Top

Home
About
Home Organisation
DIY Home Projects
Contact

From Great Beginnings

from great beginnings - a space housing a beautiful collection of all things diy, wedding & home

New to the Blog

Storing Dry-Goods in your Pantry

Home Made Cleaning Products – Recipes

How much did my pantry cost?

Designing my Walk-in Pantry

Princess Delilah’s Kennel

« Previous Page
1
2
3

Iryna Federico,

Home organisation, budgeting and all the bells and whistles! Read a little More about me…

Picket

Organisation

Projects

Get Tips · Freebies & Goodies
right in your inbox!
Type, type, type!

fromgreatbeginnings

Charlie's drawer is officially my favourite 👶👌🥰🍼

Hey friends, Thank you for all of your lovely mes

Hey friends,

Thank you for all of your lovely messages and comments of congratulations on the arrival of our little bundle of pure joy ❤️. We are soaking up the newborn bubble with our sweet boy 👨‍👩‍👦. Still can’t believe we made a human 😍. Delilah has also warmed up to him now but had no idea what to do with him early on 😂😂

Just letting you know I will mostly be off socials for a few more weeks; jumping on here and there, so not to worry if you don't hear from me for a little while 🥰

📸 @_madriiana ❤️

Welcome home 🏠 our little Charlie bear ❤️.

Welcome home 🏠 our little Charlie bear ❤️. We are absolutely head over heels in love with you.

This poor little bunny entered the world a little bruised and battered thanks to some giant salad tongs but he's recovering so well and is absolutely perfect 🥰. He arrived a little while ago and a few of you guessed but thanks to some instagram auto scheduling magic for a few days, we've been able to stay up at stupid hours of the night staring at our boy, giving him endless cuddles, not wanting to put him down and wondering how we got so damn lucky.

Having him here is so, SO much better than we ever possibly could have imagined. It really is intense and incomprehensible love ❤️.

PS: sorry for all the singing videos but they melt my heart 😭🥰

@dom_and_delilah fixed the legs and put them on th

@dom_and_delilah fixed the legs and put them on the right way after my failed attempts 🙌😂😂.

Loving how sweet his little room turned out ❤️

Won't be folding any tiny baby clothes 🥳🥳🥳🙌. Lucky dip drawer system here haha 😂

Everything is washed and ready to go for our little man ❤👶

Saw this super nifty hack on @aspireorganizing tik

Saw this super nifty hack on @aspireorganizing tik tok and now all of Dom’s ugly cables have a pretty home thanks to @spotlightstores photo organisers 🎉🙌
⠀
⠀

Had so many follow up questions yesterday when I p

Had so many follow up questions yesterday when I posted the fridge/freezer that I thought I'd do a FAQ post and now I've forgotten all of the most common ones 😂🤦‍♀️ so drop them below and I will answer and update this post 😊.

Over the last few months, we've been increasing the serving size of certain dinners we've made and frozen the left overs for post hospital freezer meals for us. At one point, the freezer was full to the brim and we were set for ages but just like the labour snacks, we've slowly been eating them instead of cooking since they're there 😂😂. Luckily, we weren't as savage with the freezer meals as we were with the labour snacks - those are now completely empty and need a totak refill hahaha. Did you have any favourites?

#freezermeals #fridgeorganization #freezerorganisation #organized #organization #organised #fridgefreezer

Happy New Year friends! 💖 We hope it is a great

Happy New Year friends! 💖 We hope it is a great year filled with many blessings and good health 🤞. We personally cannot wait to meet our baby boy!! 👶

Thank you to each and every one of you for sticking around and following along. We hope that this year, this page brings you even more organising ideas and inspiration for a clear mind and a happy home 🥰.

We have some fabulous news to start off the year ... Android has FINALLY been approved and Picket has officially launched on the Google Play store🎉🥳 Time to start the new year off with a bang and get your habits, finances, projects, meals and everything else in order!

Head over to the Play store now to download and start your week free trial ($10 a month after) or if you're mega keen, the annual subscription is currently 50% off and is $60 for the year.

