Path to Living Simply

Ideas for this fabric

2011-11-12T22:45:00.000+10:00

I have started my christmas crafting and dug this fabric out of my stash. I bought it at the BrisStyle Indie markets a while back and thought it would make a grab gift for my almost-1 year old nephew, I'm just not sure what I should do with it!

I don't really want to cut it up, I was thinking maybe a floor blanket with wadding but it's only about 1.5m x 70cm so pretty skinny for a mat for a littley that doesn't spend much tine sitting still anymore.

Do any of you crafty and creative sewers have any suggestions?

Using it all up: apples

2011-11-01T21:19:00.000+10:00

I bought a whole bunch of organic, locally-grown apples at our Wednesday markets a few weeks back and the last few were still hanging around slightly mushy.

I decided to make a German apple cake, which sounded delish, and was left with a whole pile of apple skins and cores. After a bit of Google browsing I decided to make my own apple cider vinegar using these easy instructions.

The cake was delicious and moist with all those apples in there; the vinegar I won't know about for approximately 2 months.

There are so many uses for apple cider vinegar, it's a bit like bicarb for household uses.

I've just made up a batch of my own rosemary hair rinse, using Christine's easy directions here on her Slow Living Essential's blog (which is a great read btw!) and have the shiniest hair I have for a long time!

Other uses for apple cider vinegar include:

as a face toner
weight loss / detox
repelling fleas
relieving sunburn
removing stains from teeth
reducing body odour
treating age spots and acne
fighting allergies
reducing dandruff
plus heaps of uses for cooking

On a completely separate note, the Queen decided to visit little old Brisbane recently and I had a great view form my 33rd floor office

Pity my phone camera doesn't have such a great zoom.

Hope you're having a great week

Kim :)

Meet the girls!

2011-10-11T20:54:00.000+10:00

Sookie (yup True Blood fans)

Willow

Meet the newest members of our family! They look kinda evil in those pictures don't they haha

We are one step closer to our country, homesteading life we dream for.

The girls came from my mum's flock and are slowly getting used to being suburban backyard chickens (as opposed to 40 acre farm chickens).

We've had the girls for a little while and so far have only had very little eggs without any yolks (apparently called 'fart' eggs, yep really, Google it!) and we think we know why. The Doberman (!) that lives next door has apparently been jumping out of her yard, into ours and into the chicken run to 'play' with our girls! Yes I mean one of those huge, angry looking, could-eat-a-chicken-in-a-second dogs. But no harm has been done, it really appears like she has only wanted to play with them, the poor thing she is so bored during the day, but I think it might be a bit scary for our girls to have this intruder trying to play with them and I think that's why they're off the lay. We've spoken to the neighbour and we've both ramped up our fencing and so far we've had no more visits so hopefully we'll be getting some free-range, home-grown eggs soon!

My herb patch became their have hangout for a while until I discovered I was down to about half of my original herbs, just from all their scratching around, so they've been evicted from that area! Now they like to have their dust baths down the back amongst the pumpkin vines which is fine with me.

The best part of my day is when I get home from work and they come running for me when they see me, such a welcome home! I know they're only after some tasty veggie scraps but gives me a fuzzy feeling all the same. I love watching their antics as the scuttle around the yard looking for bits and pieces to nibble on. Just the entertainment value is worth having chickens for (although eggs would be a great bonus too girls!)

Hope you're having a great week!

:) Kim

Make your own.. NAAN BREAD!

2011-10-03T19:34:00.000+10:00

What's an indian curry without naan bread? Not as satisfying I tell ya!

So one rainy night last week when Lyndon (my personal chef!) and I decided on a curry we thought we would try our hand at making naan bread to go with it.

Why?

a) naan satisfies my carb cravings ;)
b) it goes oh-so-well with curries, and
c) IT'S SO DAMN EASY TO MAKE!

So after a quick google search on my phone (how much has our lives changed since the invention of google, and internet on your phone!) I had a recipe in hand - one that didn't include eggs (watch out for my next post on a funny story about why!)

With my phone propped up against the microwave I proceeded to make yummy, authentic-looking naan

Easy Peasy Naan Bread

from here

Ingredients:

2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup warm milk

1/2 cup yoghurt - thank you Rhonda for the recipe to make my own!

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

pinch baking soda

chopped herbs/garlic/sultanas - anything else you want to put in your naan

butter for frying

Directions:

The directions on that website above are very particular, but here is what I did and it turned out great -

Mix the dry ingredients together then add the wet (save the butter)

Let sit for a few minutes (until the curry is about 15 minutes off being ready)

Knead the dough for a few minutes

Cut into 8 pieces and flatten each VERY thinly - you can see in the pic above how thin the uncooked ones are

Melt the butter in a pan and fry up your naan one piece at a time

You will start to see it bubbling in sections - usually after a minute or two

Flip over and brown the other side also

Warning: these are very filling!

ENJOY!

Spring sewing

2011-09-25T14:34:00.001+10:00

There's nothing like a beautiful spring Brisbane day to start some sewing again.

For some reason I seem to go into hibernation mode during winter (even though our winters a very mild!) and not get a lot done; I blame the short days!

I started off nice and slow by mending some clothes; sewing on buttons and redoing hems in thrifted vintage skirts. I then completed little project I've been meaning to do for a while; a plastic bag holder.

I needed something that was quick, easy and satisfying, oh and I was keen to use this cute fat quarter I picked up earlier in the year!

Now we have somewhere with than the back of the cupboard to put those pesky plastic bags, and as you can see by how full the bag is we had ALOT!

Now to stop collecting them......

I then started working on my christmas gift list. Early I know, but I am a planner at heart and thoroughly enjoy surfing blogs and websites for great sewn gift ideas. I have added plenty of links to my bookmarks!

You can see some of my homemade gifts from last Christmas in this post.

I've discovered the world of fabric covered buttons and using these to make accessories. And then I found yoyo necklaces USING the fabric buttons. Oh Etsy you are amazing! Check out some Etsy inspiration here and here.

Sooo... I started experimenting with making my own fabric buttons

I think I like the plainer patterned ones better. I guess it would probably help if I got the flowers in the middle of the button!

Have you started your gift list yet, or is that just me!

Hope you had a great weekend

xx Kim

A weekend whip around the food garden

2011-04-10T20:38:00.002+10:00

Lovely lavender...lavendar yoghurt cake but what more?

The first ever passionfruits in our garden.. I CAN NOT WAIT!

A forgotten tumeric root in the back of the pantry...to THIS!

Ravishing native rosella

Raspberries on weetbix is THE best start to the working week

Growing my own peanuts

Lovely productive lemons

Cool capsicums

Promising pumpkins

Hope you had a lovely weekend!

Loads of LUFFA & my first GIVEAWAY!

2011-04-03T21:23:00.001+10:00

From this in August ...

I was so excited to grow my luffa plants. As you can see above I raised these little beauties from seed, a very rare feat in my gardening experience so far.

I have written about my luffa's here, here and here. Can you tell I'm playing favourites!

Well this weekend it was time to harvest them!

I have harvested a few here and there to include with presents, but this time we ended up with a whole load!

... to this in April

And this isn't even half of them. These are just the ones that have been left to dry on the vine, which makes it super easy to take the exterior shell coating off and get the seeds out. There are still a whole load on the vines too, which means we'll be stocked up on luffa's until the end of the year!

Peeled and de-seeeded

When they luffa pods are as dry and brown as the picture above, it's only a matter of banging the pod against a hard surface to loosen in from the luffa and peeling off the outer shell and tipping out the seeds (for seed raising later on).

Load of LUFFA's

The next step is to soak them all in bleach to make them sparkling white.

Eventually, I'd also like to try making soaps incorporating the luffa's.

I now have SOOO many luffa seeds that I do not know what to do with, so I'm going to do a little giveaway.

The first 10 people to leave a comment will receive a pack of 10 luffa seeds for you to grow your own.

Please include your email address so I can email you to get your postal address.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

AFTERTHOUGHT: Well I am new to this whole giveaway business and of course dived straight in! I don't want to be bailed up by the quarantine authorities so unfortunately I do have to limit the giveaway to those addresses in Australia, excluding WA & Tas (goodness they are strict!). Sorry about getting your hopes up if you are outside these areas, hopefully I can come up with a giveaway for everyone shortly :)

My beautiful nephew

2011-03-18T22:32:00.000+10:00

Meet my little nephew, Patrick Isaac

Those eyes get me every time!

It's so beautiful watching this little life get used to the surroundings around him. Trying to take this crazy world in.

I am absolutely loving spending time watching little Patrick get bigger and brighter. Even if it's just a few weeks between visits his little personality is becoming more and more apparent each time.

I get to spend this whole weekend getting cuddles! SO EXCITED!

It's really getting Lyndon and I thinking more and more about having our own little family, especially since I celebrated my 27th birthday on Monday; time is ticking!

Oh what a whole new world of blogs and information to keep me busy!

Have a great weekend

xx

The MOST amazing week of my LIFE!

2011-02-11T20:57:00.000+10:00

That's a big call I know!

But if you've been to the Woodford Folk Festival, north of Brisbane, you'd understand instantly what I mean.

Here are some snapshots from that most heart-warming and life-affirming week

I can't believe I haven't been there before! It's only an hour away from my house.

Mind you, it was one of the wettest festivals they have had in their long history, thank goodness for Ivan our campervan for keeping our dry!

Have you been? What are your experiences? Do you have any festivals that you go to every year?

I will certainly be going again!

Making a framed silhouette

2011-02-05T11:47:00.001+10:00

Recently I spoke about all the gifts I made for family and friends for christmas.

The silhouette prints would be one of my favourites just because of our simple they were and look quite effective.

I wanted to take you through the steps to make these if you wanted to. I've seen people who have used a side portrait of their children through the years which would be a sweet little keepsake.

Like I said in a previous post, I came up with this idea when I spotted felt with adhesive backing at Spotlight in their bargain bin. I think I got this for around $1.

It was a bit manky on the edges but was plenty enough to do the silhouettes I wanted to do. I have since seen it for around $5/metre all nicely rolled too, which is still really cost effective.

First step is to find a picture you want to make as the silhouette. I went online and used google images to find mine, but you could use the outline of photographs, or images in books or magazines, anything really. Just make sure you do it mirror image to the way you want the image to be shown in the frame (I learnt that the hard way!), especially if you are using letters or numbers!

This is one of the images I found online and thought it would be perfect for a new little babies room.

Roughly cut out the image on paper, it doesn't have to be perfect at this stage because you will have to cut again when it is on the fabric.

I found sticky taping the image to the adhesive cover made it sturdy enough to cut around.

Once cut out you can see why you had to use a mirror image of the picture

Then here comes the easy part! Simple cut out the amount of background fabric that will fill the frame and stick on your silhouette! Make sure it is in the centre and sitting straight, but being adhesive you can pull off and reapply if need be.

Then it's just a matter of putting it all together in the frame. I painted my frame black so that the silhouette would stand out.

All done! How easy was that hey!

If you've made anything similar please share your links, there are so many possibilities that you could come up with!

REAL Tomato Sauce

2011-01-19T22:19:00.000+10:00

My family love tomato sauce. I grew up eating meat pies with tomato sauce (LONG before I was vegetarian!). So what better gift to make as part of my handmade gift packs for my parents and sisters (they're not vegetarian and NEVER will be)

You can make some too! Trust me it tastes so much better than the uniform-coloured, preservative and fake-flavoured stuff from the supermarkets.

REAL Tomato Sauce

(or Ketchup, if you're so inclined)

Adapted from Cheap and Easy website

2 1/4kg tomatoes

350gm apples

1 3/4 cups white vinegar

250gm onion

Spices - I use pepper, ginger, paprika, ground cloves, mixed spice

4 cloves garlic

3 tablespoons salt

2 cups sugar

Roughly chop apples (take out core, leave skin on), tomatoes and onions and place in a large pot with rest of the ingredients.

Bring to the boil then continue boiling for an hour. Stir throughout because it will stick, especially towards the end of the hour.

Blend with a hand mixer or in the blender.

Pour into sterilised bottles and seal whilst hot.

That's it! Couldn't be easier could it.

The recipe will make more than this. I like to double the recipe to make a big batch, especially handy when making them for gifts.

Enjoy!

My Handmade Holiday

2011-01-17T13:14:00.000+10:00

Previously I spoke about wanting to make a lot of my Christmas gifts for friends and family. Of course, I left it very late (mid-December!) to get started by luckily I wasn't working so was able to dedicate whole days (and plenty of them) to making gifts.

This picture shows most of the gifts I made (click on the picture to enlarge it)

In addition to these sewn gifts I also made homemade lemon butter and tomato sauce, the very yummy Christmas cherry ripe biscuits (recipe here), strawberry seedlings (from my own plants), and put together packs of mixed fruit and vegie seeds.

I'm going to list each of the gifts I made with the link to the pattern/instructions/recipe so you too can have a go at making them if you like. (If I can find the sites again! My laptop died and took all of my webpages saved as favourites with it!)

Starting from bottom centre going around clockwise

Tiered mini dress - pattern from Burdastyle website here for around $5 and fabric a bargain at $2/metre from Spotlight! (I will do another post on this dress and another I sewed shortly)
Reversible baby playmat with ties - no pattern just used scraps of materials I already had (in almost gender-neutral colours of green!), cot-size wadding, and 2 bias-tape ties that I sewed in to enable the mat to be rolled and tied up) In the picture below you can see the ties coming out from the top

a silhouette print of a child and butterfly - no weblink as I came up with the idea when I found adhesive fabric in the scraps bin at Spotlight and had seen the silhouette idea everywhere on the web. I will do a tutorial on how to put it together though, so stay tuned!
a simple gathered apron for my partner's mum (and an almost-matching one next to it for her twin sister) - based on this tutorial
The Madeleine Mini Bloomers (for my 21 year old sister - these are WAY too short for anyone older than that, unless thats your sort of thing..) - free pattern from here
Driver's cap for my boy - this one was tricky to track down and I was almost at the stage of drafting my own pattern! Thank goodness Chantal from the blog Stayathomensewin was able to send me the pattern she used. Link here. My boy loved it and couldn't believe I'd sewn it myself (until I showed him some dodgy stitches on the inside, hehe)

Betsy handbag - I had previously made this and blogged about it here. I cut out the strap where it attached to the bag and re-attached it to the outside with wooden buttons, it looked much better, good enough to give as a gift!
More silhouettes - ducks were for a friend who is a few months pregnant (gender-neutral again because they aren't finding out sex) and the dog and cat for my sister who has pets that look just like these.

