New School Year and a New Burst Of Energy

Despite the fact that I live in Japan and the school year starts April, for me, I always feel that the school year is September, that is what I grew up with. August is time to kick back and relax and then September kicks in with a new lease of life.

August is a good time to catch up on projects that haven't gotten finished too, many of my Clear The Clutter clients have been doing just that. I love the system that one of them set up, she posted all the printouts from the months that she hadn't quite completed then set to checking each item off as she tackled it.

Each month, you get a printable and then an email every second day reminding you what your mission is, each mission should take no more than 15-30 minutes (depending on the state of your home of course). And it is designed to tackle one room at a time and give it a deep cleanse, getting rid of junk, clearing out clutter and making space.

I am loving watching how everyone's homes are becoming more organized and about hearing how it is helping the whole family too. Plus the team spirit in the Facebook group is great.

Some things the CTC ladies have been saying....

One thing I really appreciate about decluttering is that you now _know_ what needs to be purchased because you know what's missing and don't have the illusion that you can make those torn pants work in an emergency. I feel more confidence in shopping (which I don't particularly care for).

Going back to April's master bedroom, just wondering if people who revamped and decluttered are still keeping up. I've found that now the room us basically neat and well-organized, it is so much easier to do a little tidy up at the weekend and get it square again. DH goes on frequent trips so there are suitcases and basket of laundry sometimes, but overall it is good. 

For the first time since starting this course, I am up to date with the missions.  The rest of the house is benefiting also as it is always in the front of my mind so there is no new clutter being made.  

So, are you interested in getting your house de-cluttered once and for all, to keep on top of everything and reduce stress, then come on over, we would love to have you! Sign up HERE, I will see you over there.

The pool...

We had a pretty full on weekend, Saturday we did the usual jobs around the house and then Ebi-kun and daddy went to buy new football shoes and I headed into town for some window shopping. I don't get into town very often and when I do it is usually for a reason so it was nice to just have a mooch. In the evening I met up with friends for a few beers (and almost a fight) then dinner, it was the first time these various friends had got together, it was a great night out and it was the first time I have been out for months, well needed! Sunday we did a spot of shopping and dropped by a cafe which was having a mini artisain fair we also picked up a new paddling pool. The yard gets really hot in the afternoon so I sewed some sheets together to make an awning which made a massive difference.

This time last year there is no way ebi-kun would have tipped a bucket of water on his own head! He hates having water on his face, from being a baby he would scream blue murder if someone splashed him so this is a big step forward!

 It felt rather exotic sitting under theses sheets!

Yes, I know his water clothes are too small, we are holding out until his birthday, only a couple of weeks to go, luckily it's not a public pool.

Just look at the style of my boy! the bucket on the head just about tops it off, he has a bit of a thing for buckets on his head, he used to wear a yellow one for a long time, until his head got too big! What did you get up to at the weekend?

Finally....the before and after shots!

Blimey, it seems like a long time since we started giving the living room a make-over. We bought a new sofa because our old one had had it, once you sat on it it was next to impossible to get up again. We also decided to move out ancient TV over to the other corner too and I finally got round to making new drapes too, so here we go....

before

after

 And the other corner, before....

after.

I still need to make some new DVD boxes, the ones we have the bottoms have fallen out! It is also a big mission to get Ebi-kun to keep his desk tidy, this is as close as it gets.

New visitors always ask about our photos, most of them were taken on our year trip to South America with the exception of Angkor Wat from when we got married.

And of last but not least, the bookcase, I drew up a design and daddy-ebi build. It is mostly Ebi-kuns books, I found a pile of ladybird books in the cupboard that are the right level for him now and I also added some of my art and design books, he likes looking at them as I do! I got a couple of horizontal shelves put in too so he has somewhere to stack his National Geographic Kids magazines and his workbooks.

The garden...

It was beautiful weather at the weekend so we decided to get the garden sorted out. We have a square foot garden set up and in the past tried to grow veg with varying success. Ebi-kun picked out yellow pepper, okra and water melon plants! and we have a strawberry plant that is doing well , except last year the ants ate all the strawberries. Any anti-ant advice welcome. This year we we got more herbs and planted more flowers.

