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Hello!

Today was more of an organisational day (tomorrow is the day to collect our niece from the airport) so I didn’t make it into the garden!

I did sit and do some more cards in between the few domestic chores and going out to deliver 3 dozen eggs (which takes AGES when its Ruby, Margie & Shirley, because you just HAVE to stop for a chat. I reckon Jeff thought I was lost)

Anyway – When doing little crafty things, you often get lots of scraps that are annoying to pick up – In the case of the cards its all the backings off the double sided tape.

One of the useful things I picked up in Japan was making a small temporary paper bin – from newspaper or junk mail.

My Japanese friends mainly used these in the kitchen where all the food scraps could go into them – and then straight into the compost if you are using newspaper.

I tried to get a series of photos to show you how they are done.

I want to show you how to fold the pretty seed packets soon too, but will get my niece to help video that as the folds are slightly tricky and I think difficult to convey via still images.

I haven’t tried to explain this via photos before so let me know if it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and I will move on to video!

So – grab a sheet of newspaper

Fold in half (see red line 🙂 )

Fold in corners to middle

Fold one layer of paper up to meet the triangles

and fold the same layer up again to cover the bottom of the triangles

Turn the whole thing over

Fold each side to meet in middle

Fold bottom up to meet the ‘not so triangles’ like you did on the other side

And fold up a second time to match the other side

Open the ‘almost’ box

Squish bottom down to make a flat underside (This is where a video would come in handy, but just fiddle with it! It works out pretty easily!)

Ta daa!

A ready made recycled scrap bin. I find them pretty handy.

A busy couple of weeks coming up, so stay tuned for some new stuff when the girls arrive!

Cheers & Goodnight

 

 

 

I think of “Correct Weight” and I immediately think of horse racing – thanks to my Dad who likes a little flutter on the neddies every now and again!

But in this case, we have a zucchini that weighed in at 4.199kgs!

So congratulations Audrey, who put in a guess that was a teeny tiny one gram out of a perfect guess – 4.200!!! Fabulous! Thank-you to those that had a go.

I will find my ‘quirky memento’ to send off! 🙂

Cheers!

A couple of jars of orange peel had been sitting on my kitchen window ledge for a bit too long, and I was down to the last bit of laundry liquid, so thought it would be a good idea to restock on my cleaning products

The citrus cleaner I use is a ridiculously easy process.

So if I am making something that creates a lot of citrus peel, I just bung them in an old coffee jar, cover in vinegar and let them sit and look pretty until I am ready to strain them out –

Then I store the liquid in a clean coffee jar until I need to top up my spray bottle.  I use it as an all purpose cleaner – it smells nice and I don’t have to worry about odd chemicals when I am using it in the kitchen.

Vinegar is pretty cheap – you don’t need to use an expensive type, so the whole thing is fairly easy on the wallet (Esp since most surface spray cleaners are around the $5 mark)

Laundry Liquid

I am sure a lot of you who follow homesteading/frugal living blogs are aware of people who make their own laundry liquids or powders, or do so yourselves.

Soon after we moved here I was determined to get in touch with my Happy Hippy Self and try to wind back on the spending and chemicals & rah rah rah… I haven’t started tie-dyeing yet, but I am, little by little, moving away from pre-packaged stuff and being a little more self sufficient.

With just a tiny little bit more effort, you can save a bundle.

This is how I make my laundry liquid. The basic ingredients have lasted an eon. In fact – today I used the last of the Lux flakes, from the first box I bought over 4 years ago!!

I have had to replace the washing soda and borax once each.

I did a costing on it ages ago and worked out it was costing me less than $2 to make 10 litres!! A high end laundry liquid here can cost $10/litre. Dunno about any one else, but I am way keen to be spending that spare $98 on something more exciting than laundry liquid!

You need a bucket that has a bit over a 10 litre capacity & a bunch of bottles – preferably with handles.

1 cup Lux (soap) flakes

1/2 cup Lectric Soda (Washing soda)

1/2 cup Borax

Half grated bar Velvet soap (or a pure washing soap)

10 litres water

Optional oil for making it smell pretty (I love using Eucalyptus oil)

Put all your dry ingredients into a pot, along with a litre of the water and bring to boil

Let all ingredients melt and boil well (it will boil over if you don’t keep and eye on it!)