And, those gifts that aren't shown in the top picture -

Lemon butter - I LOVE lemon butter and made sure there was enough leftover for me. I used this recipe
Tomato sauce - I'll be doing a tutorial on this so check back shortly. Trust me it's worth it! So yummy

I was surprised I was able to get it all finished in time, actually a few days early which was nice to allow me to relax. I will definitely be hand-making my gifts this year also, but plan on starting earlier, November at least!

:) Kim

Tentative steps into sewing gifts

2011-01-15T20:47:00.000+10:00

With the expectation of the first baby in our family a few months away sisters, girlfriends, mums and sister-in-laws gathered to shower the mum-to-be with the cutest of cute gifts - baby gifts!

Not the cutest present
but very practical, a baby
car seat from my
my mum and sis to the mum
to be

My little sister was organising the baby shower for our sister, so I didn't find out when the shower was going to be until 2 weeks out. Argh, this is why MY profession is event planning, I'm a touch more organised than the rebellious little sister. ANYWAY... as I was planning to sew some gifts for this occasion I jumped in straight away looking at patterns and ideas online. I'll let you in on a little secret.. there is SO MANY CUTE baby things to sew!

I had to narrow my search down to BEGINNER projects. If you have been following my tentative steps into the world of sewing you will know I was still baffled by patterns, sewing jargon and all those buttons on my sewing machine!

I decided on some simple nappy covers with singlets that had matching cutouts on them and some baby shoes. I just couldn't go past the baby shoes, even though they looked pretty difficult.

The horsey and matching nappy cover. You can't really tell in this picture (thank goodness) that my sewing on the singlet is dreadful! It's ok but there were just way too many turns and with this tiny singlet it was very hard to turn it on the sewing machine without sewing the front to the back, which I did twice!

Take 2 - much easier shape this one!

Take 3 - (Almost) PERFECT! Except I should have used pinking shears or a zig zag stitch around the edge, but there was no way I was doing these EVER again! By the way - can you tell my family is a farming one, with the horses, chickens and dogs! Also we didn't know the sex of the baby so I tried to go as gender neutral as possible by I was also being frugal and only using what was in my stash!

Next up was the baby shoes. They were actually a lot easier than I thought! The worst part is sewing the sole and 2 top pieces (front and back) together without a) snapping the needle or some other sewing machine malfunction or b) not having all pieces together under the needle and having to resew to make sure they are all secured together. Once that part is down though its just a matter of threading the elastic and bingo, you have a pair of these little beauties!

I was pretty happy with how they turned out, they do look a little odd shaped though, oh well!

Here are the links to the patterns/instructions I used:

Nappy (diaper) covers

Baby shoes

Kim xx

The emergence of Ivan

2011-01-15T19:51:00.000+10:00

One of our dreams of owning a campervan came true last month.

Certainly doesn't look too pretty in this picture does it! Our ex-Wicked van has been thrashed and bashed by backpackers all over this country (we know this by the graffiti on the interior!). Surprisingly only minor mechanical issues were detected after a once over by a mechanic, which were promptly repaired. Safety first people!

Then we were off on our first adventure! Down the Gold Coast highway, along the Tweed river and into the North-eastern New South Wales hinterland... to Nimbin! Now if any of you know what Nimbin is most famous for don't worry we certainly didn't go there for that! The hinterland driving was absolutely beautiful, gave our new camper a work out and we found a gorgeous almost-empty campground on the edge of town and a huge tree-lined river. Just perfect, although I don't we need to visit Nimbin again any time soon! You can see why a facelift was next on the agenda from the picture above hey? Definitely not my cup of tea!

So back home to begin the arduous task of cleaning, scrubbing, and even chemically-removing, the traces of previous travelers.

We all of the work work ourself (because we are scroungers and definitely not living the high life!), which included:

sanding back the exterior slightly
undercoat on exterior
top paint on exterior - YELLOW!
using nail polish remover to take of permanent marker from the interior
then, realizing were are going to paint it anyway so could have saved myself 3 hours and a back ache!
painting the interior ..with BLACKBOARD paint, oh so cool!
scrubbing gunk from the seats, carpets and cupboards - I do not ever want to know what that stuff was!
using spray adhesive to cover the ceiling with foam then yellow gingham material! hehe so cute!
installing the fan
learning how to check the various oil, water, air and battery levels
AND, naming our new little beauty! IVAN was born!

Our very next camping test was the big one. Woodford Folk Festival for 8 long days of camping! I had never ever camped that long in my life. This was certainly going to test Ivan and ourselves!

Long bloggy absence

2011-01-14T22:22:00.002+10:00

Goodness me does time fly when you're having fun!

Haven't I been a bit of a bum to not keep this blog updated though. My goal was to use this blog as an online journal to look back on in years to come and it so happens I have become apart of this great blogging community. It's for this reason that I have really missed hearing everyone's stories and being a part of this online group.

This is just a short post to say hello and that I am still around and will be updating my blog in the next week or so with ALL of the fabulous things I have been up to so please keep an eye out for my posts shortly.

Also, just so you know, my family and I have not been affected by these devastating floods in my home town. I am certainly affected by what is happening to my fellow Brisbanites but have no personal property damage. I feel so lucky to be spared this heartache. I have been awed at the velocity, destruction and loss of life of the 'inland tsunami' that hit Toowoomba and Grantham then to see the iconic Bremer and Brisbane River inundate so many houses in Ipswich and Brisbane. It's hard to believe this is all happening 15 minutes down the road, especially with the sun shining and the sound of lawn mowers in our suburb, just surreal! I went to school in Ipswich and my sister currently lives there - there were some very nervous text messaging between my sisters and I on the night the floods were peaking! But thankfully no damage or injuries, just a lot of disbelief and the occasional tears at the horrible stories that are coming out of the flood areas. I will be heading to Northey St City Farm tomorrow to help them with the clean up before this weekends organic markets that they are still putting on - troopers!

The Northey St City Farm chickens are high and dry thanks
to some ingenious volunteers (photo from Northey St
Facebook page)

I will finish off this post with some sneak previews of what I have been up to in the past two month. I will post about these in detail shortly, stay tuned!

Campervan facelift and MUD....

Tiny clothes for tiny bodies...

A handmade holiday...

A tutorial...

In the kitchen....

A whole new world...

AND.... most exciting of all.... A WHOLE NEW LIFE!

Stay tuned. I'm back

xx

We're buying a camper!

2010-11-26T11:03:00.003+10:00

How awesome would it be to just jump in the car, drive for a few hours then set up camp for the weekend?

How much more awesome would it be if you didn't have to pack everything, because it was already in the car? And how much MORE awesome would it be that if it did rain you wouldn't get too wet like you would in a tent?

So I know you know how excited I am to be getting a campervan.

I can just picture us cruising down the highway with our tunes blaring to some 80's hit, hair down, curtains swaying in the back, on our way to a destination unknown, what bliss!

It's not fancy, new, rust-free or probably leak-proof, but it's mine! YAY

We'll be picking it up in a few days then starting to put our own stamp on it with a new colour, a good clean and then decking out the interior. I will be positng photos of the transformation.

Now I should start thinking about some decorating for the inside, maybe some curtain and pillow sewing. I'd love to put photos and pictures up on the inside too. Your ideas are most welcome!

Stay tuned!

:)

Sewing school - class 1

2010-11-25T15:42:00.000+10:00

I had my first lesson at my beginners sewing course on Monday.

We started right at the very beginning with threading the machine, filling and inserting the bobbin, selecting the correct needle size and type and removing and inserting the needle. Pretty basic, and I did know most of it.

Although I did learn that you shouldn't just use the needle that came with the sewing machine for everything! Ha

So now I am a little more aware of the different types of needs for different fabric types and also how often you should change your needle (every 4-8 hours of sewing apparently, certainly haven't been doing that in the past!). I also learnt that those little metal things in sewing kits are actually needle threaders, will come in handy when my eyesight starts to fail me!

I'm looking forward to expanding my skills a little with the next 3 lessons, particularly inserting buttons and zippers. But I am enjoying being able to ask a professional questions and getting to know the little quirks of my particular (old) machine.

I would recommend beginner sewing classes to those just starting out. Even though they may go over things you already know, you never know what little tidbits of information you will pick up from the teacher or others in your class, and also better ways of doing those things you've done a hundred times before.

Happy sewing!

Perfect day

2010-11-19T19:32:00.003+10:00

What makes a perfect day?

A secluded picnic with my boy, on the waters edge, with wine, cheese, wraps and laying back looking up at the clouds together, that comes pretty close I think.

Whats your idea of a perfect day?

{this moment}

2010-11-19T14:54:00.000+10:00

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
Inspired by soulemama

Have a fabulous weekend!

Carrot Harvest!

Sewn gifts

2010-11-18T22:24:00.003+10:00

I am very slowly increasing my sewing confidence and skills, through a lot of unpicking, swearing, re-cutting and going without patterns.

This past week I have started working my way through my gift sewing list.

First up was a simple pincushion - a gift for myself

I used the throw blanket I picked up from my op shopping adventures the week prior and used my new rotary cutter and mat to create this simple but cute pincushion. The stuffing was even recycled! From Reverse Garbage for $2 a bag for cleaned raw sheeps wool, bargain! I didn't use a pattern just a few pictures I found online for the design.

I'm pretty happy with it. But I do still need to work on the stitches I used for closing the pin cushion. I think they stand out too much (right corner in picture above). What method do you use to close seams after stuffing?

My next gift was for a dear friend who's birthday is this weekend. Since I will be visiting my grandparents 4 hours away I won't see her on her birthday, so we are having lunch together tomorrow and I will be giving her this garden apron. She is a keen gardener and we always share our gardening stories with each other. I think she'll love it!

I used the tutorial from Make-it-do for this apron, and yep you guessed it, the same material as the pin cushion, from the thrifted blanket.

This was my first try at using bias binding. I have since decided I will never use any bias binding less than 25mm! Ha ha. You can see the bias on the top of the pocket is qute a bit thinner than the tape around the bottom of the apron, I vowed I needed a bigger width after using the 12mm tape and had so much trouble keeping the fiddly stuff in place!I raced out to get some from Spotlight straught away so I could finish off the apron.

I have since bought 3 different sized bias tape makers from eBay for $15 so I can make it myself from whatever material I like.

My next project was a patchwork-type pillow for my Nana. When my sisters and I were younger we used to spend Christmas holidays with my Nan and Pop on their hobby farm in Wagga Wagga NSW. One christmas I remember quite vividly was my Nana teaching the three of us (aged 5, 7 and 10) to make our own patchwork pillow cover. So I thought it would be nice to give one as a gift all these years later.

A simple project made even easier with my rotary cutter and mat, I love those things!

This was my first project inserting a zipper. I found it surprisingly easy by just winging it and working it out for myself, rather than using instructions in one of my sewing books. I certainly learn better by doing than reading I have discovered!

I am yet to make the little pillow to go inside this cover, well that's a lie I did make one and it was too small and looks silly in the cover so I am going to make another one that will be bigger to fill it out more. I will keep the first one and make a cover for it and maybe give it as a gift to someone else.

Ah trial and error, it'll all works out in the end.

And how satisfying is it to create a gift for someone from scratch, to know I am increasing my homesteading skills and to not spend much money in the process! How very frugal!

xx
Kim

Sewing bliss!

2010-11-17T10:39:00.000+10:00

Ah what bliss to sit at my sewing machine, wine in hand and look out across the leafy backyard.

This is life!

:)

Kim

Busy, busy, busy

2010-11-16T14:26:00.002+10:00

I have been so ~~busy~~ productive this last week, it feels fabulous! You've probably noticed from all my posts! I know Hazel has :)

I have now been on my 'home holiday' for 2 weeks now.

In the first week it was a very different story, I barely got anything done.

You see I'm a list person. And when I started these holidays, I thought relaxing menat doing without my lists, becuase they mean work don't they, things to do. So I had all these great ideas for the things I'd like to enjoy, learn and make on my holidays, but because there were so many things I was like a deer in spotlights! I had no idea where to start and I was quite overwhelmed.

So out came the lists again.

I have a list for the christmas presents I'd like to make
I have a list for what odd-jobs need doing around the house
I have a list for what personal things I need to do, e.g. dr appt, dentist, optometrist, etc (those things you put off when you're working!)
I have a list for what things I'd like to cook/bake
I have a list for what blog posts I will write about
I have a list for day trips/places I'd like to visit
I have a list of things I want to Freecycle/declutter

That looks a little daunting doesn't it? Well there isn't a whole lot on each list and I absolutely love that feeling of crossing each line of lists. Yes I'm a little weird! This is what I am enjoying doing on my holiday, when I could be doing ANYTHING! Well that's how I work and it took me about of fluffing about to work that out.

Now that I have these lists I am on average half way through them all - see how productive I am with my lists!

Now don't worry I'm not overdoing it and not enjoying my time off. I'm just not a person that can sit around all day. I love doing things, especially things I enjoy - gardening, sewing, baking, visiting.

So now I'm off to check on the scones in the oven, see if my berries have defrosted for some jam making for gifts, quickly sew up a pillow insert for a pillow cover I made for my grandparents who I'm driving 4 hours to visit on Friday, create a tag for another gift for a friend I'm meeting for lunch tomorrow and check out campers for sale on line, all before going out for dinner tonight with some people I've worked with in my short term job these past 2 weeks.

