What Sarah Kate Says

As summer marches on here in the UK I began thinking back over some of the holidays I have enjoyed in my recent life. Let's be honest it is one of the best things about being an adult...holiday time!  So I thought I would share with you some of the pictures from my absolutely favourite holiday so far in the hope it may give you an idea of a future destination for yourselves. A couple of years ago we decided to splurge on a Sandals holiday in Grenada. The resort was newly opened so was throwing out some great deals. It would have been special anyway, but we were blown away by a surprise upgrade upon arrival at the resort. Coupled with a beautiful location and the friendliest staff it was, hand on heart, the most fabulous holiday I have ever had and highly recommend it, but be warned...it is not cheap - worth every penny though. The food was beautiful and facilities were top notch.  I would love to hear what your favourite holiday destinations have been or wher...

Warning - I'm going to be annoyingly typical here and say how blown away I am having reached this milestone, but honestly I am. When I started the blog I honestly (no really honestly) never even thought about anyone other than me reading it. I just enjoyed (& am still enjoying) the process of writing and publishing. However I do have a slight confession....when some people did start to like and follow my blog I confess I started to wonder (full on daydream) if my blog could take off and keep growing. My imagination did get a little carried away for sure. However that is one of the biggest traps of blogging (based on my personal experience) whereby you can easily get obsessed with the numbers game. If you start to focus on the numbers what you create can start to get warped by trying to attract visitors and please the masses. Then the risk is that you start creating posts that even you do not like and the quality could even suffer as a result.  I've re...

So as I promised on Instagram on Sunday night (whatsarahkatesays) I'm using this nights blog post to give a catch up on my progress against my plan for the week. Now this is purely a domestic/social planner - my full time job is managed with an electronic calendar and one I am happy to leave at the office thank you very much. This is generally how most weeks tend to look at the start. I always create spaces for logging the meals I eat, my two blog posts and plans for cleaning. I find that writing it all out gets it out of my head (which is overcrowded most of the time with work stuff) and helps me face the week a bit more "sorted" than if I didn't do this. The purpose of the meal stickers is to help me track what I'm having for breakfast and lunch at work - I clearly am going through a soup phase right now! I find it is encouraging me to meal plan more and try and create some variety at home. Below is a sweet chilli chicken pitta fest I had on T...

A few posts ago I shared  Phase One  of my side board organisation mission and now I'm finally ready to share phase two. This did not take half as much effort as the first cupboard, but for some reason took me longer to feel happy with it. As you can see from the picture below the before was a huge mess, full of junk and just not nice to look at.... So once again I emptied it out and began sorting it all into piles...trying to find common threads. I also knew I had a few items left over from phase one that wouldn't fit into that space once organised, so cupboard two has become predominantly my filing overflow. Through this process I have learnt something new to how I have organised my stuff in the past. Thanks to Pintrest I have gazed at hundreds of beautiful images of organised cupboards and I finally twigged what I loved the most about them...they were pretty. Folders matched, boxes were in keeping, etc. In the past I just organised the things but...

I think a lot of people have a space like this. A small, narrow cupboard that can hold a surprising amount but is then a complete pain to get anything out of. Digging around for the products you need to use while cooking and sending cascades of tuppaware spilling out on top of you. Here's how I have dealt with our messy little cupboard... The Before: I've watched a lot of YouTube organisation videos now (admittedly a slight obsession of mine) and one idea that came up many times and that stood out for me was the use of a simple contraption called a "Lazy Susan". The beauty of this device is that you can really easily access items by spinning it round - genius! No more digging around. So one bored evening I measured up the space and took to Amazon to see if there were any Lazy Susans that would fit. Imagine my geeky joy when I found they did exist. I felt so confident in my measuring skills that I ordered two. The Process: Firstly I emptied out the ...

When I really thought about it the first goal that came into my mind this month is a need to "sort my life out", but what does that actually mean? For me it means different things at different times of the year and is very linked to my mood. So I asked myself this question... What would make me feel like I had "sorted my life out" by the time I got to the end of August? The answer was actually several small things, so this is more like a life to do list rather than goals. Find shoes for my friends wedding.  Should be easy right? Well not when you are 6ft tall and have BFG feet! It is always a bit of a mission. Arrange a trip to Harry Potter World with my Sister. Something we have been trying to do since February and so far cannot get our act together! Complete my  sideboard organisation project  that I started last weekend. One cupboard down, two to go! Update my CV. Something that is long overdue. Start job hunting (FYI I have a job but f...

It's that time again when I want to reflect back on the goals I set at the start of the previous month and 'fess up to how well or badly I did!  So I was kind to myself and only gave myself two  goals in July  which were to deep clean the house and attempt to have a rolling stock of four blog posts in the bank. So how did I do? Deep Clean - ACHIEVED!   As predicted with two lots of visitors coming that month the house was kept in great shape and so far we have managed to keep it going too with the usual cleaning routine. So feeling quite smug about that one. Don't get me wrong there were a few days where the spare room started to resemble a laundry but we brought it back from the brink. Rolling blog posts - ACHIEVED! Well almost...I'd mark this one at about 80% achieved through the month. I had a couple of exhausting weeks at work so I struggled to have the posts fully written up and ready to go, but I have always managed to have at least four blog ...