Melanie Toye's Hobbies

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay Ok, so I like a tidy home but I am no where near those homes where you arrive and it's perfect, every single time.  Nope. I have just so much fun with my hobbies, that I will clean when I finish my hobbies for the day.  But I am trying something new ...  If you are like me, cleaning is a chore. I don't wake up and go, "Wow, what a day to clean!" No way. Not Ever.  So it might seem weird, but I definitely have to create a game or challenge for doing every type of cleaning. I do absolutely enjoy a clean and tidy home. And I find I am more at peace when it is tidy and my hobbies are away and so is the mess.  Here are three games you can play to get you cleaning: 1. Do one hobby and then once it's complete, do one cleaning task.   So for me, I love so many hobbies... if I really wanted to (and I try) I can spend my whole weekend doing hobbies. Generally writing is at the top of the list because that is how I share my hob...

Image by Peter Olexa from Pixabay How to make a writing routine is always tricky to begin with. So you want to be a writer and you want to write on a regular basis. I would suggest when starting, create time on your weekend (if you work Monday - Friday), or create time on the days you have off work/studies. One hour. Start with one hour. This doesn't mean you sit down and write for one hour. It could mean, brainstorming ideas for what you want to write. Or plotting a story and the chapters within. Just one hour. Put your timer on and this is your allocated time to write. Now do this on the same day of each week for 30 weeks. Your routine is now set.  For plotting new stories, you may be interested in " My Book Planner" Printable Templates which helps you create your story idea.  Once you master writing for one hour a week ... you might be looking to add more writing to your routine. So you decide to add 15-30 minutes to write each day. When you are such a creative, that...

Image by Jan Kosmowski from Pixabay Scrapbooking is super fun and creative and having your child learn how to scrapbook, is really fun.  Here are some sure fire ways to help your child scrapbook: Show your child your finished scrapbooks By showing your child your scrapbooks, they get to see the end results and get an idea of what scrapbooking is visually. This teaches them that being creative with paper and stickers and some glue and scissors, can be turned into some cool art.  Also, it shows your child, that you value memories if you use photos in your scrapbooking. And children or anyone, love looking back at older photos and memories. So it's quite a moment for them as well.  Show your child your scrapbooking supplies It's exciting for someone who does scrapbooking to show their scrapbooking supplies to someone who seems interested in it. You have spent time browsing and then choosing which supplies you would love to use and now you can show someone the cool supplies ...

So, I love self-growth and I love motivation podcasts on YouTube and watching inspirational quote style videos on Instagram.  The movie, The Secret I also love buying non-fiction books. So I was on YouTube and I thought, hold on... what if I re-watched the movie, The Secret. I hadn't watched that movie for about 20 or so years ago... (Wow, I just googled when it came out, 2006 - literally 20 years ago). I really enjoyed the movie, The Secret back then and thought, why not watch it again.  And then, I thought, ok that was cool... and I was chatting to my Mum about it and she said, you know there is a book about it. Which gives you activities and teaches you how to live the secret. So she gave me the title, "Ask and it is given: by Ester and Jerry Hicks. The Law of Attraction Book Collection I bought Ask and it is given eBook from Apple Books. It was so good and powerful, I realised this isn't good enough to be an eBook. I want to be able to read this book, as often as I wan...

Image by Willi Heidelbach from Pixabay ^Please note, I use affiliate links in this blog post. This means I receive a percentage of the sale from the seller. So... I don't know about you ... but I have something to confess?  I have so many work in progress crocheting projects, I don't know where to put them all.  It sounds weird ... why not just complete one project at a time?  Different crochet projects  Oh, that sounds easy. But the thing is... I also have projects for different types of travel. Like, I have a yarn in my bag because when I am on the train for an hour, I am crocheting a beanie. A small enough project that I can do on the train (and I still drop the yarn sometimes on the ground). I have two blankets in progress and that's because when I was a quarter of the way through one, my sister mentioned she would love a blanket. So I stopped crocheting my blanket and now crocheting her a blanket and will restart my crochet blanket once I finish my sister's. Bu...