I'm so happy!

Sewing classes here I come!

2010-11-14T20:48:00.000+10:00

My lack of understanding of sewing patterns and terminology coupled with my very eager enthusiasm has me in quite a situation. I would love to sew up some unique and personal gifts for my family and friends this christmas and also start sewing clothes for myself and hubby, but at the moment just don't have the skill set.

So I have enrolled in sewing school!

Sewing Intuition are located about a 10 minute drive from my house and have classes that a) really suit my (lack of) skill level, and b) are quite affordable (yep I'm always on the lookout for frugal options!).

The course goes for four weeks with one 2 hour lesson each week and focuses on:

Threading the machine
Fill and inserting the bobbin
Select the correct needle size and type for your project
Remove and insert the needle
Select the correct thread tension for your project
Select the correct stitch length for your project
Use different machine stitches
Sew a buttonhole
Sew a zipper
Take up a skirt hem, pant hem and jeans hem

All this for $112. Bargain I say.

I do already know how to do a few of these things but I think it would be really worthwhile to have someone show me the correct way in case I am doing those things I think I can do, incorrectly.

I'm very excited to head along to my first lesson next Monday. I will let you know how I go.

Eek! Excited!

Op Shopping

2010-11-13T19:23:00.001+10:00

Oh how I love op shopping. All those little treasures that must have many stories to tell, if only every item came with a little note about its journey.

I no longer buy new clothes from departments stores, yet instead opt to recycle and upcycle clothes that I find at thrift stores. Sometimes it's a struggle to find what you're after but when you do, it's like christmas all over again, and usually at a bargain price.

If people want to throw out their clothes and other goodies to replace with new stuff, I will certainly put them to good use. I'm not too proud to wear second-hand clothes. Responsible shopping I like to call it.

Check out my latest finds!

A beautiful dainty little dress. Now lets hope my sisters baby is a girl!

And what does that little card say? "Antique dress as is 20c"

Yep that's right I only paid 20cents for this little beauty! (I'm not sure if it is acutally antique or just old!)

A beautifully-patterned day bed throw for $5, but I'm more inclined to cut up the material and use it for my sewing projects. I think this would be a beautiful material to use for my sisters nappy bag, not too gender-specific which is good because they won't know what they're having til the little thing pops out!

If you haven't already, I encourage you to head down to your local op/thrift shop and see what little treasures they might have waiting for you!

How so very frugal!

Cheers

Kim

Made my own laundry liquid!

2010-11-12T20:23:00.001+10:00

Prompted by my desire to eliminate as many chemicals as I can from our house, I have started looking into green cleaners.

Rhonda at Down to Earth has some fabulous posts (aren't they all!) that make it look so easy! Check them out here and here.

So yesterday I was like a witch standing over my cauldron stirring my green and clean concoctions!

All I used was:
1 bar soap, grated
1/2 cup washing soda (powder, not crystals)
1/2 cup borax

Put it all into a saucepan. Then add about 1 litre of water

And keep on the heat until all of the ingrediants have dissolved.

I then did the same as Rhonda, and took the mix downstairs to the laundry.

Add about 8 litres of hot water to a bucket, then add the mix froom the saucepan.

Stir well, and leave to cool down.

Once cooled, pour into containers for storage (I used a funnel, was much less messy!), then remember to label so you remember what's in the bottles!

Give a good shake just before using and use 1/4 cup in with your washing.

How simple is that! Took me about 30 minutes in total and now I have 10 litres of laundry liquid.

The cost savings are quite significant too, see Rhonda's posts linked above for the details.

Let me know if you have a go at making your own laundry liquid or other cleaners, I'd love to hear what's the best recipes you've found.

:)
Kim

Pledge update

2010-11-12T10:08:00.001+10:00

The beginning of the current financial year prompted me to sit down and write some goals that I could work towards on my journey to living simply and more responsibly. I was spurred on by Sam, who's blogging at All Things Quilty, decision to do the same.

I think an update is certainly due, to keep my accountable

Listed are the pledges I made, with my progress in purple.

Not purchase any new clothes. I have bought 1 t-shirt for $10 I do admit, but everything else has been from op-shops, thrifted or made myself. Eventually I want to start sewing a lot of my own clothes but at the moment I am at the point where I am very slowly increasing my skills and confidence with my sewing machine.
Make my own bread well enough to stop buying store-bought bread and make my own yeast starter. Well I can very happily say that I have not bought a loaf of bread from the store in months. I am still using bread mix and haven't progressed to making my own flour mix yet, but I'm pretty happy with where I'm at. It is quite a bit more time consuming mixing, kneading, resting, kneading again and then cooking the bread but it is much cheaper ($2.80 per loaf shop-bought compared to $12 for a mix that I get 14 loaves out of - equates to less a dollar a loaf!). On that note I haven't started investigating making my own bread started yet.
Keep all of my plants alive and make organic fertiliser and pesticide. I am doing very well at keeping my plants alive at the moment, and can't actually think of any plants that have died, YIPPEE! Although my rhubarb is looking a little distressed at the moment so I don't want to jinx myself. My trouble is with seed raising, I just don't have that mastered yet. I think I will have to re-read all of my books on seed raising and really focus on just a few types at a time before I become more proficient at this. I have been using chicken poop from my mum's chicken coop for my fertiliser and luckily haven't required any pesticides yet.
Make my own dishcloths. Simply answer, no. Crocheting and knitting have fallen by the wayside with this hot summer-like weather we've been having recently. Although I really need to suck it up and get back into crocheting to finish off a blanket for my sisters baby due in January. We are also very close to needing new dischoths so nothing like a bit of extra motivation!
Make my own dishashing liquid. No, but I have made my own laundry liquid. See next post.
Stick to my new budget and save $7200 by December. Tick, I have already saved that much. Although now that I am 'on holiday from work' (ie. unemployed but not actively seeking work just yet) I will get through bit of my savings, but should remain above the $7200 in savings.

So far I don't think I am doing too badly. In the next two months I need to crochet dishcloths, make dishwashing liquid and get started on a bread started. I can handle that.

Some other steps I'd like to begin also, include:

Setting up a chicken coop and getting a couple of laying hens
Make at least 75% of all of my christmas gifts
Harvest lots of vegies, and stop having to buy lettuce and tomatoes at least.

Well that will sure keep me busy on my 'holiday'. I can't wait!
:) Kim

Using up a glut of fruit and vegies

2010-11-11T22:21:00.000+10:00

I have barely left the kitchen today!

We have ended up with a glut of carrots, potatoes, pumpkin, oranges and a range of other fruit and vegies that we need to use up VERY soon.

So far I have made:

orange and lemon cordial (3 jars full) - I use my own recipe - juice your fruit, put in saucepan and add sugar to taste, warm until sugar has dissolved then bottle, easy peasy
pumpkin loaf
Lady Flo's pumpkin scones
another loaf of bread
roast pumpkin slices, for salads and sandwiches
carrot cake as a loaf

We have to many sweets in the house and I am (only just) sick of licking the bowl! hehe

We have also been cooking up soups and roast vegies to get through it all.

This is what happens when you go to the country and come aross a quaint little farm stall! Be warned! hehe

:)

Kim

Christmas cherry ripe biscuits

2010-11-10T20:11:00.000+10:00

You have got to pop over to Cityhippyfarmgirl's blog right now and check out her recipe for Chocolate cherry biscuits! Here is the link, don't waste any time go now!

Don't they just look and sound absolutely divine!

I have renamed mine Christmas cherry ripe biscuits, and I think they would go perfectly in my christmas gift hampers I am creating full of home-made goodness for this years presents.

But before any of that, I must taste test them of course. Mine are just about to come out of the oven......

;)

Pumpkin Pie!

2010-11-10T15:40:00.000+10:00

Recently we have had an excess of vegies that we have been trying to use up before they go bad.

Using an altered recipe from an op-shop plate that I picked up, we made Pumpkin Pie. It turned out fabulous! I can't believe I've never had pumpkin pie before. I guess it is more an American thing but I'm certainly a convert now!

Couldn't even get a shot of it before being eaten!

I think it was the condensed milk in the recipe tht makes it taste so damn good!

I'm off too make another one now, because we finished the first one quick smart. Lucky we did too because the recipe is on the plate so now I can give it to you so you can try out this delicious pie yourself

"Op Shop Plate Pumpkin Pie"
Combine 1.5 cups steamed & cubed pumpkin with 3/4 cup sugar and 2 slightly beaten eggs.
Add quarter teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, half teaspoon of ginger, and a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg.
Add two-thirds cup condensed milk (yummy!) and three-quarters cup water, mix thoroughly.

Pour into uncooked pastry shell (made yourself or shop bought if you're short on time).
Bake in 220 degrees celsuius oven for 15 minutes then reduce heat to 170 degrees celsius and bake for 4 minutes more

Enjoy!

xx
Kim

Starting to think about Christmas gifts

2010-11-06T18:37:00.002+10:00

I try to stay away from the shopping centres as much as possible, but grocery shopping once every fortnight/3 weeks means I am witness to the onslaught of plastic christmas-themed stuff popping up already.

At least it gets me thinking early about what I can sew, bake and make for this years frugal and meaningful gifts.

At the moment I am thinking a hamper type thing as a gift for my family with:

homemade jams & cordials
a sewn gift (apron, baby things for my 7-month pregnant sister - baby shoes look very cute, other ideas appreciated!)
homemade crackers and dip (my partner made some fabulous crackers the other day but now we are having trouble finding the recipe, don't you hate that!?) and maybe cheese if I can get all the stuff in time
a seedling or plant of some sort

Another idea would be putting everything in a reuseable sewn draw string bag also, might be a bit hard with the goodies though at least it will look like a Santa sack!

I'd love to hear if you make you gifts and what you create.

x
Kim

Chickens!

2010-11-05T11:45:00.001+10:00

We have just received word from our real estate that the owners of house we are renting have okay'ed us having chickens!

So excited! Bring on fresh eggs, chicken pop and crazy chicken antics!

Now we need to think of a coop-type thing. I'm thinking a bird aviary with some adjustments.

What do you use?

My first sewing project from a pattern!

2010-11-04T10:36:00.003+10:00

The other night I was itching to do some sewing.

After mending some clothes that had rips and tears I decided to cut out the pieces for the Betsy handbag from the Burda Style website, which you can download for free.

Before I knew it I had whipped up this little baby. Ok so I didn't actually follow the instructions. I used the pattern to cut out the fabric but the instructions were still a bit jibberish to me so I just tried to apply common sense! Well it turnd out ok

The only things that didn't work out were:

I forgot about the straps and had to sew them on afterwards, still works just looks a little funky!
You can see the seams on the inside. I'm pretty sure if you actually followed the instructions it shows a way where they can be hidden in the lining somehow

Oh yeah and I am still to put a fastener of some sort on it to hold it closed. I am thinking two wooden buttons with a little loop, I think that will go nicely with the fabric.

Oh well! I was still pleased as punch to finish this little baby. I will now work actually understanding the instructions and try to follow that to make some christmas presents and maybe even one for a giveaway, stay tuned!

xx
Kim

New spring life

2010-11-03T17:34:00.000+10:00

Ah how beautiful is spring! Especially when you're not having to go to work everyday! hehe

Now that I have allowed myself a few months off from work I have plenty of time to explore my hobbies. I am loving potttering in the garden tending to my fruit and vegies, learning to sew and baking up a storm! HELLO HOMESTEADING!

You certainly don't need to be in the country to be living the dream.

Here are some new photos of the new little lives springing up in my garden this spring.

Luffa's springing into flower. Check out that fruit forming behind the flower! I have a special connection with my 4 luffa plants because I raised them all from seeds. One of the only seeds to have sprouted from that first bunch, so they are dearly treasured. I'm not sure how long they take to form their pods, but I'm hoping in time to add to some Christmas presents for the family.

Lovely lavender! Mmm can't wait to harvest those flowers. Anyone got any tips on harvesting and drying the flowers to use in scent bags?

My peanut plant is flowering! I'm so intrigued by this little plant and how it grows those peanuts underground. Has anyone grown peanuts before? Any tips? Now I am growing fruit, veggies and nuts in my little suburban block!

Yummo strawberries. I think I need to plant a lot more of these becuase I pull off the fruit as soon as their ripe. How am I going to make jam at this rate!

Ah mint. Smells so lovely and is safely contained in a pot. Now I need to think of some recipes to use it in.....

Ah my one faithful lemon (top) finally has some friends, about 6 other lemons forming in fact!

Pumpkin vines, also raised from seed. I have quite a few of these vines int he ground so hoping for a big harvest in the coming months.

After getting excited and taking photos of all the plants happily growing away I headed off to buy some new additions.

I have since added:

a grape vine (suited to QLD's humid weather luckily)
a rosella bush seedling
some garlic bulbs
sweet potato seedling
an heirloom mini capsicum bush seedling
eggplant grown from seed
chilli grown from seed

And after having minimal luck with raising from seed, I have tried again, this time with some different seeds.

I am disappointed with my seed raising results, as I know this is an area I'd really like to accomplish for both financial and satisfaction reasons. I started using the peat moss tabs but they seem to either dry out too quickly or get mossy! I'm now using seed raising mix, but I'm finding that with the amount of sand in it the water is not holding and they are drying out every few hours! Any tips are most welcome!

How is your garden growing this fine spring?

:)
Kim

{this moment}

2010-10-29T12:11:00.000+10:00

Empty inbox on my last day at work - AWESEOME!

I love Brisbane!

2010-10-28T15:07:00.017+10:00

After our weekend jaunt to Melbourne a few weekends ago I have a renewed LOVE for my hometown of Brisbane.

Melbourne Prahram Markets - rainy, windy and wet!

Park near Queen Vic Markets in Melb - yep he's wearing a poncho!

Quirky Melbourne laneways

No it isn't, is it? Yes SUN on our last day!

