Day Zero – How’s it going?

I jumped on the bandwagon and set myself a Day Zero Challenge of 101 things to do in 1001 days. I have 812 days left and have so far completed 27% of my challenges and half-done a few more.

Curious? Here are my 101 tasks:

1. See a movie in 3D with Sy

2. Learn to play F properly on the guitar

3. Take Arthur swimming.

4. Take Tori and Arthur to an aquarium.

5. Visit Bath Cats & Dogs Home

6. Cook homemade chicken Kievs

7. Go to a concert

8. Visit the theatre

9. Learn an Avril Lavigne song on the guitar

10. Finish Tori’s ‘First Year’ photo album

11. Make a ‘First Year’ album for Arthur

12. Put photos in Tori’s ‘My First Year’ Frame

13. Take Tori and Arthur up Blackpool Tower

14. Buy a new set of saucepans, frying pans & wok

15. Buy a matching crockery set and replace the old chipped ones

16. Teach Tori to count to ten

17. Grow some lettuce or similar in pots in the yard with Tori & Arthur

18. Take my Mum & Dad out for a nice meal & refuse to let them pay!

19. Dye my hair a new colour

20. Complete a 365 photo challenge

21. Get a new non-touchscreen phone!

22. Go to the zoo

23. Sing karaoke in a bar/at a party

24. Learn a poem off by heart

25. Go horseriding

26. Go iceskating

27. Go to London with Tori & Arthur

28. Buy a winning lottery ticket

29. Read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

30. Wish on a shooting star

31. Have a family picnic

32. Carve a pumpkin at Halloween

33. Make a Simnel cake at Easter

34. Make a proper cooked breakfast

35. Cook my way through a cookbook (My Daddy Cooks – 12/100)

36. Write a proper letter to someone

37.  Get my eyes tested

38. Have Arthur Christened

39. Finish Tori’s CareBear cross-stitch and get it framed

40. Write a short story

41. Start a savings account and put in £5 for every DayZero challenge completed.

42. Have a day out with Liberty involving shopping, a meal out and ending in a bar/pub.

43. Complete a puzzle book cover-to-cover

44. Visit a museum

45. Spend a day at the beach

46. Go without chocolate for a week.

47. Make homemade pizza

48. Go for a meal at Nando’s

49. Make a snowangel

50. Move house

51. Go for a meal at a Thai restaurant

52. Clear out my entire underwear drawer and buy some nice new replacements.

53. Write a CV

54. Buy a plant and keep it alive

55. Visit the Disney Store and replace my broken bowl and glass

56. Go to Bath Thermae Spa

57. Make fresh pasta from scratch

58. Have a themed night out for my birthday.

59. Complete a computer or console game all the way through

60. Buy a second spice rack and fill it.

61. Teach Tori and Arthur to play ‘Away In A Manger’ on the piano/keyboard

62. Make a cheesecake from scratch

63. Keep up with my Book of Happiness.

64. Sort out my room at Mum & Dad’s

65. Buy an oragami book and try to make every model at least once

66. Make chocolate rice krispie cakes with the kids.

67. Read an auto-biography

68. Build a house of cards and take a photograph before it falls down.

69. Inspire someone else to start a Day Zero project too.

70. Buy my mother flowers.

71. Send someone a present through the post just because I saw it and thought of them.

72. Read & return Liberty’s books.

73. French Plait my own hair successfully at least once (and take a photo for proof)

74. Ride on a rollercoaster

75. Have dinner by candlelight

76. Light a firework (sparklers don’t count)

77. Go for a walk in the rain and jump in the puddles.

78. Get a manicure

79. Jump on a train and go somewhere random and new for the day.

80. Buy that essential ‘Little Black Dress’ and wear it out somewhere.

81. Buy some bright red heels and wear them with pride.

82. Weigh less than 10 stone

83. Make at least 5 different cocktails out of my cocktail recipe book.

84. Raise money for a charity by doing something (sponsored or a sale)

85. Send my Grandparents a gift just to say I’m thinking of them.

86. Find out how to make Danish Butter Cookies and then try to do it.

87. Learn how to pipe icing.

88. Buy a case and strap for my guitar

89. Ask 5 different people to suggest a book to read and then read all 5.

90. Build a sandcastle

91. Give money to a street musician

92. Complete a colouring book with no help from the kids

93. Pay off my student overdraft

94. Buy Arthur his first pair of proper shoes.

95. Wear shorts and actually leave the house.

96. Eat at Burger King.

97. Buy Tori & Arthur matching outfits.

98. Go shopping in the Birmingham Bullring and the Manchester Trafford Centre

