1. Organising/ storage ideas
2. Health
3. Fitness
4. Creativity
5. Financial
6. Christmas ideas
7. Passion (largely due to my work at the church)
8. Recipes to try

I like the 20-page ones although most of these are of the 10-page variety. Just because they’re more readily available.

5. Every 6 – 12 months, depending on how many magazines I’ve been reading, I’ll quickly flip through the flipfile to see if I can throw anything away. Sometimes our tastes change and you now know without a shadow of doubt that you’ll not be doing mosaic art anytime soon (I’m just saying!).

Anyway, it was delicious but next time I will have to ask for instructions myself

In other news, I won nothing in last week’s giveaway. No real surprise because I only entered about 10 or less contests. BUT Annie gifted me with a signature which you can see on my what do you value? post! Cool…

Now, onto this week’s menu

Anybody have any quick and easy recipe ideas for me? By quick and easy I mean less than 20 mins prep time

Imagine my shock and horror when I saw that Annie awarded the Creative Blogger Award to me. Then I read what she wrote and it really is very sweet of her.

Marcia has lots of blogs and even a professional website full of creative ways to organize your life. She always has pictures of food she has made or organizing tips. She is very creative!

Thank you, Annie.

I browsed my Google Reader and thought that this is the ideal opportunity to introduce you to some really creative gals I stalk I have a thing about gorgeous photography and though I almost never comment (some of that is due to Typepad), I am always lurking. In fact, I’ll let you in on a secret: I read my creative folder first every day because I love the yumminess of colour and art.

So I bestow this award on these 5 bloggers:

1. Chronicles of me – Boho is a photographer and jewellery designer.
2. Superhero Journal – Andrea makes the yummiest necklaces and is a photographer too. I wrote about how I love one of her posts the other day.
3. The simple life – I’ve been reading Mindi’s blog since before I even started blogging. She is a super-talented photographer and has the most GORGEOUS kids.
4. Elizabeth Harris – I don’t quite know how I stumbled upon her blog. Also a very-talented photographer. She took some baby pictures on her blog recently which are just GORGEOUS.
5. Jennifer Deaton – I “met” Jennifer through Menu Plan Monday and went to visit her creative blog. I drooool at the cards and other gorgeous things she makes. Jennifer has a post which I’ve bookmarked because the baby gift she made is so beautiful. And she was so encouraging when I was trying to do something similar (in my non-artistic) way.

Go ahead and visit them – it is well worth your while

Have a great weekend everyone.

This is a sticky post – please scroll down for new posts!

So Shannon has this “dog days of summer” giveaway starting tomorrow and I’ve decided to participate.

The rules
1. If you’d like to be entered into the draw, you have to comment on this post. If you want to, you can also ask me an organising question!
2. You do NOT have to be a blogger to enter but you do need to let me have your email address. Anyone can enter since it’s a digital download.
3. Comments close on Friday 12 mid-day South Africa time. So if you’re international, best leave your comment now.
4. The draw happens this Friday, 27 July (incidentally, my husband’s birthday ) so come back to check if you won!

I’m giving away a downloadable product I sell on my website called the Household Organising File. It has 25 downloadable forms spread out over 3 sections – planning, household and personal – and is guaranteed to make your life simpler, easier and more organised. Something we all need, don’t we?

By the way, if you do win and you’ve already purchased this product, then I’ll give you my 12 days to goal-setting success e-book.

If you’re anything like I am, you buy things on a regular basis like food, clothes, things for the house, etc.

In the same way, if you don’t have a regular plan for decluttering, you will soon become overwhelmed with clutter.

Photogenic left a comment on my previous post asking for my best decluttering tips and I couldn’t resist

1. I subscribe to the one in, one out theory. If you buy 3 T-shirts, give 3 away. I actually rotate – my T-shirts move from nice ones to gym ones, and then they go out!

2. Have a box somewhere (mine is in my laundry) that you can toss things in regularly.

3. Have a plan to get the stuff out of your house. My box leaves once a week with my cleaning lady. If I have to run errands like take clothes to church for the orphanage we support, or books to the bookstore, I take those bags to my car and leave them in the boot (trunk).

4. Ask yourself, “who can use this today?” instead of saying, “I might need this someday”. When you focus on the benefit, it is easier to get rid of things.

What is your best decluttering tip?

Last weekend I had the wonderful idea to go to 3 bookshops (they’re all the same, just different franchises within about a 2km radius) to check out the latest stuff. Clearly I am soooo led by God because there was a HUGE SALE!!!!