I love:

the almost constant sunshine
the occasional summer thunderstorm (we just had one as I started writing this post)
not having to wear thermals in Spring, or winter for that matter (like we did in Melbourne!)
being able to grow most of my vegies ALL year round
being able to wear summer dresses and sandels to work
not having to carry an umbrella wherever I go
enjoying the rain when it does come, not cursing it because it never goes away
being able to plan picnic's, day trips and outings with most of them not being interrupted by rain/wind/terrible weather
getting a tan!
being able to use public transport without getting drenched
enjoying the cool waters of the beach
SUMMER

What do you enjoy about where you live?

P.S. I thought Melbourne was beautiful, the weather was just a bit of a bummer

Feeling slightly uneasy, only slightly

2010-10-26T16:15:00.000+10:00

My employment contract comes to an end this Friday. After that I become unemployed and I have nothing lined up afterwards. I am both excited and nervous.

Nervous because this is the first time since leaving school that I have been unemployed and excited because I get a holiday! I could have tried harder and had a job lined up by now, but I'm really looking forward to having some time off that I haven't really applied for that many jobs or put too much pressure on myself to do so.

Don't worry I won't be living in the streets or bin diving any time soon, if you remember by budget post you know I have been determindly saving for a good few months and have built up quite a bit of savings. So I don't need to work for a while, but it's still a little weird.

But to keep my mind active these are the things I'd like to do on my little break:

Learn to sew - I've had my sewing machine for a while now and no time to really get stuck into learning all that scary terminology. I'd like to make a lot of my christmas presents this year so hopefully I can pick up sewing pretty easily.
Keep working in my garden - We have managed to weed all of the garden beds now and I have a huge supply of chicken manure that my mum so kindly bagged up and brought over for me, so I am keen, keen, keen to get some more plants into the garden and make it ever more productive that it has already been. So far we are self sufficient in lettuce and tomatoes, and I'm looking to add a lot more to that list (which will hopefully help to reduce the grocery bill which will be nice with my zilch income!)
Spring clean the house - we've been in our new house for a few months now and there are still a few things that haven't been unpacked. I will go room by room (because I need to feel ordered or I get overwhelmed!) and completely sort and clean everything in each room. Hopefully we can freecycle a lot and declutter that house!
Amp up the excercise and lose some kg's - I have struggled with my weight since I was a kid and it the past few years I have been trying to kick that in the butt! Over the past year I was doing very well and lost about 10kg's, then I went to Paris and after coming back got lazy. So I have put a few of those back on and now it is time for me to lose the final 13kg to get me to my long time coming ultimate goal! I'm eat ok byt currently my exercise is next to zero, so not having a job will leave me with absolutely no excuses.

Ah it's good to write those down. They have been swimming in my head for weeks now and I'm feeling better by having a plan of attack so I don't get bored. I will certainly also fit in plenty of picnic's with my boy, day trips, resting, reading, blogging, visiting family too just so it feels like a real holiday!

Stay tuned for updates!

xx
Kim

Learning to sew

2010-10-14T14:24:00.000+10:00

I very kindly received a working sewing machine for free through Freecycle! How lucky was I? Very I know. But I have not been able to give into my sewing urges because of the Festival taking up all of my time...until now!

My baby - a Brother from 1986!

And it is now that I have found sewing patterns and terminology to be complete mumbo jumbo to me!

I'm ususally quite a capable person and can pick up things quickly, but those patterns still seem baffling.

I have started off very small to build my confidence and to produce from very quick results.

This was my first project. (Please excuse the orange lawn mower and glass of bubble in my hand - this was the Festival wrap party - thank goodness this photo was taken early in the night!).

I bought this Indian-sari-looking dress from an Op Shop for $12. I cut about 60cm off the length (yes it was that long!) and rehemmed the dress into this sexy little number! It's not a fabulous hemming job but boy wasn't I proud as punch to be wearing my (part)creation out and about!

My next project was just the other night when I really wanted to sew something and I had become very disheartened by some patterns that were jibberish to me. Even the 'easy' ones from Burda Style which I thought would have been my best bet.

I ended up creating this scarf for my upcoming trip to Melbourne. Funny story with this material too. Remember my post on Council collections? Well I drove past a manky old rain sodden mattress numerous times and just loved the fabric. So I sent the boy out to cut the fabric off the matress. I have since washed and ironed the fabric and it has come up just like new. When I was looking for an easy-peasy project to satisfy my sewing desire I thought this fabric would match with my red jacket just perfectly and look quite quirky down in the Melbourne fashion scene.

So if you have any go-to resources that helped you learn to sew please, plese, please leave them in the comments so I can start producing something a little more advanced.

Thanks!

:)

Kim

More flood pictures

2010-10-12T15:14:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I was talking about my (lack of) preparedness.

These are some reasons why

This stream is usually 1-2 metres wide

Path to nowhere!

Luckily no houses in my area were inundated with flood water and there were no injuries that have been reportorted. But this was only after 4 days of rain. What if there was 2 weeks of rain!

I think it's good to run the "what if's?" through your mind to help you mentally and physically prepare yourself for the situation should it arise.

On a lighter note, we had sun this morning! Interspersed with rain showers, but still SUN, for the first time in over a week. It's funny how it can affect your mood without realising.

I'm off to Melbourne this weekend, which is renowned for it's crazy weather unlike sunny Brisbane. Hopefully the sun is out down there for us.

Hope you're having a lovely week!

Kim

Beginning to prepare

2010-10-11T15:17:00.000+10:00

My beau and I have been hearing about Peak Oil a lot more recently and it's giving us the jeebies!

There's now no denying this is happening.

Lyndon's dad is a geophysicist who worked for a multinational oil exploration company. He's telling us to seek alternative power sources.

We are using our common sense. Oil is clearly a finite natural resource. There has not been a major oil basin found since the 70's. I think we are very close to the top of Hubberts Curve. Then what are we going to do?

Eek scary stuff I know. I'm not going to go into all of the details of Peak Oil. If you don't know about, research it if you'd like, if not that's fine it's up to the individual to decide what they want to know about.

But now that I have researched it extensively, I am absolutely 100% convinced that one day we will run out of oil. We're oil babies. Born into an era where everything is based on the supply of cheap oil. We don't know any other life. So when we run out we will be forced into finding alternative ways to transport ourselves, our food, create electricity, etc.

This is one of the main reasons we are working on becoming self-sufficient. We are a long way off but I feel better knowing we are doing something.

While discussing Peak Oil on the weekend, we came to the conclusion that emergency preparedness was an area we were severely lacking in. And not only for the initial effects of the peak oil crisis, but also for weather emergencies or any other reason that we would be trapped in our house without the luxury of going to the shops to get supplies or have to leave the house quickly and live in the car for a while.

Funny that we were talking about it on the weekend. This is the local stream that seperates our house from the city this morning after almost a week of constany heavy rain

Usually this is a metre wide stream. This raging torrent is only a few metres below the road that I use to get home and it's still raining! Don't worry I'm leaving work shortly to get home before it goes over.

So what if I couldn't get home? Or what if I was home and cut off from all shops? Or worse still what if there was a major catastrophy that meant all services were down, roads were cut and if was unsafe to go outside?

I know that sounds really drastic, but I would rather be prepared than not prepared.

Have you discussed an emergency plan?

When we started discussing things like "where I will go if I can't get home after a disaster and can't contact my partner?", "what should we take with us if we have to run out the door, get in the car and just drive?" I started feeling very under-prepared! We hadn't ever discussed anything like that. The Government agencies tell you to have an emergency plan in place, why hadn't we listened?! Because you don't think something like that will happen to you. The news reports with all of those terrible natural disasters, wars, conflict, social upheaval happen overseas, not here.

But I think it is a very responsible thing to think about. I've started looking at stockpiling, what should be in emergency packs that you keep near the door, in the car, or even at work, and I'm starting to get together lists of items I should start collecting.

We are only beginning to really think about being properly prepared for an emergency so I'm feeling a little uneasy should anything happen in the meantime.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on if you have an emergency plan and the details. What's on your list of essentials? Do you keep a pack near the door or in the car 'just in case'? I'm such a newbie at this and would love to hear any info you may have learnt through your research.

Be safe
x
Kim

Need your advice

2010-10-06T21:28:00.000+10:00

We have these little ant mounds all over our neighbourhood and, more annoyingly, all through our yard.

Do you know how we can get deter them?

Finally time in the garden

2010-10-06T21:11:00.000+10:00

I am loving having my weekends back after the month of working EVERY DAY!

The weather has been fabulous as well which makes it extra fun. We have a lot to work to do in the garden and also in increasing our knowledge but we're not stressing ourselves out just taking it slow and enjoying the process.

We are already seeing results! We are at the point where we don't need to buy lettuce anymore and that is ideally where I would like to be with the vegies we currently buy. The more we can grow ourselves, the less pesticides we are ingesting, the cheaper our grocery bill will be and the more nutritious our food will be YIPPEE!

We have been able to harvest broccoli, lettuce, tomato's so far

Check out the growth of the broccoli and potato's in this garden bed in such a short amount of time!

From this in August......

To this at 40 days later!

So satisfying. And the lettuce....

Before

After

We have had a big job ahead of us. When we moved in to this place only a few short months ago the gardens were empty. Since the glorious beginning-of-spring rains and with me working like crazy the past month, this was the site that confronted me everytimeI stepped outside. It was quite depressing and made me wish I was not on my way to work but rather digging around in my patch.

WEEDS!

A thick blanket of weeds engulfing all 6 of the garden beds! Well I am very proud to say we now only have 1/2 a bed left to weed. We have been laying weed mat down over the weeded beds for now because we just don't have the number of plants and mulch to fill all the beds just yet.

But some plants that I have planted in the refreshed garden beds are.....

Raspberries YUMBO!

Strawberries (can you tell I'm a berry fan?!)

Luffa - excited about seeing the results of this one!

Plus, more tomato plants, the cumquat seedlings (that I grew from seed from the fruit of my very first batch of jam -NOSTALGIA right there!), passionfruit, and 2 peanut plants. I'm very excied about the peanut plants, sounds very intriguing to be growing my own nuts!

I also have a pumpkin vine that has popped up from underneath the compost bin and another few vines in the back gardens that I'm willing to let loose over the back lawn.

It's very exciting to see these plants come to life under my assistance and to actually produce food for us to eat.

We are one step closer to being self sufficient. But we are making sure we enjoy the ride not just eageraly waiting for our future goal to be upon us. I think that is important.

Happy simple living!

Council Collection

2010-10-04T20:32:00.000+10:00

Do you have these in your neighbourhood? Where you put out large items that you don't want anymore and want to through out? The council sends a letter to let you know when their next collection is and a few days before the whole neighbourhood has their 'junk' out on the kerb?

Well I was driving home from the Brisbane Organic Growers Fair on Sunday and I kept driving past piles and piles of stuff' on the kerb that people were just throwing out. Perfectly good stuff, but stuff they obviously didn't want. Hadn't these people heard of Freecycle?

Well who could pass up such a good opportunity as this?! As soon as I told Lyndon we were in the car driving around the neighbourhood, slowing past every pile of 'stuff' to see if there were any goodies! We scrounged at a frantic pace and before we knew it we had collected and brought home 4 car-loads of those goodies! (I only have a tiny Holden Barina so it may sound more than it actually is!)

Now I don't know what you're view on this might be, but I don't have that big a problem with it. My biggest worry is "oh god what do those peple think of me?" talking about the people on their verandahs watching us rifle through their junk.

So what did we end up with:

4 perfect camping chairs (we only need two but will give the other 2 to my sister and her husband for Xmas)
3 bikes that Lyndon has been able to get working (he's a bike collector, these bring his total to 10)
a push mower in perfect condition
a full length mirror that I will put in my sewing room
2 worn 1950's style chairs (to go with our 50's style house when we fix 'em up giving me some sewing practise!)
a rug that we will use under the house
some beautiful retro material off an old mattress (I will find material anywhere to practise my sewing on!)
stereo system for under the house
a working breadmaker (my find of the day!)
and lots of other stuff I can't even remember now

It's funny, when we were on our scavenge we discovered there is a whole community of people that do the same thing, there's even professionals!

I know it may seem a little scabby to be digging through someone else's junk but just think about it. Every item we collected is now 1 less thing going to landfill and it is 1 less thing that I am going to spend money on saving me money.

I'm pretty happy with that.

The best lunch!

2010-10-02T14:57:00.000+10:00

I had the best lunch I've had in a long time today!

Why?

Well
1. The festival is over and I have my weekend's back and this is the first one where I have just sat and relaxed!
2. I used bread that I had baked myself (this was one of my pledges to learn before the end of the year, see my post about it here)
3. I used lettuce, tomato and basil that I had grown myself in my new garden beds without any pesticides
4. I used butter. Real butter. See my next post about using real foods
5. It tasted damn good!

Unfortunately it tasted so good I didn't have a chance to get a photo so you'll just have to believe me.

Now I'm wondering did it taste better just because I knew I put the effort in to grew those ingrediants myself or because homegrown produce has a better flavour? I think a combination of both.

What has been a dish you've cooked that has tasted great from homegrown ingrediants?

PS. it's good to be back! I've had a hiatus for a while dealing with work but now I am back and determined as ever to continue on my path to living simply

SNAKE in suburbia!

2010-09-09T14:30:00.000+10:00

Not quite on a plane, but still as shocking!

Taking the garbage bins to the kerb yesterday afternoon, I saw the long grass moving wildly from where we just moved the bins from.

Is it a worm? Have I finally lost my mind and am now hallucinating? No it actually was a snake! Albeit a small one, definitely a baby, no maybe more than that, a toddler snake?!

It was about 30cm long which is long enough for me to have a freak out and do that little dance when you think it will run over your feet (I wasn't wearing shoes!) and scream to my boy to 'do something with it!'

So my macho (hmm little exaggerated as he also did the little dance and he was wearing shoes!) man came over to investigate after telling me it must be a worm.

