Bats in the belfry....

 Well, maybe not so much the "belfry" as the grape arbour.

Every morning for the past week, we've woken up to this:

A giant mess of grapes, grape skins and grape leaves all over the deck and steps under the vines.

Homemade Taco Seasoning Mix

I was making up a new batch of my taco seasoning mix this morning and realised I haven't shared it on the blog before, so although there are hundreds of variations already on the 'net, here is mine!  Please excuse the dark photos as it is overcast here today.

Herbs and spices lose their flavour rapidly once ground so I try to buy and store them as close to whole as possible, so I generally need to use a spice grinder when I make up this mix.  I dry my own garlic as whole cloves, chillies whole, onions as slices and oregano as whole leaves (all dried in a dehydrator).

I make up around four or fives times the quantity of mix in one go and store it in a small glass jar.  The chilli powder is a matter of personal taste - we like it really spicy but I can only get away with about 1 tsp in the mix before my youngest starts complaining.

If you prefer a thicker sauce, add 1 tsp of cornflour (cornstarch) to the mix as well.



Taco Seasoning Mix

Chilli powder to taste (I use 1 tsp for the kids, and 1 tbs for adults).
¼ tsp each garlic powder, onion powder, crushed red pepper flakes & dried oregano
½ tsp paprika
1½ tsp ground cumin
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground black pepper

Combine all ingredients together and store in an airtight container for up to three months.

Makes the equivalent of one packet of commercial seasoning mix, for use on 500g (1 pound) of mince (ground beef).

Of course, this mix doesn't need to be restricted to tacos - use it to flavour burger patties or sprinkle it on grilled chicken, for example. Yum!



Cheers,

Happy Australia Day!

As I type this it is 7am, it's already 25'C and it's currently 100% relative humidity (i.e. it's foggy!).  The forecast - once the fog burns off - is for 40'C (104'F) here and higher than that over much of the inland.  Apparently summer has waited until Australia Day to makes itself known!

Wherever you are across Australia, sweltering in the heat or sandbagging against more flooding, I hope you get the chance for a cold beer or a slice of pavlova today (or both, like us!).

I know it's over-used but it is Australia Day and the second stanza of Dorothea Mackellar's poem My Country just has to be repeated:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

Cheers,

Super Tuesday Bike Count

Hubby has been riding his bike to work for a few years now and although he uses bicycle paths where they are available, and side streets where they are not, I still hear regular stories of riders being hit by cars or having near misses and it worries me.


Newcastle has better facilities for commuting riders than many cities (certainly there are some great bike paths for recreational riders) but there is much room for improvement for those riders competing with traffic.


For the past few years, Bicycle Victoria has organised an annual visual bike count of commuting riders in various cities and suburbs around Australia, and this year the Super Tuesday Bike Count is on Tuesday March 1 between 7am and 9am.

As you can imagine, the information gathered at these counts is vitally important in helping campaigns for better cycling facilities.

You can register as a counter here, and if you nominate a group such as a school or biking group, you will receive $50 for your group as a reward!

If can't help count, you do ride to work occcasionally, and you live in one of the 47 municipalities participating in the count (scroll down for the list) make sure you ride to work on Tuesday March 1, 2011 so that you will be counted :-)


Cheers,

What's in my Stockpile

Kate asked in my previous post if I could outline my stockpile list, and as it's something I received a few emails about, I thought I'd do a quick post on it.

There are many advantages to stockpiling; buying items when they are on sale and in bulk will both save you money, having a store on hand will save you time at the (super) market and will also help in times of difficulty and crisis, such as when a family member is ill or you can't get to the shops due to the weather (snow storm, flood etc).

I hate shopping at the best of times (even the farmer's market can be stressful when it's crowded and I have all three kids with me, who have little patience for my browsing), so the less time I spend on it, the better.  Moving away from convenience foods was a big help as I can avoid over half the aisles at the supermarket.  We usually get our organic fruit & veg delivered, and I am a member of a couple of bulk-buying co-ops but I still need to go out for fresh milk & juice, toilet paper, some tinned foods, and dry dog & cat food for example.

