At the time of writing it is Friday and this post is timed because on Sunday I am in Spain !!!!

Jobflow & Roadtrip in southern Spain!

Miska and I rent a car and travel around southern Spain again, just like last autumn in other areas. We fly to Malaga, are away for 18 days and stay in 8 different hotels! Our route is Frigiliana - Granada - Montefrio - Caminito del Rey - Júzcar - Tarifa - Marbella - Los Romanes.

We were in Tarifa last year also fell in love! We just have to go there again!

I do not think that other people's holiday pictures are great fun when you go on a charter, but on the other hand people who visit different places and film a lot, I think it is great fun! I thought I would be good at updating Insta Story this trip (was half good last year) so follow me on Instagram @ Imakeyousmile.se if you want to keep up at a distance :)

Here I am in Ronda last year ♥

I have had a real autumn feeling lately and got into a real flow with the job! Such a flow that I almost felt that it was bad timing to travel away right now, I have enjoyed cave in and work long days.

But much of the work I have done has been preparatory for the autumn and preparatory for me to be able to be free for 2.5 weeks. So for the first time, it does not feel at all stressful or difficult to go away because everything is like finished! :)

There will only be two makeup posts a week during these two weeks, but I have at least prepared a lot! Here above you see my "blog almanac" where I always write in my posts.

All green posts are ready and published / timed
All yellow posts have started
All blue posts (do not have such now) are planned posts but for which I have not photographed material yet.

A better home office!

Before
A customer asked me this week "you say you live small, but how small is it? Do you have a sofa and TV and stuff anyway?”.

We live in a small guest house with a room and a small attic upstairs. The upper floor feels more like an attic than a room because there is a low ceiling and sloping ceilings on both sides, so the side walls are about 80cm high? :) In the room downstairs we have space for a bed, a small table with two chairs and then there is a kitchen area.

We have toilet and shower as well. When we went to Finland to visit my sister, I showered läääänge and enjoyed all the place - in the cabin of the boat. Then you know you have a small shower at home haha!

We make it work! :) But it is not an optimal accommodation when working from home, it starts to be a small problem that I always work downstairs because it feels like a prison in the end to do everything on exactly the same chair. We sleep, work, eat and are free in the same small room. I work at the table when Miska works in bed, then we change.

Annika has had the attic as storage. We have no closets so we have clothes on racks there, but otherwise it is an old bed, garbage bags, stuff and a whole lot of winter jackets. Plus I printed a small desk + my photo lights at the bottom, so I can take pictures of my make-up there.

When I have to put on make-up, I first have to crawl under the make-up lamps, then there is a narrow path to get to the chair on the other side, which I rarely do without accidentally knocking over lots of things on the way haha.

Change!
Now to the point - this weekend I got approved to remove Annika's stuff, even the bed! So that's why I did not write a Sunday post last week because my Sunday was spent in the attic cleaning, cleaning and furnishing! :)

Guess how WONDERFUL it was to move all the work stuff upstairs later and make a home office in the attic? I njuuuter!

Now the downstairs is only for free time! It is important to be able to distinguish between work and leisure !!

I did not photograph a role model, but this is what it looked like before the furniture chaos was at its worst!

In the middle of it all, I told Miska ”oh what I feel like a mother now, partly because of the project itself but also because I thought the idea that it would be great with a cleaning beer" Lol.

A moment later he came up with this "drink" for me:

My favorite candies and a Toblerone drinking stick haha! So fun and also so worth having had time to taste in the meantime :)

After
Now I have a spacious make-up area with a table next to it = I do not have to have all the brushes and products on the desk = I can use the desk as a workplace for computer work too!

Nothing fancy as you can see, but it's such a nice improvement haha!

Next to it, I also have a reclining armchair with such a high backrest that you kind of get stuck with straight legs, so when I need to change position, I can jump over to the armchair! Very ergonomic and good with variety because I often sit for several hours in a row. I know you have to get up and move in between but I do not like to break my focus when I work.

So nice, haha!

I must add that it is a little difficult mentally to understand that I am moving forward in my career when everything I see physically in front of me looks like I am going backwards. A year ago I had a large house with an entire room as a walk in closet for only beauty products and a salon of 367 sqm and my own office at work. Everything is much more stable now than then, I feel better and the company is safer. But when you have a bad day, it is easy to look around and whip yourself with the thought "it's almost 4 years since we started the salon, I have toiled like an animal and not even taken out a salary half the time - to now be crowded among things in a dark wind and still have financial anxiety”.

Fortunately, most days are good days! :) And then I think instead: think that I have built up a company with such a good team that handles everything so well that I can work 90% from home! I live cheaply and can save money for a dream house in Spain and we also have so much fun here with Annika and Mileya. Mileya is 7 months now and just growing and growing, she has learned to sit by herself, crawl and stand up to things over the course of 3 weeks!

It all depends on how you see it haha! The most important thing is always the "soft values", that my life looked more successful in appearance a year ago really does not mean that it was! On the contrary indeed! :)

Here I sit in the evening and work in my little corner in the attic! I have really taken advantage of the workflow period I had and started working immediately after breakfast (usually around 8 o'clock) and then I have worked until 20-21 in the evening. You get a lot done on such full days! :)

Make an autumn schedule, again!

You never do things 100% unnecessarily, you always learn something! But what if I had known when I was struggling with the autumn schedule this spring that everything was in vain haha!

This spring I talked to everyone in the staff about what they thought about the current schedule, routines etc. Then I did a huge job (excessively well done I realize in retrospect) with 1. a new schedule which only took a very long time 2. an example schedule in the booking system so that they would get a clear overview of how their times synced with colleagues and 3. a long document where I described the improvements and how the schedule facilitated the routines with lunch and booked time for "tasks" without customers where the person who finishes 14 is responsible for the webshop, the person which ends at 4.30 pm is responsible for customer contact with answering emails etc. and the two that end at 8 pm are responsible for cleaning and orders. Kind of like that. I thought it was great!

It turned out, however, that no one thought the schedule was good, no one wanted to end at 4.30 pm, no one wanted lunch, everyone wanted the "task booking" at a different time than I had decided, etc. haha. Everyone simply wanted exactly the old schedule, so that's how it turned out :)

Cut to the chase - this autumn one of the makeup artists (who is a substitute for Lisa who is on maternity leave) will stop and we will not have time to train a new person before Lisa returns. And since the previous schedule is adapted for 4 people who work shifts, we now needed to change the entire structure in any case! So I did the autumn schedule twice unnecessarily this spring and now I had to make a third attempt! :)

Now it went a little smoother than the first time anyway haha, but it's a lot of work anyway because I want to make everyone as happy as possible, but when they think that different things are good / bad, it's really hard. It would have been easy if it was an office job, but we have opening hours to adapt to and preferably everyone should work alone as little as possible, but it is also a bit too crowded for all three to work at the same time. Lots to think about!

Now it's done anyway! Pjuh! :)

I have also had some customers at the salon, worked with reports, salaries etc. at the turn of the month and also worked with the makeup brand I plan to start if everything goes as it should;)

But I do not have time to write more now because we have to go to Arlanda now! I have not finished packing yet and Miska just said "we will leave in 40 minutes" waaah. I was too chatty on all the other points in the post so time just ran away haha.

Now I have to run! Hugs are !! ♥