Pour into bucket and add the remaining 9 litres of water – keep stirring it up

Add your oil of choice

Pour into your bottles, leaving a good amount of ‘shake space’ as the mixture will separate after sitting for a while.

It works fine (I occasionally use normal stain remover – we do live on red dirt after all…) Just add a 1/4 cup to your wash. Its half an hour out of my life well spent. 🙂

Enjoy what’s left of your weekends!

Cheers

 

After spending a long time in town this afternoon, this ended up being my lunch – which was so late it might as well be relabelled as a dinner entrée! (Mind you we did a repeat performance of the pumpkin soup tonight, as requested by Jeff who clearly really enjoyed it! Yay me!)

I needed some photos printed. I took delivery of some blank cards & envelopes the other day, as now that I have a nice collection of local images, I had the grand idea to make some cards to add to my market stall

I miss film and proper photographic labs. I really do!

Back in my former life I owned a shop that (in part) developed and printed film. Of course, as digital slowly crept in and film slithered out, the industry changed and people either weren’t printing photos or were expecting super cheap jobs. (Due to some of the bigger chains installing labs and retailing their printing at under the price of what it cost for normal labs to produce a print.) We eventually closed the lab side of things and readjusted.

So, the consequence with digital and people not printing like they used to is the loss of labs with people that know what they are doing when it comes to your printing. I have to drive about 25-30 minutes to take my files to Harvey Norman which is a furniture, computer, homewares shop that happen to do printing as well. Its all booths to DIY and regardless of what you do at home to your files, their system is different and their screens show different again to the final print. There is no person who knows what they are doing attending to the fine tuning of your images.

So instead of this –

I get this –

So honestly I don’t think I got very far today. I plan to call my old lab in Canberra tomorrow to talk to them about sending them my files. At least I know when they are being printed, someone is casting a knowledgeable eye over the process.

I did manage to print some details on the cards and a number of the images will be usable

I found some excellent packs of glassine bags locally to pack the final product in too!

I guess I am quite picky when it comes to the quality of my photographs – (haha – says she while posting photos taken tonight under revolting light!!) I don’t mind paying more to get a better job done, but unless I send away to professional labs, there is no choice in this area.  Home printing is out – Paper and inks are very expensive and the life of the print compared to true photographic paper (that has to go through a wet chemical process) just doesn’t compare.

Anyway – its a little challenge to get it fine tuned and looking good… then the real test will be if people actually buy them! 🙂

I’ll leave you with a few of the images that I plan to use on my first lot of cards!

Cheers!

 

 

 

I am a sucker for animals – there are not many I don’t like. I’d even rather relocate a spider than kill it.

The ones we officially own, like the cat and chickens are spoiled silly. Pretty sure Pip runs the house –

Although he has to put up with small indignities –

The chickens get premium scraps, as well as cakes baked for them –

Seed blocks made for them –

Proper funerals if they fall off the perch-

Admittedly they also have to put up with occasional indignities –

We unofficially share our place with possums –

And a cheeky rabbit –

We had an exciting drama once with a 4 foot tiger snake that decided our bathroom was the best place to hang out!! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I came home and saw it gliding into the bathroom!! Pip was on the bench just watching it and I was desperately hoping he wasn’t going to pounce, as I was going to have to go after him and that wasn’t going to end well for any of us!

I saw it go under the bath, so I went in and scooped up the cat, closed the door and ran to wake up Jeff (who was on nightshift) so I could share the news. Bleary eyed he dutifully came to the bathroom, we opened the door and there’s me grovelling about on the floor with a torch looking for the damn snake – and then I look up! Draped over the towel rack like an ornament!!

Well, you can’t have a bloody great poisonous snake cavorting about the bathroom, so I did some phoning about to get a snake person in to catch and relocate it.

They eventually arrived (two and a half hours later – and with only one loo in the house, I had to make other arrangements as even though I like snakes, I wasn’t ready to sit on the toilet with it lurking nearby!) From memory it only cost about $40 for the mother & son team to come in and do their thing! Money well spent and we immediately blocked up the offending hole in the bathroom!

Of course we get lots of interesting insects – ranging from your usual grasshopper-

through to the weird and wonderful –

But todays unusual animal drama came from a lizard. There are a lot of them scampering about out the back at the moment.