We look forward to seeing you all becoming a part of the Picket family 💖🏡

#homeorganization #digitalorganisation #picketfeds #pickpicket #digital #app #organisation #organizationapp

Happy birthday to the love of my life ❤️. Wear

Happy birthday to the love of my life ❤️. Wearing two pairs of eyelashes to your 21st to impress you back in the day clearly worked a charm 😉. You are going to make the best daddy to our baby boy 👶🍼 (even though you are literally loading up his pram with your remote controlled drift truck as we speak so you don’t have to carry it to the park or waste the battery 😂).

We are so lucky to have you ❤️ love you @dom_and_delilah 🥰🎉

@picket.feds has officially launched around the wo

@picket.feds has officially launched around the world! The feeling is surreal to say the least. We are so incredibly excited for you all to get downloading. There is a free trial available for every new user ❤ - just search for Picket! We would be so grateful if you could leave a review on the app store after if you enjoyed it!

Looking back at the last few years as this community has grown; we could not be more appreciative of every follow, like, comment, message and just general support. If it wasn't for each and every one of you, we would not be here today so just really want to reiterate that appreciation. It is so crazy to see how far we've come together!

Do you remember at what point you joined this beautiful community?

We can’t wait for the future which will see frequent Picket updates based on your feedback.

Welcome to the Picket family, we love that you're here ❤ 🏡

PS - a bit of admin:

🌸 Unfortunately we have to apologise to Android users as it is currently not available on the Google play store due to the google crash this week BUT it should hopefully be there soon.
(yes this does mean we can't use our own app on our own phones😂😂)

🌸 We could only do one introductory offer at a time and since the annual subscription is currently discounted to $59.99, we could only offer a free trial in the monthly option but you can switch to annual straight after you sign up monthly and keep your free week.

Much love to you all,

Iryna, Dom, Chickpea and Delilah xo

1 DAY TO GO 🎉 As many of you know, I'm not a b

1 DAY TO GO 🎉

As many of you know, I'm not a big recipe follower so this has been a real challenge for me. I always thought that it was the normal way to cook because mum never used a recipe (to this day, she doesn't own a measuring cup and the only reason I do is because I found cute pastel ones which was lucky since I wrote out what felt like a million recipe cards for Picket😂)

I wouldn't say Dom and I are picky eaters because we well and truly try everything and eat most things BUT we are definitely variety people. We refuse to eat the same thing twice for dinner in the same fortnight (burrata exempt) because we are delicate flowers 😂

I love sharing our dinner ideas and you seem to love them too so I hope the meal section helps you decide what to eat and maybe even try a few new things. Each recipe has been written with love.. and a lot of cursing in the background 😂❤. I kept them super simple and brief because I didn't want them to read as long and tedious instructions with a tonne of ingredients. I hope they encourage you to experiment with flavours and feel confident to cook to your own taste and preferences. They have all been tested and so far, everyone has loved how simple and flexible each recipe is, except for the poor girl who tried out my Christmas cookies and added 12tbsp of salt because I made an error and forgot a / (was meant to be 1/2). Sorry about that but thank you for testing 😂😂. Picket allows you to take our recipes, save them as your own and edit to suit your preferences!

If you are a "by the book" kind of recipe person, Picket also allows you to organise all of your current recipes and upload them so you have access to everything in one place and it will auto populate your shopping list for you if you enter the ingredients as you go.
Meal planning saves us time and has allowed us to stick to a $100 a week grocery budget for many years (pre-covid and pregnancy because let's be honest, I can spend that much on snacks per week now).

We want to take the guess work away for you and with all of your recipes uploaded to Picket as well as our Fed Favourites, we hope it does just that🎉🙌.

What recipes are you keen to see?

2 DAYS TO GO! 🎉 I'm sure by now you all know

2 DAYS TO GO! 🎉

I'm sure by now you all know how much I love to-do lists and smashing out projects. I will always hate the project execution part (no app is going to help me there) but I absolutely love the end result, ticking things off and getting things done.

I find all of the projects we get done start from a task list, whether it be the under the sink storage, the nursery or the garden centre. It always comes from the items I need stored and then moves into the materials I need to make it a reality - from screw to shelves and more. This goes for all types of things not just projects such as; a to do list, party planning, present ideas for friends and family, lists of meals I’d like to try, movies I don't want to forget or a database of measurements for various projects I currently have on the go. After all, so much of @picket.feds is a culmination of things we wrote in our lists while out walking Delilah.

