#100HappyDays - The second seven...

If you haven't figured it out by now, you're about to learn that I am a serial procrastinator.

I put off doing, well, pretty much everything...

I let myself get distracted by just about everything, and the things I should be doing, the things I need to be doing, just don't get done.

Everything from housework - dusting, mopping, sweeping... you get the idea - to reading the bookcase full of books that have yet to have their spine cracked for the first time, and blogging.

I hate housework with a passion and will make any excuse to avoid it, but I love to read, and I love to blog, so why is it so hard to get out of my own way and do what I love?

By the time I get around to doing stuff, no matter what it is, the task has become so huge, so overwhelming, that I pretty much become paralysed by the enormity of the task.

Take the #100happydays challenge for instance.

There have been a few days where I couldn't post because I was in a area where there was no internet or mobile phone reception  yes, those places still exist!  and there have been a few times when I had forgotten to post and so posted the pic and caught up the next day.

But that's posting the initial pic on Facebook.

I also had committed to keeping you guys updated on my progress with the challenge.  I managed to post one week in a row!  Woo-Hoo!!  Now I'm into the sixth week...

So in an effort to get myself up to date, and not be so overwhelmed by the size of the task, I have broken it down into bite sized chunks, ones that won't choke a rhinoceros.   I've done a draft of each week with the pictures of each day and a brief description that I dragged directly from Facebook, so now all I have to do is to go back and flesh it out a bit with some details and make it a bit more prettiful...

Now, without further ado, I present to you #100happydays- The Second Seven.

Day 8:

After several weeks of being in limbo and insurance assessors demanding quote after quote, we finally got the call to tell us that the car was a write off.

It was such a relief.  Now we knew what was happening.  It was a huge burden lifted from our shoulders, and now we could go car shopping.

New car shopping.  Oh dear.  What a shame.

*insert sarcasm here*




Day 9:
BM's Mum had come back to our place for a couple of weeks, and much of it was going to be spent taking her around the district and doing all the Terry Tourist things.  So I decided that a nice relaxing movie day was called for.

Knowing she likes classic films, and having a not too shabby  DVD collection that includes several classic movies, we settled down on the couch to watch movies like Harvey - Jimmy Stewart has a best friend who is a 6' tall talking white rabbit... who is invisible... and Blithe Spirit - Rex Harrison is a writer who is researching his next book and invites a medium to his house for a seance, she inadvertently calls up the spirit of Rex's first wife who then proceeds to haunt him and the new Mrs... and my all time absolute favourite - Arsenic & Old Lace... Cary Grant is a writer who has made his fortune writing books on how terrible marriage is and is a confirmed bachelor.  He falls in love with the girl next door who is a ministers daughter, and they run off and get married in secret.  He tells his sweet old aunts who live with their crazy as a loon brother, when Cary Grant discovers a dead body in the window seat.  Thinking his uncle has finally snapped and murdered someone, he tries to have him committed to the local sanitarium.  Hilarity ensues.  It's really not a movie you should watch with a full bladder...

Best. Movie. Ever. 


Day 10:
As I mentioned up there in Day 9, we have a bit of a DVD collection.  It's numbered somewhere over 1000 movies - not counting the ones with multiple movies in the one box.  I do have a database that has them all listed, but it's not up to date - at last count about 18 months ago  there were 982 in the database, but we've bought heaps since then, so I guess I have another job to do.

They were roughly sorted into genre - drama, action, comedy etc the only exception to that is the Disney collection, and Disney Pixar, but not alphabetical within the genre.

This drove DD absolutely nuts!  Apparently all of her DVD's are strictly alphabetical (except the Disney ones of course) so she can find what she wants to watch, by title, easily.  Whereas I tend to think about what sort I'd like to watch rather than a particular title, and choose accordingly, hence sorting by genre.

She decided to take advantage of MIL's visit to get me to re-organise the DVD collection as it had gotten a tad out of control...  BM isn't well known for putting things back where he found them, so the only organisation that we could see by the time we started was DVD and BluRay were on different shelves!

It took the three of us  DD, MIL, and me   two days to complete, and we had to relearn our alphabet to do it!  I'm sure you can picture us, three grown women, all sitting there silently going through our ABC's.

I think it was worth it, what do you think?



Day 11:
Before Christmas I had begun sewing slipcovers for my couches.  I had bought all the fabric, and done one slipcover but hadn't done the seat cushion covers because I couldn't decide whether to put zip closures on them or ties etc.  Once again I let myself become paralysed with indecision - do I do a pillowcase closure?  A zip closure?  Ties??  The more I thought about it, the worse I got.  In the end I took the zips out of the original covers and simply copied how it was done.  I'd never done zips before - ever - and was really worried about how they'd turn out, but as usual, there was no need to be worried.  I popped my zipper cherry!  Zips are easy!

So after more than six months, I finally have one completed couch of brand new slip covers.

I've already begun on the other one...


Day 12:
MIL and I had been home alone for a couple of days while BM was at work, and more or less just sat around watching movies and sewing, so BM decided to take her to see a lovely little historic village not too far from us, called Morpeth.

Every year this place hosts a Teapot Festival, which is awesome!  If you can think of something, anything, then someone has made a ceramic teapot version of it.  For example a toilet, a toaster, a caravan, golf clubs, oven, various animals...

We took her to see the gorgeous little shops, she bought some gifts and souvenirs, then we stopped for lunch a cafe called Savannah's.  The menu was to die for, the service was brilliant, the food was delicious, and the atmosphere was welcoming - we'll definitely go back.

But what I really loved about it, and I don't really know why, were the table numbers.

Day 13:

I would have gotten a shot of the full cup, but lives

were at stake.  Yes.  It was good.

The whole day was packed with errands, and for some reason, I had skipped my morning coffee.  

With my jobs done, and BM at work, I took MIL to lunch at a tavern, and then on to Spotlight.

I was looking forward to it as I hadn't been to Spotlight since buying the fabric for my couch.  They were having a huge sale, and MIL wanted to have a look for some flannelette sheets and some curtains.

Silly me had forgotten that she and I have two completely opposite shopping styles.

I walk quite quickly, scanning the shelves as I go, and only stop if something catches my eye, otherwise I just head for whatever it is that I want.


MIL however, ambles, excruciatingly methodically, up and down every single aisle, and looks at absolutely everything.  She picks things up and goes over them with a fine tooth comb before replacing it and then moving onto the next item.  I get the feeling that when she goes shopping with other family members, she's not allowed to look at her leisure, so we don't rush her.

We had a great day out together, and we both jumped into our pyjamas when we got home, there was no way in hell we were going anywhere else,  and I finally had time for my first coffee of the day.

At 5pm.

In the afternoon.


Day 14:

Pinterest is one of my time wasting loves.  It has the most random collection of photos on it you can think of, rivaled only by Google Images.

When I'm feeling a bit low, or more likely, when I'm trying to avoid housework  I open Pinterest and have a good laugh, it's ridiculous how much happy there is to be had on Pinterest.