What a busy time we have had...

Oh Gosh how busy we have been! With only a few weeks until Christmas I am in a mad frenzy trying to finish, hmm maybe that should be start, the Christmas presents.

I have almost finished two pairs of PJs for the cousins, I still have buttoholes to do, oh how much do I hate buttonholes! I have a lovely old sewing machine that belonged to my Nana and Pa.

It has a button hole feature on it, however it isn't easy to work.


I have made a sweet little flannel pj set in lillac using an old vintage pattern. This is the top minus the buttons

I am also in an apron swap at down~~~to~~~earth I have made a lovely vintage apron from 1948. I used yellow gingham cotton. (sorry I can't get the picture to rotate!)

And finally my eldest has decided he would like to learn how to 'sew' so we spent this afternoon learning how to embroider. How wonderful is the look of concerntration on his face!
I have begun a new blog at crafy and crazy by em as I do alot of sewing and 'stuff' It will be essentially about my sewing, scrapping, knitting and any other creations that come from my fingers. I will even try to put some tutorials in as well!

Have a wonderful week....

My Big 8 Meme

Ali at http://ourpatch.blogspot.com/ has tagged me Meme.

8 Things I Am Passionate About

1. My hubby and kids
2. Family
3. My friends
4. Gardening
5. Food
6. Photography
7. Crafty stuff like knitting, sewing
8. Organic living

8 Things I Want to Do Before I Die

1. Get old with my hubby
2. See my boys grow up
3. Fill a whole 1 acre of land with a food forest and vegie garden
4. Live almost completely self sufficent
5. Buy a farm and get out of the city!!!!
6. Finally finish restoring my 1975 Kombi
7. Make lots of wonderful memories

8 Things I say often

1. I love you!
2. Be Careful - to my Hubby when he leaves for work
3. Bloody Chickens, get out of the vegie garden!
4. What are you two up to? - at the boys, when it is suspiciously quiet
5. Who made this mess? - at the boys

8 Books I've Read Recently

1. Backyard self-sufficiency By Jackie French
2. Solar food dryer by Eben Fodor
3. A lighter Footprint By Angela Crocombe
4. Natural Farming a practical guide By Pat Coleby
5. Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
6. Ten Thousand Acres by Patrica Newell

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over - Gosh that is hard I think I will stick to albums

1. Anything by Janis Joplin!
2. Anything by Jewel
3. Hips don't lie - Shakira - my house cleaning kick off song lol
4. Jefferson Airplane

8 Things that Attract Me to My Best Friends

I don't think I could list off individual things about my friends as each one is so unique and special to me, I think it is their inner beauty that attracts me to them.

Well I've done it *relief* I didn't think I could lol...

(I am not going to tag anyone for this as all the blogs I check have already done it lol.)

Chookie dramas

~ Bathing in the dirt and dust L to R Lucy, Beth and Sally standing, abit ahrd to tell them apart lol

In early August one of our lovely chookie, Sally became sulky, not eating and her crop was the size of a cricket ball and just about as hard as one.

Now if you ever have ever felt a full crop you would know they are ment to be squashy. Sally's was not. Diagnosis? Impacted crop. Twice a day for almost a week I filled the poor girl up with warm oil, massaging it in and hoping the 'stuff' would pass through. Ha this was not to be. So after much googling and consulting our vet, who said he would charge $60 just to see her - yicks! (She only cost $12.60 at the rural store!) I decided Surgery was needed!

Now I won't go into how exactly you do this, as I feel you do need a vets advice and it is rather yucky. But essentially it involves a small incision in the crop (thanks lovely hubby) and removing the muck with tweezers. You would never believe the smell....

It turned out our silly Sally had swallowed some pieces of baling twine(!) which had knotted and could not pass through.

It took her two weeks to recover, I really did think she was at deaths door for several days as all she did was drink water... But no 3 mths later she is fine and back to laying huge eggs.



Incredible! The tiny egg was Sally'e first one when she came back onto the lay.

The latest drama is during this time Lucy came to live with us. Aka little chook. Now our little chookie tractor was ok for two chookies but as we now have 3 (We also have Beth) it is a little squeezie.



So I am embarking on building a chook pen. I have ordered all the wire but I am still waiting on the steel posts (They were stuck at sea for a week, serves me right for trying to save $20 and buying imported crap!!! KARMA!!!)


Anyway they should be here tomorrow so this weekend will be designated to building a chook pen and converting their old house in to raised house with laying boxes. aka the chook hilton lol.
I will post a few pictures once we start building it.

