Yoyo loves Peaches

You see... the thing is...

2011-08-11T13:37:00.000+10:00

I have been writing a woman's memoir for the past year, and in order to do that, I've had to toss everything aside--that includes craft and my sanity.

I have my sanity back somewhat, even though others might disagree, and I'm starting to think of craft again. In the meantime, I've launched an Etsy store for my brother in law, who is a mad collector of native American turquoise and silver. The store is called Silverdreaming and you can see a few pieces in the left sidebar. Such beautiful pieces too. I'm pleased to be able to offer them on Etsy for him. I've sold one already, ironically to someone in New Mexico, which is where the jewellery came from originally.

As things are warming up in the garden, I'm going to start adding manure, Dynamic Lifter and extra mulch to get things moving along.

Photos to come.

Something's afoot

2010-11-21T00:24:00.000+11:00

So plenty has been happening over here but I've been a bit busy actually DOING that I haven't had as much time to write about it. I'm about to finish my second term of pottery and it's seriously the best handcraft I've learned in years. Between the day job, pottery, writing a memoir (not mine - more about that another time), hanging with Jeff and renovating the other house, it's been fun.

We have so much growing at the moment. The herbs that I moved from the old veggie patch are loving the full sun in their new home. I planted lemongrass a few weeks ago and it's going great guns. The tomato seedlings are not growing too well. I have no idea what that's about because a compost tomato plant is doing well. The weather's been so weird - we've had so much rain and it's been a super-cold spring so I'm sure that's got a bit to do with what's happening in the veggie patch. It's going to be ok though. We also have eggplant, lettuce, leek, radishes, snowpeas, yellow beans, potatoes and onions growing. I think I'll mulch tomorrow and give the garden a drenching with blood and bone.

So here is a story, in pictures, of spring in the garden and some new pottery pieces.

Clockwise from top left: New pottery, the hard rubbish score have been cleaned and are
ready to be painted, the first of the season's hydrangeas, our very first cherries!

Clockwise from top left: poppies in the pond, wild figs from the tree in the gnome
pond, the potatoes are coming, the first strawberry

Out of the closet

2010-09-30T09:19:00.004+10:00

I'm inspired by my friend Momo who is moving back to Melbourne (YIPPEE!) after a sojourn in a rural location and has done a massive offloading of STUFF. Plus this article from Whole Living (yes, yes, another freaking Martha Stewart magazine) was in my inbox this morning.

Now, while I can't even pretend that I fit into the same jeans I wore in high school - like the person who wrote that article - I've found that I'm holding onto too much clothing. Some of it is quite good, classic stuff. But the rest is just good, but not classic. I just like it.

So this weekend, I'll be exorcising the wardrobe and for each and every item, I'll ask myself:

"How does this make me feel?

Am I waiting for it to fit again or come back into fashion?

Is this the person I want to be now?"

And this is how it will look when I'm done. Absolutely exactly like this.

Bread 'n' lamingtons for Father's Day

2010-09-05T18:06:00.005+10:00

I made THE most amazing bread yesterday, if I say so myself. This is going to be one of those ones that I'll want to play around with and perfect.

Recipe for a good sized loaf:
4 cups plain flour
2-3 cups warm water
1 tsp dry yeast
1 tsp salt

Mix the water and yeast in a large bowl. Add the sifted flour and salt to make a thick, but sticky, dough. It shouldn't be as thick as regular dough but not runny although it's this stickiness or wetness that creates the telltale chiabatta "holes". Do not overwork it. Mix until combined and that's it. Cover with gladwrap and leave for 12 hours. That's right, 12 hours!

Preheat the oven to around 180c. Turn the dough out onto a floured baking tray (you can use polenta instead of flour). Bake for around 1 hour - the colour should be a really deep golden brown.

You can add anything to the dough before you set it to rise - caraway seeds might be nice.

This is gorgeously chewy and dense chiabatta!

So that was the success story. Now for the disaster.