The items that I are on my stockpile list at the moment include those listed below. Most items are organic if they are available (& I can afford them), though I generally give locally-produced foods preference over imported organic food.

Dry Goods
Flours (plain & self-raising wholemeal, bread flour, buckwheat flour, masa harina, semolina & Khorasan)
Polenta
Sugars (raw, caster & Rapadura)
Pulses (several types of lentils, chick peas, split peas, kidney beans & cannellini beans)
Nuts & seeds - e.g. sesame, sunflower seeds, pepitas, pecans, cashews, macadamias, hazelnuts, almonds.  Other nuts & seeds such as walnuts & linseeds (flaxseeds) go rancid quickly so we buy as we use them.
Pasta & spaghetti (I make fettuccine but we like penne and spirals for a change)
Wheat grain & other seeds for sprouting (e.g. radish seeds, mung beans)
Cous cous
Pearl barley
Burghal wheat
Popping corn
Coconut - flakes & dessicated
Sea salt
Baking powder, bicarb soda, citric acid & tartaric acid
Powdered milk
Cocoa powder
Cornflour (corn starch)
Brown rice & arborio rice
Instant coffee & tea leaves.  Roasted coffee beans go stale quickly (and I am not impressed by the taste of beans stored in the freezer) so we buy fresh-roasted beans regularly.
Breakfast cereals - oats, bran, wheat flakes. Wheatgerm goes rancid quickly so we buy in small amounts as we use it.
Dog & cat biscuits


Tinned & Bottled Goods
Pasta sauce (which would normally be homemade but alas, not this year)
Tomato paste & Passata (puree)*
Coconut milk*
Baked beans & brown lentils*
Beetroot
Tuna & salmon*
Preserved fruit (mostly pineapple, pears & peaches in juice)
Evaporated milk& UHT milk
Stock powders (bouillon)
Oils - coconut, extra virgin olive oil, regular olive oil (for soap-making), canola (GM-free), sesame, peanut and rice bran oil
Cat food (he is old and refuses to eat anything I make).

* I no longer buy tinned tomatoes due to my concerns about BPA in the lining of tins leaching into acidic and fatty products (refer to this Choice report) and the only tomatoes I can buy in glass locally are puree (though there are several US brands which have BPA-free tomatoes and other products). I will not buy coconut milk or tinned fish for the same reason when my stockpile runs out, while I investigate BPA-free canned products.  I hope to start making and canning my own baked beans this year, so I won't be replacing them either.

Condiments
Tomato sauce (also would normally be homemade)
BBQ sauce (as above)
Worcestershire sauce (as above)
Soy sauces & Tamari
Maple syrup, rice malt, golden syrup & molasses
Tahini
Mustards & vinegars
Honey, peanut butter, sunflower nut butter, Vegemite & jam
Home made sauces, jams, pickles and chutneys


Frozen goods
Peas & corn
Yoghurt & cheese cultures


Laundry & bathroom supplies
Bicarb soda
Washing soda
Borax
Pure soap (for clothes washing)
Oxygen bleach stain remover
Bleach
Toilet paper
Liquid castile soap (generally homemade)
Milk hand soap (as above)
Tea tree oil, Eucalyptus oil & clove oil
Glycerine

We also have a first aid kit where many other items such as matches and aloe vera gel are stockpiled.

As much as I'd like to store all of these items in glass, not plastic, that just isn't practical for some items.  I have a few 3L glass jars which I try to use for items with a high fat or oil content, which may be more likely to absorb chemicals from the square 10L lidded plastic buckets I use for the rest of the foods.

I hope that this is of some help!

Cheers,

Getting Organised

I mentioned in a previous post that I've been doing our annual decluttering, reorganising and cleaning this month.  As part of that I hauled out the contents of my pantry, cleaned the shelving and sorted through everything, updating my inventory, repacking foods as necessary and then putting it all back in again.  Man, I need another cup of tea just thinking about it.