I was finally getting around to cleaning up the back veranda, and I found this poor fellow stuck to a bit of packing tape that was hanging off a box!!

It probably took about an hour of delicate work with a cotton bud and a jar of warm water – I dunked him in a few times…

I think I would have cried if I killed him, so we took it pretty slow – and the trick was keeping the newly unstuck limbs from resticking themselves on again! He could feel the freedom coming along and got quite wiggly (understandably) once a few feet were loose.

I thought he may like his new found freedom in the herb garden among the oregano-

Well that was my good deed for the day – I even got the veranda done (with a bit of help from the wonderful husband)

Hope your day was great!

Cheers

 

Meet my Great Aunt Ruby!

I know a number of you may be familiar with Ruby via some posts Mavis put up on “One Hundred Dollars a Month”

My aunt is an amazing woman – she is 99 years old, lives by herself, keeps herself fed via a fabulous garden and is an all round wonderful person to know.

I thought I might reserve Tuesdays to write an anecdote or two about Ruby, her life and stories from way back. (Yes – Tuesday – are you singing the song yet ?? 🙂 )

While Ruby’s daughter, Margaret and myself help out in the garden, Ruby does an awful lot of it herself. It gives her the independence to be able to trot up the back and ‘get herself a feed’

During a recent afternoon cuppa together and chat, Jeff and I discovered that Ruby had never tried Fairy Floss before!! (Cotton Candy) How is it possible in nearly 100 years that someone hasn’t given fairy floss a go??

Ruby is a nurse from way back – and hospital matron! She informed us that she couldn’t believe people were eating what looked like cotton wool! She knows what cotton wool gets used for and eating it just wasn’t something she could bring herself to do!

Recently at Steam Fest, I found a van selling fairy floss, so I cheekily bought a packet then took it around to Ruby. She giggled so much, but she is such a good sport about the mad things I ask her to do, she dutifully tried it to please me!

After inspecting it carefully and working up some courage, Ruby tried some fairy floss for the first time in her 99 years!

She said it was nothing like she expected and it wasn’t bad at all. But she didn’t need to have it again! 🙂

I suspect Great Aunt Ruby is happier with the fresh goodness of her garden than sugary carnival food!  Probably why she is still with us!

Cheers

 

I am not generally a list person. But today I thought I would give it a go as I am pretty much an aesthetically relaxed procrastinator so I thought it would help.

Plus crossing things off is quite satisfying.

I had been meaning to make up some cherry ice-cream for a while. I had bought some cooking cherries locally and froze what I hadn’t used.  My parents bought us an ice-cream maker for Christmas! (I think they were playing favourites here as I do like ice-cream, but Jeff has an addiction)

I made a traditional vanilla ice-cream base recipe and then just poured the pureed cherries in.

The final colour turned out pretty fabulous!!

It taste tested up really well 🙂 But it has to freeze overnight to be ‘proper ice-cream’ (waiting – waiting – I wonder if its ok to have ice-cream for breakfast?)

It was a beautiful day outside and I couldn’t let that sunshine go to waste without putting a couple of loads of laundry through –

It was a good excuse to get out of the kitchen a few times and soak up the sun.

I got into those windfall apples and rescued what I could. Even the dodgy apples still have plenty of good bits to use. We have codling moth unfortunately that we haven’t got under control yet. At least they mostly burrow to the core so they are easy to cut out.  This one was a bit more manky looking –

But I still got plenty out of it –

It was hard eyeing off the blue skies out the kitchen window, I wanted to be in the garden, but I knew the tomatoes were going feral, so I had to sort them out too.

I used a good amount in a slow cooked meal. I thawed out some stewing steak last night and added a couple of onions and a mix of beef stock, mustard powder and a liberal helping of my plum-Worcestershire sauce. (one of those make-it-up-as-you-go-along dishes!) I know these recipes call for browning the meat & onions first, but I am a huge fan of not adding to the workload or dishes – so, into the pot altogether at once!

It worked out really tasty, which is lucky because it is going to be dinner tomorrow night too.

The rest of the tomatoes got sorted – either chopped and frozen or given to the chickens. I did not even glance at the tomato plants when I was in the garden!! I don’t want to know what’s ready to pick until tomorrow or the next day!!

