Keen to get back into socialising after our time away from home, The Man and I invited some friends over for dinner on the weekend. The couple is mad about anything Japanese so it’s become a bit of a tradition to have themed dinner parties.

I’m generally a fairly confident cook but Japanese is definitely a gap in my culinary expertise, so it’s always a fun challenge trying new things. This time, I wanted to concentrate on the main course (I was cooking tuna for the first time) and just have a simple summer dessert.

I used some green tea ice cream from the local Asian grocer, topped with crushed ginger nut biscuits and served with sesame snaps (and sake, naturally). The combination of flavours and textures worked really well. (Although I have to admit to being more excited about using my new Anthropologie bowls than the actual dessert!)

Do you have any store-bought desserts that you tizz up to present to guests?

I think you’ll all agree when I say that paperwork is one of the biggest clutter culprits in most homes. ‘Going paperless’ is a semi-regular series on eliminating paper from your home in order to save time, reduce clutter and benefit the environment.

Step 2: Digitising

One of my earliest posts waaay back in June 2010 was about carrying a home notebook. It was a small spiral bound notebook I wrote down references about our house, such as dimensions of furniture.

Of course, the problem with a paper-based system is that you had to remember which handbag it was in and it tended to get really tattered and messy with scribbled updates.

My notebook has now gone high-tech! I set it up in Evernote on my desktop computer (way quicker to type everything in) but I can easily access and edit it on my phone when I’m out-and-about. I love that if I find some cute storage boxes I know they’ll fit into the shelves back at home. It seriously cuts down the time spent returning too-short curtains and too-big frames.

I haven’t tried it yet but I believe you can also share notes with other users (don’t know how much use it will be though, pretty sure The Man has never been casually wandering around a furniture store by himself and thought ‘Gee, that’s a gorgeous tablecloth, if only I knew what size our dining table was’).

Do any of you guys have a reference system like this? Or are you more a of a cross-your-fingers-and-hope kind of person?