Project Life 2012 - February

February 2012 was a crazy month.

 

~ February ~

 

Week 5:

 

 

 

 It rained for 3 days straight, resulting in our 3rd flood in 3 years.

This one was higher than the last two and left Roma a disaster area.

The life of an amazing, vibrant, loved local woman was taken by the raging water even as her children were rescued from her car. As I sat cut of in my home hearing about what was going on in town, I knew I had to do something. I googled Baked Relief (remembering about the baking women did in Brisbane during the clean up) and contacted the woman behind that idea. She gave me lots of ideas and I started a facebook page to coordinate my team of bakers.

We baked like crazy people! The Lion's club got involved providing the makings for sandwiches. We packed food into eskys and I sent out cars to different parts of town - with colour coded maps to ensure that each street received some relief in the form of baked goods and water.

 Week 6:

 

That's Life story on me and our Baked Relief effort.

 

Local paper story about our baking.

 

The devastating pictures.

 

Country Life Story

 

Local paper stories

 

I was so proud and am still so proud of what we accomplished. A group of women who couldn't get out to help clean houses for a variety of reasons who spent their time baking to help their community! It was a priviledge to know and work with these women.

 

Week 7:

 

Week 8:

Project Life 2012

As excited as I am about the arrival of PL 2013, I must, I must finish 2012 out properly. Through the caos that was packing up our life and moving interstate I continued to take photos and journal about it all. The good, the bad and the ugly parts. Over the coming weeks I will photograph PL2012 and brig you up to date!! Although back at the beginning of 2012 I did start blogging PL - I'll start from the beginning again!

Because I wanted my weeks to read Monday - Sunday and New Years day was a Sunday, I put our first photo and New Year's resolutions on the title page!

Title Page:

 

Week 1:

 

Week 2:

 

Week 3:

 

 

Week 4:

 

 

Watch out for more updates!

Catching up.....There's a hole in my heart....

....that can only be filled by you.

6 months of being away from each other just about drove us both insane. I cried every night after talking to Marko. My heart ached each night when I came home from school to an empty house, until I moved out and into the beautiful Lisa's home where I was so welcomed but still so lonely. Our occasional weekends when I flew down were as precious as gold.

I NEVER WANT TO DO THAT AGAIN!

I don't know how families do it. Honestly. I know there are plenty of couples out there who deal with the long distance all the time. Whether it's two weeks on two weeks off or a longer roster. I just am not cut out for it. Neither is Marko. He found it as unbearable as I did.

I guess the best thing to come out of it is that we each have a better understanding of each other than we did before...crazy for a couple who's been married coming on six years. But honestly you tend to take your partner for granted after a certain amount of time. I know we definately did. Not anymore. We treasure our time now that we are reunited. I feel so cherished and loved because he tells me constantly!

Together again...at last!

Catching up.....Packing and moving a home...

While Marko started work at Bayswater Powerstation at Easter, I had to go back to Queensland and keep working at Roma State College until I was approved to teach or had found a job in NSW. It was my momentous task to pack our home, sell unwanted items, clean and hand the house back to EQ. It was a huge task and after talking to Marko on the phone each night, I was often in tears. The whole thing was just so overwelming.

I started by selling bits and pieces on the Roma Buy Sell Swap website, then I had a garage sale, then all that remained went into storage - where it remains today. We currently don't have a big enough house to put all our stuff into, plus we don't want to spend thousands on moving everything here when we may not stay long term. This is a decision that will take time and will rely on heaps of factors - job enjoyment, whether we like where we are living, making friends, whether we fall pregnant any time soon and my family.

So here are my tips for moving interstate with a household full of stuff - some that is used regularly and some that isn't.