By this stage it had freaked out enough by seeing us and was looking for an easy escape. It had started down a crack in the concrete. Lyndon very hesitantly grabbed its tail to pull it back out of the hole. We hadn't thought about what we would do when it came out of the hole, probably throw it wildly in the air would be my guess, but it didn't come to that because ..... IT'S TAIL CAME OFF! Like how a lizard sometimes loses it's tail. Yes that's right we dismembered the snake.

Well the screams were almost deafening, very much like you hear at a 5 year olds birthday party. Yes and that high-pitched too! Lyndon wildly threw the snake tail and it landed in the garage and continued to wiggle. It was quite surrealy to see it keep wriggling like that when the snake was still in the hole.

We reasoned with each other that it could grow it back like a lizards and continued in our quest to put this potential monster back into the wild (if we could actually get to that point), so Lyndon once again grabbed hold of the now stumpy and bleeding end of the tail and started bringing it out backwards. Oh my god, I can't even write this.........ANOTHER PIECE OF ITS BODY BROKE OFF!

So that was it, we knew we had killed the snake by ripping it apart. We looked from the bloody snake pieces to each other in disbelief and realisation at what we had done to this poor creature at the beginning of its snake life. The pain we inflicted on it. Oh my goodness, my heart wretched like I'd seen a human die in front of my eyes. It was the most horrible feeling.

We both walked off in different directions and in silence still shocked and disturbed at what had happened. I started silently weeding my gardens and Lyndon went into the garage to work on his bikes.

So I'm officially apologising to Mr Toddler Snake for contributing to his death. I didn't think the snake would kill me but I still had to have it gone, and look at the consequences of that. Oh and I'm sorry to Mama Snake who I hope won't hold a grudge against me and come looking for me while I sleep.

My life for the next month....

2010-09-02T14:03:00.000+10:00

This will be my life for the next month....

The 25th September is a LONG way away and I will be working my butt off the whole time. I have looked at my calendar and so far do not have 1 day off the whole month! Lucky I love it!

If you live in or around Brissie, come check out some fabulous events, that we have been working tirelessly on for months http://www.brisbanefestival.com.au/

So.... that means I will be a little absent here for a while. Don't worry I manage to sneak in a little time every few days to check out everyone else's blogs, but will only posting intermittently myself.

Have a lovely September!

:)
Kim

Gardening...finally!

2010-08-29T16:34:00.000+10:00

We moved into our new house a few weeks ago. I was so thrilled to move from our unit into a house with established garden beds. See one of my previous posts on my unit/balcony gardening here.

Over the past few weekends since moving in I have dabbled in gardening a little, but not as much as I would like, due mainly to unpacking (ewww), being sick and under the weather (also ewww) and then this weekend going camping (not ewww at all!). We went to Neurum Creek Bush Retreat, which was beautiful.

Although it did happen to be some doggie spectacular event going on and we were the only ones there without a pooch or taking part in any of the activities (it was totally fine by me to lay next to the creek and read rather than throw things in the water for my dog to jump in and get!). If you live within a few hours of Caboolture I suggest you go check this place out. Only thing though, don't expect many nicetties from the staff that check you in, I found them to be very rude and uninterested! If I worked in a beautiful location as they do I think I could probably pull out a smile!

Anyway, I'm getting off track, I wanted to talk about gardening.

So I potted around a little bit these last few weekends and I wanted to show some pictures and also show what needs to be done!

Lemon tree with new buds

Plants still needing to be transferred into the garden

Some garden beds still to be prepared


One garden bed with Bush tomato in front, bro	ccoli, carrots	, potatos, and one transplanted tomato at the back

Second prepared bed with lettuce and a flower mix to attract beneficial insects

Spring has sprung! (on my lime tree)

Mulberries starting to form (IN MY BACKYARD!)

One of the beneficial weeds in the lawn (probably the only beneficial one!)

My seeds are actually sprouting! I must be doing something right

Luffa seedling - it's HUGE!

Even my pumpkin seeds, that I saved myself, are sprouting. Good signs!

Well that's the tour of my backyards so far. Hopefully I'll be able to bring you some more pictures soon.

How was your weekend?

Using it all: pumpkin

2010-08-27T19:29:00.002+10:00

We have been actively trying to not create any waste when we make our meals. Our latest success has been with pumpkin.
My other half decided to cook a very delicious pumpkin soup with beans blended to add thickness to the soup.
That was dinner. Then instead of throwing the skin and seeds in the compost (which in itself I thing would have been considered 'using' it all up) we then made pumpkin chips from the pieces of skin (which I officially love!) And are currently drying the seeds to eat as a snack (very good for u according to my naturopath). So that's one way of using the whole pumpkin. What do u do with pumpkin or do 'use it all up' with something different?

Books: the frugal way!

2010-08-24T18:48:00.001+10:00

This is my ever growing list of books on hold at the local library:

Small strawbale : natural homes, projects & designs

Strawbale homebuilding	Steen, Bill.
Stephanie Alexander's kitchen garden companion	Alexander, Stephanie,
Herbs for Australian gardens : a practical guide to growing and using organic herbs	Woodward, Penny.
The herbal medicine-makers' handbook : a home manual	Green, James, 1940-
Nourishing traditions : the cookbook that challenges politically correct nutrition and the diet dictocrats	Fallon, Sally.
Handmade home : simple ways to repurpose old materials into new family treasures	Soule, Amanda Blake.
The creative family : how to encourage imagination & nurture family connections	Soule, Amanda Blake.
The gentle art of domesticity	Brocket, Jane.
The new complete book of self-sufficiency	Seymour, John
Choosing Eden : the real dirt on the coming energy crisis	Langman, Adrienne.

What a treasure trove! Cost to place a hold and have the book delivered to your choice of library within the Brisbane area is 80cents. Not bad!

I can't wait until I receive that email in my inbox to say they are ready to pick up! Some will take longer than others, for Amanda's (aka Soulemama) 'Homemade Home' I am 7th in the queue so could be a long wait, but all of the others I am the next in line so should receive that email to say they are ready in the next few weeks.

Oh how very frugal!

Kim

Using it all up with mangoes!

2010-08-23T18:08:00.002+10:00

Last weekend at the farmers markets I couldn't walk past the fabulous aroma of MANGOS!

To my they epitomize summer in Brisbane. Yep I know it's not summer yet, but that beautiful tropical smell is hard to walk past.

I bought a couple and after having one with ice cream (best combo ever), I made up some orange and mango cordial.

Very simple standard recipe that you can use on any mix of fruits that I read on Rhonda's down to earth blog.

Juice your fruits and weigh. I lined a bowl with muslin cloth and scrapped all of the mango flesh into it, then squeezed all the juice through the cloth into the bowl. This left a lot of the flesh in the muslin cloth.
Make the same weight of sugar syrup (which is a mix of half sugar, half water heated on the stovetop until the sugar is dissolved)
Then just mix them together and pour into sterilized jars.
The cordial will stay fresh for at least 1 week like this, otherwise add a little citric acid (which you can easily find in the baking section of the supermarket) to keep the flavours fresher for longer.

I used the juice of 2 mangoes and 1 orange, and this gave me about 500ml of quite nectar-y tasting cordial, very delish!

But then I had the leftover mango flesh that I didn't want to just throw out. So I whipped up a mango cake to use it up! I didn't follow a recipe. Just added flour, sugar and milk until it was the right consistency and poured it into my ring tin then into the oven until it looked just about right. Easy, no fuss!

All that was remaining of those mangoes was the skin and seeds, into the compost and each and every part of those mangoes was used productively.

Do you have any great recipes for 'leftovers'?

Lost my mojo

2010-08-22T18:06:00.001+10:00

I have completely lost my blogging mojo. No, I lie, I've also lost my housework mojo, actually I think I have actually lost my do-anything mojo.

This last week I have felt so flat. I think a combination of moving last weekend, being the week before 'that' time of the month and having a stuffy headcold is doing my energy in and throwing my emotions all out of whack. Absolutely drained is a pretty good term for how I'm feeling right now.

It also doesnt help that next month going to be ridiculously intense for me. I work for a festival and next month is THE festival, so this whole year we have been working towards the 3 weeks in September when we (somehow) pull it all together. So just thinking about that is not doing much to increase my energy levels at all.

Today my headcold kicked into overdrive and has knocked me out. I slept for 4 hours in the middle of the day today, now that is very unlike me.

So I have been upping the vitamins to try and kick whatever this rut is in the butt! I'm taking valerian to help me get a deeper sleep, a zinc, B6 and magneisum mix for the dreaded PMS, and LOTS of cups of tea and hot chocolate just because I'm in need of comforting. I am seeing a naturopath tomorrow to see what they suggest also.

What are your natural remedies that you swear by?

Homemade ricotta

2010-08-17T14:36:00.000+10:00

I've been a little silent here over the weekend as we were moving into our new house! So very exciting, but I'll share those details with you another time. It's just too exhausting thinking about what still needs to be unpacked and put away that I've decided that this week I am not going to think about it at all!

Last night in our new kitschy 50's kitchen I decded it was time to get back into experimenting with making things myself (and ignore the boxes and mess around me. I am VERY good at procrastinating).

I read on a few blogs that making ricotta was quite simple, it has been on my to-do/learn/master list of simple living skills for a while.

So here is the process I used (I found it online, sorry I don't have the link, I'm really bad for writing down a recipe and forgetting where I saw it to link to and reference)

Pour 1L full cream (preferably organic) milk into a pot. I used Barambah Organics milk, which is pretty local to me. Add 2 1/2 tablespoons of white vinegar.

The milk will start to curdle straight away after putting in the vinegar

Bring up to a slight boil and boil for about 30 seconds.

Curds and whey seperating even more after boiling

Take off the heat and let sit on the bench for approximately 15 minutes. This will result in the curds and whey seperating even more and allow the mix to cool down so you can squeeze it later.

While the pot is sitting, set up a bowl with muslin cloth over it (I also used a strainer between the two to catch any bits that escaped the cloth, but later realised this wasn't necessary)

After the 15 minutes is up pour the mixture through the muslin cloth, being careful to not allow any of the curds to fall into the bowl. If they do just scoop them out and put them back in the muslin cloth.

Ricotta mix in muslin cloth

Then gather and lift the muslin cloth, and squeeze out any excess moisture.

What's left in the muslin cloth is your yummy fresh ricotta!

1L of milk made this much ricotta

We mixed it all through a fresh basil and tomato pasta that we'd cooked for dinner. YUMMO!

And what's left in your bowl is whey.

VERY nutritious and useful, especially in bread making. We used it in little scones. But you can use it anywhere that asks for buttermilk or replace any liquid in baking (pancakes would be yummy!). Some people swear by drinking it straight!

Nothing like playing around in the kitchen to take your mind of the household duties!

:)
Kim

I'm a no-pooer!

2010-08-12T14:27:00.000+10:00

Now don't take that the wrong way, I'm talking about not shampooing of course!

I have read about not using shampoo in a lot of blogs, and it really got me to start thinking it might be something I could try. It fits in nicely with my simple living and frugal mantra and I had everything I needed for this little experiment in my cupboard. I was further prompted by the fact that we had just finished our bottle of shampoo.

First step was breaking it to my partner. He wasn't too impressed and his first words were "Don't expect me to do that!" hehe. Well I was't going to let that dampen my enthusiasm.

So I have been using the bicarb and vinegar method for the past two weeks now.

After experimenting with different amounts of bicarb and vinegar, I think I have perfected my recipe!

I certainly went through about a week of greasiness, but apparently that is to be expected. I've read that using shampoo strips your hair of all its oils so your scalp compensates by producing a lot more oils. So once you stop using shampoo your scalp takes a little while to get back into the habit of not producing that much oil, hence the greasiness for a little while. But I promise it doesn't last long, and I can proudly say that now I am sporting some healthy looking hair and no one at work is any the wiser (well they will be if a certain someone reads this post!)

I've found that using vinegar is a bit too smelly and makes my hair too dry, so I only use 1 - 2 tablespoons of bicarb dissolved in a jug (that I keep handy in the shower) of warm water. I pour half over the top of my hair then I flip my hair over and pour the rest over the underside. As you would imagine the bicarb mixture isn't thick like shampoo so you need to pour slowly to get an even coverage otherwise you'll lose most of it down the drain. My hair still feels a little different when I'm towel drying it, but once it's completely dry it looks completely normal!

I just did the sums and on the 500g Coles brand bicarb soda that I get for $1.50, 2 tablespoons (approx 15grams so Wiki says) works out to be 4.5cents! How cheap is that! Very frugal indeed, and one less thing I need to buy from the supermarket!

If you wanted to also take up this challenge please do it for at least 2 weeks before you throw in the towel and experiment a little with the amounts. Report back and let me know how it's gone for you.

Happy no-pooing!

Kim

P.S. I still haven't convinced Lyndon to give no-pooing a go, but I am hoping by leading by example may show him it's not really bad

Rain rain go away so I can MOVE HOUSE!

2010-08-10T16:11:00.000+10:00

I love rain, I do! I love how you can get all cosy in big fluffy jumpers and under doonas and with spunky fiances! But I want to move furniture tomorrow and it's going to be very difficult with weather like this....

Webcam view from South Bank towards city

In other news, I learnt to knit last night! Well no, that's a massive overstatement. I followed instructions in a book and online to cast on and I knot 4 rows. My first 5 attempts slipped off the hook, the knitting is too tight and really difficult to seperate each strand to knit into and it's slow! (ok I'M slow). I like crocheting much more. But I'm going to perservere and at least learn how to knit properly (and purl) and at least knit a scarf or something just to say I've done it. I may grow to like it. Doubt it, but you never know.

What do you prefer? Knitting or crocheting?

Tell me your early experiences with learning to knit.

Hope you're enjoying the rain if you're getting it!

Procrastinating...

2010-08-08T13:54:00.000+10:00

I should be packing or cleaning or something relating to our move next week, but I'm not.