 The pots we refilled and planted lots of seeds, I hope we will have lots of flowers this year but it still looks a bit dull just now.

a new calendar...

I found this great calendar on Etsy, it is chalkboard wall sticker and I love it!

I put it on the wall going up the stairs (hence the awkward shot) which means it is out of the way but it is big enough to get everything we need on it. I had just cleaned it for the next month in this picture, I didn't really want to advertise all our coming and goings to everyone on the net.

The stickers go on easily, even though our wall paper is rough, I thought that getting everything lined up would be a nightmare but the way that the set comes makes it really easy, so if you are looking for an alternative to a paper calendar, I can recommend Simple Shapes.

The best thing....

about new furniture is the giant boxes it comes in.

Ebi-kun made himself a castle, I found him inside reading this book about ninjas

I will share photos of the new sofa, in fact I plan to do a before and after but at the moment the TV is stuck in the middle of the room because we want to move it to the opposite corner and the cable is not long enough and I also want to make some new curtains, so you will have to wait a bit longer or pop round for a coffee and see it in real life!

A tour of the Montessori room

I thought it was about time I did an update on this, plus I have nice new curtains that I want to show off!

Our Montessori room is also the guest room and it is supposed to be my craft room too but not much crafting actually goes on in there, maybe when I manage to get my sewing machine set up that will change. When we designed the house we had sliding doors put in between the guest room and Ebi-kuns bedroom so that it opens up into one big room, I love this set up, it makes it feel bigger and much more airy.  So, this is the view when I am standing in Ebi-kuns room.

I decided to move the shelves around a bit, this corner has the globes, the Montessori continents, land and water and a regular globe and I keep an atlas with them too. On the little shelves are the knob less cylinders and pattern extension cards and the bottom has the number rods.

The next two shelves are actually CD shelves so they are not really deep enough for some of the work. In a classroom I think it is important to keep the various sections of work together, language on one shelf, math on another but lack of space means that we have to just do with what we have but where possible I try and keep the equipment together. I have the bead material to go out but I haven't figured out how to display it all yet. On the top of these two shelves are the metal insets, then from the top left going down, some of the bead chains, decimal tray, addition tray, snake game and top right the stamp game, wooden numbers, trinominal cube, 100 squares, 1000 cubes and the geometric solids and 3 part cards in the box at the bottom. Between the two shelves are the brown/broad stair and the pink tower.

More metal insets on the top, top left origami paper for the metal insets and a nature basket with magnifying glass to study with, herbs and spices smelling bottles and cards, colour tablets box 3, parts of speech word cards for the farm and they are sat on the grammar symbols box, the box with the checkered lid is the farm (I will do another post on that), words and objects box for making sentences with and the bottom is the movable alphabet. Then the right.. slides for the microscope, model of a heart, model and 3 part cards for the internal organs, tap and make - hammer and coloured shapes of wood that you hammer to a cork board, frog activities, 3 part cards, life cycle, books and a game and bottom shelf is the clock and cards for telling time. To the right is the board for the metal insets and the animal and botany puzzles plus the mats.

 Then under the desk we have the continent puzzle maps, we don't have a rack for them so I just put out the map we are working on at the time, behind the maps is the microscope that my brother gave Ebi-kun and the red rods (he rarely uses the red rods but if he decides he wants them we can get them out easily) then knobbled cylinder blocks. These little draws are great, they have shelves on one side then pockets to put documents of books and more shelf space and draws on the third side plus they are on wheels so I can just turn them round when we have guests. Anyway, the one on the left has the continent folder, inside that are pictures, quizzes, work sheets and various other activities. The next shelf down has info cards, CDs and small objects from Africa and the bottom shelf has the continent cards and picture cards. I will add the flags for Africa one I have printed them out.