Have a great evening.... and thanks for stopping by!

Cheap living - groceries

My friends are amazed I can fed our family of four for $250 a fortnight. This includes all my groceries, meat and fruit'n'vegies. (Disposable nappies for daycare is not included in this.)

How is it possible? Plan plan plan!

A few days before my grocery day I plan all the meals we will eat for the next 14days. This includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. (One night a f/nite is Take away night much to the kids delight.) I list these on one sheet of paper, whilst at the same time I list all the ingredients on my grocery list, that I will need that I don't have in my stock pile.

When it comes to fruit and vegetables I will only purchase what is in season. We grow alot of our own vegetables but we still purchase some at the shops. For the meat I only purchase what we need, I have on occasions had not written a list and spent more and brought more than I need!

I also make everything from scratch, (not bread) cakes, jams, sauces, pickles. I have several old cook books that belonged to my great grandmother & great aunt and I have found they are an endless source of information. I think this also saves heaps at the check out. One good trick I have is I will buy all the items we need and put the treats at the end of the groceries. When the checkout operator gets to this pile I ask for my total. If I am under my budget I will get them or maybe only afew of them. If I am over (this is very rare!) or on budget I tell them the truth and say I have to leave it as I cannot afford it. I walk away feeling guilt free!!

These are afew of my old cook books, alot of them are hand written in real ink!

Have a great week!

Getting Ready for Christmas

~Our first tomatos for the season ~

Golly Gosh it is only 7 or so weeks until Christmas!

Now for most consumerish types this would not be a problem, but for us this year we decided to make all of our own presents, well as much as we could.

Why you ask?

Firstly to save money, for our farm.

2nd there is no point in giving people 'stuff' they really don't need

Now I should note here that my dear hubby is contributing very little to this venture at the moment (Yes DH it is true!) lol but I really can not see him knitting... So I have been knitting like crazy since August, sewing since October and embroidering since the 1st of November.


Hand-knitted socks are one of my favourite gifts this year!

Now most of our families are recieving socks for Christmas. Hand knitted of course. The single pale blue sock is a geisha sock so you can wear socks and thongs! It is for my sister who will wear thongs all year round! But I have to finish the other sock first.

Socks are very easy to knit, it just takes a while to get used to using 4 or 5 needles at one time. Try googling 'knitted socks' there is some very good tutorials online and gorgeous, gorgeous patterns too.

Next on the list is rice packs. (Instead of wheat). These can be heated or chilled. I started to make them out of plain material but they looked so boring so I decided to embrodier some.

These are two of the rice packs waiting to be ironed and sewn up. (yes the picture is upsidedown lol)

Also on the list is neck coolers, chutneys, jams, cakes and biscuts. And the all time favourite chocolate truffles! (I will post the recipe later)

I really hope our families enjoy our gifts this year, no more boxes of chocolates and gift vouchers from us. Oh and no more chirstmas shopping YAY!

Have a wonderful evening.

Growing potatoes

You haven't had a potato until you have had a home grown potato!

Last year I tried to grow my potatoes in a cage. But I had little success, when the plants all rotted off. The mulch was too heavy and thick and I loved them to much aka too much water. Most amusing though 2 of the 4 plants came back this year!

To create the potato cage prepare a 1m square of soil, pop in your spuds, mulch well, put in steel posts and then put a cage of wire around it. The object of the wire is to keep the mulch in as the plants grown up.

This is last season's cage. There is 2 plants of the right that came back up and a healthy parsley on the left that self seeded.

This year I am trying spuds in a sack. I have found hessian sacks at the fruit shop of $2 each! It is very simple to do - roll down the sacks, add soil, spud and mulch. EASY!

So fair no rotting and I have rolled up the sack and added mulch 3 time since this pic was taken!

This sack contains 2 potato plants... so easy

This week in the garden I am rearranging things to make better use of the the space. I had put in a few plants that were to just stay in that spot temporarily until I had other gardens prepared. So off they went to their new homes. Hubby trimmed the hedge, but I still have to dig over an area in the garden that is compacted and add some compost and the fertilizer that the kids and I collected at my mum's place earlier in the week. Aka cow and horse manure.

I still have to get my melons and pumpkins in. I am leaving them a bit late but we had afew late and nasty frost during spring so I didn't want to put any out. But now we are in the thick of summer I guess I better get around to it. But now it is time for bed oh dear look at the time 11.20pm! Eek

I hope you have a productive and exciting week..... g'nite!

The vegetable garden...

