Jetpens giveaway by the Crazy Suburban Mom

I am a serial offender when it comes to window shopping stationery, but luckily for my bank account and minimalist tendencies I rarely buy anything. I came across this post by the Crazy Suburban Mom, and thought it was just a good excuse to look at the goodies sold by JetPens. And then to my delight, I got an email from the lovely Tracy to say I'd won!

I'd kinda forgotten about it, and then came home to find this nicely decorated envelope waiting for me:

Look at the pretties! 

Unexpected stickers, gotta love that :)

It kinda reminds me of writing in Barbie nail polish

I've already stuck some of the stickers on the flyleaf, today marker and plastic wallet in my filofax. I haven't decided what I'm going to use the pen for, but I might use it to write the contexts for my next action lists.
Thank you so much, Tracy :)

Philofaxy post

Well, I've done my first post over at Philofaxy, which you can read here!
Twice a week, there's a shorter post called Free For All Tuesday and Free For all Friday, with the idea to encourage readers to ask questions and discuss anything filofax related. I've noticed that over time, the number of comments has been increasing, and am amazed that mine has had 82 comments!

I've already written a longer post which is due to be published soon, and am about to do another one right now. I've been meaning to improve the layout of my filofax and how I use it, and am pleased that blogging about it will be another incentive to actually crack on with it.

Things I love Thursday

I think it's about time I resurrected these posts to share the love :)

Here's what I'm enjoying currently:

• Walking to work - I feel so lucky to be able to do this. Half an hour's brisk-ish walk mostly along footpaths, past a lake and the birdsong can be so loud, with occasional up-close encounters with squirrel and Canada geese
• Cupcakes - my thoughtful husband visited me at my work today just to drop some off for me
• Watching the Big Bang Theory - 'Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes lizard, lizard poisons Spock, Spock smashes scissors, scissors decapitates lizard, lizard eats paper, paper disproves Spock, Spock vaporizes rock, and as it always has, rock crushes scissors'
• Plotting what posts I can write for Philofaxy, now that I've joined the team as a contributing writer
• Considering ideas for the Shiatsu Society Journal (their quarterly magazine), something else I've recently volunteered my time for 
• Alternating getting loads done with being lazy - I've never been particularly good at this in the past, and used to think about all the stuff to be done rather than chilling 100%
• Getting my email to zero more regularly - amazing what a difference this makes
• Wearing summer dresses with a cardigan and long boots - bit of a d'oh moment as otherwise I only wear them in the summer
• Meditating in the half lotus pose - it feels so grounded and stable. I'm pretty flexible, but have never found the full lotus easy, so am working my way up to it this way
• Having a lie-in - I've been fighting off some bug and I always sleep more when I'm poorly
• Using my vintage pink A5 Malden filofax - upsizing from the personal size has been quite a revelation for me. Our cat, Floopy, loves it too... as a seat!

How to meditate in a moment

The benefits of mindfulness meditation are widely documented. It can help reduce stress and anxiety, increase life satisfaction and even lead to changes in the physical structure of our brains.

But many of us struggle to find the motivation or time to practice mindfulness. So this video is a great reminder that even a simple moment of meditation can benefit our state of mind.

Courtesy of Action for Happiness.

Blogging from A to Z challenge reflections

Phew, the challenge is over!
I'd been considering writing a final follow-up post and then discovered that the A to Z reflections postings will begin on Monday May 7th. You can add yourself to the linky list here. I think it'll be interesting to learn how other people found the challenge.

I think the biggest thing I learned is that, despite being a bit of a procrastinator, I managed to keep to the schedule of when posts were meant to be published. I've been working on changing and improving my habits, and consistently and successfully keeping to a deadline is something I used to struggle with, so it's been a great experience from that point of view.

I wrote many of my posts in advance and scheduled them in Blogger, which I've only recently found out about. Overall, it was harder than I expected, but I've never been the most prolific blogger and I adjusted the content if I was struggling with the letter, or couldn't think of anything interesting to write. It helped me realise that my posts don't need to be either particularly long or on a complex subject to be of interest. In the past, I've probably passed over many ideas as I didn't deem them worthy enough, which seems silly now.

