Yvette's Favourite Things 2009

Like Oprah, I like to share the good stuff I discover.

Unlike Oprah, I can't give them to a few hundred people, so you will have to make do with this list of links instead :) If I own these things, I have bought them as a consumer and recieve nothing for posting them here, it is a genuine recommendation.

Eco Silk bags - I own six of these in different colours and when I pull them out of my bag, checkout and other sales staff ooh and ah, as do other customers! I am seriously thinking of asking them for some business cards to hand out! I LOVE these bags - I can squish up six shopping bags in my handbag and they take up no room; the colours make me happy; I use them for stuff other than shopping too and think they would be great for travellers.



Squiz cards - Oh how I love these! I have them hanging from my keys, attached to my mobile phone and in my wallet and when I want to give someone my details, I never need a pen! I am going to order a set with my work details too.


Louenhide bags - I bought this great bag in April and it is still going strong after being my daily bag ever since! I love the colours they come in but am also impressed by the materials and craftsmanship. I look forward to getting another :)



Belkin Pocket Top laptop case - My lovely orange friend has done a great job as my work horse this year, helping my laptop as it ventures between home and work and between desk and bed! I love it!



Book Niche - I wanted to show you the sleep shirt I bought, which is now out of stock, but now I have seen they have jammies, so guess what I am getting?





I hope you enjoyed my favourite things too :)

O’Dowd Family Christmas Letter

Although none of believe it can be, it seems another year has slipped through our fingers and the festive season is here once more. It has been the usual hectic pace for us all and, reflecting back, amazing just what was squeezed into twelve months.

The members of our household each became a year older – Rodney 45 and Yvette 46, Melissa 25, Kaitlyn 22 and Kieran 18, while Frodo and Merry the cats are now ten and our lovely dog Molly is a mature one year old!



For Kieran – and the whole family – it was a final year at school. Year 12, the infamous VCE and all the ‘lasts’: last school photos, last school uniform, last parent-teacher interviews!! As he puts school behind him and looks forward to studying computers at TAFE in 2010, it is a bitter-sweet end to a school-focused household since 1987, when Melissa began kinder!



Melissa may have grown up a lot since those days, however it seems she has spent most of this year in the dress up box! Her love of designing and sewing costumes continues to grow and she has created amazing outfits for herself and Kieran as they explore the world of Anime fans (a type of Japanese cartoon, if you are as bewildered as I!) She is enjoying her job at Savers Frankston, has recently moved to full time and is training to take on a more senior role. These past weeks she has had a few shifts as store supervisor. Melissa finally got her driver’s licence early this year and bought her first car. She continues to enjoy Salsa and Swing dancing and this year learned to Tango for a performance! And she still goes juggling when she can fit it in!





Kaitlyn has had a most eventful year, moving out of home in late July, into a share house with her boyfriend and several friends. Having bought her first car a few weeks before, you would think she couldn’t top that, however she and boyfriend Ashley Greig became engaged just prior to her birthday in October and are planning a wedding on November 14th 2010! Plans for that and an engagement party in January have everyone entering a whole new world!



Kaitlyn’s bedroom was briefly empty after she moved out, but only as long as it took the paint to dry in Yvette and Melissa’s new scrap and sew room! This motivated Yvette back into the scrapbooking which had stalled in previous months – most probably explained by her unnoticed need for reading glasses, rectified at her birthday check up!

Yvette’s health has been mostly good this year, the MS not causing any major dramas. Just as well, for between working 3 days per week at the new Breastfeeding Centre in Dandenong, continuing yoga classes and taking up swimming lessons and water aerobics, there wasn’t much room for downtime. Plus the steady scrapbooking that has resulted in 40+ albums (so far!)She celebrated her 25th year as a member of NMAA/ABA, clocked up 17 years as a breastfeeding counsellor and continues to have her finger in many ABA pies!



Rodney continues to work hard and play harder, fitting in two work trips to Japan amongst other more local travels. His racing bike goes nearly everywhere with him and he continues to ride/race most Saturdays and Sundays.



One of our greatest pleasures has been our dog Molly, a cavalier King Charles Spaniel who was born in April 2008. Her wonderful personality brightens everyone’s day – except for Frodo and Merry, who tolerate her antics up to a point and then thump her! Molly walks Yvette regularly on Frankston beach and has developed quite a local fan club.



Kieran is now the only one not to be a member of Facebook, everyone else enjoys regular connection with friends and family – including catching up with long-lost cousins, school friends and other faces from the past. We all embrace the internet technology and the way it keeps us together, even though our lives take us in different directions.