Beans, lettuce, strawberries and mint... yummy!

How things are growing with the recent rain! The cucumber plants have doubled in size, seeds are awakening and showing there first leaves. There is 3 reasons I grow our food.
1 the cost is so much cheaper
2 it is better for us and the enviroment
3 I am happiest in the garden!

I was thrilled to walk out to the car this morning and see the corn tips peeking out of the mulch. Last year I tried corn and it ended up a dismay display of tiny cobs and little to no kernals. Why you ask? Irregualr watering and possibly poor pollination.
I am growing alot more in containers this year as I can not dig up much more yard. I have quickly discovered chooks love sytrofoam! That is why in the picture the boxes are covered up, it seems to deter them.

In these boxes I have tomatoes, sunflowers and more tomatoes growing. The green box in the middle is the carrot box. It is a hydroponic method of growing carrots.

It is concerning how expensive fruit and vegetables are becoming. I was reading an article recently that 50 years ago most families grew their own food. If you did not, you went without as most families couldn't afford the high prices. Now backyards are so tiny that this would be impossible for most families to do, with the increasing cost to food! I wonder how they will cope if the drought continues?

I am currently harvesting - mulberries, lettuce, mint, cos lettuce, broccoli (still!), chives, strawberries, silverbeet AND Eggs!!!

Currently growing - brown bush beans, princess climbing beans, golden corn, pumpkins, zuchinni, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, chickpeas, capsicums, chilli's, red and green lettuce, carrots and peacharines (cross between a peach & nectarine)

Now I am sure I forgotten afew things but that is a good start. Most of winter went to preparing the garden for summer plantings, filling tanks and finding containers. So we are having to buy most of our vege and fruit at the moment. What are you growing?

Have a wonderful afternoon.....

And the rain came down....

Such wonderful wonderful rain fell from the skies Thursday night.

The earth in the gardens was beginning to feel bone dry and the plants were beginning to wilt regardless of how much water we poured onto them.

We recieved 24mm in about 5hours which for Toowoomba is pretty good. At the end of last summer it went for 40 days with no rain. At the time I only had a 500L tank. It was empty so I had to use the kids bath water to water the vegies, luckily they don't ge very dirty. (Please note you should not use greywater in the vegetable garden. Especially on vegies that are eaten raw!

Our kids bath in plain water and I only used it plants such as the pumpkins and the capsicums.)

I find it fasinating that people can come up with clever ideas to save water. I have read several articles & blogs about people using their kitchen water, for the garden. The water is cleaned and filtered though a worm farm, usually in a bath tub and the resulting water is clean enough for the garden. Small amounts of washing liquid must be used and very dirty water is not put through the system, but how clever!

Our shower water is used in the front vege garden and the flower garden. A diverter is connected to the main line out of the shower. This line is then sent to a large storm water pipe, to which a funky purple hose is attached to. Yay no more buckets!! The kids water goes into the vege patch and our water goes to the flowers out the front.

This is our grey water system. It can be removed or turned off if necessary. We had to use such a large pvc pipe to allow for the water to be able to drain out the tub. Otherwise you have a shower whilist standing in 2inches of dirty water. Basically it is just a very large hose that avoids greywater being stored. Oh and no more buckets!!!!

Funny how it only once a precious resource is nearly gone before people understand just how important it is....

The start of my journey

I have always been 'weird' as my husband would say, I have grown my own food since I was 10 and sewn my own clothes since I was 13.

So when I said to my husband lets stop being consumers, get some chickens, grow more food and live more enviromentally friendly he just said 'Yes Dear.' Now as my post will show you, my husband will often say these words, that is why we have a Kombi waiting to be re-painted but that is a whole different story.

So now I have chickens, well there chooks. 3 to be exact, they are either called Henny Penny and little chook or roast, drumsticks and sunday lunch (Not really) depending on how many vegie patches they have gotten into and eaten on me...

This is our chicken tractor made out of an old fence and a dog kennel.

I looked at aquaponics to grow vegies, but the water needed for the system was just too much, so I am starting hydroponics instead. Yes it was another 'Yes dear' moment. It will need slightly less water and all the parts we had already.

We live in a town that has harsh level 5 water restrictions (unlike our neighbours Brisbane who are still allowed outside watering!) Rumours say if we don't recieve decent rain by Christmas, we will be in deep trouble!

These are just a few of the things, I have time to list, that we have brought into our lives which I hope will make a difference to our footprint on the earth. Stay tuned for more!

Thanks for stopping by....