Oh don't worry, I've had spurts of motivation over the past two days and got a bit done, but now that we're down to the knitty gritty I am procrastinating, just like the latest post over at The Knitty Gritty Homestead (ha like how I did tied in that 'knitty gritty'!).

I catch myself actually seeking out things to do that have nothing to do with our move. Like washing outdoor chair cushions(!), checking out Freecycle, making ginger beer or reading books (I do admit these do have to go back to the library before we move so this is activity might just fit into the moving category).

I want to chat about the book I just started reading. It's called Successful Organic Gardening and is written by David Murray. Has anyone read this book?

Within the first 11 pages, he has already slammed the concepts of moon planting, biodynamics and permaculture! Quite aggressively too, I might add, while touting his obviously favoured concept of Integrated Pest Management. Now to be honest, I haven't tried ANY of these ideas, so have no real leaning to any one just yet. As I've written about we currently live in a unit with space for just a few container plants, but from next weekend we will be in a house with lots of room for gardening so I am educating myself on the different methods of vegetable gardening. I am very intrigued to learn about IPM as I hadn't heard of it before, but he's kind of put me off already just by the way he's attacked the other concepts.

Well, as I said I am only 11 pages in, so I can't really start judging the book by this inital reaction, but I will give a review at the end so you can decidde if you want to read it also.

I'd love to hear if anyone uses any of these different techniques in their gardening and how successful it has been for you. Also any good books that you think I should read.

Well I should get back to it, the front balcony needs a tidy before the real estate comes tomorrow to take photos to put up on the web to advertise the property.

Hope you're having a great weekend!

:)
Kim

{this moment}

2010-08-06T08:50:00.001+10:00

Our new house! Can't wait to get into that garden!

We're Moving!

2010-08-05T19:57:00.000+10:00

To a HOUSE....with a YARD....and GARDEN BEDS!

I am SOOOOOO excited!

The little unit balcony has been great for growing the few things we have but I just can't wait to get a whole yard to grow in!

It will be a little sad to say goodbye to my home of 2 years, but it is oh-so worth it!

....now, seed catalogues to peruse... packing to do.....tools to buy...

More details to come, stay tuned!

Crochet: SLOWLY but surely

2010-08-04T15:46:00.001+10:00

Crochet patterns scare the living daylights out of me!

All that gibberish means nothing to me (and I'm Gen Y, so you think it would make perfect sense to me!LOL). But I have mastered (ok not really mastered at all, just understood) my first one!

It's a very simple one mind you, and I had to watch the Youtube videos about 3 times before I could actually decipher each crochet in the written pattern!

Note the very large petal on the upper left hand side. Yup thats too many double crochet's right there. But wasn't I proud as punch when I finished it despite that little flaw! I ran out to show Lyndon and he was very lovely with his compliments (even though I'm sure a mid-twenty male couldn't truthfully be that excited about crocheted flowers!)

Now this one is much better but still a few lose threads hanging about.

I also learnt how to tuck the end yarns into the flower, which deserves another pat on the back I think! hehe

Now onto the real patterns.......

:)
Kim

I won a giveaway!

2010-08-04T10:43:00.000+10:00

I was so excited about Emily's giveaway when it saw it on her Little Greenapple Farm blog. These cute little bird earrings on wattle from The Purple Finch are right up my alley!

Aren't they just adorable! And I was soo very lucky to win them! Weee I can't wait to get my little parcel in the post!

Thanks Emily for running such an awesome giveaway. Check out her fabulous blog here

And also head on over to The Purple Finch's online store here to check out Vee's other goodies

x
Kim

A fabulous book!

2010-07-31T11:03:00.004+10:00

First let me just say how much I love libraries! I often come back from a walk at lunchtime near my work with an arm full of books I've borrowed out from the local library up the road (sometimes it can be quite difficult getting them all home since I catch the bus and have to lug them all the way home, very heavy!).

Earlier this week I once again popped up to the library to return a few overdue books (I have so many I forget which are mine and which belong to the library!), and came back with another armfull. This time including a meditteranean vegetarian cookbook (so many yummy dishes to make!), a learn to knit book (I'm struggling to get past the basic crochet stitches so thought knitting might be a good diversion), a herbal book (good to know what things I can plant to create my own garden medicine cabinet) and a book titled "Ten Thousand Acres" by Patrice Newell.

Has anyone read this book, or any others by Patrice?

I hadn't heard of the author before but the front cover struck me.

So I've finished reading the book already! Not hard since the writing is very easy to follow, its not too full of text (has lots of brilliant photography!) and the story is so beautifully written.

Here is how Patrice describes her book on her website:

Ten Thousand Acres – A Love Story goes beyond the angers and arguments of debates on ecology and climate change to the deepest feelings we have for our farm and the wild landscape that embraces it.

It goes beyond the crops and the cattle, high above the olive groves and the old homestead into the old stories hidden in its hundred hills and valleys.

We do not really own our farm, let alone the ancient landscape that rises above it.
Ten Thousand Acres IS a love story – of how the place has come to own us. It is my book of endless discovery of the extraordinary riches that surround us, in the dark of night and the harshest days of drought.
It is about the wild aviary of birds, the boundless zoo of native animals, the abundance of beauty, of trees, plants, grasses and botanic secrets.
I hope to make a contribution to the literature of ‘place’, the new awareness that Australians must have for all the Australia’s within our immense continent.
In words and pictures, my book sets out to reveal the love we must have for the totality of the natural world – the respect for the land that is essential if we (and I mean all of us, ‘all creatures great and small’) are to have a hope of survival.

I fell in love with the writing, and here to prove how beautiful it is, here is my favourite passage:

"On exactly the same day as last year, two frogmouths arrive and take their place side by side on their favourite branch in their preferred ironbark tree. I look up at them. They look down at me.
A few weeks later there are four of them. Two big-eyed babies.
Things are as they should be." pg 93

Looking on her website I see she has another book I'd be interested to read, "The Olive Grove." It's the story of when she moved from the city out to the country, definitely something I'd like to read!

How's your weekend's going?

:)
Kim

{this moment}

2010-07-30T11:01:00.000+10:00

Along the path to the train this foggy Brisbane morning

Straw bale!

2010-07-28T16:28:00.000+10:00

I have been researching like a nutter! It's what I do when I get onto a great idea or goal. I ~~waste~~ spend all of my time glued to google researching the heck out of a topic that I've just recently discovered. This week that topic is building with straw bales!

Lyndon and I have recently been chatting about living in a shed on our land before we build. That way we can start prepping the veggie patch, chook pen, fruit trees, etc early on and start reaping the benefits quick smart. We would then look at building our house. This would allow us more time to save for the house while living on the property, rather than having to stay living in the city longer while we save. It would also give us the opportunity to get to know our land, the way the sun crosses it, the weather patterns, the layout, before we build so we can incorporate all of that info into the design of the house.

So.... living in a shed. Right. Well I'm no princess and think I could handle living in a shed for a few years. It would have to be insulated though at least. We were then looking at different options for sheds to have on our land and the costs involved. The shed part is easy, making it liveable is the harder part. We then thought 'why not build the shed out of straw bale!?' That would give us practise before we build our house out of straw bale, and would leave us with a great little art/craft studio/guest retreat once we've built the house. It may be a little bit more expensive but will be much more usable and blend in with surrounds a lot more.

This is the basic design we found on the web that we think would suit:

Doesn't that look sweet! So cute! We'd extend the living area bit some more enough for 2 lounges and a small 2 person dining table. We were thinking the total dimensions would be about 10x7m and a bit taller to allow for the loft bedroom.

There are some great examples of Australian strawbale homes on the web and I have been excitedly trawling through all of their websites and blogs.

A lot of people building straw bale houses offer for people to go and help out, giving them experience in the process. I thnk this is a great idea and would certainly look at doing this to learn the trade!

I'd like to know if any of you have had experiences, or know of anyone else that has, with building with strawbales. I'd love to hear your tales, the good, bad and ugly!

Visit to the country

2010-07-27T13:12:00.000+10:00

This past weekend we spent a lovely weekend visit my fiance's parents up at Pomona, in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. The whole weekend was overcast and slightly rainy, which was just lovely.

After the hour and a half drive from the smoggy, busy city after work, luckily only stuck in coast-bound traffic for a little while, we made it to the quiet ands serene countryside. We met up with the parents-in-law at the Cooroy RSL for dinner. It took me back to when I was growing up and we would join the locals at the local country pub for dinnner each weekend. Surprisingly the music was really LOUD! It was a 50's band playing the ol' faves, but it was just too damn loud, very unexpected for the patronage at the RSL!

One of the best parts of visiting Lyndon's parents is the guest bed, it's the comfiest bed we've ever slept in! And we take full advantage of it, usually sleeping in until 8 or 9 in the morning!

On the Saturday we ventured out to the Eumundi Markets. These markets are so full of produce, craft, baking, furniture, buskers, hippies, you name it! and its set up in such a way that it's VERY easy to get yourself lost and walking past the same stalls over and over again! I became quite friendly with a few stallies!

I restrained myself and didn't end up buying anything from the markets, except for a yummy lentil and vegetable roll. I'm surprising myself with how well I'm going with not spending money willy-nilly!

After the markets we met up with Lyndon's godmother who he hadn't seen in over 10 years. What a breathe of fresh air she was! She's just written an autobiography and is described by her publishers as a "passionate gypsy wanderer"! Check out her bio and book here. If you get a chance grab a copy of her book and have a read, you will not regret it. It's a great story about the adventures she has had all over Australia. We were speaking to her about our plans for the future and she was so motivating in her encouragement of it all. She's convinced us to live in a shed when we get our property to get a feel for the land first! Sounds perfect to me!

We then popped into the local nursery which was very cute! It's set up like a little cottage garden. Again no purchases, just some lovely scenery.

After this very eventful day we headed back to 'The Farm' as we affectionately call it, and decided to take a walk up to the lookout. The property backs onto the Noosa Trail Network which is a bunch of hinterland trails through some great countryside. We didn't go too far to get this great view of the sunset over Pinbarren mountain:

On the Sunday, we spent the first part of the day walking around the property checking out the new work that Lyndon's parents have had done to it. A lot of new work! It's an extremely hilly 10acres so it was quite a workout. We then lit a burn pile but it didn't last long because of the rain.

Just before lunch we headed out to the famous "King of the Mountain" festival in Pomona. It's a yearly event where competitors run up the 4.5km, almost vertical Mt Cooroora, then back down again. Crazy if you ask me, but the festivities that take place in Pomona on the day where lots of fun.

Then we headed back to Brissie. Sigh.

How was your weekends?

:) Kim

THANK YOU!

2010-07-24T10:00:00.001+10:00

I wanted to write a post to thank all of you bloggers out there!

Having just started my own blog here, I know sometimes it can be challenging writing posts that are witty, informative and interesting every few days and sometimes, everyday! So I wanted to thank each and every one of you for sharing your advice, wisdom and goings-on to everyone in the blog world.

Your efforts have given me HOURS of enjoyment and taught me tricks of the trade that have helped me on my own path to living more simply and enjoying the little things in life.

Everyone reading this please venture over to the blogs on my blogroll to the right of my page and check out the inspiring bloggers who keep me entertained daily, you won't regret it! (well you might when you realise hours have passed and you have done nothing on your to-do list!)

THANK YOU!

{this moment}

2010-07-23T10:49:00.001+10:00

Learning to live frugally

2010-07-22T17:27:00.000+10:00

Is quite a challenge! I'm not going to lie to you and fluff over it making frugal living out to be really easy to do. I'm very early into this journey towards living more simply and I want to be as honest as possible, so a) I can read back on this blog sometime in the future and remember what it was like in the beginning, and b) so anyone else reading this blog gets to see the journey from my perspective truthfully.

In the past few months I have been reading a lot of books and websites on living more simply and frugally. The reason a lot of them suggest we do this is to do our bit towards saving the Earth. This has lead me to be a bit more passionate about environmental issues recently. Now things like, seeing someone using disposable cups and plates or driving just down the road, really irks me! What a change that has been in me. It used to be me doing those things, not that long ago!

It goes to show that it doesn't take long to change your ways once you change your mindset. Changing your mindset is the biggest change you can make and always the first. Once I discovered the path I wanted to take with my life, I found it really easy to find out lots of websites, courses and books on the topics, I connected with people that had walked the same path and had the same ideas, I was able to decide on some goals and am able to use those resources to decide how I am going to achieve them. But it was that initial decision to not just give in to my every whim, not 'treat' myself because I was feeling a bit low or because I got paid or just because it was the end of the working week that was difficult!

Living frugally and simply is a goal of mine to lessen the impact I have on this Earth, to connect more with nature and to live a life more meaningful to me.

I have been taking small steps to live more efficiently and aware. I have chosen to use public transport to enable me to save momey, car emissions, and to reconnect with nature as I walk the 40 mins to the train station in the morning. It's such a simple act but has had so many benefits. I have also chosen to not buy any new clothes for (at least) 6 months, to learn to make my own green cleaners, to grow as much of my food as I can, to lessen my electricity use, to learn the lost arts of crocheting and sewing, which will enable me to make my own clothes and create gifts. These things I have begun to do while still living in my near-city unit, with no lawn, while still working a 9-5 job and without changing too much to be a drain on my energy. It's the little things that you make a habit that I think have the biggest impact. The things that you would normally do everyday without thinking. So once you have decided that you are willing to change, the motivation kicks in and enables you to make these small changes.

I work close to the city where the streets are lined with clothes shops, cafe's, trinket stores, supermarkets, and generally places where I would normally spend a large proportion of my money. The temptation is definitely there to just go into a shop and see what they have and usually walk out with some junk that I didn't need. But really what is the pont of that? That's just me being another mindless consumer! It's part of the culture. These shops wouldn't be there if people didn't go into them and buy STUFF.