1. Choose one room at a time to sort through. You don't have to do everything at once, and lets face it you would go crazy trying.
2. Create piles - 1 keep and pack ; 2 sell ; 3 throw out.
3. Pack / Sell as you go. As I made decisions about which pile each item was going into, I took photos and listed them on the Roma Buy Sell Swap page. Heaps of areas have these kinds of pages on Facebook and they are really useful. I'd advise you to tell your buyers that they have to pay on collection. DO NOT chase around trying to deliver to people. If they want the item they will come to you.
4. Only list 3 or 4 items at a time and add new ones as items are sold. This will mean you are not overwelming buyers with insane amounts of items to sell.
5. Carefully label your boxes. If your belongings are going into storage like ours is, it may be a long time before you open the box so the more detailed you are the better. Mind you - don't put valuable jewellery in storage and label it - that would be asking for trouble.
6. Clean 1 room completely - wash walls, clean windows and remove everything from the room. Now this rooms becomes your storage room for all your boxes so that you aren't tripping over boxes every day. As you pack you will run out of room in that first area so when you have packed another room, clean it's walls and start putting boxes in that room. My wise friend Brooke calls this 'closing down rooms' as they are cleaned so you know they are done.
7. Make lists....about everything!!!!! Make sure you cross of jobs as you do them. This will not only keep you organised and on track, but will help you feel like you are really making progress not just treading water and losing the battle between the mountain of stuff and the folded boxes.
8. Organise carpet cleaner and pest control as soon as you have a moving date. This is really important. I was moving at a time when Education Queensland was shifting lots of staff around between the EQ houses. By booking in early I ensured that the last minute rush wasn't even more stressful.
9. Only keep essentials unpacked. I was very very fortunate. I had a lovely friend who had me over to her house every night for 2 weeks for dinner so that I didn't have to cook at home. This meant I could pack nearly everything in the kitchen only keeping out what I needed for breakfast. I then stayed the last 3 nights at another friend's house so that I could pack everything and finish off!
10. Stay calm and ask your friends for help. This is SO important. What does freaking out accomplish...not a lot. As I said previously I had the regular freak out and cry every night, but the biggest part of that was how much I was missing my husband and the fact that I was doing this all alone. I didn't ask enough people for help and really struggled. My worst days were when I was making decisions about our dog who just wouldn't play nice at the homes I tried to find for him. (A story for another day).

These tips are by no means the only ones, but I feel these were the most important in my journey. I hate packing and moving. I hated doing it alone even more. But I did do it, and I survived it! Just....

The Arrival of Project Life 2013

I realise it is kind of weird showing you my album and it's insides for 2013 before finishing off 2012, but I was SO excited to receive it this week.

 



Project Life in it's box!

 



Jess messaged me while I was at work to tell me hers had arrived and I was worried that mine wouldn't come on the same day, but she drove past my place and text me to say it was there!! So after an excited afternoon of trying to concentrate at work while knowing Project Life (PL) was waitng for me at home, I headed to Jess' so we could play together.

We photographed, giggled, unpacked and arranged all the components of our kits. You can read Jess' post about it here. We were like kids in a lolly shop! It was so fun.

Jess and I with our kits.

 



Project life is the brain child of Becky Higgins. You can purchase kits in a variety of ways from here. I chose to purchase the Amber Starter kit because it came with everything I needed. I did think that the kit would look like this:

 

With a beautiful yellow binder, and instead received this:

A week later, I'm still a little disappointed it isn't yellow but I do quite like the limey-yellow folder and it's lovely cards.

A starter kit contains:

• A binder
• 60 Becky Higgins Photo Pocket Pages
• 500 Journaling cards
• 40 Bi-fold Journaling cards
• 8 First Page Cards
• 8 Last page Cards
• 60 4x6 title Cards
• 12 Month Dividers

On the Craft House website you can purchase all sorts of other accessories, like designer paper and lots of other goodies but I chose to keep it simple for now.

The box of cards!

Inside looking at the cards!

Journaling Cards

 

More Journaling Cards

Even More Journaling Cards

Journaling Cards and First and Last page cards

4x6 First and Last Page Cards

4x6 Title Cards

4x6 Title Cards

4x6 Title Cards

4x6 Title Cards

Bi-fold Journaling cards

Bi-fold Journaling cards

 

 

 

So then I set up my first page:

 

And last page:

 

 

I then worked out the order for the cards and started putting them into my folder. It is seriously beautiful. I'm so jealous that Jess is already planning for next year when I have to keep my mind on getting 2012 finished off. But I'm taking notes and getting my ideas sorted.

 

A well earned cuppa while sorting cards!

 

Thanks so much for a wonderful evening Jess! I had a great time.