Keep Calm and Carry on Ironing

the irony of the crinkles in the poster
has me giggling like you wouldn't believe!

Or just chill with an awesome bunch of ladies and some great food and drink as the case may have been.

Thanks to Philips I gathered some of my buddies and held a bit of a British themed ironing party on the weekend.

Firstly let me just say that I feel incredibly privileged to be able to even say I had some buddies to gather. The fact that they actually turned up is even more of a blessing. Now I know generally speaking I don't tend to worry too much about things but when it comes to throwing a party and having peeps turn up I tend to worry like there is no tomorrow.

Thankfully though this was an occasion where I had just the right amount of guests. Given that it was all being held in the shoebox it was lucky the guest list was not too long. Mind you I may have got a tad carried away with the food preparation and prepared enough for a small army.

Apologies in advance for the lack of light in these photos, hint hint if there is a camera company out there, I need a new one...

Just some of the fan fare.
Under the white thing are some scones my mum made. Yes they were awesome

Choc Orange Swirl cupcakes with cute little toppers.
Complete with some chocolate frosting carefully piped on by Lovely

A close up of some of the British food I was sent.
I had a few British guests who assured me authenticity of it all.

These were beyond devine.
Cream cheese, sour cream, smoked salmon and a shallots,all whipped together.
I say whipped because I used my electric egg beater. 

In keeping with the British feel, despite there being watermelon on the table, which is clearly not British just incredibly refreshing, there was also Pimms. Oh and tea, but nobody drank that because, well there was Pimms. Which according to my brief research is the beverage of choice at Wimbledon. Followed closely by champagne (which I also had on hand if you were wondering).

Once everyone had arrived and settled we got straight into the game playing. Because what is a party without games?

The games all revolved around the rather magnificent PerfectCare Aqua Pressurised Steam Generator.

Honestly this iron is the iron of all irons. Even without being a dedicated ironer (and by that I mean someone who may have difficulty remembering where the iron can be found) I can recognise that this little baby is all kinds of awesome and then some.

In fact the look on Suzy's face is testament to just how awesome this little baby is.

Suzy is a regular ironer on account of her husband having an important job and needing clothes that are wrinkle free. Sadly though until the weekend she was oblivious to the fact that not all irons are created equal. A fact she quickly discovered after a few quick swipes of the ironing board with PerfectCare Aqua.

Turns out that all Suzy's years of ironing practise paid off because that lady can get a shirt wrinkle free quicker than you can say Bob's your uncle, not that I ever say that because Bob was my dad and therefore could never be my uncle regardless of how fast you said it but that is probably a story for another day. Anyway Philips had kindly given me an extra iron to pass on to one lucky guest and Suzy's ironing speed and ability made her that lucky guest.

Suz left with one of the biggest smiles and making jokes about the steamy night she was in for as she got to know her new love a little better. Suzy was not the only guest in love with all things iron related and nor was she the only one that left grinning from ear to ear.

Our IBOT hostess with the mostess, Essentially Jess who is a self proclaimed ironing nerd got the pleasure of running away with the rather impressive ironing board

You can check out more photos of the day via Instagram and the hashtag #rhiannasarvotea and if you haven't already check out the YouTube clip of my original review of the iron

For those that like fine print, I was gifted a PerfectCare Aqua for my original review. 
I was also given heaps of cool stuff (too much to mention) to host an iron party. 
All thoughts and words are totally my own

Some thoughts on confidence

Now handing over the reins is not something that I do easily. Well not normally anyway. I can be a control freak just like anyone. Today however I have handed over blogging on a Tuesday, and I have done so with great pleasure.

Last week as I was trying to avoid actually doing something constructive with my time, I turned to my Facebook page with a whine of how exhausted I was feeling after a hard day of community building at the school. The reality of my day was that I had actually held someone else's baby (with glee mind you) while she (the mother, not the baby) actually did all the work serving the kids at the Father's Day stall.

Anyways, a loyal liker, who also just happens to an old high school bestie, shared that she had sat an exam that day. Knowing her like I do, I assured her that she probably had little to fear from the exam and passed with flying colours (or words to that effect). Which being the super modest chick she is, Angela politely deflected which then resulted in a brief epiphany on the topic of confidence.

Now I am not sure who said what, but before we both knew it, Angela had agreed to sharing a few of her thoughts on confidence in the shape of a blog post.

So without further adieu I give to you the wonderful words of Ms Angela.

Image from here

Having just finished a semester exam I decided to check out what was happening in the land of Facebook. Scrolling through my feed I saw an update from A Parenting Life, asking what I had been up to. When Rhianna heard of my exam she complimented me on my skills as a student. Which I instictively went to deflect.