So I have found that making the decision to be frugal is quite hard, making the initial changes aren't so hard because you have the motivation, but when you are then constantly bombarded with the consumer culture it is quite difficult to maintain those small actions. I sometimes catch myself looking at the racks of clothes from the shops lining the streets on the walk from work to the train station and thinking "oh they're only $10, I can afford that." It is a hard task to keep on track but I have found that being almost 'obsessed' with my goals, by going over them constantly and looking at more ways I can live frugally, really helps to keep those goals in the forefront of my mind and, so far, keep me on track.

Let me know what you do to keep on track. I'd love to know what methods you use.

:)

A little unnecessary.....

2010-07-20T16:33:00.001+10:00

Hello!

So sorry I feel like I have been gone for ages! I am super busy at the moment with work, I'll tell you about that in a second.

First though I want to show you some pictures.

I walk past this house that's being built on my morning walk to the train station, and I am constantly astonished by it.

Its the house on the left. Look at the size of it! Seriously how unnecessary!
So I have a few reasons why I would never have a house built like this one

Imagine how many resources are needed to build that huge new house! I think we should start looking at ways to reduce our impact on the earth not look for ways to exploit it even more.
Look at how much space is between the house and the fence on the right, I hope they don't have kids - there's just no yard at all! I love my open spaces
Just think how expensive it would be! I do not want to have to work in the workforce any longer than absolutely necessary and the mortgage for this would be huge!
I'd get lost! It is that big that everyone in a large family could have their own bedroom AND living room! Now I don't see why it is necessary to have that much room. If you can't stand hanging out with your partner/family maybe turning off the TV and reconnecting with each other might help?

Wow aren't I on a rant today! I don't usually get so passionate about things, but that house just seems so unnecessary.

Let's look at it again

Phew ok I've got that off my chest!

So, as I said, work is getting very busy at the moment, and I feel like I'm starting to abandon my blog which I do not like at all! So I am going to have to get a bit more organised and set some time aside each day to write my post and catch up on everyone else's (actually this last part is mainly why I run out of time to write my own posts!).

So my goal form now on for this blog is to post at least every second day! Let's see how that goes.

If you want to see where I work and why I'm so busy, check us out here!

x
Kim

Garden Update

2010-07-16T16:18:00.001+10:00

Don't let anyone tell you that you can't grow your own vegies while living in a unit. Check out how my balcony gardening is going.

Cherry tomato's about to pop! This plant has gone crazy and grown about 60cm in the past month (is that normal?!). There are so many baby tomato's coming up like these, can't wait for my first harvest!

2 lemons coming up on the dwarf lemon tree. We nearly lost this tree due to aphids and ants (!) but it's bounced back after some yumming organic pesticide and worm wee!

Hehe do you see the little fella down the bottom of the pot, that's my garden worm! A friend (who is also a keen gardener; we share our produce at work!) went to the Nambour Garden Expo last weekend and bought me a little present for my garden! So Harris (that's his name) sits in my Moreton Bay Fig pot and greets me every time I come up the stairs, very cute!

Even though I live in a unit and have no yard to myself, I have stolen a small piece of the common land that the 5 units in my block share, for a compost bin. This little patch of grass faces only our unit so if it does get a little smelly, it shouldn't annoy the neighbours too much.

In addition to the plants pictured, I have a strawberry plant and lettuce in hanging baskets, basil, bush tomato and a lime tree potted on my balconies and I'm hoping to harvest quite a bit in the coming months so keep an eye out for more pictures.

And just to keep the pictures going I have some gorgeous pictures of trees (I love trees!) that my partners mum emailed through to us recently.

Enjoy!
x
Kim

Picnic anyone?

This is what my Moreton Bay Fig tree will look like about 30 years after I plant it out of the pot on my balcony! That's why I currently call it a bonsai!

My very first blog award!

2010-07-15T16:46:00.001+10:00

Well I feel as though I'm a real 'blogger' now!

Stephanie from Green's Going Green has awarded me my very first blog award! The "A Blog with Substance" award. I feel very honoured to receive an award this early in to my blogging adventure and am SOOO glad someone feels it 'has substance'!

Please head over and have a look at Stephanie's blog http://simplicitymom.blogspot.com/. It's so fabulous to read her inspiring blog of getting back to the basics and enjoying the simple things in life, and she does it WITH A FAMILY! I definately look at Stephanie as a role model for how I want to live my life.

I am feeling the blog-love going around at the moment, and love the 'community' feel of blogging. I didn't really expect blogging to be like this, more just like a journal where you write your thoughts and they are kept to look back on later. But I have found the back and forward dialogue between everyone is very inspiring I've learnt and been motivated to do so much more than initially planned through the advice and other posts of those bloogers I follow.

So The Rules for Acceptance of this Award are:

thank the blogger who bestowed the Award on you. Thank you Stephanie!!!
sum up your blogging experience, philosophy and motivation in five (5) words - simple living / quietness / sustainability / motivating / inspiration
pass the Award on to 10 deserving bloggers

Here's my list of 10 deserving bloggers. Please go check them out and discover why I think they're so great and on my daily list of reading!

All Things Quilty
By Way of the Moon
down---to---earth
Frolics from Scratch
Living the Simple Life
Plain and Joyful Living
Pottymouthmama
Sewing the Seeds of Change
small things
Towards Sustainability

Oh wow that was hard, limiting that to 10! Please go and check out their wonderful blogs, trust me you will get so intrigues by their blogs you will lose track of time! I have lost many hours in the midst of these wonderful blogs.

xx
Kim

Lots n lots n lots o' LEMONS!

2010-07-12T14:14:00.001+10:00

This past weekend was absolutely FULL of cooking and baking. I received a huge bucket of Bush Lemons (about 50 lemons in total!) and about 12 limes from Freecycle (it's a bit like ebay, but where everything is free). You can see the huge pile of them below in the picture (on the way to get the lemons I did get sidetracked a little and visited a garage sale and an op shop and picked up the books, kitchen gadgets and patterns all for $3 BARGAIN!)

So when I got home with my bounty I had a thousand things I wanted to make with it all.

So far I have made:

lemonade (of course!)
lemon curd (for on toast and in tart fillings - that's to come)
lemon and lime cordial
lemon cake, where you pour a lemon syrup over the cooked cake, makes it sooo moist! Here's the recipe
Lemon and basil risotto YUM!
Fixed my previous attempt at orange and grapefruit jam, by adding the pectin from soaked lemon seeds, lime juice and rind, passionfruit and apple. Now it tastes much better and isn't overpowered by the grapefruit taste.

But I still have about 15 lemons and 10 limes left. So I'm thinking about a lemon and lime marmalade (MORE JAM!), maybe a sorbet, and then probably just freezing the rest of the juice for use in future cordials and lemonade.

So I have been a little carried away this past weekend, but don't worry I haven't forgotten about my pledge I made for the new financial year.

So just to update on where I'm at with those pledges

Not to buy any new clothes - so far so good, I haven't even tempted myself by going to any shopping centres. Actually come to think of it, I haven't gone to any shopping centres, except for grocery shopping once a fortnight, for months!
Master baking bread and making my own bread starter - ok this one I haven't even looked at yet, BUT I have started growing my own ginger beer plant! It's so simple. I'm following the instructions on Rhonda's down to earth blog.
To keep my plants alive and make my own fertiliser and pesticide - plants are still alive and I just saw that the cherry tomato tree I bought a few weeks ago has it's first little tomatoes appearing! So exciting! I did a little dance on my balcony when I saw them (3 in total!! tomatoes that is not dances). Must be that worm wee fertiliser I'm using on them. I have also almost made my homemade white oil with oil, detergent and water (I say almost because the oil is in the sparayer and that's as far as I've gone!)
Make my own dishcloths - haven't started this yet, but our current store-bought dishcloth is looking pretty manky at the moment so it is spurring me on to get started on making them, hopefully by next week!
Make my own liquid dishwashing detergent - nope haven't even looked at this one yet
Stick to my new budget - well I'm happy to report that this fortnight is almost oer and I have stuck to my new budget to the letter (or number I guess!). It's great to see the balance in the savings account going up and up and up!

Well that was my weekend roundup. What did you get up to? I'd love to hear if you got up to anything new relating to living simply or learning new skills.

Have a great day!

x
Kim

Television

2010-07-08T15:13:00.000+10:00

Stop watching television, now. Just do it as an experiment. Give yourself a week of no TV and see how your life changes.

I think this was my first step to living more simply that had a huge difference on my life. It lead me to talk more to partner, give myself more 'me' time, have time to learn how to crochet, read books (about everything!), rediscover the joy of baking, get enough sleep, use less electricity, relax more, appreciate silence, learn new board games, have time to write a blog! The list goes on, but you can see where I'm going can't you?

My partner and I stopped watching TV about 6 months ago and really re-connected with ourselves and each other. We then fell back into the trap of coming home from work and turning on the box, unsurprisingly we started to drift apart from each other a little during this time. About a month ago we once ago went back to either having music on in the background in the evenings, or just silence, and we have really reconnected again because we've had to talk to each other again. And I'm not just talking about "How was your day honey?", "Yeah my day was crap as well", etc talk. You will have those converstions in the first few days of not having the TV to distract you because it takes a bit to recreate that connection with your partner where you talk about the deep, deep stuff that you just can't in the ad break of a sitcom.

I've also felt that I have re-connected with myself more as well. The down-time we have in the evenings really allows for more personal reflection on where we are in life, where we want to be and how we are feeling about it all. I also feel much more rested because my mind has quietened and hasn't had the stimulation that TV forces on it. And I love that I have found a few more hours in my day where I can actually be productive - even if that is sitting in bed crocheting, cup of tea by the bedside, bliss!

So just try it, like I said, as an experiment. I would love to hear your experiences!

x
Kim

New Budget

2010-07-06T16:38:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I mentioned that I had recently re-vamped my budget and have got it to a stage that I am saving $600 a fortnight.

I wanted to detail my budget here (at the beginning of my blogging and living simply journey) and the recent changes I have made to net me that $600 a fortnight.

I will list my fortnightly (because that's how often I get paid from my job) budget items and then detail the changes that I have made:

INCOME

Salary - $1361

can't do much about changing that at the moment, although I am only on a contract until November so I am starting to get motivated to try to secure a job well in advance hopefully at around the same salary so that I have no/very little down time between jobs. But I will have a few weeks worth of annual leave that will be paid out to me at the end of my contract, so that's a bit of a back up but I would rather save that than spend it.

Rental income - $647

I was involved in an accident when I was young and received a payout for my injuries. I very sensibly (for a 21 year old!) used that money as a big chunk of a deposit for a house. This place is my investment property though, because it works out cheaper for me to rent a unit with my partner paying half the rent closer to the city than living in my 3 bedroom house that would take me over an hour to get to work.

TOTAL INCOME - $2008

EXPENSES

Rent - $270

As you've seen in a previous post I live with my fiance in a small 2 bedroom apartment with no yard and only a few balconies. We pay below the average for rentals in our area (the owner lives overseas so I don't think he realises he could be charging more, but great for us!) and it suits us at the moment. However I am yearning for some yard to garden in. I grew up in the country so was used to living with plenty of land surrounding the house. We are currently on the look out for house rentals in our area for not much more than what we're paying, just not happening at the moment.

Mortgage - $615

This is for the above mentioned investment property. I still have a bit to pay of this house before it's officially mine.

House & Contents Insurance - $30

This covers my house insurance for my investment property and contents insurance at the rental. This is one of the budget items that I have recently decreased. I re-evaluated the amounts I had my house and contents insured for and then shopped around for better priced insurance. I'm paying almost half of what I was paying! And that's just from making a few phone calls, easy money!

Car Insurance - $18

I have a small Holden Barina that I use only once or twice on the weekends as I catch public transport to work. I have started using one of those insurance companies that give you cheaper premiums if you don't drive your car much. I have thought about selling my car but that would leave us with no car and with both sets of parents living over an hour drive away it's something I've decided that we need to hold on to, plus fortnightly grocery shopping would be hell if we had to carry it all on the bus!

Car registration - $13*

One of those necessary evils that I would be able to do without if I sold my car. Unfortunately this is a non-negotiable.

Health Insurance - $17

I only have singles extra's cover as I (am supposed to) wear prescription glasses and I still have back pain from the accident I mentioned above when I was young, so I do get a bit of use out of the health insurance. However I was speaking to my sister, who's a dental assistant, and she said that some of her patients put the money they would have otherwise spent on health insurance into a seperate account for any health related expenses. That way you get full use out of all of the money rather than paying premiums that you may not use. I thought this was a pretty good idea but would build up that fund first before cancelling the health insurance. In Australia we have a national health system called Medicare, which is funded by our taxes and ensures free public hospital care and reduced GP fees, so I don't need any general health insurance. In Queensland, our ambulance cover is also provided for by the government and paid for in our utilities.

Internet - $5

That is ridiculously low isn't it! I am on a 'cap' plan where I pay $19.95/month for a 2GB download limit on my wireless broadband. I split this expense with my partner. I have just reduced this from a 5GB plan because we were never using over 1.5GB.

Mobile Phone - $25

Because I don't need a landline phone I solely use my mobile phone for all calls and sms. The 'cap' plan I am on allows me to spend $500 worth a month and only pay $49.95 a month. I have only gone over the $500 limit when I went overseas and didn't realise I was paying for receiving calls and text messages!

Rates - $84*

Rates are property taxes that are paid to our local governments and include water expenses. I only pay rates on my house that I own as the owner of our rental propoerty pays the rates for our unit. It is a little risky being responsible for the water charges of my tenants but there is a clause in their contract that if they use over the 'average' amount for our local area they pay the excess charges. They're great tenants though and have never gone over the average.

Electricity - $20*

This is another expense that we have just recently shopped around for a better deal. We will save approximately $150 a year with this new supplier plus my partner has a permanent disability meaning we get an extra $215 off our electricity a year. We have also started being very vigilant about our electricity use at home. I have actually printed and laminated signs that I have stuck next to every electrical outlet in the house that has a reminder to turn the light or appliance off after use! We have also vowed not to use any electric blankets or heaters this winter. We're half way through winter and so far so good! So hopefully our usage will drop next quarter resulting in further cost savings.