No time to do the happy dance because the biggest store was about to close so I had about 7 minutes to grab everything and pay. Now I am a champion shopper so I grabbed a basket, focussed and got on with the job at hand

We then went to the other two stores and got some more stuff at the one place.

And came home with this…

The two baskets on the right have things I picked up at Clicks – again, led by God – some great gift sets for rock-bottom prices.

This is my good deed of the day – we detoured at Pick & Pay and these stationery sets were going for R10 each ($US1.43), marked down from R39.99 ($US5.71) which is still dirt cheap. Anyway… I decided to pick some up and give them away.

You might be wondering why the photos above are in black and white – it’s because the pile of shopping doesn’t look so bad that way! But here is a smaller photo, in colour.

Anyway, I tackled both those surfaces this week and I’m very happy to say all that stuff is put away or has been given away.

1. Gave a stationery set to my cleaning lady for her 3 sons and another to an underprivileged school.
2. The books I bought purely for gifts have been put away on my gift shelf (which now overflows to a second shelf).
3. The books for me have been put on my bookshelf. I must say, it felt like I was working in a library because my bookshelf is sorted by topic, so I filed under job/work, family, life balance and novels.
4. Also moved some books to my bedside table to start reading soon.

What did you tackle today?

(don’t forget to check my main blog for my giveaway)

Edited to add the button – this is not the original person who was supposed to make the button for me!

This is a new series that I’ll be posting on the blog, one post per week.

I battled a bit with perfectionism because I asked someone to make me a button and I wanted to wait for that first before starting the series. I’m still waiting for the button as you can see but since I’ve had this ready for about 10 days now, I decided to go ahead and post. I can always add it in afterwards, right?!

At the moment I have planned 10 tools but who knows? It could and probably will stretch to include more tools.

Why do I love notebooks and pens?

It is easier to jot some notes down immediately without losing the thought than to have to try to remember it.

I have notebooks all over the house, one next to my bed, one on the entrance hall table, one in my handbag, one in the car, etc.

This one is in the kitchen and I use it for my helper, Bea, to leave her any notes

This one is on our phone table

Pink notebook in my handbag

on my bedside table

Some uses for notebooks

1. Notes for your helper or gardener
2. To-do lists
3. To-blog lists
4. Client notes
5. Meeting notes
6. Great ideas – business and other
7. Recipes to try

What else do you use notebooks for?

Annie tagged me and wants me to answer these 5 questions.

1. What brings tears to your eyes, just about everytime?
Reading a beautiful post where a mother writes to her child about how she loves him/ her.
Examples are Born Smiling and 6 months of Ben

2. What does your favorite outfit look like, the one that you feel great in?
I don’t have a favourite outfit per se, but I have a number of favourite items of clothing.

1. Grey sleeveless T-shirt I bought in Thailand (it makes my top half look great – enough said )
2. Dark blue bootleg denim jeans – make my butt look smaller (and I need all the help I can get) and my legs look longer
3. Navy short-sleeved skirt suit – if I say so myself, this suit fits me perfectly (and I have one in yellow and another in red), the length is perfect to show off my legs (probably my best feature) and the jacket is at exactly the right length to minimise the aforementioned big butt. I wear it for interviews or when I just need to portray the right corporate image. I’m going to probably wear it for next month’s talk because I know I can relax; I’ll look good and I can focus on talking. (The photo doesn’t do it justice but I tell you what – I’ll get Dion to take a picture and I’ll post it with me in it, ok???)

3. What color are you looking at a lot these days?

Autumn colours – greens, browns, oranges with an occasional pink!

4. Do you let your kids/hubbie drink after you, would you ever share a toothbrush with hubbie?
No and no again. I am very fussy with hygiene and he even teases me because I kiss him but I will not use his toothbrush or let him drink from my mug/ glass/ anything

5. You’re having dinner at your best friend’s house, you find a hair in your food… what do you do?
Well now, because it’s a good friend and I don’t want to hurt their feelings, I won’t say anything…
I’d either quietly spit out the food into a serviette (Jen, another one of those words ) or just move the food to the side of my plate to be disposed of later!

Now my five questions are:

1. What do you do if someone pushes into a queue in front of you?
2. If you had 6 months to live, what would you most regret not doing?
3. What is your favourite hot drink and why?
4. What do you do if you already have a plan and you then get invited to a “better” event?
5. What do you most value? What is most important to you? You’re not allowed to say God or any other people!

I’m tagging Michelle, Suzanne, Coach Jen, Corrie, Alexis and Lorie.