Wednesday 21 December 2016

An Invigorating Simple Living Weekend

Last weekend was one of those rare ones: a weekend where we had no obligations and we could do what we wished. Of course we did what we do best; work and play together.

We did a few odd jobs around the house that had been bugging me, like sweeping and mopping the floors and cleaning the bathroom. Those tasks may be thought of as unpleasant but are very rewarding when they are finally complete.  Of course there was many swims in the pool in between tasks!

On Saturday morning we did our normal grocery shopping and visit to the markets. We got a bit distracted and bought some ingredients for beer making, and also some tools from the Yandina markets. I got a machete which was great after a bit of sharpening. It is a very useful tool for when we need to start to clear our place. OH got a old fashioned 'dutch hoe' for weeding. It is very hard to explain but they are great tools. They have two cutting edges so you push and pull it just under the soil to cut the weeds off at the roots.

We also got to make some damn delicious food. We had a go at making some fresh pasta for the first time. There is a pasta maker at the house so we borrowed it. What a revelation those things are! Previously the one time we did it by hand we ended up with the thickest pasta you have ever eaten. It was difficult to fit in your mouth. Of course we made way too much so we have some in the freezer for the next little while.

Our awesome pasta

I made some of Rhonda's basic muffins with mashed banana added in. They are ok, but I think they need a little vanilla extract to give them the right flavour.

Basic Banana Muffins

OH also picked a HEAP of basil from his work. So as we were running out of pesto we made another 6 jars, which should last us at least 6 months. I love using pesto on pizza, and of course on homemade pasta with heaps of parmesan :)

The recipe I used is:

Chop two handfuls of walnuts in the food processor. Then fill the processor loosely with basil leaves, two garlic cloves and add salt and pepper (I added four "circles" of salt, which is me grinding it in a circle at a constant sort of speed). Then process. While processing, dribble in the oil for about 30 seconds or until you get the consistency you want. Then place in a clean jar. We keep ours in the freezer, because we have a very large one and saves us on gas to heat up the water bath canner.


Here they are, chilling out with the bread

OH also made a spelt loaf by hand, which was great. We had that for dinner on Sunday night with our fresh pasta, with a sauce of fresh tomatos from OHs work, basil and parmesan. How delicious. I think the most satisfying food is some that you have made yourself from scratch. Or even better, grown from scratch.

Yum yum!

We also repotted three of our citrus trees. Some of them were starting to look a bit tired so it was time for a bit of love. Last time we put mostly garden soil instead of citrus soil so we'll see if they perk up a bit better.

What a satisfying and productive weekend. Bring on two long weekends in a row!


Thursday 10 November 2016

Vege Patch Update

Due to how busy we have been on weekends (and the fact that I am only at my parents half of the week) my vege patch is looking pretty sad. The tomatoes are going great and the celery is shooting up just fine, but the rest of the garden is struggling a bit. My little lettuce seedlings that have popped up from the compost are growing pretty slowly. I think I might do a pH test next week and see if it is off.

My zukes have pretty much had it, I don't think they get enough air flow in the bed so they are really suffering from mouldy leaves. So I probably won't try to grow them again. Here are some photos:

These are some of my tomatoes


This is the celery patch


This is the other end of the bed where I left the rocket. The tomatoes are good here but nothing else.


Next step is to finally grow some seedlings and start filling the gaps! I wish our seed raising bed was back in action, maybe that's something we can do this weekend.

Monday 24 October 2016

Vege patch update

Last weekend was a quiet one for us, I spent Saturday morning cutting all of my hair off to donate to charity and OH took a few big loads of stuff to the dump.

That's my hair!

When I finally made it up the coast we went for a swim in the pool (first for this summer!). I'm not sure what we did that afternoon, but it must have been nice :)
On Sunday it was pretty dreary and cold. Definitely no swimming! We had a very lazy morning (except for one dump trip) and after we made some bread and cake we helped OHs mum to paint her house. It is a big job but it is looking great. We also helped them by pruning their mandarin tree and harvesting some bananas for them. We got 3 large bunches in total and they are hanging under our house, away from the bush turkeys.



My little vege patch is looking a bit bare after taking out the rocket. The tomatoes are pretty slow, I think its because it's been fairly chilly. Some of them had blossom end rot so it is a good sign that I need to put some lime down to give a calcium boost. I hope that is what they need to get moving.



But I do have a little zucchini on my Black Beauty plants! After all male flowers it is a relief. Hopefully it stays there.



I planted some seeds today too. I have put in lettuce, marigold and silverbeet. That should help fill out the bed a bit. I've used coloured straws to mark out the different plants. Green for lettuce, pink for silverbeet and orange for marigold.



Here is a fabulous sunset we caught at home, just in time. Have a nice week!



Monday 17 October 2016

Finally finished the inside of the house!

The inside of the house is all finally packed away, including the downstairs. Now we have full use of the house. On Saturday we went to a swamp boat race at OHs work, which was great fun. All the boys were so competitive and some of them jumped in the dam to rescue their boats multiple times! We brought the dogs and they ran around like mad things all day, chasing the boats and swimming out to lick unfortunate competitors fetching their boats.