The other shelf has the self portrait work, below that the golf tee and marble activity - still a favourite and the nuts and bolts matching. I like to keep a couple of easy activities out, I find that after he has done some hard work he will pick something easy to wind down with before picking something more challenging again. The box shelves on the desk are actually book shelves but have a door on them which is perfect for displaying artwork and books of the moment. 

And that is about it! I think the hardest part about Montessori is trying to decide what needs to be out and what can be put away, I put the sandpaper letters and sound pouches away for the first time this week. I also feel that if you are new to Montessori and you see the list of equipment, it is enough to make you want to run to the hills. If you are starting out with a toddler then plenty of practical life and sensory work is what you need and in the mean time you can start putting together some of the other equipment. Now I know someone is bound to ask.... the materials I didn't make I bought at IFIT Montessori mainly because they had the cheapest shipping options, most of the equipment has been OK, some of the paint has chipped on the wooden materials and the paint is flaking on the metal insets, I suppose you get what you pay for!

MTD hodge-podge style

I am a week behind with the MTD's but I don't suppose it matters. I was trying to do something

arty with the egg but it didn't work, still looked cute but not quite what I was aiming for LOL.

From the top, carrot flowers, rice ball, boiled egg flower, balloon tomato, mini jellies, sesame dip, balloon tomato, cheese covered with parma ham, rice ball, middle is cucumber sticks and the top of the egg as a flower.

I have almost sorted the spare room, it is looking lovely. Now I am just trying to work out how to display the bead material, we don't have space for the whole bead shelf, anyone got any ideas, the beads chains specifically? I am also putting together the farm but realised that we don't have much of a selection of farm animals, so I am on a hunt for farm animals too. I have also decided to make some new curtains, the ones we have in there are awful that we got for our first apartment, they were cheap, VERY cheap and I hate them. So, I cut out all the fabric, started to sew it all up last night and the sewing machine threw a fit, I stripped it and cleaned it all out and changed the needle  but it still doesn't want to play, grrrrrrr

Hmmm cheesy......

Well it was a busy weekend, I decided that the spare room needed to be cleaned and organised which was a job and a half, I got stuck in whilst the boys were at football and still haven't finished! Although it is looking much better, I can actually see the floor which is a good start! I also decided to pull everything off the Montessori shelves and re-organise them, more of all that when I have finished.

Sunday morning I made ricotta cheese, last week on a whim I ordered a cheese making kit form Urban Cheese Craft, making the cheese was really easy and I can't believe that I have suffered Japanese processed cheese for so long. Although the cheese was ready to eat and we could have taken it on the picnic with us I decided to leave it to chill so we had a gorgeous fresh ricotta salad for dinner. Next up is mozzarella which looks a bit more complicated but I can't wait to try it, hmmmm yum.

and...did you vote yet?

It makes me smile...

...everytime I sit down to eat.

Our old place mats were looking a bit on the grubby side and I bought this fabric a good while ago with the intention of making place mats, well this week I finally got round to it, I teamed the linen up with some cute polka dot fabric, I can't help but grin when I look at them!

I made two of each mat and a a runner plus matching coasters

and now Ebi-kun is learning German and French since out teaspoons have

different French words on them

I think out all the pictures, this cow is my favourite.

Hanging pictures

When we built the house we had to tell the house maker which walls we wanted to hang things on so that they could reinforce them - that's right, we can't just hammer nails in willy-nilly! At first we just said do the lot but when the quote came back we had a major re-think and had to sit and plan where we would be hanging things. So, back before the house even had foundations I had planned to hand pictures going up the stairs and we have been in the house over 2 years now and only just got round to it!

I made calendars for various family members for Christmas but one was misprinted so I decided to make use of the pictures from that and add some of Ebi-kun's artwork into the mix. I am not a fan of sticking kids art on the fridge to get all battered and tatty, I wouldn't do it to my artwork so why be disrespectful to my son's work? I would much rather have it displayed properly. We went through his portfolio and pulled out a few favourite pieces, he helped choose which frame to put it in.
I also framed this caricature of Ebi-kun which we had done in Barcelona, a present for daddy-ebi but...Ebi-kun hates it, he says it is scary and neither me or daddy-kun like it much so I think we will be swapping it for something else!
Thank you for all the congratulations messages, immigration was actually painless. I went to get my revenue stamp first then went it, handed in my documents and got called up straight away, in and out in 2 minutes, maybe having to wait 9 months for the visa to be processed had something to do with it Ha! I will still have to go every 3 years to get my re-entry permit updated, what a faff! When we were finished we went to a friends house for lunch and a gossip/play, turned out to be a nice day out.