Car Breakdown Service - $3*

I am a little ditzy at times and quite often lock my keys in the car or run the battery dead by leaving my lights on, so I definitely get my moneys worth when this organisation comes and saves me when I'm stranded for free because of my membership.

Fuel - $30*

Because I only use my car once or twice a weekend and occasionally a visit to the parents I do not use much fuel and get by on 1 tank a month, which costs around $60 a month.

Groceries - $50*

My partner and I have shopping down to a fine art. As an example last Friday we did our whole shopping in about 25 minutes, that's going to 2 different stores also! We very rarely spend over the $100 ($50 each). I think this is partly due to being vegetarian so we don't buy any meat and my partner is lactose intolerant so we don't buy cheese (we still get milk though). Eventually we'd like to investigate Community Shared Agriculture (CSA's) where you buy in a co-op direct from the local farmers.

Public transport - $60*

Our public transport fees have just gone up, however I love my 40minute walk through our nearby bushland reserve to the train station and not sitting in traffic on the way to and from work. It is much more relaxing and I de-stress from work before I get home so I can be fully present with my partner with the little time we have in the evenings together. After my contract finishes in October with my current employer I will look at finding a job within the surrounding suburbs to save on that public transport expense.

Spending money - $100*

$100 a fortnight for spending money is quite a lot! But since starting this path to living simply I have been using that money up buying some necessary items, such as plants, potting mix, remnant fabric, knitting and crocheting equipment, etc.

TOTAL EXPENSES - $1340

SAVINGS $600
See I wasn't lying. My budget says that I can save $600 a fortnight, let's just see if i can actually STICK to the budget and save $7200 by the end of December. I also have a little left over from all that, about $60 a fortnight if you did the sums, so I will start putting that and anything else I don't use up towards an emergency fund.

You may notice I don't have any credit card or personal loan repayments in there. That's because I have just finished paying them both of last fortnight!! I was so thrilled and of course, did a little dance! I plan on not using my credit card unless I buy something online or there is a real emergency (as I don't have an emergency fund just yet).

Also you will see the little * next to some items. I withdraw this money from my bank account and keep the money for grocery, public transport, fuel and spending money in my purse so that I do not need to use my debit card. The other items with * next to them are expenses that are only paid every few months or maybe even once a year, so instead of letting them accumulate in my bank account (where I have been known to spend it because it 'look's like I still have money in my account at the end of the fortnight), I use something I learnt from Rhonda's down to earth blog and use the envelope system and let them accumulate in little envelopes away from my everyday access.

Well that is my VERY detailed budget. I hope that you are able to get something out of all my rambling. Let me know your little tips for saving money also, I'd love to hear them!

x
Kim

My new financial year pledge

2010-07-05T16:30:00.000+10:00

I've finally slowed down and focused myself enough to work out my pledge for the next 6 months, being prompted by Sam's pledge for the new financial year here in Australia (funny how I'm actually at work when I choose to slow down and focus on something that isn't work! Hehe).

So here it is. My pledges for the 6 months to help lead me down my path to living simply.

I pledge, along with Sam, to not purchase any new clothes. I don't have a sewing machine nor know how to sew too well just yet, so I will limit my clothes purchases to only second-hand clothes from thrift shops, etc (except knickers of course, but I should be good for these for the next few months)
I pledge to master the perfect loaf of bread, that is good enough that I am happy to replace store-bought bread with it and to also make my own bread starter. I've seen this on quite a few blogs and it doesn't look too difficult at all, it just takes a little while.
I pledge to keep all of my current plants alive! and to make my own organic fertiliser and pesticides. Fingers crossed this doesn't ruin my pledge and actually kill the plants!
I pledge, to join Sam, in making my own dishcloths. I will look at crocheting mine, whereas Sam will be knitting hers. I saw a great post (I can't for the life of me find it to link to!) about using twine to crochet dishcloths that are a bit more gritty and good for pots and pans.
I pledge to keep trying to make my own dishwashing liquid that doesn't glob up and add more oil to my sink than the dishes do! I've seen a few recipes online but they all include glycerine, and glycerine is really expensive where I've seen it so it's not cost effective at all. Please, please, please tell me where you get your glycerine from or if you have a dishwashing liquid recipe that doesn't use it.
I pledge to stick to my newly-edited budget, which will net me savings of $7200 by the end of December. I will post about my budget changes shortly, so stay tuned if you'd like to see how I can manage to save $600 a fortnight!

Well those are my pledges for this coming 6 months of the new financial year. I'm looking forward to hearing about your pledges and also hearing your comments about what I hope to achieve. It will be interesting to look back in 6 months and see how far I have come in achieving those pledges.

x
Kim

What a weekend!

2010-07-04T20:18:00.001+10:00

Whoa I had a huge weekend! Well huge in the way that I learnt and did SOO much that's leading me down that 'path to living simply.'

Notice the word 'path' in my blog title? To me it is as much about the path as it is about the destination. The destination is fabulous to think about - perched in my rocking chair next to my hubby-to-be, looking out from out verandah-surrounded self-sufficient straw bale house out into a landscape where I can see the natural Aussie bush, a few chickens chasing each other around the yard, a high-yielding vegie patch and orchard that supply us with all of our fruit, vegies herbs and nuts (maybe), and the bellow of our dairy cow that brings us precious milk, oh with a cuppa in hand of course!

But back to the path. I am having so much fun learning all of these new skills that have been lost to our generation, especially when I have successes.

Let me tell you about my weekend.

On Thursday I received a shoe box FULL of yarn with a crochet needle from a lady on freecycle. Have you heard about freecycle? If not, you really need to! It's fabulous. It's really big in the States but there are local goups in my area, and I believe other cities in Aus. It's a bit like Ebay, except that everything has to be free. So you can post anything that you have that you want to give away rather than throwing it out and adding it to landfill, or you can post up items that you want and if anyone has them and wants to give them to you they will reply to you. So a while ago when I started making jam I posted that I wanted some jars. Well now I have a huge plastic box full of them! Then last week I posted that I'd like some yarn if anyone has any spare (don't worry I've given away a lot as well! It's been great for decluttering) and a very friendly lady sent me a box full of very soft and beautiful yarn. I have been using Pip's online crocheting tutorial to learn how to crochet. I am currently up to lesson 7 (the lessons after lesson 1 are on the right hand side of Pip's blog about half way down the page.
Check it out so far:

It's actually starting to look like a granny square! I'm going to crochet a yellow and white blanket for my sister who has just found out she's expecting. I'm going to be an aunty!! Sooo excited!

So after my crocheting lessons on Friday night (picture this: sitting in bed with laptop, cup of tea, Lyndon's snoring next to me and the cat we were looking after keeps trying to eat my yarn!), we packed up my tiny Barina and headed out to my parent's property about an hour away. They have 40acres way out in the boonies so it was nice to escape the city for a few days. I will let you know what we packed the car with in a sec. First though, on the Saturday mum taught me how to sew. Another one of my homesteading skills I was keen to master. Ok so I am FAR from mastering sewing but it was good to get a hang of the basics. I used a pattern of a singlet that mum had already laying around (warning: it's a little naff and not high on the style side, but good to practise on). Check out my journey in pictures:

Mum getting the sewing machine ready for the novice and me unpinning the fabric from the pattern

Trying not to mess up the paper patterns or mix up the front and back fabric pieces for the singlet

Mum showing me the ropes

Trying to pin on the facing (is that what it was called, I've forgotten already!)

Ok so this first singlet MAY be a little dodgy!

Gees I'm not paying any attention to where my fingers are in relation to that little stabbing needle!

Adding a little more naff-ness to the singlet and practising my zigzag

Finished product! (Poser? Me? No not at all)

So that was my sewing lesson with my mum. It was great fun! We drank tea (I drink a lot of tea you may notice, nana-hood here I come!), chatted about my sister who just found out she was expecting a baby, and just fooled around! We had a few little snips at each but other than that we had a ball!

You would think that was enough for one weekend, but no we were up at 4am this morning to go to the local flea market out near my parents house. The temperature gauge on my car was saying 0.5 degrees celsius, that's damn cold! I remember it being that in PARIS in WINTER when we went last year. Anyway thermals and ugg boots on, thermos full of coffee and a car chock-a-block FULL of stuff that we had fished out of our garage and we had arrived and set up at the markets by 6am.

Check out our bargains!

Well I am happy to report that we sold most of it (after reducing everything to $1, then to 50c in the last half an hour) and made a tidy profit of $150 for our troubles. Yes it's not much and actually works out to be only $8.80/hour for each of us for all the time invested into it, BUT we did declutter our unit a lot! I can actually fit my car in the garage. It's such a great feeling knowing we aren't just throwing it all oout either. I've actually done that before, terrible I know!

Soo that was my weekend, and why I hadn't blogged earlier. Although I really need to consider blogging more often so that these posts aren't so long! Sorry if they are really tedious to read because they're so long.

Oh and something else that happened this weekend. My first seed sprouting! I only discovered it about an hour ago. We have avocado, passionfruit and cumquat seeds in pots on our kitchen windowsill and after a few weeks the cumquat seed has actually sprouted!! Woohoo! I did a little dance in the kitchen when I saw it. Sorry I don't have a picture of it my camera died this morning at the flea market (I don't think it likes to the cold either!)

You may remember me talking about Sam's New Financial Year pledge, and that I was going to join her in a pledge? Well my busy weekend has prevented me from sitting down and actually writing something down, so I am off to do that now and will post it tomorrow. Stay tuned and join us if you would like.

What did you get up to on the weekend? Hopefully a little more relaxing than mine!

xx Kim

In the kitchen...

2010-07-02T14:31:00.002+10:00

Hello hello

The last week I have been busy, busy in our little kithcen practising baking and making jams. I've felt like a right housewife and having a ball!

I have been doing lots more also, like checking out other people's blogs (I love doing that, especially at work, shhh!), thinking about the pedge I will make for this new (financial) year (have a look at Sam's here, we are going to encourage each other over the next 6 months), working of course, and getting ready to go to the flea market this Sunday!!! I am so excited to clear out all of our stuff, it's going to feel great driving home afterwards with (hopefully) an empty car boot. I'll update you about the flea market next week with lots of photos (warning: they won't be pretty, we have to be up at 4am!)

So here are some of my finished products:

My first bread baking experience turned out pretty well. I don't know how we will go replacing the bread we get from the shops, we like this bread so much we go through it much more quickly!! The aroma's that filled the house while I was baking the bread were so mouthwatering too, this is my second favourite thing about it. I've seen on a few blogs about making your own yeast, I definitely want to try that as it looks pretty easy and will help me in maximising things I can produce myself.

The jam above the bread is my first jam made by myself! Everyday I walk home from work I pass the neighbours FULL cumquat tree with all the fruit just going to waste. So the other weekend I went up to ask them if they minded if I took some to make some jam. I knocked and knocked on their door for about 5 minutes but no one answered, so what did I do? I very sneakily grabbed a whole bunch and creeped home! I didn't take too many that's why there's only about half a jar. I have this great old preserving book that I picked up from the Lifeline Bookfest the other week (absolutely loved the Bookfest, we got over $100 worth of books, and thats a lot because they were soo cheap!) and copied the recipe very diligently. Next time though I won't cook the jam for so long because it's pretty hard/set.

I baked this mandarin cake after seeing it on Rhonda's down to earth blog here. So so easy to make. I was going to make the orange cake that Rhonda made but this is why I couldn't:

Eww gross I know, and I only had two mandarins left but they did the job wonderfully! I have never really needed a food processor before. Weird I know but I have made do with our blender or beaters. But with this recipe I really needed the processer to mix up all of the mandarin into a mushy mess so I could mix in the flour, etc. So I had to think a bit laterally. First I tried the old faithful blender. But all of the mandarin just stuck to the outside in big clumps, barely processed at all, just out of reach of the thrashing metal blades. I was pretty stumped after that and was searching in my cupboard knowing a food processer would be oh so handy right then. Then I stumbled across my large Breville juicer that was hiding in the back of my cupboard (don't use it nearly as much as I should, when I have fruit trees it will be a different story!). And bingo, problem solved! I fed the mandarins through the juicer and then put all of the fleshy parts (that are normally thrown out when you juice) and the juice that came out of the spout into a mixing bowl and added the other ingrediants.

This is how it turned out. I love the little face that formed when I started putting icing on, I just had to take a photo!

While my mandarin cake was cooking, I started on a batch of orange marmalade. Because it was only an after thought and this was a Sunday I hadn't soaked the skin and seeds in water over night to release the pectin. I have now realised I just need to follow recipes and not get so cocky thinking I know what I'm doing. Even after cutting up the rind and adding it and the seeds to my cheesecloth and have it cook with the flesh of the orange and grapefruit for over an hour the result was more of a syrup than a marmalade, because of the lack of pectin released I'm assuming. So I continued to jar it up and when it cooled I tasted it and it was terrible! The grapefruit flavour had taken over the entire jam/syrup and it was extremely tart. I've left it sitting in jars on my bench for a week now thinking about what to do with it. I am now thinking I will re-heat it all back up and add in some apple and passionfruit for sweetness, and some SOAKED orange rind and seeds for the pectin to help it set a bit more. Hopefully I can save it. I will update you on how it turns out.

Here are my finished products. Look at all that jam I have to 'fix'! You can tell I was overly eager to get the icing on while the cake was still a bit warm, it ran all over the sides of the cake and underneath it. It still tasted yummy though!

So some lessons learned from this baking experience:

Just follow the recipe - no Kim you don't know what you're doing, stop being so stubborn and just follow that darn recipe!
Grapefruit is gross. Period.
To make the cake cool down more quickly (so you can get ice it and eat it more quickly) put it in the freezer for a little while !! Hehe