How could the Australian Women's Weekly let me down??? I followed their recipe for lamingtons and while they look great (in fact, I reckon they look better than the AWW ones), and they tasted great too, the cake was so thick and dense! Lamingtons should be light... (oh, yes, I MIGHT have forgotten that I didn't use cornflour - didn't have any - so maybe it wasn't the recipe's fault. Whatever.)

Hooray for me and Martha!

2010-08-31T21:26:00.020+10:00

I was at my manic best last weekend, without the requisite come down that I'm anticipating to be around the corner. It's not that I'm wishing doom and gloom upon myself, but I've been fairly buoyant for around 6 weeks now and history tells me that it's been waaaay too long between mood swings. But while it's here, I'm riding the sunshine wave. Sooooo.... I got busy!

I finally painted those tins and, seriously, such an anticlimax. I like them because they're good storage but, meh, don't know what the fuss is about. But it did give me the chance to use the paint that Jeff bought at a school fete many many years ago.

Next to the tins are a couple of bags of seed potatoes that we picked up from Diggers a few weeks ago. We got yummy kipflers and dutch creams and they're going in this weekend. That first potato that I dig up in a few months is going to be the best!

And while I was painting the tins, I painted the potting table... Martha might be proud!

I repotted the hoya that an friend of mum's gave me a year ago. Bad news... I decided to look up what to do with a hoya AFTER I repotted it. Seems that hoyas don't like to have their roots messed with and prefer to be rootbound. Well, talk about doing things ass backwards. I can't even bring myself to say what I did to its roots so I have everything cross that it won't die. CRAP. Moral of the story - research FIRST.
The aloe plant has been looking mighty sad, pale and lifeless. I thought I'd repot it and. whaddaya know, it had around 15 babies sucking from it. No wonder the poor thing looked tired. The good news is that I have heaps of aloe babies to give to friends. Here are just a few.

I also repotted all of the loquat seedlings that I've been nurturing since the end of summer. I was determined to grow them from the seeds of fruit that I'd savoured. I saved these seeds from the juiciest fruit that I had in Mildura last November. I've never had such fat, sweet loquats so I just had to grow this variety. I didn't think that so many of the seeds would germinate so I have around 10 seedlings. Two for me, which are now planted in the garden, two for mum and the remaining seedlings will continue growing in pots until they're ready for some guerrilla gardening in the neighbourhood.

So, with all this activity, all the beautifying, the gardening, the fixing, am I any better off? I dunno. I feel more accomplished. I like to surround myself with beauty. I like to tick a list.

I may not be a better person for it. And Martha Stewart eally couldn't give a crap either way, but I certainly feel like my weekend had some purpose.

And, sometimes, that's the best anyone can hope for.

This weekend

2010-08-26T13:10:00.007+10:00

I'm still on that freaking Martha Stewart list, and keep adding to it. Here's what I have left (that I care about):

Move the geraniums from the front yard into pots for the back garden - after listening to an excellent podcast on digitdownunder I must admit that I have a new fondness for the old-granny-plant. And I'm thinking of combining two tasks by potting them in the old crates we've found around and under the house during the renos.

Stick some happy wanderer in the ground so I don't have to stare at ugly fencing when I do the laundry - well I haven't got to this yet but I have planted a white and a purple variety on either side of the sunroom at the front of the house in the hope of improving its visual appeal - that's my compromise. Jeff refuses to get rid of it and while I HATE it, the expense is too great when only one wants it to happen (kinda like ivf and having children... oh that's another story). So let's hope the happy wanderers do their job.

Paint around the windows of the sunroom - I tested the charcoal paint and I think it's a winner. Now, if it would only stop raining. What is this! Isn't there a drought or something?

The mint chandelier... I just had a brain wave - by combining two tasks again! Plant them in tins with drain holes... yes, that's the plan.

I also want to make a heap of ceramic magnets with the white stoneware that I brought home from pottery.