A bit of this and a bit of that!

This post is a bit of a jumble, a bit of a waffle if you like.

Wednesday, I took Ebi-kun to Nippori with me, a brave act but he was really well behaved and helped me find what I needed. The shops were not very busy and it ended up being a great tactile experience, he went along feeling all the different types of fabric and explaining how they felt or comparing them to things from home. It turned out to be a successful trip and I managed to get everything on my list. Before we left, I took Ebi-kun into the bargain basement, where the rolls of fabric are ¥100 a metre ($1/ 65p) and told him to pick which one he liked, but it has to be light weight. He choose this one with tigers all over it, I splashed out and got 4m. When we got home I cut it in half and sewed it together to make a square, added some loops of elastic on the corners and hemmed the edges. Took about 15 minutes all in all. And now he has a tent making sheet.

Here is Sir Ebi-kun (as he likes to be addressed) in his new castle with some essential knightly reading - living in space and a book about clownfish. ¥400 well spent!

A couple of days ago I read Meg's post about her crafting shelf collapsing and then One Pretty Thing did a round up of lovely crafty rooms - so I thought I would share my space.....

It is actually the kitchen work top and so I have to clear it all up to do dinner, I think I spend more time setting up and cleaning up than I do actually sewing!

I am working on a great project at the moment, it has really got my imagination going and I am also in the midst of putting together a rocket-bag pattern, a simplified version of the original. I will be needing pattern testers at some point.

Then, totally un-related. Ebi-kun got his play-doh out yesterday, we keep the dough in tupperware type boxes, he opened the first, then the second one he asked me why it had changed colour, when I went over to see, this is what was inside. Yup, mold, but quite pretty mold don't you think? Obviously the lid hadn't been put on properly - oh well.

And there we have it, a messy, mold, tenty type of post - I did warn you :o)

Our Montessori Home

I did a post like this a good while ago but looking back I realised that since then we have bought a lot more Montessori equipment and so I though I would do an update. 

Grab yourself a cuppa, it might be another long one...

This is the small shelf in the living I talked about in this post. We used to have books on the bottom and 2 or 3 toys on the top, now the big books have taken over... he tends to keep a couple of smaller toys on the top and it does get used as a dumping ground. To the right are his jigsaw puzzles and to the left the wooden band activity I made.

He also has a small desk (Ikea) I am trying to get him to keep all his papers and stickers in the tray but as a mad crazy artist it is usually overflowing. The little buckets were from the ¥100 store and he has one for crayons, pens, pencils and then a general stationary one. They usually live on the art shelf and he takes out the one he wants to work with.

OK, this is the guest room come Montessori room. We have 2 shelves like this, they are actually CD shelves so a bit narrow, I have to juggle quite a bit to get things on there. I will list what is on the shelf an add links to posts I have done with more info rather than try and fit it all in one post.

So, starting bottom left, we have the geometric solids, in the box is also the 3 part cards and shape cards. The binominal cube, smelling bottles, which are basically always on the shelf because he often works with them and the sewing basket are on the next shelf. Third shelf up has a pincer exercise, picking up pom-poms with pincers and putting them into an ice-cube tray. Next shelf up is a spooning exercise, spooning small glass beads into a narrow necked bottle. Above that we have the balance game, another permanent fixture; the days of the week activity and the touch boards which I keep hoping he will show an interest in. On the top we have the sensory balls (I have a post planned for making them); the colour tablets - set 3 and the wooden scales with weighs (made out of salt dough and baked)

Down the left side we have maths materials the wooden number cards and a counting activity - count the dino eggs and match clip the peg on it to match the number. Under that are some more number cards and the thousand cubes. Below them are the decimal gold beads tray and on the bottom is the number stair and and addition activity (new one that he hasn't tried yet). 