Eventually I made my way down to the beach, but there was less kelp than yesterday.

I was strong and stayed away from the shells

Funny thing was, as I was walking up the beach picking up lumps of kelp I could hear a conversation coming up behind me. I thought… that’s nice. Friends out for a stroll on the beach. Ha – one woman on a phone. She walked all the way along the beach above and back and she was still on the phone! I felt a little sorry for her. I guess I love it that I completely unplug when I leave the house.  I see a walk on the beach as a way to unwind and just be with a friend or your own thoughts for a change, rather than organising those busy lives of ours!!

Anyway – I found it easy to fill two bags with kelp. There is a lot of grassy seaweed on the Wynyard beaches which makes fantastic mulch. (But there are a couple of girls coming to stay in April and that is a perfect job to get them to help me with -saving that task up for later)

I was a bit naughty and put the bags in the car 🙂

If you live by the sea and are allowed to collect kelp – this is how I make my ‘kelp juice’

Then your vegetables can grow big and strong –

Recipes below if you are interested!

Have a great day!

 

Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream

300ml milk

pinch salt

1/2 cup castor sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence (or 5cm piece vanilla bean)

1 egg, beaten

250ml cream

Combine milk, salt, sugar, vanilla into saucepan – cook over medium heat until nearly boiling.

Gradually stir half the milk into the egg – stirring

Add all back into the pot and cook over low heat until mixture thickens slightly.

Refrigerate  – chill well.

Mix cream in with wisk and pour into ice-cream maker to  do its thing.

(This is where I added in the cherry mixture. Raspberry is next on my list!)

 

Mostly Made Up Slow Cooked Beef recipe.

1 kilo stewing steak – cut into chunks and coated in flour

600gms chopped tomato

two thickly sliced onions

Broth: Mix:

1 cup beef stock

1 teaspoon mustard powder

1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

Mix all together, splash more Worcestershire Sauce in and add some garlic salt.

All into oven at 100 deg. C (or slow cooker if you have one)

I did this one for about 4-5 hours and thickened at the end with a bit of cornflour, served with rice.

PS 😀 😀

 

 

Despite my pessimism about the weather and a chilly start – it was a gorgeous sun drenched day, with minimum wind! Sometimes Mother Nature gets it exactly right!

I found my spot and parked the car and of course grabbed the camera and dashed down to the beach! All that kelp!!! (yes yes – the sunrise was quite lovely, but I was making plans for a return to stock up on kelp for the garden!)

By then I was sufficiently awake enough to start unpacking the car and setting up.  I would like to take a moment to let you know that Jeff piked out on me and stayed home!! The advantage to this is he is not wandering the market unsupervised spending the money I am trying to make. The downside  was at the end having to cross my legs a bit! 🙂 (The public loos (toilets) are waaaay down the other end of the market)

One of the regular stall holders that I have gotten to know came and helped get my gazebo up – I can do it myself, but its quicker with more hands of course! One of the nice things about this area – friendly helpful people – although I must admit the man in question did tease me about actually turning up today!! He thinks I am a fair weather person!! I would totally agree!!! If you had experienced having a market stall on the foreshore when the wind was howling, the rain was coming in sideways and unexpected hail in summer – then you would think it was perfectly reasonable to pull the covers over my head and stay firmly at home!

Today was one of the more perfect days!

There were lots of people out and about today, but not so many reaching into their pockets to spend.

I was really pleased though, to offload almost all the boxes of vegetables that I brought with me. The jams & sauces keep, so no drama and less cooking over the next couple of weeks!

I also put a nice big jar filled with parsley on the table and offered it free to people who stopped to chat or buy. I have so much parsley I am happy for it to be used, and a small free thing cheers people up I reckon!

I love meeting new people & chatting to the regular stall holders that I have gotten to know. I have made new friends with a couple and their young daughter who moved to Tasmania in their old bus less than three weeks ago and I have already run into them about 5 or 6 times. I am wondering if I should try to convince them I am not actually stalking them! 😀

People watching is fun, and customers are varied but mostly friendly and chatty. One lady made me chuckle a little today as she wanted some of my cherry tomatoes… I was offering that people could fill a bag for $2 (and telling them not to be shy about stuffing it as full as it would go)  Anyway, she only wanted a few unripe ones, so she filled the bag about a quarter full or so and asked how much… 50 cents I say confidently. Her face fell and she spent the longest time trying to decide what to do!! I thought it was a pretty good price (hey we are talking organic here too!) Maybe I should have just said to take them gratis!! Sometimes I think of the best thing to do too late!

