The new routine and a few Work In Progresses ..

New routine giving me some extra time every day

We're only four days in that my daughter is staying at school until halfway the afternoon but I'm already starting to get used to this. I've noticed that these two extra hours make a huge difference in what I can do in a day. Previously, I tried to do some stuff in the few hours she was at the nursery but as many know writing can't be forced and sometimes this meant I had to do some other non-important things before getting in the right flow to write, leaving me with too little time to finish things. These few extra hours I have now she spends the nap hours at school as well make a huge difference to me already.

I have to admit that I'm still wasting too much time to my own liking as I feel a bit lost with my new found me-time. But no need to feel bummed as I know this will improve with the day and I'm very curious to see what I've managed to wipe off my to-do-list from this week compared to other weeks in the past.

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More quality time

It's very noticeable that we have spent more quality time together. This was also probably the main reason that she decided to be a big girl and just accept her faith (lol) having to rest instead of play during nap hours. I told her that I don't like it when I'm trying to focus on work things while she wants my attention as well. I'm not very productive when I'm constantly disturbed and she's getting annoyed that I tell her to wait a little bit before I can listen. I knew that this would be a great motivation for me to do all my stuff during work hours, and after that my laptop time will be reduced to the bare minimum.

I have to admit, that it's a bit hard sometimes (you know it feels like withdrawal symptoms after a few hours haha) but overall we have had quality time in the afternoon. I'm there 100% for her, and we both enjoy that. So even if I can't finish everything during school hours because I'm still seeking my best routine for those hours, too bad, I can continue in the evening when she's in bed. The afternoons are for us to hang out.

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Something I've wanted to try for a long time is painting stones

A few years ago, an artist I really admire started sharing her dot art. I loved it from the first moment. I always told myself that one day I would try to do that as well, but it never came to that point. Along the way, I found out that you can also use stones to create art. Like these examples:

I don't have any illusions that I will create anything nearly as cool as the images shown above, but this was just easy reference. I watched a video about how you need to prepare your brushes to make dot art, I don't have any of the stuff here, only brushes and acrylic paint. So here's what I will do this afternoon when the little lady is at home: we are going to see if we can make something funny with the stones I collected yesterday. I just want to get familiar with the feeling of painting on stones. To see if that is something that I may want to try more often and especially if I should try the dot art technique one day.

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The little chair project

For a while, I've been hunting for a children's chair but the only ones we found were the IKEA models which I'm not a huge fan of myself. They look ok, but I've seen much nicer ones, in Holland that is. With these things, I'm still quite lost in Budapest, and therefore the purchase got delayed. A week ago someone responded to my old advertisement asking for a similar chair in a sales group. She said I wouldn't do it, they break easily, we had one.

My boyfriend asked if she didn't want to sell it for a few bucks. I asked her and her answer was I could get it for free. Nice! Saved about 12 bucks there, lol. Boyfriend picked it up two days ago, this is what it looks like now:

I already noticed on the picture that it looked gross, up close it's even worse. Although I'm very happy with the free chair, personally I would be ashamed to give away an item looking this dirty. Maybe that's just me though.

As soon as the chair arrived here, my boyfriend started to see what could have happened, immediately it was clear that they didn't put 2 screws in the chair. And these are quite important for safety reasons. Oh well, now we have our little project chair here. Although our little girl would love to use it right now, we first have to buy the screws and then probably also paint it over. Need to find some inspiration for that first though, I would love to make a cool chair of it and not a boring white one.

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Last but not least, the resume is becoming a WIP as well

I've given it quite some thoughts, but the conclusion remained the same: I need help to get my resume done the way I envision it. No more boring resume for me, it needs to stand out and I want one of these creative resumes while having no photoshopping skills whatsoever. Thankfully, I had this bright moment remembering that @hetty-rowan has these skills and that I should ask her help for this. We talked about it and came to an agreement.

Hopefully, I will be able to leave a message soon saying someone said I'm hired as well, lol. For now, @hetty-rowan is hired to help me out while I do other things within my abilities. Thanks in advance!! Much appreciated!

~Anouk

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