Bring a smile to your face for Blue Monday

Apparently, research shows that January 21st is the gloomiest day of the year! This was posted on facebook a few days ago and really bought a smile to my face, in fact it went as far as make me giggle out loud! Reminds me of the old 70's TV show with Johnny Morris

And for a flashback to my childhood...

And finally, we can't have a post about Blue Monday without featuring the brilliant New Order, now can we? Here they are live at Reading festival and a little know fact for you, Bernard Sumner (singer) once gave me a a full bottle of vodka at Reading Festival (different year to the video) and thanks to that, I remember very little of the rest of the day!

Do you have any obscure claims to fame? Time to brag in the comments section!

Let's talk comfort food...

We have has a sickly couple of weeks here in the Ebi household. Ebi-kun started with a temperature and a cough so ended up having the week off school. Friday night he was coughing so hard he made himself sick. I won't go into details but he produced 5 bin bags of laundry - it was not nice.

Of course Ebi-kun has very generously passed on his bugs to me and so now I am coughing like I smoke 60 woodbine a day!

Anyway, that brings me to the question, when you are sick, what is your comfort food?

Ebi-kun asked for boiled egg with soldiers almost every lunch that he was off, his other request was chicken soup. That one threw me, I do make chicken soup but I don't remember serving it up when he was sick before but it was a good choice, with homemade bread yum!

My husband on the other hand has a thing for sloppy rice (okayu) or soba.

Me, I lean towards tea and toast, I do like soup too but it has to be homemade, I can't stand tinned soup and the range of pre-made soup here tends to vary between sweetcorn, potato pottage or pumpkin. Blah.

So, now it is your turn, what is your go to food when you are under the weather?

Can you guess what we are doing this weekend?

Pintest love this week is bought to you by The Camping Board. I love camping but what we do is more like clamping, the big tent, a car full of equipment, it is not like the days when I was in the scouts and we would carry everything we needed for the weekend in a back pack. It is still nice to get away from it all and breath in the fresh air and get bitten by 101 different insects!
And with that, i bring you my favourite 5 camping pins at the moment...

Source: maymomvt.blogspot.com via Jo on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com via Jo on Pinterest

Source: tipnut.com via Jo on Pinterest

Source: putumayo.com via Jo on Pinterest

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Source: laughingsquid.com via Simone on Pinterest

So, what are you up to this weekend? Anything exciting, let me know in the comments below.

I have a gift for you...

Well, to be honest, for only 5 of you! The next 5 people to sign up for the My Organized Chaos e-course gets a complementary coaching session with me.

Yep. you get to bend my ear for and hour and afterwards I will give you feedback, ideas, tips and solutions to help you and your family get back on track.

Now, until recently, I was a coaching skeptic. I thought it was a load of old mumbo jumbo and a waste of time... then I signed up for b-school. When I hit that Pay Now button I promised myself that I would get out of my comfort zone and try anything and everything that came my way. 

I have and a whole new world opened up to me. I have had a few coaching sessions, with different people and each one I have come away with something valuable. For example, Jenn Morgan, a branding expert helped me figure out why I was having such a hard time writing the copy for my new website and Beth Hayden gave me ideas and direction of how to make better use of my Pinterest addiction! 

Having someone to sit and listen to your problem and I mean really listen and then give you good, solid advice on how to go about fixing it is really amazing. I know most of use have a whinge when we hang out with our friends but having a mates half-an-ear whilst you are wrangling a bunch of kids just isn't the same. I rarely come away with a solution to the problem, and really it isn't my friends fault, it isn't their area of expertise and she has her own things to whinge about!

For the coaching session, which will be done over Skype. First I will send you some questions to answer then we will have our chat, I will give you some help and feedback there and then and also follow up with a email.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

So, all you have to do is pop over to My Organized Chaos and sign up! GO...

Lots of creepy crawlies...

Yesterday, Ebi-kun and I went outside to play for a bit after school. I noticed that our next door neighbours cherry blossom tree was looking a bit shabby, on closer inspection I discovered these...

The tree is dripping with hairy caterpillars. I am very cautious about these little critters after a friend had some in her garden, the hairs got into the laundry and she ended up having to get medicine from the doctor to help with rash that resulted from wearing the clothes that the hairs had gotten on to.

I have never seen so many caterpillars in one place, I am both in awe and revolted at the same time! We decide to catch a couple - using a long stick and a bug box, so we could investigate further. After much research we think that they are モンクロシャチホコ. I have no idea what that is in English but it is a type of moth.

Funny how butterflies are considered cuter than moths, we were hoping they were some kind of pretty butterfly, oh well!

Ebi-kun is named...

As Maker Of The Month over at makedo!

Somewhat of a surprise, when I tweeted about his Starship, I had no idea there was such a thing! The sub is still in one piece and takes up half the living room! We were talking about it yesterday and thought it would be great fun to take a pile of card down to the park and invite friends round to make something massive. I'm not sure what the maker Of The Month prize is, but if it is more make do pieces we will have to try and organize it.