Anyway, in terrific timing, Bec and Gavin have launched their Be Prepared Challenge this week, based on Kathy Harrison's OAR method, outlined in her book Just In Case (which I have written about before).

Read their first posts abut the Challenge here and here.

I have continual issues with storage in my house, and whilst I was ill on and off last year, we ran down our stockpile considerably (in fact, only the condiments are left in multiples) so I have a bit of work to do to get it back up to scratch.  It also means facing my perennial stockpile storage crisis head on!

It's calling for some serious lateral thinking.  I don't have any spare cupboards or cabinets (nor could I physically fit one anywhere if I bought one), my garage and roofspace get way too hot to store foodstuffs, the space under my bed is being used to store kids' clothes (and there is no space under theirs as they either have trundle beds or they are too low), and I have found that using my linen cupboard is just not working. It's close to the kitchen and is fine during winter, but come summer I need the space to store four doonas and flannel sheets; foods are being shoved to the back and getting lost or are just plain hard to get to!  Moving around heavy buckets of flour and dried beans to get to what I want is a pain in the butt to be honest.

In desperation I recently ended up with a Howard's Storage World catalogue, but that just made me laugh and shake my head ($399 for a kitchen garbage bin? Some people have way too much money) and I'm loathe to buy even more plastic tubs than we already have, especially since the larger ones I bought a few years ago to organise the kids' toys are now mostly broken, so their durability is questionable.

So, that's my part of the Challenge for today - find accessible storage spaces for my bulky dried goods.

If you buy in bulk and stockpile, where do you store yours?


Cheers,

Soaking nuts & seeds

I first read about the practice of soaking raw nuts and seeds in lightly salted water a few years ago, in Sally Fallon's book Nourishing Traditions, but it took me a quite while to actually bother having a go.  It all seemed like a bit too much work to soak the nuts and then dehydrate them again, but once I actually tried it out  - we were hooked.  Apart from being healthier, buying raw nuts also has the advantage of generally being cheaper than roasted and salted nuts.

Soaked whole raw almonds

Essentially the purpose of soaking the nuts is to neutralise enzyme inhibitors naturally present in the nuts to prevent them from sprouting prematurely.  These enzyme inhibitors can make it harder for us to digest the nuts.

Regardless of the health benefits, the lightly salted flavour of the soaked nuts is lovely - without all the extra salt that is loaded onto commercially roasted and salted nuts - and their crunchy texture after being dehydrated makes then a very more-ish snack!

All you need to do is cover the nuts or seeds in water (filtered preferably) with a few inches to spare above them as they will swell, and stir in a little pure salt (not table salt, it contains undesirable additives).  We use an Aussie sea salt to soak them in - about a half to one teaspoonful per kilo of nuts - so we are getting the benefit of a few extra minerals in there as well.  Leave to soak overnight and drain well in the morning.

Almonds after drying

You can then dry them in a very low oven or use a dehydrator on it's lowest setting, which is what I do to avoid heating up my kitchen.  Dry them until they snap when you try to break them; this can take up to 14-15 hours in my dehydrator for large whole nuts.

I always have jars of nuts - plain or mixed with other nuts or dried fruits - on our kitchen counter (next to the fruit bowl) to encourage the kids to snack on these instead of crackers and biscuits. Generally, a small handful of nuts will stave off their hunger pangs long enough for me to finish cooking dinner too ;-)

If you are interested, you can read more about soaking nuts and seeds here, here and here.


Cheers,

Lilly Pilly Jam

 It's that time of year again; the Small-Leafed Lilly Pilly trees in our street are full of their cute little red berries, and the parrots are feasting.