99.  Get into some sort of keep-fit routine and stick with it.

100. Meet up with someone from Uni (other than Liberty)

101. Buy some cheese from the local market.

Look! Books!!

New year, new start. I’m not one for resolutions usually because I’m rubbish at keeping them but that doesn’t mean I haven’t got a few aims and hopes for the year. I have filled in the Day Zero 7 x things for 2012 which are sort of resolutions and on top of those I would add that I want to get (and stay) a bit fitter.

One of those 7 things is to keep a book record and I have a reading journal winging its way to me in the post right now. They key point to this is that to keep a record I need to read. So here we go, this month I have read/am hoping to read at least the following:

Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough

War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

The Shadow Catcher by Michelle Paver

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

As I have already finished the first two in the last week – Long Lankin was AMAZING and I couldn’t put it down and War Horse was equally brilliant and also quite short – I feel I should add another book to the list as 2 books in 3 weeks should really be quite manageable.

So my ‘if I finish all the above’ book is: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (Which I am reading purely in the hope that it will make Blade Runner make some kind of sense…seriously, what on earth is the unicorn all about??!)

Memorise A Poem – A Day Zero Challenge

One of my Day Zero challenges is to learn a poem off by heart.

I decided it had to be a new poem (to me at least) so that I’d had to indulge in reading some poetry to find one I wanted to learn. I have a selection of poetry books on my shelves including children’s classics (such as Spike Milligan), A. E. Housman, John Betjamin, Willam Blake, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Andrew Fusek Peters most of which I have barely opened so this challenge has made me pick them up and start reading.

The poem I have decided to learn is Down By The Salley Gardens by W. B. Yeats because I read it a good couple of weeks ago and it keeps on popping back into my head. I won’t pretend that I understand exactly what it’s going on about but the imagery in it struck a chord in my head and that, for me, makes it a worthy poem to learn.

It goes as follows:

‘Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;

She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

 

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.’

*

I think it’s beautiful and I seem to get something more out of it each time I read it. Hopefully with a bit of practice it will soon be stored away in my memory with the only other two poems I have managed to learn off by heart: The Ducks Ditty from Wind in the Willows (Mum and I used to recite that on a morning when we crossed the bridge over the river on the way to school) and Blue Remembered Hills from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (which I learned during my A-Level drama course when we were performing Dennis Potter’s play Blue Remembered Hills).

25 Things I Like About Me

This isn’t on my Day Zero list but Love In The Nest inspired me to do it anyway. I’m not at the brightest point in my life at the moment, struggling a bit with my PND so sitting down and coming up with 25 things I *do* like about myself can surely only help me to feel a bit more positive about life. It may, however, take me a while!

1. My eyes are cool. They seem to change colour depending on my mood/the light between green, blue and brown. I generally describe them as grey but really they’re a mash of everything.

2. I can spell/write reasonably well. I am a grammar and spelling nazi, I know this irritates lots of people but it is actually something I enjoy. Maybe I should take up proof reading as a career.

3. I’m a good Mummy. I make mistakes, but who doesn’t? None of them are too major and hopefully it will just help make the Smalls nice well-rounded people when they are older.

4. I can laugh at myself.

5. I take pretty good photos when I try.

6. I have an over-active imagination.

7. I am a daydreamer.

8. I’m creative (though not in an artistic/drawing way)

9. I’ve never let go of my inner-child. I still see the wonder in most everything & am a sucker for Disney Classics.

10. I am patient. I wasn’t – but then I had babies and somewhere discovered that I do have some hidden away inside. Most of the time anyway.