Speaking of pottery - I'm afraid that half of the first batch of finished work has turned out to be an ugly disaster. Some photos to serve as a reminder that I must NEVER make pinch pots again. But coiling is ok.

Next week's will be much better. A LOT of pieces being fired this week plus the ones that I'm glazing on Monday. I'm really happy with this first stage. Pottery is turning out to be quite a winner for me...

Sowing the wild seeds, so to speak

2010-08-25T09:25:00.022+10:00

Holy crap, after weeks and months of prepping the front garden - first by removing all of the "lawn" - if you can call it that, with the drought we're having - then putting down the weed mat, getting in new yummy soil and making our little hills, we finally got mulch in on the weekend from our favourite local garden centre that reeks of cigarette smoke and I just want to get out of there as quickly as possible. We spent Saturday afternoon landscaping and I'm still in pain.

I've been collecting succulents for years so it's great to see them being used in the garden for once. They can spread out and really rustle their feathers now and GROW. And yes, when I say "collecting", this may have included some illegal activity. Here, let me practice my favourite line of defence (that I haven't had to use. Yet)

"But officer, I have NO IDEA how that plant got into my shoe/sock/underwear..."

Wherever I go, I just simply have to collect a piece. Anyway, let's not dwell.

I finally did some seed sowing as well. I bit the bullet after reading a tonne and even going to the Digger's Club seed sowing class a week ago, which was excellent and gave me the opportunity to check out the Heronswood Garden in Dromana, which everyone should check out some time (I promise I didn't collect anything at Heronswood that I didn't pay for). Learned some useful sowing tips and got a fab watering tool. Check it.

They didn't try to do the hard sell but the few products I did buy are excellent, like the seed watering nozzle above. You can use it on any plastic bottle and it doesn't disturb the seeds. Clever little invention!

We got a few more seeds, including seed potatoes, and a membership.

Did I say that I AM Martha Stewart? Looking at my sowing station might answer that question. I TRY!

The happiest day...

2010-08-10T21:21:00.001+10:00

We had hard rubbish collection a week ago and Jeff and I gladly shed a few hundred kilos of crap from the garage.

BUT...

Along the way (thanks to a dog walk I just HAD TO HAVE around the hood), I picked up a couple of "new items" that need some upcycling, like this pouf.

I picked it up from the pile next door and it's around 50 years old. My neighbour got it for her 7th birthday.

I also picked up some outdoor furniture that needs a good clean and paint before I take any photos.

But today I found the motherload! Jeff and I pulled into the parking lot at the train station this morning and there they were, sitting all pretty on the top of a heap, and here they are now... the shoes I've searched for, ebayed for, begged for, since I was a kid. I just picked them up, not even looking at the size, and just whacked them in the car hoping against hope that they'd fit. And you know what? THEY DO!!!

Wasps in the lime and velvet in my stomach

2010-08-08T22:16:00.003+10:00

I tried to get onto the list, I really did, but life got in the way.

Let's see:

Use the crates we found during the renovations to make some succulent gardens. Nope.
Stick some happy wanderer in the ground - Nooo - but Jeff agreed to planting it (he's not the biggest fan because of this fence we had that got a tad overgrown with it...)
Make tins into containers - No but I've saved a tin.
Move the geraniums from the front yard into pots for the back garden - No but I did compost the veggie garden in preparation of seed sowing.
Make a mint chandelier - No but I did decide that I'm going to make a mint pot at pottery class for this very purpose. Something saucer-like... like this. It's kinda crap but it's a start.

So what's that? Zero for five. Martha would be very sad, I'm sure.

Hmm. Sure but here's what I did do.Well firstly, my dad the drama queen came bursting in after coffee declaring: "That's it! The lime tree has to be pulled out."

Me, annoyed. It's too early for this crap: "What are you talking about?"

Dad: "It's got those wasp lumps. You'll have to pull it out!"