The berries are very tart - I believe you can eat them raw, although I'm certainly not going to have a go ;-) - but they do make a very nice jam.  Not having a sweet tooth, I love the tart flavour much more than the sickly-sweet strawberry jam my kids favour.  I harvest them by holding a large bowl underneath the clusters and rubbing them gently; the ripe and almost ripe ones fall off easily into the bowl.  Just beware of coming face-to-face with a cranky parrot, as my husband did when I sent him out for a second harvest :-)


Lilly Pilly Jam

1. Rinse the berries and pick over them well to remove any leaves or spoiled berries (and the odd bug or two).

 

2. Place the berries in saucepan, just covered with water. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for around 30 minutes, until the berries have lost their colour and the seeds have separated from the pulp.

 

3.  At this point you can make Lilly Pilly Jelly by straining the mixture through a fine muslin - leave the pulp to drain for several hours and don't be tempted to push on the pulp, as this will result in a cloudy jelly.

 

    If you wish to make Lilly Pilly Jam, simply push the pulp through a food mill or sieve, to remove the seeds (it will also remove the skins and much of the flesh).

 

4.  Measure the amount of liquid you have and return it to the pan. Add the same volume of sugar and the juice of 1 lemon per litre (quart) of liquid.

 

5.  Return the mixture to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar, then reduce heat to a high simmer for around 30 minutes. Test for setting by spooning a small teaspoonful onto a cold saucer and placing in the freezer for a minute; if it has formed a skin on the surface when you run your finger through it, it is set. if not, continue to simmer until it passes the test.

 

6. Bottle into hot, sterilised jars.

 

 

7. Enjoy on toast or scones :-)

 

Cheers,

No more plastic straws

During the summer school holidays we have been eating out more often than we usually do; nothing extravagant, but a few visits to the kid-friendly bistro at our local pub and a few milkshakes at the beach or by the lake have been really enjoyable.  We've also been drinking a lot of smoothies at home and one of our non-handmade Christmas presents was a set of old-fashioned milkshake/ sundae glasses.

{Banana split anyone? Yum, especially when the bananas are home grown and the chocolate sauce & ice cream is homemade!}.

So, I've noticed that we've been going through a lot of disposable plastic straws while we are out - I once asked for no straw in my takeaway smoothie but the server put one in anyway out of habit, then promptly pulled it out and threw it in the bin before handing it to me. Sigh.

I know the paperboard cup ends up in the bin too, but plastic straws, being so light, are number nine in the Center for Marine Conservation's "dirty dozen" - the list of 12 most commonly found plastic items in our oceans - and given that sometimes our rubbish is going into bins right next to the ocean or lake, it is something I am sensitive to.

I knew that glass straws existed as an alternative to the plastic straws you might use at home, but they are very expensive, $14 - $15AUD each, and with three small kids (who regularly manage to smash melamine and Corelle® dinnerware) I can't justify the cost versus their lack of durability.

Enter the discovery of stainless steel straws.  They have been around for some time, but I don't regularly read 'green consumer' websites or magazines any more, so I hadn't heard of them until recently. Again, they aren't cheap, mine were about $14 for a set of four from a kitchen catering equipment supplier (I bought two sets), but being stainless steel I can throw them in my handbag or picnic set for using when we are out and about.

I still feel a bit ambivalent about them, as they are not something I would ever buy for my own use and they would not have a small ecological footprint, being both manufactured in China & made from a high energy-consumption product, but I have to say that the kids are very much enjoying them.  Like the girls' stainless steel water bottles (also all manufactured in China), I hope that they end up being a long-term investment of materials.

Further to the disposable cup issue, one of our other non-handmade presents was a porcelain Eco Cup takeaway coffee cup for hubby {He is starting a new job next month and his new office is opposite our favourite cafe & our Fairtrade, organic coffee bean supplier. Lucky him!}.

As so many cafes are now happily accepting 'bring your own' coffee cups, I am wondering if bringing our own smoothie cups might be the next move?  I'm not going to cart around our glass ones, but I'm sure I have some vintage 80's plastic ones from an old Sunbeam milkshake maker kicking around in the back of the cupboard. I know I've seen some pop up at op-shops from time to time too.  It's a worth a try if I can find them I reckon, although remembering to bring something to put the wet, sticky cups into afterwards could be an issue, not to mention remembering to put them back in the car after I've washed them {mmm, dried-on bits of banana smoothie might pose a problem too}.  I suppose it's like remembering your green bags though, it just becomes habit.