2010 will be a busy and exciting year for us all and we look forward to having our family and friends along for the ride!

An announcement

In older times, it was all engraved stationery and announcements in the newspaper, however those days are gone, so forgive the use of technology, however ...

Kaitlyn O'Dowd and Ashley Grieg wish to announce their engagement!

Yes, it is true - Yvette is to be a mother-in-law! But first, she gets to be mother-of-the-bride! EEK!! They always seemed so much ... more mature?

Everyone is thrilled - except Frodo the cat, who declined his consent (if anyone is listening?) and would like his mum to come back home and bring his bed!

No dates set, however the ring is GORGEOUS!!

The Nestle Factor

I am reading with interest discussion across the blogosphere about #nestlefamily.

And feeling very uncomfortable.

You see, I have been a Nestle boycotter for many years. I truly believe their marketing of artificial baby milk in some parts of the world leads to infant deaths. My kids have grown up (or perhaps, groan up!) being ear-bashed about Nestle. I am not a coffee drinker, but have inflicted those who are with non-Nescafe products. I will not buy any product with the Nestle brand and I do my best to avoid supporting companies owned by them. After many years of loyalty to The Body Shop and a moisturiser I was not sensitive too, I wave goodbye sadly when they were sold to Loreal, who are owned by Nestle. Or more correctly, when Anita Roddick sold out to the very type of company she had set up against :(. Hoping she is not RIP over that one.

I do consider the Three Es when I shop - Economy, Environment and Ethics and I believe I do it well. But there is no doubt I haven't maintained the rage on Nestle as well as I should. As my children got older and began making their own choices, products found their way into my home independently. My daughter likes their coffee. My son likes their sweets. They own the brand Maggi, whose 2 minute noodles are one of the few things my son will eat! I haven't kept pace with who they have bought out in recent years and they probably profit by some of my purchases.

Most shamefully of all, my son and I had an all expenses paid trip to Sydney when he won a Wonka bar contest several years ago - I agonised about going and allowing him to go, but I went for the easy option in the end.

This new controversy has me thinking again and renewing my vows. My children are all adults now and can make their own decisions. One has left home, another lives independently at home and the youngest is about to leave high school. If they wish to have products tied to Nestle, so be it, however I will no longer purchase them on their behalf. I will review once again the list of companies and brands to avoid and will do so. I will continue to make my workplace a Nestle-free zone, but will also make proper effort to keep them from my home.

We cannot be complacent. While the boycott may not prevent their marketing tactics, at least I am not endorsing them with my shopping dollars.

Baby Milk Action

Nestle Boycott

nestle-free zone and Nestlé-Free Week 26 October - 1 November:

What a difference a year makes!

Here we are, the end of September and I feel like all my ducks are in a row. At home and at work there is peace and order.

Flashback to this week 2008 - not so much!

Hard as it is to believe, it is a year since we opened our ABA Victorian Branch Office in Dandenong - to be known as The Breastfeeding Centre. This time last year, I was in the midst of packing the office from its temporary location in my lounge room, whilst coordinating removalists, utitilies, connections etc and wondering if our grand plan would actually work.

So far, so good!

The empty space I received the keys for last year is now a cosy community space and also an efficient administrative base. Throught the wonder of www.freecycle.org, generous donations and karma, my wish list is pretty well ticked off and the BF Centre is the hub for breastfeeding

that we envisaged.

A new season!

I am so glad another Winter is over. I really don't "do" Winter - I much prefer Autumn and Spring - and Summer when it isn't being extreme!

So the season of new life is upon us, what better time to bring my blog up to speed and make the usual resolution to post more regularly?

There have been many changes here in our home (which always reminds me of the top of the Faraway Tree - you never know where you will be when you poke your head through the cloud!) A few weeks ago, Kaitlyn moved out of home - the first of our chicks to officially leave the nest. (Melissa backpacking for two years doesn't count - leaving the nest involves taking your stuff elsewhere to live!). So we are now down to a household of only four, after often being one of six, with Ashley around most of the time. They have set up house together, just them, three adult friends and a four year old girl :) - they may not be feeling the same level of change as we are!

Of course, Kaitlyn barely took the last item from her room (leaving only a sad, unwanted poster of Eminem) when I had the paintbrush in hand and began decorating my new scrapbooking room! What else do mothers do to compensate for losing a fledged child? I followed the fine example my MIL set all those years ago, when Rod moved in with me - she actually tore down a wall and made his room into a second living area!!!

I am sharing my creative space with Melissa. It is a Scrap and Sew room. So far this is working really well, as we have different peak times for creativeness, which tend not to overlap too much. As I vacate for bed at 8.30pm, she is just getting around to thinking about starting :) So we can each get a good couple of hours work in without stepping on any toes (virtual or actual!)