Happy Birthday...

Maria Montessori! The Google guys Larry Page and Sergey Brin went to Montessori school as did Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon! I love todays Google doodle, do you recognise all the pieces?

And the answer is...

to the question, what is in the can?

I had some great suggestions on Facebook from vodka, hair product for doggys, candle, strawberries, air fresher, cherries, mechanically recovered hotdogs, flavored condoms, biscuits, peanuts, dog shaped sponge ball, dog toupee.... all very amusing!

But the answer is... a clock! Don't ask me why, Laura did actually get it right so I owe her ¥20!

We didn't actually go into town to do any shopping as such, we just needed to get out of the house and out of the heat so we went and had a nice lunch and a mooch around Loft, 8 floors of Japanese cool and silliness, a few of the many other items that made me smile...

Rememeber those plastic soldiers you had as a kid, well why not re-create a battle on your dinner with them?

And next time I go to a fancy dress party I will be going as... a rice ball? I suppose it would work for a potluck party hahaha.

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7 great clever ideas just for you

I have been seeing some great clever ideas recently, those 'why didn't I think of that' type ideas so here is a little round up...

Gluing holes in bath toys to stop them going moldy!

image: we love being moms

Use a jewellers microscope & your iPhone to help kids investigate the garden

image: housing a forest

Use tape around your cables in different colours so you know which is which!

image: Bambula

Put a wooden spoon on top of a pan and it won't boil over, I have tired it and yes, it works!

image: a small snippet

Use a straw to hull strawberries

image: new nostalgia

Put your iPhone in a bowl with your music on and you don't need a speaker! Tried it, it works!

image: james wokcik via real simple

Clever way to store those annoying spray bottles.

image: a thousand words

My new theme tune...

One great way to survive the holidays as a work at home mom

One of the points that I have picked up from my b-school course is to schedule everything. Before I would make sure the important dates were in the schedule, work related things and deadlines but that was about it. Now, I schedule pretty much everything and as my workload has increases and my schedule has got busier I have found it really helps.

It has also helped with organising Ebi-kun, this is our secret...

We get up at 6.00am as usual, so that we can spend family time together (my husband gets home late most nights). Once daddy has left for work we go through the schedule for the day. Some days I have Skype meetings so Ebi-kun does his homework during that time other days he will do it as I am sorting out my emails and orders, writing blog posts etc. Through the course of the day I make sure that I get some solid time to do some work and he gets some free playtime. I also schedule in some quality time together which is usually when we work on a project or do something crafty and we have some reading time, where he reads to me.

So, here is a copy of yesterdays schedule. 

• Yellow is family stuff, things we do together and household chores.
• Pink is my work time
• Green is ebi-kun's schedule
• Purple is my business course time
• And blue is my husbands

We use google cal so that we can combine schedules.

I tend to leave the computer on all day so if the opportunity arises I can jump on and get a small job checked off my list, so I have started leaving the schedule window open so we can both check what we are doing through the course of the day.

Some people might think this is over scheduling but I am telling you, I have found it to be a lot less stressful because we both know what each other expectations are, we both know which jobs have to be done and we both make the most of our free time. Of course sometimes the schedule gets changed, maybe we decide to watch a film instead of doing a project or a play date gets cancelled but having the nuts and bolts down has made a world of difference.

Working from home, having Ebi-kun at home and trying to juggle all the housework too is a job in itself but I am all for stress free living. It is also really hot and sticky here at the moment so everyone is a bit more short tempered and a bit more grumpy than usual so taking stress out of the equation really helps. Give it a go and see how it works for you.

Have you got any top tips for coping with the summer hols? If you are a work at home mom, how do you cope when you have the kids underfoot? please share in the comments section.

If you have enjoyed this and know someone who will find it helpful, please share it!

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On being a worry wart...

Yesterday Ebi-kun and I looked at our schedule and worked out the best time to do homework, my work and when to play, when to do housework and when to do projects. I think whilst the holidays are on we will do this every morning. I have my work related items already in google cal so we just added his homework and play date arrangements then we both can see what we have to do and when. Worked pretty well yesterday, let's see how the rest of the week goes.

So, yesterday he had already arranged a play date with his new best friend S-kun. They arranged to meet in the little park down the road. I feel that at 6 almost 7 Ebi-kun is not old enough to be wandering the streets alone so I go down to the park with him, I took some work and sat on the bench out of the way. All was well for 30 minutes or so but then S-kun was fed up of some of the other boys and just ran off, the other boys chased him, one ran straight into the road when a car had to slam it's brakes on to miss him - the boys, clueless. The mom's? out of the 5 boys there were 2 moms in the park but they were with the little siblings and didn't bat an eye at the car incident. Ebi-kun had stayed in the park but wanted to play with S-kun, who came back about 10 mints later. So I laid down the law, they could play in the park or at one of the houses but I wasn't having Ebi-kun running round the streets. The boys decided to play at S-kun's house and the incident was over.

