Better Than - Official Video Clip

We saw the John Butler Trio and Mama Kin in Tamworth during the Festival. It was an amazing show.

My hubby has decided he would really like to learn the Banjo after hearing JB play.

I will stick to listening and grooving along.

"Life's not what about whats better than"

Lisa

Op Shop Finds

Hello again. Two posts in one day ...don't fall off your chair.

I just wanted to share my op shop purchases from yesterday's excursion over town.

My first stop was the Lifeline shop and I was amazed at how many people were there coming and going. Certainly a lot more than the last time I was there. Maybe more people are getting the message to shop secondhand.

The little wooden bowl is for a fruit bowl and was a bargain at $2.50. I think it will look lovely with green apples in it but having just been to the supermarket and noticing that said green apples are $8.99 a kilo that might have to wait a while.

The four picture frames ranged in price from 50 cents to $1.50. I am collecting various frames and painting them all white for my photo wall. I am really excited about this project and can't wait to finish it.

That sweet little handpainted spice rack was $2.50 and I have the perfect spot for it inside my pantry door. Organising the pantry is one of my projects for this month so it was a great find.

The pretty beaded necklace was $4 and the set of crotchet doilies $3.

My second stop was at St Vinnies.

My local Vinnies has bags of lace offcuts for $3. I grabbed a bag with visions of scrapbook projects in mind.

The framed pictures were $2 each. I bought them for the frames and plan to replace the pictures and hang in my kitchen.

The two skirts were $4 each and they just looked so lovely and cool hanging in the door that I couldn't resist them.

The last item was this sweet framed piece.

Isn't it gorgeous. Love the frame and the sweet lace and embroidery are so pretty. All for the bargain price of $1. Now to find somewhere to hang it.

My first project with my new purchases was cutting and dyeing the doilies. These are huge in scrapbooking at the moment and look so cute in bright happy colours.

I decided to dye them in a jar of water with a few drops of reinker. It worked great for my purposes but of course it is not colourfast so for anything you plan to wash don't use this method.

Here are some of my doilies soaking.

And here are my cute little blue doilies drying on some paper towel.



The colour I used was Taken with Teal which is quite a dark colour. Diluting it in water to dye obviously reduces the colour intensity a lot as once they finished drying they turned out a pretty baby blue. I can't wait to use these on a project and of course I will share when I am finished.

Thanks for stopping by

Lisa

New Beginnings

Almost two years to the day since my last blog post. I wonder where that time has gone and what we have achieved.

My vegetable gardens were pretty much disastrous - turns out I have a brown thumb and caring for a wee baby and a vege plot trying to cope with 40 degree days did not work out. I will try again though and I have planted out the back gardens again. I have several tomato plants from my dad together with two that grew themselves (and they are the healthiest looking tomato plants I have ever had). I have put in a few cucumbers, capsicum, strawberry plants, parsley, oregano and some Garlic Chives from Mum which I can't wait to try in my potato bake.

The worms in the worm farm died (or were set free by some young backyard explorers), so it has been set up again this time on the back verandah. I have started with 1200 worms. Apparently, 1000 worms per family member are required to keep up with food scraps - that is 6000 worms. Might give backyard composting a go again to try and keep up. I hate throwing food scraps in the bin when I know there are alternatives.

I have been thinking a lot over the past few months about what I want to achieve this year for myself, my family and community. I think a lot of the past two years I procrastinated or didn't do things (such as the vege patch and planting) because I really wanted to move the family to an acreage where I thought we could lead a "simpler life". Turns out we really would be better off staying put. Three of my four boys attend school and are heavily involved in sports. I myself teach scrapbooking and cardmaking classes and my hubby works fulltime in town. Most of our days would be spent driving back and forth and not living the ideal vision in my head.

Much better to stay where we are, start growing some of our food, reduce our electricity usage, reduce use of the car, buy secondhand where possible and start living my vision now instead of waiting for that mythical block in the country. There is so much we can do now that really I lose track so I am hoping writing here will help me focus and define what I really want and how to get there.

So yes, dear blog I am committing to writing here once a week (gotta be realisitic here) and working towards refining my vision of our simple life and getting busy with the many projects bubbling away in my mind.