Well he way almost right. It does have those wasp lumps or, according to my Australian Gardening Encyclopedia, Citrus gall wasps. I know! Sounds terrifying. Looks it too. The wasp lays its eggs in the young stalk and then the swelling occurs as the grubs develop. We caught them early but there were a lot of them. And there isn't a lot you can do to avoid it. Just prune every affected branch before the end of August. Got it!

And then I decided to do a spot of natural fabric dying with rose hips out of the front garden, camellia petals, tea bags and coffee grounds.

Was it worth it? We'll see when the fabric dries.

And finally, I couldn't let the weekend get away without a little bit of Martha. I promised my work some cupcakes tomorrow and here they are. Martha's Red Velvet cupcakes with light cream cheese icing.

So maybe Martha wouldn't be too disappointed, after all.

Damn you Martha Stewart

2010-08-03T13:12:00.002+10:00

I have a LOVE HATE relationship with the lady. So much that I want to do that I feel paralysed by it all and end up doing so much less than I really want to. Here's the thing:

Does Martha REALLY only sleep 4 hours a night?
If yes, how, goddammit?!
Is she bipolar too? That would explain A LOT - the energy, the minimal sleep, the criminal nature.

Totally unrelated to my paralysis, of course. But just like the Real Housewives of OC use the TV broads as their inspiration, I use Martha, Martha, freaking Martha.

To add, well, injury to injury, I now get her daily newsletters to remind me of how little I actually get done. Crap!

I feel like work is getting in the way of life. Again. And that I need a big long break of, oh, forever, to get going on all of this.

But instead, this weekend, I intend to:

Use the crates we found during the renovations to make some succulent gardens;
Stick some happy wanderer in the ground so I don't have to stare at ugly fencing when I do the laundry;

Make tins into containers - really?

Move the geraniums from the front yard into pots for the back garden;
Make a mint chandelier - why have I never thought of this before?

Wish me luck...

The garden - stage uno

2010-07-20T21:54:00.001+10:00

The weekends have been cool but sunny, so Jeff and I have been out in the garden getting the veggie patch ready for the first planting. And Dad's been lending his farming expertise and his 72-year-old muscle, which is quite remarkable. The front garden's also a work in progress after we ripped out the "lawn" a few months ago. I use the term "lawn" loosely because the draught over the past decade or so has turned the grass in most neighbourhood lawns into dust bowls. We've ripped out the grass, put down a layer of weed mat and the new soil is arriving this weekend. We have 20 or so succulents waiting to go in as well as a tonne of potted plants and succulents that have been waiting for a permanent home for years.

We built the raised beds in the backyard a few weeks ago out of untreated hard wood. HEAVY WOOD. But well worth it. The herbs have been transplanted into other parts of the garden for now. Check out my collage of events.

I replanted some of the herbs, lettuce and silverbeet and we've been eating a lot of green over the past week.

This last weekend we lugged 3 square meters of soil down to the back yard for the veggie patch - in a 700 square meter block, that's a mighty long way. Dad and Jeff did the wheeling while I mostly filled the two barrows we borrowed from neighbours.

We discovered beautifully composted soil in our two bins and had a few bags of horse poo that we picked up near Daylesford. The prep work is done for the veggies.

Look at that compost! I'm going to put a little container in the kitchen and everything is going to be saved. Although I do want to make a couple of bigger bins.

I've ordered a bunch of heirloom seeds that should arrive in the next week so it's not quite over. I'm so excited about the seeds! I picked some crazy tomato varieties.

So we'll see what happens. I must keep up the momentum. After all, even David Hicks is a horticulturalist now.

I love my new Holga

2010-07-13T14:17:00.003+10:00

A little while ago, I wrote about my new toy. Well, I've had a tonne of fun with this baby and below are the results so far.

This is NOT a cheap thrill. I've written off two rolls of film - one medium format and one 35mm - and have very few shots top show for it. It's true what they say about 35mm in a Holga - it's flamin' hard - you have to wedge it in with foam or a piece of cardboard (which is what I did) because the area where the film goes is wider than a roll of 35mm so without the wedging, the film would move around all over the shop. But man alive I LOVE the finished product.