I am fine with Ebi-kun playing on the street our house is on or playing down the road with other friends, the tendency is to play in front of one of the kids houses but playing at the park and running round the streets without adult supervision I am really not comfortable with but it seems like once the kids get into first grade they are allowed to run wild.

Now I'm not sure if I am being over protective and a worry wart or it is one of those Japanese things I have yet to get my head around. What is it like where you like? Do first graders get to wander the streets unsupervised?

We all have time for a giggle

Need a bit of a pick me up? Then you have to watch this video, it is silly but oh so funny and I was even tempted to re-create it myself. Would have been great to do back in '98, just before I came to Japan I has all my hair cut off, it went from being long enough to sit on to 2" and I didn't tell anyone I was going to get it done, the reactions I got were hysterical, this video really reminded me of it.

new pets...

What I didn't mention yesterday, was that after we had checked out all the flowers we went to the other end of the farm to try and catch some zarigani (crayfish). The owners of the farm don't like the crayfish because they damage the lotus stems so they set out traps for them, just look at the trap pile!

We didn't manage to catch any cray fish, (I think the traps were full) although I am sure the guys wouldn't have minded us taking a few from the traps but instead we caught two massive tadpoles. I think they might be bull frog tadpoles because you could here lots of bull frogs calling to their mates around the area. As we were leaving one of the guys gave us about 10 little fish to go in the tank too. Should be interesting to watch the tadpole change into frogs. Having tadpoles in the tank means that we won't be able to get a big beetle *phew* What is it with little boys and big bugs?

Lotus love...

Hope you had a good weekend, we had one of those ones where we tried to get a squillion jobs done and none of them were very exciting. We did start off with a bit of excitement, Ebi-kun came and woke us up early Saturday morning - nothing new there! But he had remembered that we had talked about going to the lotus farm and you need to get there early to see the flowers open. 

So, with 15 minutes we were washed, dressed and bundles into the car. Stopped at the combini to grab some breakfast then down to the farm we went. It is about a 15 minute drive away.

Although the weather was overcast and threatening to rain there were loads of people there with big fancy cameras, I looked a bit daft with my little camera and even dafter with my iPhone. It is rather photo heavy post today because I couldn't decide which pictures to show you, let's call it early Monday indecisiveness!

They are extremely beautiful and delicate, we didn't make it to the farm last year so it was good to make the effort this year.

you didn't hear this from me...

This is for those of you who use an iPhone or iPad. In Japan, by law, your mobile device has to have a shutter noise when you take a picture. This is because some scumbags were taking pictures up school girls skirts when they were on the escalators, so the sound it supposed to discourage that kind of behavior. My iPhone also has a delay so you get the sound a second or two after the photo has been taken.

Now, this is all good and well BUT sometimes you don't want that sound, sometimes I am trying to get a picture of Ebi-kun engrossed in something and I don't want to disturb him and sometimes I want to use my camera without everyone turning round to look at me (such as the other day at school). So, I did a bit of research, it looks like you can hack your iPhone but I didn't really fancy that but then then I discovered Manner Cam App and it is free to boot. Whether it is legal or not is a whole other ball game!

Just promise you won't take be taking photo's up school girls skirts!

And as we are talking about apps, I am always on the lookout for cools apps, please share with me your favourite app in the comment section below.

courgette, zucchini or marrow?

Whatever you call them, they are in season here at the moment and cheap as chips! Now, actually they are cheaper than chips. So, we have been trying out some new recipes, we tried zucchini patties which were nice but too sloppy so I ended up adding breadcrumbs to the mix. 

We made chocolate zucchini brownies and let me tell you... they are amazing and you can kid yourself that they are healthy too! I did try another recipe which was like falafel but now I can't find the link!

I have my eye on these baked zucchini sticks and tonight we will have zucchini pasta, do you have a favourite zucchini recipe?

Life is pretty manic at the moment, I am working on getting the new website up and working my way through coursework which means there has been little time for sewing or crafting boo. Tomorrow it is just me and Ebi-kun at home and the weather is supposed to be rainy so I am planning something exciting. 

In the past week he has come home from school with a massive lump on his head - hit a pillar somehow, a big cut on his knee - where he fell over and twice has come home in his sports kit, first because he has a nose bleed all over his t-shirt and the second time someone bumped into him when he was dishing out the soup and he got covered in soup! It has been a long week!

The worries of a 6 year old....

Do we have seven candles for my birthday cake?

It's not his birthday until the end of July but I suppose one should start worrying about it now!

We usually have some sort of themed party, we have had safari (1), trains (2), dinosaurs (3) football (4), knights  (5) ninja (6) so what will be for his seventh? Star Wars has been mentioned so I have been gathering inspiration over on my Star Wars pinterest board....

I won't be showing Ebi-kun this or he will be wanting me to make him one!

Ebi-kun would LOVE one of these pool toys - not sure where you can buy them though.

These printable masks would be great at a party

This is pretty neat a paper AT-AT, but I for one, would not have the patience to make it.

and one to make you smile...

ahhhhhh.....

But is 6 weeks or so until the big day, the theme may have changed several times by then!