Why a woman needs to take care of herself.... the absolute importance for all women...

I've always believed in the importance of looking after myself first.

I have been neglecting myself a bit... well... not a bit.. I must confess ALOT!

I have not looked after myself for months. I have been so busy with work and life getting in the way, moving houses, getting back into a new routine, finding and starting new jobs.

I have no excuse...

I have not been looking after myself! I now feel like I have burrowed myself out from the "otherside" of the town... There I said it...

Looking after oneself is not only good for the mind and spirit and honouring yourself as a woman. I always feel refreshed and rejuvenated. I feel better to tackle things and get things done.

My answer is two fold, I pamper myself first, then I feel good about myself. It is a very simple math.

Why should women pamper themselves?
We work, we look after our family unit, we run the household, and more often than not- we manage the household fianances. Damn it, we deserve it!

Of course there is no right or wrong answer, but I can tell you right now, women neglect themselves far too often, and I am guilty of this too. I am always rushing to do one activity and go to the next. I need to sit back more often and breathe!

To look after myself, I;

• go to bed early every night (decent sleep is important, the key is quality not quanity).
• drink lots of water.
• read a book a few minutes each day before bed
• make a delicious meal for dinner each night.
• take my own delicious lunch to work each day (my lunch is wayyyyy superior than the cafe around the corner, yeah!).

These are things that I make sure I do each and every day. While I have always eaten fairly well since I moved out of home, I have modified my eating habits significantly since I fell ill with glandular fever two and a half years ago. I feel so much better now.

This is why I make sure I look after myself every day. If I don't, I don't feel good and get very tired. Obviously that is not good in the begining of a working week. I will talk about food another day, let's just focus on pampering today.

How about a little time to ourselves?

It is important to give ourselves the gift of relaxation. If you are a woman, please learn to pamper yourself. Even if it is only 5 minutes, it doesn't matter- make the time!

Do something that will make you feel better:

• Have a Sunday afternoon nap.
• Paint your toenails in a pretty colour.
• Tweeze your eyebrows.
• Make a homemade face mask (or buy a packet at the shops if you prefer).
• Have a bubble bath and read a book.

When I lived in my old house (the first hourse I moved into after moving out of the family home), I used to look after/pamper myself religiously every Sunday. I'd make a yummy brunch on Sunday morning, bacon, tomato, eggs and turkish bread then later that night, I'd take a hot bath and light some tealight candles all over the bathroom and just spend the time thinking to myself. Bliss!
However sadly in the name of water conservation and water restrictions, I can't do this, but I can find other things to do.

Anyway, timely discussion came up in Simple Savings about making your own Nads style wax. For years I have heard about sugaring but never entered in my mind to google about it.

I can't tell you how much I hate, hate, hate shaving my hairy little legs.
While it may be a quick and an instant job, you also get the problems of getting stubble or ingrown hair. Then having to do it at least twice or 3 times a week, just to keep on top of it.
Why the heck would you want to save your whole leg every couple days? I just can't be bothered and I have better things to do with my time.

I prefer to be waxed but I can't justify the cost of having my chin, eyebrows, forehead, legs, lips and underarms waxed (and throw in a brazillan as well). I often find the beauticans in beauty salons are very young and inexperienced, especially you mix an inexperienced beautican with a brazillan, oh boy you're in for a world of pain!

The general cost of getting waxed with the list of things I want done, would cost me... $253. I got this off a beauty salon website, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't cost that much but you get the general idea of how much it would add up if I got it all done at the same time. I'm a bit stunned... with the price actually!

So...I can't remember the last time my legs were shaved, so over the last few months I've just left my legs au naturale.

I was curious and did some investigating online for tutorials how to make and use sugar wax etc.
I am telling you right now, this stuff is... GOLD..... absolutely gold.. EVERY woman should have this recipe. The upside of this is, it's cheap to make and hurts way less than normal wax. All you need is some organisational skills and your time!