Have any of you guys done something similar before?

Cheers,

Our Handmade Christmas 2010

I know Christmas is long past now but for my own benefit more than anything I thought I might post some pics & links to some of the hand made gifts we made last year.  Not included below are a marvellous quilted snakes & ladders game mat made by my Mum, simple library bags, books of 'vouchers' for individual & family activities, and a few other little things I didn't photograph.

L-R, top to bottom: 
Knitted cotton halter top (Ravelry link).
Wooden mushrooms and blocks, made by my FIL, and inspired by these. He made a box with a sliding lid to house them, and I painted "Gnome Village Blocks" on the sides.  To the box I added two pieces of green 'grass' (upholstery fabric samples), a packet of dried flowers and three gnomes (from here) in a small wooden box ('house') I had in the cupboard.
Sunhat, using this pattern.
Embroidered cotton cushions; white satin stitch on white cotton fabric with braiding edge and floral backing.
Needle books, tutorial here. 
Button hair clips = buttons sewn onto bobby pins. 
Colouring in books, printed from here. Bound with sewing machine using a cardboard cover. 
Sunhat #2, pattern as before. 
Crochet flower brooches (Ravelry link).

L-R, top to bottom: 
Crochet cotton halter top (Ravelry link). 
Sunhat #3, pattern as above. 
Indoor Hopscotch mat = appliqued squares & numbers on canvas with a non-slip carpet backing sewn onto it; inspired by this one and a painted one in Reader's Digest Back to Basics.
Felt bookmarks, pattern here.  
Child's fold out picnic blanket/ tote bag for my niece, tutorial here.  We gave her a wooden tea set to go with it.
Car "cozy" and Matchbox cars for my nephew, tutorial here.  
Knitted summer halter top #2 (Ravelry link as above). 
Bean bag toss game board, inspired by a Google image search; made by my FIL, painted by me. We use the bean  bags I made for DD#2 last year, and the older kids use small balls (bouncing them off the ground first to make it harder).

This year I'm going to have to get myself organised early - I have so many projects bookmarked, it will take me a few months :-)

Cheers,

Rain, rain, go away

Like the rest of Australia, I am utterly gobsmacked & dismayed by the death and destruction caused by flooding in so much of our country at the moment; I just can't believe the images I am seeing in the media. My heart breaks.  Memories of the 2007 floods here in Newcastle are still very fresh in my mind; it was so viscious but yet tiny compared to the Queensland & Northern NSW situation that I just can't absorb it.

I  have donated to the QLD Premier's Flood Appeal, here, but it seems so little to do.

Little Jenny Wren is having a raffle-style fund raiser, so pop by, donate to the flood appeal and enter the draw if you'd like to win one of her gorgeous hand made dolls.

My thoughts and prayers are with those who have been affected or are currently under threat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


As an aside, I am currently having great difficulties leaving comments on many blogs, so I apologise to the people I normally visit, particularly Dixiebelle, Linda and Little Jenny Wren - I've been trying to leave comments on your blogs for around 6 weeks with no success, they all disappear into the ether!  Very frustrating.

Cheers,

A new year (& a chookie update).

Hello everyone, I hope you have all had/ are having a restful follow-up to the Silly Season :-)

I should be, but somehow managed to get caught up in our annual January Purge & Organise session!  It's just that time of year isn't it? It's always nice to start a new year with an organised home, and hubby usually has some time off at the beginning of the year as well, so we always end up purging stuff and shuffling things around so that our home works a little more efficiently (in theory!).

I thought I'd done a huge linen and clothes purge last year but we somehow still managed to cart three garbage bags full of clothes and linen to the Salvos - I think perhaps it's because I am getting more and more ruthless!  Whilst I could never live with a "minimalist" decorating style, there is a large degree of comfort to be had in only having a minimum number of possessions to be responsible for. 