Not only do I get the satisfaction of ticking each item off my list as I go but I also have a place to brain dump and know that all that information is always easily accessible from my pocket. Plus, it comes with a nifty progress bar which I find incredibly motivating.

Mental load is so real. We all carry around so much on a daily basis and I personally find that unless I do a massive brain dump on those particularly busy days, I really struggle to switch off and sleep. Spending 5 minutes in bed the night before writing out a to-do list on what we have on the next day always helps me clear my head. I realised a little while ago that I found it incredibly daunting going into work and not knowing what was ahead of me in my day, especially if I was coming back from leave, so I got into the habit of spending 5 minutes of scanning through my emails on a Sunday which helped me plan my week.

I know we sound like broken records but we have so many expansion ideas that we just couldn't squeeze into the first release. You will notice a number of tabs at the top which are coming soon 🙌. I can tell you one of them is in the works already 🎉 - can you guess what the first one we are releasing is?

3 DAYS TO GO 🎉 We have always been avid budgete

3 DAYS TO GO 🎉
We have always been avid budgeters so when we started dating, it wasn't long before we combined our accounts and started setting goals for our future & budgeting together.
We found a lot of traditional budgeting systems were too consuming for the two of us to stick to so before we purchased our first property, we developed our own budgeting system. Dom still remembers the day I said "just tell me how much money I can spend without impacting our goals" and that's exactly what he did. That was 8 years ago now and we still use that same system today. 🎉
Our biggest issue at the beginning was guesstimating what we could spend and making a lot of important decisions without factual data. This was the reason why we created our budgeting system which was later followed by a guide for all of you so that we could share what worked best for us in the hope that it works for you too. Turns out it did!
We were soon flooded with success stories and messages of appreciation which was absolutely amazing.
When it came down to designing Picket, we knew we wanted to include our budgeting tool as a phone app first and foremost. The excel spreadsheet is fab (if I may say so myself) but it is limited to mostly desktop functionality and Excel whereas the majority of our luxury purchases are made on the go.
The concept has never changed but we have designed some extra functionality that will allow users to track any line items they input. For example; if you budgeted $400 on electricity per month but want to know how you're actually tracking with your electricity usage, you can swipe left and track that line item to then input the bill figures as they come. You will therefore be able to see how accurate your estimates are and update them.
The game changer for us though has been able to input all of our luxury expenditure as we make the purchase and having that figure update live on the summary dashboard.
We have so many more expansion ideas for future updates which we hope will help you remove paperwork clutter, stay on top of your finances, smash your savings goals and pay down debt and we can't wait to share this with you ❤. What are your financial goals for 2021?

“From Great Beginnings” is a concocted term wh

“From Great Beginnings” is a concocted term which summarises a big part of our life philosophy; setting things up well from the very beginning to make things easier, more efficient and maintainable in the future.
It relates to all organisational aspects of our lives because we value our time and would much rather spend it doing things we enjoy while feeling comfortable and knowing the mundane, yet important things are systemised and automated.

I started this page as a hobby but it has turned into so much more over the years and we could not be happier to see how many of you it has helped. We ❤ reading all of your beautiful messages, kind words and in particular, all the success stories; purchasing property, paying off a lingering credit card, organising an overloaded space, cooking something new with your kids or having more time to spend with your family because you've delegated mental clutter.

I read something the other day by Brianna Weist which resonated with me. I will link it in my stories because it is too long to paste here but it was basically along the lines of how important self-care is and it's usually not massages and face masks (although those are also encouraged in our household). It is making a spreadsheet of all of your debt, cooking a meal and nourishing your body, sweating through another work out or calling the quits on a toxic friend or family member. It is about creating a life you don't need to escape from and can enjoy which is what we focus on when creating our systems. That is what we hope to continue sharing with you.

