner all cooks to perfection and in the right time. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t go that well. Am I the only one?

Take tonight for example. Very simple meal, chicken chasseur (sauce courtesy of Homepride) with mashed potatoes, carrots, peas and broccoli.

I’d cooked the chicken, added the sauce on the hob, put the potatoes on and put the steamer on to cook the other veg (one of my hobs isn’t working so I have to be creative).

As the carrots obviously take longer than the broccoli, I gave them 10 minutes start. At the appropriate time I checked the carrots to find that I hadn’t put the hob on under the steamer after all and the carrots were stone cold.

I hastily put them on, putting boiling water in the steamer to help quicken the process and when I went to the fridge to get the broccoli out to prepare I realised that I hadn’t actually bought any!!

The other night I had decided to do chicken in a different sauce (we like chicken okay!). Different veg this time to make it more interesting.

I’m really fussy with chicken and cut every bit of fat and yuk off, so after defrosting it I realised I didn’t like the look of it. By the time I’d have finished cutting out all the bits I don’t like we wouldn’t have had any meat.

Okay, so how could I turn the meal into something else with no chance to get more meat. I could still have the mashed potatoes and carrots. I could make a cheese sauce for the cauliflower and in the freezer I had some chicken dippers. Not what I really fancied, but it would do.

Well I couldn’t find my normal recipe for the cheese sauce so I used a different cookbook, big mistake. Not only did it only make half the normal quantity, it became so lumpy I had to sieve it over the cauliflower. As time was running out and the family were hungry I didn’t have time to make another batch, so I made it stretch. (I just took some of the cauliflower out of the dish.)

So my lovely chicken in a sauce dinner became ‘chicken hotch potch’ with ‘cauliflower almost cheese’.

Surprisingly the family were happy with the meal but I’m not sure if that’s because they were so hungry they were too weak to complain or I am such a rotten cook they thought it was just the normal standard!

Posted in Emma's Dilemmas | No Comments »

25

 "You don’t get paid by the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to an hour."

Jim Rohn  

Posted in A Little Thought | No Comments »

A Little Behind

I haven’t been around for a few days.  I went away for the weekend with my husband to an Internet Marketing Seminar in London.  It was called the Internet Millionaire’s Bootcamp at the Novotel, Hammersmith.

The speakers included Mike Filsaime, Frank Garon, Willie Crawford, Stephen Pierce, Derek Gehl and a host of others.

After worrying endlessly about going, I really enjoyed the weekend, not least for meeting lots of people whose name I had heard but never seen and in understanding more about what my husband does.

I shall report more on this in a different format, but it really was a good event for many reasons. It’s also given me the motivation to tackle my own projects.

Posted in General | No Comments »

What Makes A Best Friend?

Throughout the journey of life, we meet many people. Some people impact on our lives greatly, some whilst not realising it change a small part of us and hopefully for the better. Some people make us evaluate our own lives and make us realise just what we have and how lucky we are. We admire people, we hero worship them, sometimes we would like to swap lives with them, even for just a few hours to see how different it would be.

There are many names for some of these people. For example here are dictionary definitions for just a few of them.

Friend: A person known well to another and regarded with liking, affection, and loyalty

Acquaintance: A person whom one knows but who is not a close friend.

Colleague: A fellow worker or member of staff.

We can probably all associate with the different types of people. For example there are people we work with that maybe we are friendly with but would never be ‘friends’ with. A really good friend of mine summed up how she felt about her work colleagues and not wanting to go on a night out with them.

“I have nothing in common with any of the girls that are going, I don’t wish to have anything in common. And I don’t like them – so that solves that feeling of guilt then!! “

Okay we may not all feel that strongly about it, but it did make me chuckle when I read it. We can’t always like everyone we work with, but we have to put up with them on a professional level. Nobody said anything about having to go out at night with them!

An acquaintance can be someone we pass the time of day with, more to be polite. For example saying hello to other people we see on a regular basis ie they are always on the same transport with you when going to work, other mums on the school run, people in a different department to yourself. You may not be in the ‘having a coffee’ league with them, but it still makes for a pleasant day by sharing small amounts of polite conversation.

A friend, as the definition says, is generally someone we like, have affection for and would be loyal to. Maybe it’s someone we have known for a long time, a childhood friend, someone you have met in similar circumstances, or can be people at work that we click with.

But what elevates a friend to a best friend? In my opinion it’s :-

Someone who enriches your life. It’s someone you wouldn’t hesitate in turning to, to share your woes and your achievements. It’s someone, who despite not always having the same ideas and principles, will still support you. It’s someone who doesn’t judge you but will listen.

And above all it’s someone who has the ability to comfort you with a hug, a word or a deed.

Posted in Articles | No Comments »

24

"Middle Age is when your age starts to show around the middle."

Bob Hope

Posted in A Little Thought | No Comments »

Thyme Out By Katie Fforde

Imagine getting your life in order after having it turned upside down by your now ex-husband and setting up a successful business growing and supplying vegetables.

And then you walk inadvertently back into his life when you find out he has taken over the local restaurant where you deliver your vegetables to,  especially knowing that he couldn’t cook when you were married!

Worse still, he wants to use your cottage for a television show he is piloting as he is also a celebrity chef.

Thyme Out  is a lovely story with the main character Perdita trying to come to terms with why her ex-husband is back in her life and the emotions she goes through.  Is he as bad as she remembers or can something be salvaged from their past life?

It keeps you on your toes wondering will they or won’t they start building up their relationship again and totally understanding the feelings the character must be going through.  It’s also heartwarming as Perdita has to come to terms with her lifelong friend and support Kitty having a stroke.

This is not the first Katie Fforde book I have read and I am pleased to say this book was just as good.

Posted in Book Reviews | 1 Comment »

Back to Normal

Well I don’t want to repeat last week.  My energy level became almost zero, my appetite went on holiday and I couldn’t even face my cup of tea, but the positive side was I was told to rest up.  So I did!

I have had to make up for over a weeks worth of housework and I feel pretty good about what I achieved today and  the day is not over yet. 

Apart from the housework the blog has been sadly neglected.  Not that I haven’t been thinking about it and what I want to do with it, but I just haven’t had the energy to get started.

I think my husband summed up the sorry state I was in when I walked downstairs wearing one of my favourite snuggly cardigans (that I had picked up off the bedroom floor).  He walked towards me and asked me if I really wanted to wear the coat hanger that was attached to the back of me!

Posted in General | No Comments »

23

 "Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it."

M Scott Peck

Posted in A Little Thought | No Comments »