I’d carried out the weekly work all semester and felt confident going into the exam, but instead of simply thanking Rhianna for her compliment I deflected it with the modesty that most women are trained to display from a young age. 

After I had written my response though I realised that I might be onto something: maybe confidence does stem from putting the groundwork in?

Academics has always been my forte; I do not have to ‘make’ myself put the work in, I just do it. That said, I can still fail the course if I don’t put the work in each week. I was confident about doing well in the exam because I did the necessary work.

Confidence comes from knowing your strengths, but it also comes from knowing your weaknesses and how to work around them. 

A person might prefer to plan ahead for a particular situation and might not like surprises or sudden changes of plan. In this case she can consider various scenarios that might derail her plans and plan for or visualise how she is going to deal with them. 

Someone else may be going somewhere new but is uncertain in new places. She can improve her confidence in various ways, such as asking someone who has been there, researching it online, or asking staff for assistance on arrival. 

Your preferred style of preparation may vary from mine; I prefer to do basic research and then plan what I am going to do. I like to limit the amount of input because I get ‘paralysis by analysis’, ending up with so much information that I can’t make a decision. You might like to talk to people whose opinion you trust. I prefer to keep positive thoughts running through my head, while you may prefer to get a pep talk from a friend or family member.

Obviously there are some people who are easy-going enough to walk into most situations with confidence, and I say that their confidence still stems from having put groundwork in, just in a less intensive way. These people are able to quickly draw on previous experiences, and it’s this that gives them confidence.

The takeaway:

Embrace your strengths and understand your weaknesses. Know how to work around your weaknesses.

Research and plan ahead in the way that you find most useful, but beware of ‘paralysis by analysis’.

Draw on previous experiences – preferably positive. If an experience is negative, focus on what you’ve learned, rather than on what went wrong.

And finally:

Confidence doesn’t always just happen, so don’t beat yourself up if you have to work at it!

#Hashtags. What are they and why are they here?

If you are a regular social media user and like to hang out at the likes of Instagram or Twitter you are probably all over the term hashtag. If however your social media habits only extend as far as Facebook you could very well be wondering what all the fuss is about.

Now I am by no means a social media expert but I do like to think I have a grasp of the basic. Some may even say that I have a strong grasp on the basics and I for one would not argue with them. With all of that in mind I feel that it is only fair that I share some of my knowledge with those less informed but curious none the less.

A thought that was confirmed for me when I asked my loyal Facebook likers if they were interested in such information. Sure only two out of 416 responded but that is enough confirmation for me.

So what is all the hashtag (#) fuss and why do I feel the need to share the fuss with you?

Well hashtags have recently been added to Facebook and if you are someone like me trying to gain greater exposure on through this medium it is a little exciting. If however, you are an average Joe Blow, free from the addiction that social media can be, you maybe left wondering what all the hashtag fuss is about. I do assure you that once you understand the joys that are hashtags your excitement levels will begin to soar.

Bear with me and let me explain a little more.

What is a #hashtag?

Essentially a hashtag is just a means of grouping like minded posts together. It is represented by the # at the start of a word or term. 

To find the # symbol you generally just push shift and 3 on a standard computer keyboard. It is often found on the second number/symbol keyboard on smart phones. Please don't think I am patronising here by telling you where to find it because just between you and me it took me ages to find it on my phone. Thankfully most apps are now designed to make it easier to find the hashtag button it can sometimes take a bit of looking for. Anywho...

The moment you place a # in front of a word or term it becomes automatically linked to all other posts that have the same word or term hashtagged. Which means it is a great way of searching for things. 

Say for example you were looking for some new crochet patterns or inspiration. All you have to do is go to the internal search feature and type #crochet and wham bam thank you 'mam there are heap of posts full of crochet goodness.

Some of the posts that came up when I searched the hashtag
#crochet on Facebook.

Why are they here?

According to the reliable source that is an uncited article on Wikipedia, hashtags were first seen in Internet Relay Chat, which as the name suggests is some sort of conversation mechanism via the internet. It was deemed handy there to group conversations and this was seen as the way to do it. 

By grouping conversations it was easier to keep track of conversations that were of interest to those from varied backgrounds and not necessarily friends with each other. By hashtagging posts similar content can be grouped together making it easier for all relevant information on a particular topic easy to find.

On services such as Twitter, if enough people are using a particular hashtag it is known as trending. Trending topics are those with the highest popularity and seen as a great way to gain exposure. For the user trending topics are a way to stay a float of what is hot.

Ultimately though hashtags are here as they provide a nice easy uniform way of grouping things together and what computer nerd doesn't like grouping things together?

So there you have all you need to know about the wonders that are hashtags.