Sugar Wax

• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/4 cup of lemon juice
• 1/4 cup of water
• glass jars

Instructions:

1. Place the glass jars in the oven with the door slightly opened.
2. Turn on the oven to 180 degrees celcius (or 356 F). Warming up the jar will prevent the glass from cracking when you put the sugar wax mixture in it.
3. Set stove to medium and combine ingredients in a pot. Stir the sugar mixure constantly. (i.e., do not walk away and leave it to cook by itself- stand there and stir until it's done!)
4. When you see that the sugar granules have pretty much disappeared, crank the stove up a little and allow to boil a little and keep stirring and turn the stove down again. It will get foamy and frothy, that is fine, this is normal. Do not allow it to boil too hard. If it starts boiling vigorously, take the pot off the stove and let it settle down then put it back on the stove and keep cooking and stirring.
5. When you see that the sugar wax mixture has become a nice amber/brown colour then it is ready. It should take about 10-20 minutes, depending on the humidity and elevation.
6. Once ready, turn the stove off and stand the sugar mixture for about 5 minutes.
7. Turn the oven off and place glass jars somewhere safe and pour the mixture slowly into the glass jars.

Note: The sugar wax is very hot and can cause severe burns. Wait until it is completely room temperature and then use accordingly.
The important thing to keep in mind is to make sure that you do not burn the sugar mixture. I did this and the result was rock hard. Not good! Don't worry if it seems to take a long time to turn into a nice amber/brown colour, I would rather cook on a lower temperature for longer than do it quickly and burn it.


Who says you need to spend hundreds and thousands on looking and feeling beautiful?

Crocheting my first scarf

Poor Mum has had a bit of bad luck following her around a fair bit lately. Some lowlife decided that it was fun to break in her car, which was parked just barely 10 meters from the chapel where mum was attending a funeral for a friend who's mother just died.  In my mum's bag she had a bottle of perfume she just purchased, medication, keys and assorted personal bits and pieces that you usually find in a lady's bag.

So I decided to send her a care package in the post to cheer her up a little (I am a good daughter!!). I had to think what to put in the care package and since winter is coming up, I decided on a nice scarf, a new bottle of her favorite purfume LouLou and sent with lots and lots of love.

I searched high and low for different scarf patterns, all with varying different types of yarn, thickness, designs. I settled on a Patons scarf pattern.

Soft and feminine scarf I picked

Ta Da, here is the result of my handiwork!!
This was the first time I've made a scarf and I am impressed! I like it so much that I plan on making the same one for myself, but with tassles. I modified the pattern of the scarf a little as I couldn't follow the instructions exactly. I think my result is a little better, forget the flower.  My flower looks really mangled, so I used a different flower pattern from Attic 24.

Me: Happy!!!

I will put up the instructions for my scarf another day as I have do complete three uni assignments and must get them done!!

La Paisible

The last few days I have been looking at different blogs on home decorating. I absolutely love doing crafty things, (does this tell you I am a very indoorsy person?) and I have become inspired to take action and decorate my house so I have a place I am proud of living in.

I have a beautiful early 20th century cottage, which has been very nicely painted and a cream picket fence. Some nice flowers, in the front and back. I want my home to be my La Paisible.

Sadly inside, it's a different ball game- it is just chaos- with clashing furniture.

I am a very chaotic person, I have never lived in a tidy house.
Clean yes, tidy no.
This morning I was thinking of my best friend and something he said to me years ago, he told me that I was "the most Organised Disorganised person" he had ever met (how you come up with a definition for that one is up to the you).
Yes, It does annoy me having to hunt around for items. But this is going to change, so bring on twenty eleven I say!

I should note down my sources of inspirations, so when I look back on this post; I can turn to things that have inspired me into action.
(and in case you would like to have a look)

• My best friends
• Young House Love
• Book- What would Audrey do? by Pamela Keogh
• Notebook Magazine (publication has now ceased- what a shame! It was the best magazine around. However, the website is still running)
• my Beautiful dog
• my new stainless steel dishwasher (out of all the appliances you buy for the kitchen, I think this is the most functional appliance- I absolutely adore it!! I highly recommend having a dishwasher, if you can!)

What has been helping me is that the last few weeks I have implemented 'a place for everything' for a few items. I cannot believe how much of a dream it was to find it, use it then put it away. It was effortless, I should do this wide scale and apply the principal to the whole house.

I haven't created a moodboard (or moodbook) of decorating styles I like and how I like certain decorations. This will help me to put everything together and see a recurring theme. Young House Love says not to make everything matchy-matchy but tie things in together.