The pantry was my next stop (wiping over the shelving etc), but I have physically over done it a bit (tsk tsk, I know), so I am now going progressively through my cook books and whittling them down to the essentials. I am amazed by how many books I have which I thought I used often, but which in fact only contain 4 or 5 recipes I actually use regularly, so I am copying them out and passing on the books... although somehow I still can't manage to get all my books to fit into our available shelving.  It doesn't help that I have to find room for another year's worth of Organic Gardener and Earth Garden magazines... ahem.


The Garden

I've been reading all the yearly reflections around the blogosphere lately and have been having mixed emotions about my year - I don't really to go back and revisit it to be honest because I know I'll feel disappointed that so many of my goals weren't able to be achieved due to my poor health.  But, thems the breaks, as they say, and despite my neglect - thanks in part to a prolific lemon tree - we still managed to harvest just shy of 185 kilograms (407 pounds) of produce from our garden.

Part of our first bunch of lady finger bananas.

One of my goals for this year is to not stress myself, so I have no aims for our garden other than to maintain the fruit trees and cultivate greens for chicken feed. Hubby has worked hard during his time off work to get the vegie garden back to looking cared for by weeding, removing spent plants (i.e. nearly everything that was still alive) and mulching heavily.

We had a disastrous end to the year vegie-wise as the La Nina weather-pattern of heavy rains settled in. We have had no flooding here thank goodness, but the constant wet weather rotted my lovely garlic & the potatoes in the ground, and spread viral wilt & fungal disease to almost everything else, so I lost the few tomatoes, beans and curcubits I had managed to get in the ground in spring. At the moment all I have in apart from the herbs & perennials are one Tommy Toe tomato with wilt, one silverbeet (chard) plant, one red kale being eaten by cabbage moth caterpillars and three very sad-looking chilli bushes!

If that weren't bad enough, the worms have abandoned the worm farm, there is an odd chewing pest I can't identify which has defoliated the kiwi fruit vines and the apple trees and the fruit fly this year has also been the worst ever - I am going to have to strip our lemon tree (I have exclusion bags on a few green fruit but can't bag them all), and our entire grape harvest.  There looks to be about 10-15 kilos of grapes on the arbour - our first decent harvest - but I didn't bag any of them (due to being ill) and the fruit fly have stung the lot.  They are even stinging the green passionfruit which is depressing - I would have thought their skins would be too thick for the flies to penetrate. Sigh.  It could be worse though - we could be one of the farmers who just lost everything in the extensive floods around Australia, so that keeps it all healthily in perspective.

Anyway, that brings me to second highlight of 2010 - getting chickens!


The Chooks

Gosh, I can't believe our girls were so tiny when we got them, LOL.  Wasn't Christabelle cute (below)?

Bit different to now; although hard to see here, the gold feathers on her neck are quite stunning:

Jennifer, Christabelle & Charlotte

Crowy, Chloe & Charlotte

We have had a few developments since we brought the two Ancona and one Welsummer pullets home.  After a few weeks we noticed that Miss Five's Ancona chook, Tinkerbelle, was developing much faster than the other, Jennifer, which raised our suspicions. Eventually we got up one morning early in November and "she" was trying to crow, LOL.  The girls quickly dubbed him "Crowy".

A quick call to the breeder and we arranged for a swap, since we can't have roosters in suburbia.  It was great pity actually, as "she" was a gorgeous pet - very pretty and with a really lovely nature, being the most happy to be handled and petted (and the easiest to catch).  The breeder was delighted when we came back with him though, apparently he was turning out to be so good-looking as to be show-worthy and he was going to be kept as breeding stock - something that left me with great peace of mind as I did wonder if he'd end up in the pot!

We swapped him for another Ancona pullet a few weeks younger - now named Chloe - and while we were chatting the breeder revealed that he had a pen of 7 week-old Barnvelders which he had marked as cockerels when they hatched but that he now believed were pullets.  Since he couldn't sell them as either they were going to be "dispatched" - so as you can imagine, I couldn't come home without at least one!