Roll 1 - 120 Medium format
Not as much light leak - a lot shakier, probably due to some problems I was having with the camera (the Lomography Society were great and they replaced the camera with a new one as there was something wrong with the shutter).

Roll 2 - 35mm

Plenty of light leak!!! Could be because I had to open the camera so many times because of the shutter problem. It did the trick though. The light leak is one of the big reasons why I've bought the Holga. I love that everything looks like it's a summer day. And I ADORE that everything is captured in the frame, including the film details - look closely. I'll add a step-by-step guide to the 35mm mod when I play with the next roll of film.

Ha! Fun...

Masterchef has a lot to answer for...

2010-07-11T21:38:00.002+10:00

Masterchef Australia has really raised the bar in thousand of houses around Australia. Raising it so high that mealtimes can become a mystery box Olympics. Invite me for dinner and I'm seriously expecting you to serve Twice baked cheese souffle, Roast Duck Breast with Wild Flower Salad, Chocolate Fondant with Amaretto Milkshake and Pina Coladas. Forget steak and three veg.

Recently Jeff and I went to the Lindt shop on Collins Street and had their macaroons, that they like to call Delice. Call em what you like, they're delicious! So yesterday, Jeff and I decided to venture into the newly renovated kitchen determined to make French Almond Macaroons. I found a recipe on taste.com for macaroons with orange blossom and mandarin rind buttercream and another with rose and berry buttercream fillings. It all seemed easy enough, but, visually, the result wasn't exactly what I'd hoped for. Here's what they're supposed to look like.

photo courtesy Ricoeurian

So what went wrong? The piping of the biscuits, for sure - note to self, try not to make biscuits look like dog turds. They were slightly overcooked, looking at the colour. The taste, however, was perfect and the texture was nice and crunchy on the outside and wonderfully squidgy and chewy towards the centre.

Redevelopments

2010-07-09T13:48:00.002+10:00

This is my second home. Unless you count this other one, in which case it's my third.

For the past few years now I've been looking, looking for what the hell I'm meant to be doing here. You can run through my rants over at BettyonaBox. And Ill still be ranting. It's just that this one helps me get a more balanced approach to life - a little bit of Sunshine.

And while on this search I went to a life coach or two, two shrinks, a therapist and I even studied life coaching in the hope that it would rub off.

So I now seem to have come to this realisation that maybe I should just do it all and quit wondering if it's THE right thing that I'm MEANT to be doing.

So, given how I tend to chop and change what I'm into so regularly and I'm into so many things, I'm changing the focus of this blog a little. It's now a space for me to explore all of the things that make me happy - craft, gardening, cooking, photography and art. Everything that makes my heart sing, really. And by doing all of those things, maybe, just maybe, I'll find that elusive happy place.

Oh, as an adjunct, today is the day I start taking Lithium so I'll be monitoring that as well. I'll soon place a chart in the sidebar, if you're interested. I'm sure there'll be tonnes of fun and games there.

So I'm here at TGIF on Chapel Street (don't shoot me, I needed an internet hotspot and they have one for an hour, free if you spend $10). I've just taken my meds, have had a hot chocolate and am about to have a Campari and lemonade (my last drink for a long time). It's kinda nice here, at the bar, surrounded by smiley uniformed staff with walkie talkies. It's nicely American. And I do like American. I mean, I'm married to one.

March Workshop

2010-03-18T08:59:00.003+11:00

I'm taking another workshop on March 20. Check out the flyer.

The last lot of workshops were excellent - we had a great bunch of women and girls who were really open to learning new skills and made some beautiful jewellery!

Can't wait for this Saturday...

If you're coming, it would be excellent if you could RSVP (jo at progresscoaching.com.au) so that I can make up the right number of kits, which are free!

