A Guide Makes Good Use of Her Time

Posted: June 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: birthday parties, cleaning, computer, crutches, Daniel, home making | 2 Comments »

The Guide Law

  1. A Guide is loyal and can be trusted.
  2. A Guide is helpful.
  3. A Guide is polite and considerate.
  4. A Guide is friendly and a sister to all Guides.
  5. A Guide is kind to animals and respects all living things.
  6. A Guide is obedient.
  7. A Guide has courage and is cheerful in all difficulties.
  8. A Guide makes good use of her time.
  9. A Guide takes care of her own possessions and those of other people.
  10. A Guide is self-controlled in all she thinks, says and does.
I was a Girl Guide, Junior Leader, Assistant Guide Leader and Gumnut Guide Leader in the days of my youth.  Guiding still holds a very dear place in my heart and many happy memories and some embarrassing ones. My bra being flown from a camp flagpole was not a highlight!
It is interesting the things that come back and stick with you.  I could not recite the entire Guide Law to save my life but I often think to myself “A Guide makes Good Use of Her Time”.  This seems to have become more and more relevant to me as I get older.  Obviously I now have multiple roles in life and never enough time in the day.  Being on crutches and having impaired mobility for so long was a salient lesson in what can be achieved in very small pockets of time.  At this stage of my rehabilitation I can be standing around for 30 minutes at most before my back starts hurting so I have had to make sure that I make very good use of those 30 minutes (or smaller) intervals.
The smaller intervals are perhaps the most interesting.  I try to get as many little things done as the kettle boils, as the toaster toasts and when I have set the oven timer for something.  I have loaded or unloaded the dishwasher at one of these time, put a load of shopping away or cleaned down the sink. While I’m waiting for my computer to boot up or shut down or for the printer to work I can tidy numerous things off the desk.  When there are bigger tasks like folding washing, cleaning and the like I often set a kitchen timer for 15 minutes to get myself started and then keep going in 15 minute intervals.
Then there are some other ways to consider good use of time.  A big one for me recently has been sleep time.  I am often turning my light off when there is a 9 at the front of the time on the clock!  I then have a far better chance of getting the 8 hours sleep that I really need.  And what about when choosing what to do?  I had a  an afternoon with Daniel this afternoon as Anthony was off playing Bowls and Eric was at a friend’s place.  I would have been very well justified in continuing to plough through laundry and tidying up especially after yesterday’s Dinosaur Hunting party but Dan and I headed for the local park with his Big Bang Rocket and in true Daniel fashion he soon adopted four other random children and organised a series of test flights making sure that everyone had a turn and that they knew the correct technique.  Now that was good use of time!

52 to Fabulous – Week 1

Posted: January 3, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: 52 to Fabulous, birthday parties, blogging, cooking, craft, exercise, Family, Food, goals, health, home making, knitting, organising, sleeping, working | 10 Comments »

I’m joining in this project here because I want to achieve good things this year. I’ve had a break from just about everything and now is the time to step up and start getting things done again. The categories for each month are follow with my wants for each category.

January – Fabulous Beginnings – getting into good routines and being really well prepared for relief teaching
February – Fabulous Organization – getting routines fine tuned and getting the family more involved
March – Fabulous Fitness – build up my stamina and lose weight
April – Fabulous Food – cooking more meals, baking more things for school lunches, making more interesting things for my own lunches
May – Fabulous Style – hair and make-up
June – Fabulous Fun – planning birthday parties for the boys
July – Fabulous Hobbies – knitting up a storm
August – Fabulous Finances – making a budget
September – Fabulous Food – more of what was done in April
October – Fabulous Health – stress management and sleep
November – Fabulous Home – making the bedroom a sanctuary
December – Fabulous Blogging – building up my readership

The big three of these?

Fabulous beginnings

Fabulous Food

Fabulous Fitness

Another Milestone

Posted: June 25, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Anthony, birthday parties, Daniel, Eric | Leave a comment »


We’ve celebrated many things today – the end of a looooong term, school athletics carnival and Daniel’s birthday party. The day was dampened by rain at the athletics (we soldiered on as it was only light) and it was dark and cold by the time Daniel’s last little party guest departed but we’ve had a great day overall.
I don’t think I’ll ever have a party on the last day of term again – even though Anthony organized it all. Everyone had a good time and the children from school enjoyed our big backyard to run around in but everyone was very tired as well. We kept it very simple. Daniel and Eric are huge Scooby-Doo fans so he’d requested a Scooby-Doo theme. Anthony decorated with stuff we had left over from Eric’s halloween birthday party a couple of years ago and screened off part of the area under the house with bird netting that is destined from my classroom with its Underwater World theme for next term. The children ran around and around the house, played on the swings and trampoline and participated in a few games organized by Eric and Anthony. Eric has been waiting for about six months to dress up as a ghost and “scare” the preps and he’s finally had his moment this afternoon.
My contribution was printing out some ready made invitations from the internet, fielding acceptances and apologies and icing two square sponge cakes last night with spooky green icing. This afternoon I added red writing and “Shaggy” and “Scooby-Doo” figures and I was done. Anthony has done the food, party bags and everything else while I have been fnishing reports, portfolios and parent teacher interviews over the past few weeks.
I’m looking forward to a couple of slower paced weeks in which I can spend time with my boys, get some work done in the house, focus on my health and fitness more and of course do a bit of school work.

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