The Mum Meme

I totally stole this from The Ramblings Of A Formally Rock N Roll mum, it made me laugh because her first answer is exactly the same as mine...

Who was your first crush?

Adam Ant! I too had a poster of him in his Prince Charming get up, on the back of my door. Ahhh Adam!

What were the last three things you bought?
Not including boring stuff like food and postage stamps and Christmas presents that I obviously can't disclose on here...

1. Some Christmas decorations for the tree outside.
2. Notebook and pens (one can never have enough)
3. Ebi-kuns annual tree decoration.

Which is this from GlakLove on Etsy

What are you secretly hoping to find under the Christmas tree this year?

I'm so rubbish when it comes to gifts for me, I see things all year round and think, Oh I'd like that for Christmas then it gets to December and I've totally forgotten what it was I wanted. Having my birthday a week before Christmas doesn't help! 

A new bottle of my favourite Anna Sui perfume would be a good start and notebooks and pens - because one can never have enough! Now I'm repeating myself!

Where would you go on holiday if you could go anywhere in the world?

We are planning to go to Tuscany next summer, so that would be fab but there are so many places I haven't been to yet that I want to go to. Myanmar, a safari in Africa, The silk route in Mongolia and Island hopping in the South Pacific would be where I'd start.

What are you reading at the moment?

I always have several books on the go. The Hundred Languages Of Children - which is quite dry and so heavy going! Might take me a hundred years to finish it. The Whole-Brain Child which is really interesting. E cubed - which I dip in and out of and several biz books on the go. And for fun! I just finished Six Years by Harlan Coben, I love his books.

What was the last concert you went to?

I don't get to gigs very often, the last one was when I was back in the UK. Jane's Addiction in Manchester and it was frickin amazing!

What were you like at school?

A bit of a swot and a bit more of a rebel. I liked learning and was in the top band for everything but many of the subjects didn't excite me so I did enough work but certainly didn't push myself. I also hate rules so would see how far I could push them without actually breaking them. It was more fun to push the limits that to go all out and just break them (because I was smart enough to know I didn't want the punishments that came with it).

I have always wanted to do things MY way so following other peoples rules, I'm like, yeah right, I don't think so!

I'm not a fan of uniforms either and wasn't into the same kind of music as most of my peers - Duran, Duran, Wham, no thank you! I knew that I wanted to travel the world and leave the village as soon as I could, square peg, round hole. Back then I didn't realise that I'd always be a square peg, now I am at peace with the idea, who wants to be in a round hole anyway?

I'm not tagging anyone, just leaving it open. If you decide to continue with the meme then please leave a comment with the link in the comments section!

The links for the books are affiliate links, this is to keep me in my book reading addiction, please go and spend a lot of money on Amazon as I am running low on books at the moment. (kidding!)

What do you want to know?

To celebrate my 6 years I thought it would be fun to answer some of your questions... so here we go....

Q. You always ask on your inspiration posts what a typical day looks like, what does YOUR typical day look like?

To be honest I don't have a typical day - one of the joys of working for yourself! The basic run down...

6am - all get up, get dressed, have breakfast together, get ready for school/work

7.20am - Ebi-kun and hubby leave for work

~ 8.00am - I do household chores, laundry, cleaning, whatever needs doing that day.

8.00am ~ 12.pm I work, this can be anything from writing guest posts, magazine articles, coaching clients, putting together new programs, blogging, scheduling facebook posts, recording webinairs, research...

12.00pm - lunch & I usually catch up on a podcast

12.30pm ~ 2.30pm work (as before)

2.30pm try and wrap things up for the day, jot down what needs doing tomorrow. Finish off any other house chores etc.

3.20pm Ebi-kun gets home, he has a snack and we chat then he does his homework, I make sure I have everything out ready for dinner. Sometimes he will go and play with his friends, other days we will do something together, play on the wii, crafts, painting...