 Chloe

I had assumed that that breeder was sexing the chicks due to colouring when they hatched but I was highly amused to discover that he uses the highly technical wedding-ring-on-a-string method like the old wives tale for sexing unborn babies, LOL.  Anyway, he did it on my "pullet" and assures me it's a girl, so I suppose we shall find out :-)  Regardless, "she" - I've named her Charlotte - is very good looking, with a double-lace pattern on her feathers, so perhaps if she is a he, he might be saved from the pot as well, as Barnvelders are his most popular breed by far at the moment apparently (I gather they were recommended on a couple of popular commercial TV lifestyle shows).

Here she is, she's about 16 weeks old now:

Charlotte

First eggs!

Our second egg-citing development is that we have finally been gifted with our first eggs just this week, by the eldest, Jennifer.  The poor thing was carrying on like a pork chop for days before her first egg; I suppose she knew she was supposed to be doing something, but in the absence of another mature hen she was trying to work out where to nest etc.  I had placed a golf ball in one nesting box, and a wooden egg in the other to try and help things along and although the first one was laid on the floor of the coop, she worked out to use a nesting box for the second egg, the clever girl :-)

Well done Jennifer!

A Homemade Christmas

I ended up making quite a lot of presents for Christmas last year - sitting at a sewing machine is not very taxing! - and organising others to make things for the girls, which was awesome.  Despite that however, we had just finished congratulating ourselves on the almost complete absence of discarded wrapping & toy packaging (I'll confess here, that Santa brought them iPod shuffles, which we loaded with audio books from the library), when we arrived at the in-laws & the girls were inundated with "the usual" from their cousins. Despite having organised them to gift iTunes vouchers, apparently they felt to need to supplement them.  Substantially. Sigh.

Anyway, I took photos of the presents as we made them, and I think I might post them later this week, more for my own records than anything, so that I can find the links to the patterns I used more easily come next Christmas LOL.

The Year to Come

As I've said previously, my plans for this year are nothing but to get well, and that includes stopping stressing about any anti-green (black?) things we do.  Tricia posted recently about how quickly things fall apart when the adult household member/s aren't well, despite how well-intentioned we are, and judging by the responses to her post, it's a common theme.

It's taken a long time, but I am finally ready to (mostly) stop feeling guilty about the occasional take away meal in plastic containers, or not shopping at the markets, or not cooking everything from scratch, and to stop stressing about no longer having a stockpile (nothing was replaced while hubby was doing the grocery shopping - I was grateful that we did have that stockpile though, I must say!) or having the new pressure canner sitting idle because there is nothing to preserve, or have nothing growing in the vegie garden.

This year it's all about "steady as she goes" and trying to live more in the moment; I've been so guilty in the past of worrying about how many things still need doing and how many skills I want to learn to focus on the present.

Change is in the air this year year though, in a good way.  Firstly, my "baby" is off to "big school" with her sisters in a few weeks, and while I am feeling pretty sad about that in many ways (slow down world, you're moving too fast!), it's also an exciting time for her to finally consider herself to be a "big girl".  It's also in many ways an exciting opportunity for me -  to be able make soap and cheese and preserves without a littlie under foot, for example, will be pretty cool!  Not to mention cleaning the house and having it stay clean for several hours at a time!! Woo hoo!

Secondly, my parents have sold up their property and are moving closer to us, yay!  It will be awesome for the girls to have close access to both sets of their grandparents now, not to mention the access I will have to all that craft/gardening/preserving know-how ;-)

Finally, I have taken on the "52 in 52" challenge - i.e. reading 52 books in 52 weeks.  There's nothing energetic or stressful about reading ;-)  For the most part, they will be books I have in my collection - those which I have not read for several years and wish to re-read before I pass them on and the reference books I re-read at least once a year (because I always find something I missed last time!), and not all are green-themed.  I'm not going to commit to blogging reviews of them all, but I might post a brief synopsis & opinion on them for anyone considering reading them.

So, onwards and upwards :-)


Cheers,