To the left of the shelf we have the knobbled cylinders, just in front are the red rods (he never gets these out) and to the right the pink tower, it is kind of hidden round the corner but it means it never gets knocked over, especially when we have friends to play.

The next section is the desk, which doesn't really get used as a desk and underneath are storage boxes on casters which also have some handy little shelves. So we have the seguins boards on the desk and on the shelves a chopsticks activity to help him learn to use them correctly, the marbles and golf tees, he loves this one, then the nuts and bolts. The next set of shelves have the knobless cylinders and the pattern cards to go with them and the bottom shelf has the mini number rods.

OK, on the end of the desk are the metal insets, the drawing board to go with it plus the paper and pencils. We have the world maps under the desk, there isn't quite enough room to build a rack to hold them so they are still in their boxes and I have to pull out the one he wants. He still can't carry one of these by himself so I suppose it is just as well that I have to take them out. On the next storage unit we have the continent folders, then the continent cards and next to that the picture matching cards and on the bottom animals to match with the continents.

This is the final shelf. The botany and animal puzzles are to the left. The starting from the bottom again, we have the moveable alphabet, the land form trays and cards, his 3D torso puzzle and human organ cards. The next shelf has colour word cards and objects to match, obviously matching colours is too easy now but he is now matching the words, next to that is a basket of natural objects and a magnifying glass, I try and mix this up every now and then (read - when I remember). The next shelf is a mixture of little objects collected from around the world, he loves to pick one and then ask me to show him on the globe where it is from, the same with our postcard collection on the top shelf. Then we have the globes and a box that I haven't used yet, it has little models on the life cycles of various insects/animals. What is left is basically the language section, sandpaper letters and sound pouches and then various activities to compliment where he is up to.

That is about it, the only other shelf is the art shelf which I forgot to take a photograph of!

I try and keep everything in some kind of order, the language activities together etc. but it is difficult with such a small space, sometimes I just have to go where there is space. I am also quite torn about how much to put out on the shelves. In a classroom most of the equipment is out all year and  so the child can work on whatever calls to them but when you have a small space to work with and only one child it is impossible but then I am always second guessing myself about what I should have out. What if the work I choose is not what is calling to him - hmm, how do you decide what to put out?

done and dusted!

Remember this?

Well, it now looks like this!

The cupboard is quite deep, so I put shelves at the back for my stash.

Then used these blue boxes for all my crafty gubbins, I discovered that I have lots of zips, elastic and bias binding, just that they were scattered all over the place so I would always thing I was about to run out and buy more! The boxes are easy to lift out so that I can get at my stash and I have beautiful labels on them all, oh so very organised :o) I managed to get my spare blankets up on the top shelf and I also sorted out all the Montessori stuff, I discovered that I have a big box worth of baskets and trays of every shape and size. I labelled all the boxes so hopefully I can find what I am looking for in the future without going through all the boxes muttering 'I know it is here somewhere'. And that green and yellow checkered thing to the right is my ironing board, yes, it really is that small, it is useless for ironing clothes (not that I do unless it is a suit/dress shirt) but it is just right for sewing projects.

I even managed to sort out my crafty corner of the dining room and most of that has gone into the boxes in the cupboard, the only things left to do is go through my old clothes and sort through the big box of fabric scraps....

Let's go fly a kite...

Yes, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. When we got married, over 5 years ago we were given a stunt kite as a present from my slightly insane uncle. So, we eventually decided to get it out of the box, we went over to Enomoto farm because they have some wide space near the river with no overhead cables and trees to worry about. They also sell the best Italian ice-cream around, which of course we needed to get us going :o) It was quite windy, maybe too much so and we managed to get the kite into the air for maybe 10 seconds at the most, we spent more time untangling it than flying it. After half an hour we gave up and went shopping instead :o)

The only photo I managed to take! The kite is just in front of Ebi-kun!