Been teaching

2010-02-18T10:18:00.001+11:00

I've been teaching beading at the Braybrook Community Centre and there are some amazing superstars! So happy to see the ladies (and some guys) getting creative. The flyer with details for the remaining classes is in the sidebar.

I've been busy

2010-02-08T19:41:00.002+11:00

Because i have the theory that idle hands are the devil's playthings and all that... here's what I've been up to on my beautiful new (old) sewing machine that i got from Ebay for $100. It works a treat! Better than the brand new Janome I got ten years ago that I had to take in for repairs every couple of years. Mum still has her old Necchi that she brought with her from Italy and has had since the 60s. I grew up on that machine and it's manual with a foot pedal. This one's powered up...

Ah the marvelous, marvelous Necchi and my new pin cushion. I bought two HUGE bags of fabric scraps recently from a garage sale in Fitzroy held by the lovely people of Queen (on Smith Street). The scaps are pretty fab.

I got the stripy fabric for both of the cushions for one dollar! The buttons are Alanna Hill - my favourite fabric shop gets leftover designer odds and ends - and I got them for around 20 cents each - ridiculous!

Hanky cushions - I found these kiddy hankies at Spotlight - the reverse side is felt. I gave these two to my friend Rayna (she of the Melbourne Craft Cartel) who has surprise twins recently. Surprise!

Awesome Ikea fabric and I edged the cushion with some cotton tassel from the local fabric shop...

Originally a skirt - but I cut it too small! So it became a top.

A fird mobile. Well they're meant to be birds but they came out looking like fish. Hence "firds". Was also for Rayna although I had only planned for one baby, as had she!

Inspiration for Feb

2010-02-03T13:02:00.001+11:00

I'm totally inspired to do a few new things this month, including:

Learn to rollerskate in time for VRDL's fresh meat intake mid-year. Here are some videos that helped me to skate like a champ in my dreams last night (seriously, I was VERY GOOD).
Make some beautiful embroidery like this by Anita Katita
Finish my Cert IV in Training and Assessment
Finish my short story and submit it to Going Down Swinging before March 31. I'm nearly there.

That's all!

New stuff

2010-01-20T13:41:00.014+11:00

I read this fab post on Radicalcrossstitch and have decided that I must learn to make tapestries. So I've been traipsing around on the interwebs and found this delightful video that shows how to weave on a frame! No machinery, just some nails, an old frame and some scraps of fabric. This is my kind of art!

Here's another great link to ye olde gothic tapestry techniques.

I will research my trusty New Idea craft book tonight in between study and watching the new series of Project Runway (US).

On another note, I have a brand new very old sewing machine. It's the same brand as my mum's ancient foot peddle one - Necchi - and despite the fact that I DO NOT trust her judgement on pretty much everything, when it comes to sewing, she's the expect and I trust her completely. Look, it's a pretty brown!

The thing is, my rather new Singer (around 10 years old) costs me the same price to service it everytime it fucks up as this machine cost and seeing that I've been taking mine in to be repaired almost on a yearly basis, I'm proud to own something that will live forever. It's made of heavy-duty stuff.

Etsy finally!

2010-01-11T21:30:00.003+11:00

Just some things I've been making.

Christmas Westie Workshops

2009-11-26T13:40:00.001+11:00

The Christmas Workshops have been updated. There are now two 3-hour sessions concentrating on ornaments. YAY to Christmas fun!

Queen of the goals

2009-10-11T16:39:00.011+11:00

I am a goal setting Queen. After more than a decade of the corporate life packed with "fun-filled', "interactive", "team-building" workshops that have used an abattoir's worth of butcher paper that by the end of the day was covered in colourful scrawls and arrows and have helped to put 3M post-it notes on the map (literally - I used to work for Lonely Planet), I am a genius at writing SMART* goals.

Creating goals has always involved a new notebook. Not your common 29-cent 8mm feint-lined A5 exercise book because GOALS deserve so much more than that. Something like this. Or my current favourite that isn't exactly stylish in the traditional sense - a mini flip notebook with the Virgin Mary, halo aglow, on the cover. Look, I need all the help I can get.