And the new space has been just the prod I needed to get my scrapbooking mojo back. After most of twelve months only scrapping what I "needed to do", I am now back on track. I have finished off some projects, caught up to date with others and begun new ones. I am not sure what led to the down time - perhaps I just needed it - but am now enjoying creating once more.

Productivity?

My first thought when I hear that word is some sort of factory conveyor belt!

However, in my quest this year to LIVE (my word for the year), I have learned this word now refers to making the very best use of my time and Getting Things Done. Sounds like just the thing to reduce stress about stuff that is behind and increase time to do the stuff you want, rather than be a slave to stuff you have to do.

My other goal along these lines is to become as paperless as possible. Paper equals clutter and clutter equals stress and I don't need that!

So - here I am, mid way through the year. What is working?

Time management:

Remember The Milk RTM - working really well. I have it installed just about everywhere, which makes it really hard to ignore! I have gadgets on my Google desktop and iGoogle page, it is synced with Outlook and Google Calendar and I have the app on my Blackberry. I mainly use it for personal tasks that are done away from the computer, like getting prescriptions filled before I run out, remembering to get cash out to pay my wonderful cleaning angel and stuff to buy at various retailers.

I have moved away from using it to manage my work/volunteer To Do list, as I have now discovered Toodledo, I find Toodledo's options allow me to categorise projects/tasks in a more useable way, it also has an iGoogle gadget :) but not a Google Desktop gadget :( and an app for the Blackberry.

Information management: I am now a firm fan of Evernote, Delicious and Google Reader, who between them keep my information up to date and accessible.

Evernote replaces filing and notebooks, with searchable files and notes being synced automatically between my desktop and online notebooks AND the ability to read handwritten notes which I can scan or photograph and send to the pool. New rule - scan, save, shred.

Delicious - which I thought was "just" an online bookmarking service, has been much more, as it offers the ability to subscribe to tags of interest and brings up sites that other people bookmark under those tags!

And Google Reader allows me to subscribe to as many blogs as I wish, with a gadget on my iGoogle and a couple of great add-ons: a subscribe button on my toolbar and a next button, which lets me power through my reading by taking me straight to the unread blog post!

Access all areas:

I made the move fom Internet Explorer to Google Chrome several months ago. I mostly love it, resent it lacks some of my preferred tools (auto-fill, which is in the Google toolbar for other broswers, but not their own? And compatibilty with my beloved Robo Form password manager :( ) However, I love the functionaility of Chrome and am willing to wait til these tools come to it, rather than battle with IE. I tried Firefox, but didn't really like it that much.

iGoogle however, changed my life!! Alright, just my online life! Now my home page, it has gadgets that bring all the stuff I use to one place! My current set up includes Facebook, Twitter, Toodled, RTM, Gmail, Google Calendar, bookmarks, Google Reader, News Alerts, ABC news headlines, weather radar, Evernote and Delicious! All on the one page. I have a complete overview and can easily move to the full sites of any of these or just use the scaled down access right there. LOVE IT!!!

Google Desktop is a new addition to my tools but I couldn't be without it already. Permanently stuck on the side of my screen, all my normal stuff (browser, programs etc) open up in the slightly smaller than usual space, so the desktop is always in sight. As are the gadgets I choose for it to display - currently my RTM list, Twitter (how I found out MJ died etc), a battery monitor, analogue clock, current weather and a small note pad I can dump my brain into as needed!

Over at the central control centre AKA Microsoft Outlook, my world has changes as I embraced Inbox Zero as normal expectation instead of mission impossible.

Orla made the difference, an add-on that introduced for essential buttons to my life: Ditch, Deal, Delegate, Decide. Instead of emails building up in the inbox, I handle each one in turn with one of these buttons. Ditch is the most used button: 90% of what I read I don't need to keep just in case, so I don't! Deal means I either reply/forward immediately or it is moved to my To Do, Follow Up, Waiting On or Send to Evernote folders! Delegate I don't use so much - probably because I have no staff LOL! Decide means I need to add it to the calendar, create a task in Toodled or file it in the corresponding folder for future access. Three times a day, I work my email back to zero - in the morning (two shifts @home over breakfast and @work after I arrive), before I leave work and before I go to bed.

And because all work etc, I love my Xobni add-on, because while I process these emails, the senders profile pops up to the side - including their Facebook profile if we are friends! So a little bit of water cooler action without leaving what I am doing! Bliss!

So, that's some of the tools that will be migrated to my new laptop nect week :) Stay tuned for more.