When we got home I decided to sort out the spare room cupboard having my stash in draws just isn't working and not having shelves in the cupboards makes for many an avalanche disaster, as you can see AND I had actually taken a couple of bags of stuff out before I took the photo!
I have got the shelves in and my stash nicely folded and put away, just got to figure out how to get everything else back in the cupboard. The top of the two draws is filled with clothes that I just can't part with - I think this exercise might just make me do it though, the bottom draw is general crafty 'stuff' and all the gubbins in the bottom of the cupboard is Montessori/teacher related and is going to need some major sorting out. I will post pics when I manage to get it all sorted. This is an in-progress shot, how am I going to get that lot back in the cupboard?

Good bye PL shelf

and hello art shelf.
The practical life shelf hasn't been getting much use, in fact gathering dust is what it was doing. Now Ebi-kun is big enough to get things out the the draws/cupboard himself so I don't need his snack things set up on the shelf like I had before. He doesn't show much interest in PL activities unless we are doing them in real life so I gave up with most of them, he still has a couple on the shelf upstairs but he gets plenty of real life PL practice!
So, I decided to put all his art supplies in one place as it was getting a bit out of hand.

The top shelf has a box with all the paints in, a jar of brushes, a pouring jug with droppers/stirrers and then buckets of pens, pencils etc.

The second shelf has colour mixing jars, water tub and palette and a box of goodies for stamping and the bottom shelf has his playdoh tub and a bag of bits for collage. 

The green bag is actually the mystery bag, I decided to keep it there because we still use it. 
I found this little buckets in the ¥100 shop, I LOVE them, I could have bought one in every colour but alas we don't have the space. One is filled with pens, one with crayons, one with pencils and then a bucket with things like glue sticks, erasers, pencil sharpener, rulers etc.
The brown paper shoved down the side of the shelf is what we use on the counter top to protect it from paint spills, cheap and effective!

What about paper? well we have a draw full of it, which is part of the reason why everything was getting out of control, we could no longer fit the pencil bag in the draw, I like this system so much better.

How to take a bath - part two

Since yesterday's post generated some questions about out bath routine, I though I would add some more pictures to try and make it a bit clearer. Back in the UK our bathroom has the bath/shower, sink and toilet all in one room. Here, the bathroom is just that, it is one contained room specifically for showering and sitting in the tub. The sink in in the area where I am taking this shot from, along with the washing machine - that is pretty standard to have the washing machine close to the bathroom, makes sense if you ask me, take off dirty clothes, pop into machine!

So, next to the bath tub is the shelf with a tap, bowl, shampoo etc. So you get naked and go into the bathroom and shut the door, fill the bowl with soapy water and wash yourself down, use the shower to rinse off. If you are in a public bath or onsen (hot-spring) you turn the bowl over and rinse down the stool when you have finished to show that you have finished there.

The rectangular thing on the floor,just to the left of the stool, is where all the water drains to and the floor is cleverly designed so that the water drains away quickly and leaves the floor virtually dry - clever stuff! Oh, yes, that is a squigy on the floor too, we use it to scrap the walls to help prevent mold, you wouldn't believe how fast the bathroom mold grows in  Japan, although this place is nothing like the last place we lived in.
Then, when you have finished having a soak in the bath, jump out and put the lids on, this bath had two had pieces for a lid, our old apartment had a roll on lid

as demonstrated by baby-ebi

I don't think the new baths pose this problem but one of my students, back in the days when I was teaching, was covered in scars. As a toddler she had climbed onto the top of the bath cover, which gave way and tipped her into scalding hot water, she was covered in 70% burns and was hospitalised for nearly 6 months having to have grafts. As, I say her accident happened in an old Japanese farmhouse and I don't think our bath will actually heat the water that hot, there is of course the fear of a toddler or small child drowning in the full bath.

I hope that makes it all a bit clearer!

We have my cousin coming today for a few days and then we are off to the in-laws for a few days so the posts will be a bit thin on the ground for a week or so. I will be checking in though, so feel free to leave a comment :o)