11. I can cook. And it tastes good 9 out of 10 times too. This is something else I have discovered since having kids. I enjoy it too which surprises me.

12. I’m not bad at making cakes. Apart from when my useless oven bakes them wonky.

13.  I have faith and enough confidence not to hide it away. It’s hard being an open Christian through secondary school but as I came through college and university and life ever since I have found myself becoming more and more confident in what I believe and less and less inclined to just ‘not mention’ that I go to church every week and believe in God and Jesus.

14. I have a nice figure. Despite having had two babies in a fairly short space of time I am still (after a bit of a healthy eating push) a size 10 and when I’m not having an ‘I hate everything’ day I can look in a mirror and like what I see.

15. I always see the good in people. Sometimes this comes back to bite me in the bum when I take a person’s ‘nice’ personality as their true one and it turns out they’re a prat but mostly it’s a good thing. I like to think that most people have good in them and I try my best to spot it – if nothing else it gives me a little more faith in humanity in an age where morals and good-heartedness seem to be fading.

16. I’m not afraid to give something new a go. I might sometimes need a push or an encouraging smile to set me off but more often than not I’ll give most things a go.

17. I’m a geek. I like reading, console & PC gaming, sci-fi and fantasy (books and films), I birdwatch, I love to watch documentaries about cooking and wildlife and things like trains.

18. I’m a softy. I will cry at almost anything – books, tv, films, radio, the news….

19. I still get excited about things like going to the zoo regardless of if the kids are with me or not.

20. I can cross-stitch. I get a bit cross (haha) but I can produce some nice things and they make good gifts for people.

21. I like to make other people happy. I’m the sort of person who will buy someone else a present just because I know it will make them smile. I like giving.

22. I am forgiving.

23. I can be brave when things get tough.

24. I’m stubborn and will stick with something even if it drives me mad. (For example I read Mr. Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire right to the end despite it making me want to throw things – mostly it – out of the nearest window. And I went to every PAD lesson but one at uni, despite it being a total waste of time – if you don’t believe me, ask Liberty, she went too.)

25. I’m good at remembering people’s names.

Meal Planning Monday

Click here for more Meal Plan ideas

 

Last week went fairly to plan bar a day swap so I cooked low-effort pasta bake on Tuesday as I had forgotten I was going out that evening and didn’t want to spend what time I had at home slaving over a hot stove.

This week the plan is:

M. Bangers & Mash with onion gravy

T. Carrot soup & crusty bread (I made the soup some time since and put it in the freezer. I go swimming Tuesday evenings so a quick & easy dinner is essential.)

W. Sticky baked salmon with sesame noodles (My Daddy Cooks)

Th. Mexican Lasagne (My Daddy Cooks)

F. Chicken risotto & crusty bread

S. Pasta Carbonara with garlic bread (My Daddy Cooks)

Meal Planning Monday

Click here for more Meal Plan ideas

We did pretty well on our meal plan last week aside from me failing to get organised on Wednesday morning before I went out and thus shifting all our meals over a day and knocking the Pasta Bake into this week instead. The Goulash was a big hit and the Spanish rice recipe made enough to feed Sy & Tori the next day as well! And, well, we always like pie so that was a no-brainer.

I will make a note when one of the recipes I am using is from Nick Coffer’s My Daddy Cooks recipe book as one of my Day Zero targets is to cook every single recipe at least once over the next 2 and three-quarter years. Hopefully this will help me and Sy discover foods we didn’t know we liked and get us over some of our fussiness.

On to this week:

Monday: Roast Chicken & all the usual stuff (Sy misses out on Sunday dinners due to work so I do them during the week instead)

Tuesday: Pasta Bake

Wednesday: Oven-Baked pork chops with ratatouille and feta (A My Daddy Cooks recipe)

Thursday: Homemade pizza with chips (A My Daddy Cooks recipe) < It’s Tori’s birthday and pizza makes good party food!

Friday: Sausage & Bean Hotpot with Mash

Saturday: Creamy Pork Stroganoff (A My Daddy Cooks recipe)