On Sunday after a lazy morning we got stuck into it. We had to clear out everything in a staged manner, so we could fit more stuff in! First was the carport, which we had laid out a heap of new stuff that was bought by the owner. After packing that away, we finally got the owners car in the carport, where it will probably stay until he gets back. It is good to get it off the driveway. After that, we rearranged the downstairs (including a big pile of OHs stuff) to make some more room for other stuff from upstairs. We moved some of our bigger furniture items downstairs, like a spare desk and TV. Then we finally emptied the spare room. Luckily most of it was already in plastic tubs, so it was mostly a matter of carrying them downstairs. This is the room before:





And this is the room after:





We keep some of our old shop stock and random things like ski jackets in the spare room normally so they went there again. It is good to have all of the inside of the house sorted out! We have full use of the loungeroom and can entertain guests if we need. We finally vacuumed and mopped the WHOLE house fully since we moved in. Took a long time, but still, Hooray!

Next job is clear the driveway of the big piles of rubbish we have managed to make. That will be a relief when we can get all of it to the dump. Then we have to work on the ute a bit so that will probably take up most of next weekend.

Have a good week!

Tuesday 11 October 2016

October Update

It's been a busy few weeks (as usual) and now I am driving between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast a bit more. Since last post we attended a wedding and hung out with a friend who lives in Canada. It was nice to spend a few days (mostly) off. Last long weekend OH is off to an event with his stepdad, so I spent a bit of time weeding and cooking delicious food for myself, because I can!

Three weekends ago we cleared and cleaned the back and front decks. We did this just in the nick of time for our guests the next weekend. We have already used the areas a lot so the work was worth it. Here is the back deck now (forgot to take before photos):









And here is the front deck before:





It had way too many sets of furniture on it, so it felt cluttered. Here is after:





On Sunday OH went to help cut a tree down at his Dads and I pottered around all day. My little vege patch at my parents is going very well, the tomatoes are starting to flower and so are the zucchini. I harvested a couple of little zucchinis and made some delicious fritters, the recipe for which is here. There are also tiny tomatoes growing too! Here is a photo of it currently:



Have a nice week! I will post again soon!

Sunday 11 September 2016

Out of the rental!

Last weekend we have been moving house. We hired a 3 tonne truck for the weekend and did two full loads. Our chickens and the coop went up in the ute with the trailer, which I drove one of the days. Since I have been at work last week, I left the house in total disarray! OH has been busy working, organising the furniture and working in the garden. I am excited to see what he has been up to.

This weekend was spent getting the rental ready for handover. After a full day of cleaning and moving our housemates stuff, we were finished. Today we had a day off (sort of...) and it was great. It will be nice to be able to chill out after all of the work is done. We are gearing up for another few busy weekends now.

In the rental garden we picked one last harvest. We picked beetroot, snowpeas, kale and a variety lf leaves. It was nice to get a last couple meals out of it.


In the past few weeks we also harvested some cabbage and kale, for the freezer. Here they are blanched and ready to go.



It is exciting being able to grow enough food to freeze too.

I will miss the garden. My new garden at my parents has totally different soil so will be a different learning experience. Some of the last things we learnt at the rental was that snowpeas like our new trellis system, which was rio with bird mesh. 


The strawberry patch went really well too. This is it after we pillaged the best plants to go to the next place.


And here is the garden as we left. A lot of the plants had gone to seed.





This is my garden at my parents as it is now. It is chockers with tomatoes and zucchini. Bring on summer!


For my birthday OH got me a flash pair of secatuers and a harveseting knife. They are very practical and great to use. They are the best present ever.


I have also got a couple new books I can't wait to get into. In order to help us at the new place, we picked up these two books:


They are particular to our area so will be a great resource now and into the future. I also bought Permaculture Deisgn: A Step by Step Guide by Aranya which I can't wait to really get stuck into, until I can get myself to a design course!

On to bigger and better things!

Saturday 27 August 2016

Under The House

This weekend was spent cleaning under the house. It had become a dumping ground for years of hoarding and broken appliances. It was also a source of odour that was wafting up the stairs, so it had to be dealt with. Here are the before photos. This is looking down from the stairs





And this is the laundry area to the right



This is looking back from the laundry area towards the garage





And here is the area to the right of the garage door.





This is looking back at the staircase



This is the carport outside. We had already moved a bit of stuff out of here.



These are the after photos. Looking at the stairs:



There was a really grotty couch in front of the little door which we couldn't even see. I suspect that was one of the main smelly culprits.

Looking from the stairs:



Looking back towards the laundry from the garage door:



We stacked all of his stuff better and threw a lot of empty boxes, which made a lot more space. Here is his stuff all packed up:



And the carport now:



All that stuff on the floor are tools that will be sorted and packed away. This is the area to the left of the garage door:



This took us a full days work. We were very exhausted and had a well deserved afternoon off! Here is the stuff that was discarded from downstairs:



We sorted it into piles: general waste, steel, cardboard and wood. Luckily we are borrowing a very large trailer from a friend. So two general waste and one steel load later the piles look like this:



This work was well worth it. Now it smells less (we think) and there is room for some of his furniture from upstairs that we won't be using and there is a place for all of OHs tools. Not sure what next weeks job will be, it will either be moving our stuff or finishing off some small things in the house.