My home is filled with dozens and dozens of such provocative and inspirational notebooks containing one or two pages of goals and lists such as:
• things to do on the weekend;
• things to make on the weekend;
• things to finish on the weekend;
• my five-year plan;
• my 10-year plan;
• my 12-month plan;
• april plan;
• to do Christmas break 2008-9;
• start a blog;
• goal to lose 10kg;
• goal to lose 5kg...

You get the idea, no doubt.

It isn't that I'm a gonna. I do plenty. I live by the motto "idle hands are the devil's playthings". As well as "idle hands lead to boredom and premenstrual tensions with my significant other" or "idle hands make TV very very boring" and finally "idle hands make snacking far easier". I'm constantly stitching, knitting, crocheting, writing, planning, planning, planning. The problem is that I sometimes spend so long planning that there's barely enough time for doing and I get sidetracked doing things that are perfectly fine, but not what I intended because I get so bored from all of the planning and over-analysing that I just don't feel any joy at the mere thought of what I was planning in the first place. But that's not to say that goal-setting is evil. But poor goal-setting definitely is.

This year, 2009, has been the Year of the Coach for me. I've been studying life coaching, started listening to a tonne of podcasts about creating life and business and even enlisted a couple of coaches for myself.

And I found http://www.stevepavlina.com/

Steve is a no nonsense entrepreneur and personal-development "preacher". He won't be to everyone's taste and, to be honest, his ideas freak me a little but he has an alluring approach to life and how to start your own business. He espouses the notion that the best way to start a business is to quit your job and just go for it without a plan, just figure it out as you make mistakes. I'm not quite down with the school of hard knocks, having been knocked about before but I do like Steve's approach to life. So along with my studies (7 weeks to go) I've decided to take a new course of action in my life.

Firstly, I want to start my own business so that I can quit my job sooner rather than later. And as Steve says, if you want to start your own business, just start it right now. You don't need a logo, a flashy website or business cards right away. The first thing to do is create value. What do you know about that will be of value to others? Right now, I know three things already:

I like to tell people what to do;
I like making things;
I like to look at pretty things that other people have made an telling people about them.

Number two is easy - make things (remember, idle hands...) as is number three.

Number one is the reason why I'm studying life coaching - to harness my skill and use it for good instead of evil. Coaching is far from telling people what to do. Coaching is helping people uncover their value and how to plan the (very) real steps around bringing that value to the surface so that others can bask in it with you. Ready, fire, aim, as Steve Pavlina suggests. We mostly live by a slightly different ethos - Ready, aim, fire. The problem with that is that we spend so long aiming that by the time we're ready to fire, the target is long gone. Remember what I was saying about spending so long planning that I end up over analysing the idea to death and get sick of it? Of course, if you're planning to sink a few million into an idea, or even a few thousand, you might want to spend more time aiming but that's not what I'm about. As a sole proprietor whose only expense is an internet service provider then the approach - Ready, Fire, Aim - works because the more time I spend on the right masthead and the perfect widgets then the less time I'm spending on creating value.

So today, I decided to grab the first notebook I could find, which happened to be a 29-cent 8mm feint-ruled A5 exercise book, in my husband's draw in the study, tore out the first few pages that already had some scribble on them, and walked the dogs to the local coffee shop for breakfast. I even forgot a pen and had to use a mini pen that I have dangling from my keys. Hardly comfortable, hardly stylish but definitely able to do the job.

And this is the result of my first post. Because I AM great at setting goals, and now I'm even better at working towards them. After all, I am a coach on a never-ending road towards discovery through making.

*S - Specific
M - Measurable A - Achievable R - Realistic T - Tangible or Time focused

Have been sick

2009-06-15T21:37:00.008+10:00

So here's what I've been up to.

Some things I've made

2009-06-01T09:15:00.003+10:00