Over the next few days, we will launch something that has been in the works for years, specifically designed for this beautiful community; an all-in-one home organising app called @picket.feds. So much has gone into this project and we truly hope you all love it and it helps you stay on top of things and reduce the mental clutter that comes with everyday life. Keep an eye out over the next few days for posts which will go into detail about what's included in our brain child but please know that we have SO many more expansions - this is just the beginning. Much love, Dom, Iryna, Chickpea and Delilah ❤ x

Everything is blooming 🌸 I thought by now I'd b

Everything is blooming 🌸 I thought by now I'd be well and truly struggling with the heat in the third trimester but we wore our winter jackets out for a walk yesterday 😂. I also haven't bothered buying any pants that fit because I did not think I would need them but yesterday was definitely a trackies kinda day 😂. Both myself and the plants are very much so enjoying not getting scorched 👌. What's the bet next week we get a heatwave and a 47C° day like last year 😂. Or was that in January? ...when I'm due 😭😭😭.
Really hoping my hydrangeas bloom before a heat wave so I can cut them and enjoy them inside. I didn't cut them in time last year and they all burnt to a crisp. I even tried covering them (they're shaded now). #fromgreatgardening went from killing everything to covering plants with umbrellas... I don't even recognise myself anymore hahaha. Any other suggestions? 🙏

Last year, we replaced our gas cooktop which kept

Last year, we replaced our gas cooktop which kept randomly exploding or not lighting with a beautiful new induction cooktop.

I used to meal plan all of our "splatter" meals towards the end of the week because I hated cleaning that gas cooktop with a passion and Saturday is usually our deep clean day 😂. Induction is SO much easier to clean but it is also quite delicate, especially since we use heavy cast iron pots as our cookware.

I wipe the stove top down every night with dish soap and a sponge to remove any splatter but around once a month, I give it a really good clean and apply a protector from #HillmarkHome.

It protects the surface from chips, and speckles which I have recently started seeing more and more of. Pots and pans move quite a bit if you're stirring and don't have your hand on a handle which can damage the surface especially if you're adding things like salt and pepper to meals where the flakes land under the pot.

If you head to my stories, I have recorded my process. I love the shiny end results and seeing a sparkly reflection! 🥰🥰 You can pick some up from Bunnings, Mitre10, Coles and Woolies. ⁠

Curious if you have induction, electric or gas and if you've had one of each, which did you prefer?

@Selleysanz #HillmarkHome #sponsored #inductiondeepcleaning #inductioncooktop #induction #kitchencleaning #greaseremoval

Our second baby (Delilah is first, third and actua

Our second baby (Delilah is first, third and actual babyis yet to come 😂👶) has officially entered beta testing and we could not have been more terrified/nervous. We have been working on this bad boy every single night for over a year now and in the spirit of "looking at it for too long", have managed to convince ourselves of every possible doubt that can come to mind so to get it to beta who's entire job is to critique and find issues and receive nothing but positive feedback, excitement and so much encouragement (and some excellent suggestions) has been truly worth it all already and we could not be more appreciative ❤. Then to be flooded with support from all of you guys was just icing on the cake ❤❤❤.

We've also had soooo many questions on the process of app development and also how we selected our beta testers so thought I'd spread that out into a few posts because it has been a wild ride but also incredibly interesting and a huge learning experience for the two of us who have never done anything like this.

To start, a few months ago I put out a call here on insta asking for people to email through some details if they were interested in beta testing. I remember having the story up for about 3 minutes and my inbox was absolutely flooded with volunteers. Not sure how many of you remember the story I posted but I had to take down the beta call request because it broke my fit bit which could not stop vibrating from all the email notifications 😂.

I then went through all 300+ emails and put them into a spreadsheet with the details people provided me so we could select a wide demographic of testers. Over the last few months, we have worked with them on numerous occasions where we asked them questions on what they'd prefer, set up socials, deliberate pricing, etc.

Last week, @picket.feds entered the first stage of beta testing which was done so by about 5 people total to test for final bugs. This week, it went out to our stage 2 testers...all 119 of them.

If all goes well and nothing major is picked up, we hope to release mid December so please cross your fingers and toes for us 🤞🤞🤞. (Continued in comments)

This handbag has served me so well, I love this ba

Load More… Follow

Copyright © 2021 · From Great Beginnings · Conditions of Use · Hello You Designs