Being a person of limited means with a budget of $1200 and no eye for decoration or style, I am going to decorate the whole house on the cheap, I undertake this monstrosity of a challenge with the best of my ability. I will be sticking to my budget for the whole year by;

• accepting freebies via freecyle or gumtree
• finding discounted or clearance items
• hunting around the house and find items that will make do and utilise them differently
• Anything that is useless, collecting dust and wasting space, I will either freecyle them or sell them online.

I have several rooms to cover;

• Bedroom
• Study room
• Hall way
• Lounge room
• Kitchen
• Laundry
• Bathroom

My garden will have a separate budget, so it will have a budget of about $150 dollars. Again the same rules apply when doing it up.

The next few posts will have more detail for each room.

Stay tuned.

Miracle Cleaner...

I am not one for commercially made cleaners for cleaning my house. As I worked as a cleaner many moons ago, for one year, commercially made cleaners make me choke and cough on the vapour. Ugh!

Now I can have my house smelling clean and fresh, like I scrubbed it within an inch of its life with bleach all day long. For very little outlay and effort, I introduce you to the Miracle Cleaner! I sourced this from the Simple Savings website. I can't tell you how much money this site has saved me over the years. The membership fee is well worth it's money, in my opinion.

Ingredients you need:

1.5L water
250mL vinegar
40mL dish washing liquid
40mL eucalyptus
4 teasp dish washing soda

Mix in a small bucket and decant into a spray bottle. Viola! Miracle cleaner!

Store the rest in an old used milk bottle.


I made some small changes:

• I used 20mL dish washing liquid has I had the concentrated one on hand.
• I also used 20mL eucalyptus as I found it very strong.

You can also use other oils like lavender instead. I am not a fan of lavendar but other people might like it. I would LOVE to have a vanilla smelling one.

DON'T use this on timber surfaces, it will strip the polish and shine off. I use use vinegar for timber surfaces and wipe.

Happy cleaning!

Designing....

Spent quite a bit of time this morning looking at backgrounds for blogs. So many are so pretty, I looked at so many, tested each one I liked.

I found a few with butterflies but decided against some of them. I picked this one, as I felt it was important to make sure the lines and colours were clean enough not to be distracted by all the pretty colours and pictures. So I kept it simple with black and white with added colours on fonts.

I found the background I chose from The Cutest Blog on the Block.

Goodbye 2009, Welcome 2010!

Visualise then Realise!

The year 2009 has been a pretty crap year for quite a few people I know, even more so for people overseas who have lost so much due to the Global Financial Crisis. I feel more for those that live in Third World countries, they suffer far more than people in Developed countries.

I went overseas a few years back, unfortunately I had to come back due to illness, but the upside of all the upheaval of the time.. Even though I went to countries that were far more wealthier than a Third World country, it struck and astounded me so much how much more visible poverty was outside of Australia. That is something I remember far more than anything else on my trip to the Northern Hemisphere.

Anyway, it's been a long two years for me, trying to get better physically and mentally. I have just spent the Christmas break lounging around, doing absolutely nothing (which was great by the way) and I've just realised exactly what my problem was! I had a negative mindset!

It is wrong on so many levels. I need to change my thinking, to the way it used to be. Get off my bum and be a happy and positive woman, or I'm never going to be one. I'm an Australian, for goodness sake- I have everything to be happy about! I AM living in the lucky country, there is no doubt about that. So little time, so much to do!

Last night, browsing on my favorite website, Simple Savings, and came across a thread that had a link to the book called, The Game of Life written by Florence Shinn. Well worth a read, if you have the time. Even though this book has strong Christian links and references (Please note that I am not a practising Christian nor I follow ANY religion, and never will), it does make an interesting reading about changing your mindset- 'ask and you will recieve' kind of stuff.

Sales tactics...

I got thinking while I was in the bath last evening, thinking about how I needed to purchase a new bottle of hairspray, and how I had to remember the brand name for it as it's convincingly the best hairspray I've come across for my hair. I have very fine hair, and using any supermarket hairspray makes my hair look like I haven't washed it for a week, or better yet, a dole bludger with bad roots from the back suburbs.

Anyway, I got thinking about sales people and their tactics they use to sell their wares. I was recalling the time the woman was advising me to buy this particular brand because it was so good "uses it personally" for her hair.

Is that the case when sales people are trying to sell something? Do they REALLY use it or are they just trying to make a sale?