One big change for me is that I realised I enjoy writing. In the past, I've gone through stages of finding blogging a chore or being unsure of my reasons for doing so. Before the challenge, I don't think I was quite convinced of my writing ability and posting more regularly has helped increase my confidence. As a result, I contacted Steve at Philofaxy and I'm delighted to announce that I will be a contributing author to the site! I doubt that I would have done this without the A-Z challenge, so a big thanks to Denise at Cupcakes and Cadenzas for introducing me to it :)

To be honest, it's a bit strange now that it's over and I'll be thinking about what subjects I'd like to cover here and how often I'd like to post. Thank you to those of you that visited for the challenge, and for your kind comments. Now that I have more time, I'll be going back through the sign up list to go and say 'hello' to more people. 

All my A-Z posts can be found here.

Z is for Zen Habits

I came across Zen Habits a couple of years ago, during a period when I was a bit addicted to productivity blogs. I wanted to change less useful habits like procrastination, but spent too much time reading about productivity, instead of getting on with stuff! I discovered loads of other great sites, such as Lifehacker, Steve Pavlina and 43 Folders. However, there was something about Zen Habits that grabbed me straightaway and I subscribed to his posts pretty soon after.

More information about the creator and writer, Leo Babauta, can be found here. In my opinion, his posts are well written, intelligent and inspiring. Over time, it seems his focus has moved further away from just productivity ideas, and more towards mindfulness and how to enjoy life. I've found I've been naturally moving in this direction anyway, and discovered some important principles for me:

• It's not possible to be highly productive 24/7 - this took me quite some time to figure out & I understand now that it's natural for me to have downtime after periods of higher productivity
• If I'm kind to myself I procrastinate less and generally get much more done.

I decided to buy some of Leo's books as I had enjoyed and benefited from his site for free. He uses his writing to support his family and I like the idea of being able to contribute to his chosen career.
I have purchased:

• The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life Click here to view more details
• The Zen Habits Handbook for Life Click here to view more details
• Zen to Done Click here to view more details
• The Little Guide to Un-Procrastination
• Focus. 

I think my favourite book is still Zen to Done, as it 'takes some of the best aspects of a few popular productivity systems  (GTD, Stephen Covey and others) and combines them with the mandate of simplicity. It makes things as simple as possible, and no more'. Now that I have more space in my A5 filofax, I'd really like to simplify my system and get it working better.

If you're a newcomer to Zen Habits, I'd recommend you start at the beginner's guide to Zen Habits: a guided tour.

Y is for yoghurt

Okay, I admit I couldn't think of anything sensible for this post, so I thought I'd talk about how much I enjoy eating yoghurt :)

I know this advert's for frozen yoghurt, but I still think it's great.

At the risk of sounding a bit crazy, I have a favourite spoon for eating yoghurt! The strange thing is it's not my all-time favourite spoon, just specifically for yoghurt. And I don't let myself use it all the time, because that would be giving into the weirdness, right?! Just to put the record straight, I don't have any other preferred cutlery, just this one... Hmm, swiftly moving on, I think.

My gorgeous husband kindly bought me the EasiYo yoghurt maker starter pack, which I'd really recommend.

It's very easy to use as you just mix the sachet's contents with water, then pop the jar into the yoghurt maker (a type of flask) with some boiling water at the bottom and leave overnight. My favourite base so far is the Greek n' Coconut, which is very creamy with a lovely coconut flavour.

So, how does it all work out price-wise?

• Yeo Valley yoghurts (what I used to buy most often) are normally around £1.50 for 450g 
• Julian Graves currently sell most of the EasiYo sachets for £2.99, which makes 1 litre
• The initial outlay of my starter pack cost just under £20.

However, according to EasiYo, the cultures in yoghurt only last days, so it's most beneficial to have fresh, rather than a product that's been in the chiller for quite some time. 

I personally don't know enough about the subject to comment on how accurate that is, but enjoy making the yoghurts and it was a very thoughtful gift.