By 2pm, everything had died down, so I packed up as fast as I could (remember – crossing my legs now) and drove literally across to road to see my Great Aunt Ruby, as its tradition for me to drop in after the market and have a cuppa!

I caught her cat napping in the sun (perfectly reasonable for someone who is nearly 100 years old!) So I dashed past with a breathless “Hi Ruby  – Its Lisa – I need your little girls room right now!!”

Once that was sorted I could give her a big hug and catch up. The darling had cooked me lunch!!!

Everything from her garden fresh!! Oh did that go down well!!!  Of course we finished up with coffee and sponge cake before I took my leave to get home and unpack the car. (A job almost as bad as folding washing, but not one I can avoid – pretty sure Jeff would say something about having to drive to work with boxes of sauces and market tables in the car with him…)

It was nice to sit down with Jeff and count up all my loot – $130 today which turned out a lot better than I had supposed so was totally worth getting out of bed early and spending a day not in the kitchen!

A quick wander about the garden is necessary – just to see what is happening. Jeff had done a lot of work weeding and trimming trees etc. Then I saw someone – who shouldn’t have been – in my vegetable garden!!! Bad Chook!

After throwing the chicken back over the garden fence I ate a bean –

and picked the last small corn cob to discover it had about 20 fat kernels  – so I ate those too! So sweet – they just explode in your mouth!

I hope your weekend has been a lot of fun

Cheers

 

 

After a wet, howlingly miserable day that forced me into lighting the fire for the first time this season, Tasmania chose to say goodnight with a spectacular sky.

So I grabbed my camera and dashed across the highway so I could get some photos to share.

Enjoy.

 

Clearly I didn’t think I had quite enough fruit and vegetables to sort out, so I picked up 3kgs of distressed banana’s to add to my list of “things to chop”

Well, I couldn’t help it. I recently made a couple of banana/raspberry bread loaves and they were stonkingly good. Pretty sure we needed more. (Will add this recipe at a later date)

Since the raspberry harvest this season was fabulous – I have a freezer stuffed with packs of frozen raspberries. Brilliant to be able to just make any raspberry item that takes my fancy at any time.

Unfortunately what took my fancy included bananas that I didn’t have!

So I peeled and mashed my box of banana’s (note – peels chopped and will be fed to the rose bushes as I read somewhere about that being good for them) and bagged them up to join the raspberries in the freezer to cook at a later date (After all – my food processing day had hardly begun!)

It wasn’t raining, so I set the stall out the front again. Funny thing, when I checked it an hour or so later there was a random dollar in the jar but nothing  had been taken!

I have two theories:

1.  Someone thinks I am busking.
2. Someone short changed me yesterday and has conscientiously made the effort to pull up and give me my dollar.

I am good with both these theories.

Todays total take was $11.90 😀

I am a bit puzzled about the 90 cents, but I have decided it goes with the sign that says “take what parsley you need and donate something” 🙂

I finished my current lot of tomato sauce, filled the dehydrator with apples again, pre made dinner for two nights – and then decided to get on with the chillies!

 

I really don’t know how I ended up with so many varieties. I don’t think I pay attention to a lot of the things I put in the ground – but its a lovely surprise when random things grow. Like those round fat chillies! They were meant to be normal capsicum!

This time I ‘suited up’ to tackle the chopping and deseeding part. I suspect a lot of my friends got sick of my whinging and whining about stinging hands for three days after the last effort – seriously – chillies are diabolical!!

How awesome is the colour tho??

Happily there will be enough chillies there to make up another batch of sweet chilli sauce – there is a market on Sunday which I am aiming to get to if the weather is agreeable.

I don’t think my dinners are really that interesting all the time to bore you with – but I can’t tell you how good it was to sit down this evening to a couple of home made hamburgers. (I had forgotten about lunch so was a bit peckish by dinner time!)  As I mentioned somewhere in an earlier post, we get out beef locally, and its great having the (mostly) home-made/grown bits and pieces to make the patties and build up the burger!

Hope your day was great

Cheers!