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.

Backyard Update

Well, I have been busy in the garden planting and planning but the weather has not been very kind to me (or my plants). We have had temperatures in the high 30s and I have heard reports that we will be hitting 40 by this weekend ...yikes.

One of our bunnies (Peppa) suffered from heat stroke and passed away last Saturday so we have all been extra vigilant with the shade and frozen water bottles for the animals. Zac has worked especially hard at this..checking their water every couple of hours and moving them around the yard. I am very proud of him.

I have some photos of the backyard taken on 31 Jan for our records of where we started. Hopefully next year the backyard will look very different.

This first photo is looking at the back fence. The shade sail is partially over the cubby house because that is where it blew in a windstorm and one of the legs is now busted. The cubby at the moment is where I am storing my mulch and potting mix etc. Notice the plastic toys everywhere..no there was no cyclone...just Ben and Matt.

Second photo is our back corner and garden shed (lovely glare of the shed there lol). The shed is Nige's domain where he stores his tools etc and is due for a massive cleanout but we will get to that later. The back garden has only weeds at the moment. When the rabbits free-ranged (before Max- one of the dogs..not a child... decided to start nipping them) it was full of rabbit burrows and was there favourite place to hang out. Nige has plans for an Olive tree in this garden and some herbs in pots.

Third photo, my passionfruit vine. I am hoping to grow this around the pool fence. Mmmm passionfruit on icecream yummo ...can't wait for that one.

The other corner of the yard with the guinea pig hutch sitting in what will be my second vege patch. I am planning to do a no-dig style garden bed there with layers of newspapr, hay and compost.

A Meyer Lemon Tree and a Kaffir Lime in self-watering pots by the back steps.

Ben watering the seedlings for me. I have planted:

* a capsicum bush,

* three cucumber seedlings only one of which survived the first day

* six mixed capsicum seedlings (only one has survived)
* three watermelon seedlings..all going well.

I mulched with pea straw. They had compressed bales at Bunnings so it was convenient. I plan to buy some bales of hay from one of the local farmers before I start the next vege patch.

Strawberries are still going along nicley..I have one strawberry almost ready for picking. Not quite sure how I will share that out amongst the boys though.

I have moved the worm farm to a shadier spot beside the house and added some more worms. I am hoping they will go a bit better here (also less likely they will be knocked over when Nige does the mowing). At the moment they are nowhere near keeping up with our kitchen scraps.

I told you I had been busy.

Lisa

The Back to Basics Challenge

I have been thinking about leading a simpler more fulfilling life for quite a while now and so to help me get from thinking to doing I have decided to participate in Belinda's Back to Basics Challenge

The challenge is:

"The Back to Basics Challenge for those who choose to accept is to report weekly or fortnightly on either their blog or in comments here on the topics of
Sowing seed or Planting
Planning for The Future - meal planning, the next seasons garden plan, working out storage plans or more long term goals and projects like plans for digging root cellars
Working for the Future - storing food, managing stores, preserving, building that home made cob or solar oven, adding house insulation, saving for manual grain mills etc
Building Community - volunteering, donations, joining an existing community group, forming your own community group, taking a cake to a friend having a hard time, calling someone you just let drift out of your life, etc
Learn a new Skill".

So this blog will be a place for me to record my efforts, challenges and achievements on my path to a simpler life. So firstly this week I plan to:

Sowing Seed or Planting: Dh and I have decided to try and grow a pineapple from the top of a store bought one we ate yesterday. We have a garden bed down the western side of the house that we don't use at all. The land on that side of the house is only just over a metre wide and the fence is only short. The neighbours house and front door is right there too so there is no privacy and we just don't use that area. It is sheltered by the neighbours house so won't be affected by the frosts and apparently pineapples don't require a lot of watering so it will handle a bit of neglect. We will give it a try anyway. At the moment it is wasted space so we have nothing to lose.

We have also bought three strawberry plants that I have in a plastic self-watering trough on the back verandah. One of the plants is already flowering so hopefully we will have some fruit fairly quickly. I think the boys will enjoy that planting (Matt is such a strawberry monster..whole punnets have been known to disappear into his mouth within minutes).

The vege patch currently holds one lone tomato bush (that desperately needs staking). We have some serious weeding to do and also need to get some compost or something to get some nutrition into the soil. I will also need to mulch.

Planning for the Future

I will get back to menu planning this week. It makes such a difference at the end of the day to know what is for dinner and that we have the ingredients to make it. Also helps with the budget.

Working for the Future

I am getting the worm farm up and running again. I will need some more worms. DH knocked over the farm while mowing the backyard and I think most of my worms are now free range.

I plan to build a compost bin too. We have some old bricks around the side so I was planning to build one with them. I will do some research for some plans and get onto that this week. We have all the materials I think I will need in the yard so it should be a frugal project.

Building Community

I am sorting through our cluttered cupboards and I have already given away several boxes of stuff through freecycle. I also have more clothes from my wardrobe to donate to our local St Vinnnies.

I will organise a scrapbook day with my scrappin buddies once a month on a Sunday as well.

This week we also adopted a homeless dog from the vets. His name is Charlie and he is the cutest little terrier cross. Such a great nature too. Our Silky Terrier Selby died last August (he was 14 years old and part of the family). Our other pup Max (a Shitzu x Maltese) was lonely so he has been so happy chasing Charlie around the yard and I often see them curled up together. They are so cute together and I think they will be great buddies.

Learning a New Skill

I would love to learn to knit or crochet so I will try and work on these this week. Nan was a fantastic knitter and always made jumpers for us but her hands are too sore now. Mum used to crotchet as well but her hands don't allow her to do that anymore either.

Okay so those are my plans for the week. Lets see how we go.