5.00pm start dinner - Ebi-kun often helps

6.00pm finish dinner & clear up, Ebi-kun is a slow eater so I usually clear up as he is finishing his meal then some evening we chat to my mom on Skype otherwise Ebi-kun reads to me and we kick back and relax.

7.00pm - Bath & bed routine

7.45pm - I jump in the bath

8.00pm - Usually catch up on course work

9.30pm - brain dead so I will do a bit of hand sewing or doodling and watch TV. Hubby usually gets back around this time so I fix his dinner whilst he is in the bath.

11.00pm - bed

Q. I have tried blogging but I can't stick to it, how do you do it and did you keep a diary when you were a child?

No! Well, I tried but I probably only managed a week at most. It is quite surprising to me that I stuck with blogging! I think to begin with, I knew my friends and family were reading so it was an incentive to keep going and now I see it as a document of what we, as a family have been up to so I want to keep going. I also write posts in my head ALL the time - luckily for you, only a fraction of them make them to the blog :)

Q. When are you going to write a book?

Hahahaha, I have no idea, I would love to write one but I'm not sure what the subject would be - open to suggestions!

Q. I hope this isn't too personal, you obviously love children, is there a reason why you only have one or are you planning to have more?

I think anyone with an only child gets asked this a lot. When I was 39 weeks pregnant with Ebi-kun I was diagnosed with HELLP Syndrome and was rushed into the operating theatre so they could get Ebi-kun out. Obviously it all turned out OK in the end but the hospital warned that I would be high risk if I had a second child and I would have to go into the hospital to be checked every week of the pregnancy.

*The whole birth experience was scary but I didn't actually know at the time what HELLP Syndrome was, when I got home a did what any 'sensible' person does - yep, googled it! It was terrifying to find out that I could have gone into that operating theatre and not come out.

For me, the choice was to be the best mom I can be to one child rather than risk leaving one child and possibly a baby too, with no mother and my husband with no wife.

Q. Do you plan to stay in Japan forever?

Certainly for the short term, now we have a house we don't have a lot of choice, there isn't really the 2nd hand house market that they have back home so selling isn't really an option. I would love to eventually have this as our base but spend extended time out of the country, I love travelling and finding out about new cultures so being able to spend 3 months here and 3 months there would be great - that would all depend on the rest of the family and our finances though!

Q. What made you stop designing and instead start My Organized Chaos?

There were a number of factors, after the 3/11 disaster I decided we needed to have an income that was location independent, so that if something happened and we had to get up and leave, we could do so and still have some kind of income. Then the number crunching came in, selling patterns I can only ever charge, at the most $12 and to make a decent income from that I need to sell a LOT of patterns every month. So, I started to look at other options, the concept for My Organized Chaos had been rattling around in my head for a while but I was thinking of it more on the lines of a book. Then I discovered online courses and everything fell into place. I really enjoy the helping people aspect and the  course is a lot more sociable than selling sewing patterns. There is still an element of design since I do it all myself.

Now I can go back to enjoying sewing as a hobby and I will probably release more patterns as I come up with them and I would still love to have a line of fabric from my designs...

and a few liners...

Q. What is your favourite Japanese food?

Sukiyaki or okonomiyaki

Q. What did you study at university?

Electronic Imaging & Media Communications (also have a HND in Electronics & Software Engineering)

Q. The old classic, if you could invite 5 people to dinner, who would you invite?

Assuming I can pick dead people too... Leonardo Da Vinci, P!nk, David Attenborough, Kate Adie and Jamie Oliver (and get him to do the cooking).

Q. What is your favourite film?

Hmm  don't really have one, I love films you can sing to like Wizard of Oz, Mama Mia, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Also a Star Wars fan and there are lot of films I have really enjoyed but I tend only to re-watch films if I can sing along LOL.

Thank you for all the questions, it was fun answering them! If you have any more, pop them in the comments box...

Did you miss it?

My chat with Katie, last night? If so, you can listen to most of the recording here. Slight technical (as in forgetting to hit record) problem. So you miss all the juicy bits from the opening :o)

If you have any other questions about anything that came up in the show, pop them in the comments section...