Slow Living Essentials - May 2013

I originally started this blog in July 2012 after being inspired by Christine at Slow Living Essentials where she wrote about "Slow Living". One thing lead to another and life got in the way and I didn't get around to posting any monthly updates and neglected the blog after four posts.  Then in April this year I felt inspired again and I picked up where I left off and started posting pictures and stories about Simple Living.  I created this blog separate to my normal kids and life blog Our Everyday Life in Pictures so I could focus and record those things related to simple living.  So here you have it nearly a year after I started this blog here is my first recorded "Slow Living" month that is going on the blog.  I'm a huge reader of everyone else's stories so made sure I blog hopped and it's always so inspiring.

NOURISH: Make and bake as much as possible from scratch.

I tried out Rhonda's biscuits this month which were fantastic and I wrote about them in this post here.  

I made stock for the very first time using the slow cooker and also made Rhonda's Down to Earth Chicken.

We made this bread a few times this month for our breakfast toast and I wrote about it here.

PREPARE: Stockpile and preserve.

I made chicken stock for the first time and froze it in containers.  I continue to make spaghetti bolognese in the slow cooker using this recipe and freeze 3 portions for future meals.

 I also made enough pumpkin soup for a few days worth of lunches as it has been rather cold and wet lately.

 

REDUCE: Cut down on household waste by re-using, re-purposing and repairing.

Passed on some toys and a couple of kids DVD's to the neighbours little girl.

GREEN: up our lives. Start (or continue!) using homemade cleaners, body products and basic herbal remedies. The options are endless, the savings huge and the health benefits enormous.

I continue to use vinegar in my bucket of water to wash the floor tiles and this has been working well.

GROW: plant/harvest. 

Planted garlic, sugar snap peas and bok choy in our third veggie patch and we have been eating lettuce from the garden every day on school lunches and some dinners.

CREATE: to fill a need or feed the soul.

I purchased the first edition of "The Art of Crochet" on sale for $2.95 which came with a crochet hook and two balls of wool a DVD and the Week 1 instructions.  We (my 7 year old and myself) watched the DVD on how to get started.

DISCOVER: Feed the mind by reading texts relevant to current interests.

This month have discovered lots of interesting websites linked through links on creative simple living.

ENHANCE: community:

Helped out in James' class for literacy rotations and also assisted with their class excursion to the Rural Discovery Day which was held at the Exhibition Grounds and was a really interesting day.

 

ENJOY: Life! Embrace moments with friends and family. Marking the seasons, celebrations and new arrivals are all cause for enjoyment. Share a moment to be remembered from the month here.

I went out to dinner to our local tavern with my two girlfriends for a meal and some laughs.

I also make a monthly Baking Day in the Country with my friend Karin where we try out recipes from the "The Homemade Pantry" .  You can read about it here and here.

Baking in the Country - Month 2 - May 2013

Last month my friend Karin and I made a date to catch up and do some baking out of "The Homemade Pantry" book which I wrote about here.  We decided to catch up once a month and go through recipes, have coffee, (many) and lunch and spend the day together which is really enjoyable.  Today was our second baking day and we made "Maple Popcorn" which was sooooo good, a slice with oats, nuts, sultanas, chocolate etc. which was a no bake slice and I made minestrone soup for lunch (I took my Thermomix with me) which cooks the soup for you without stirring.  The soup was good because it rained all day so it's nice to be warmed up with hot soup.  We had a lovely day together and the kids were pretty thrilled after I picked them up from school and had the Maple Popcorn for afternoon tea.  We had left over Minestrone Soup for dinner tonight which was quick and easy for me and early bedtime for my two kids as they are exhausted and to think we have got to get through another 3 weeks before school holiday....it's going to be a long 3 weeks as James is exhausted more so than Sienna.  Here's some pictures of the Maple Popcorn and Karin was very creative with her red cardboard and we made little cones to put the popcorn in for the kids.

Everything old is new again

Years ago I used to cross stitch night after night and I loved it and it would be nothing to sit in front of the TV from 8.00 pm to 1.00 am with my embroidery floss, pattern and stitch away.  I was also into quilting and have made a couple of quilts, wall hangings etc.  Time moves on and 2 kids later, different interests and aging eyes I stopped doing cross stitch and quilting didn't really go with my change in home decorating from "country" to "modern".  I'm at the computer a lot with photo editing, photo book projects, blogging, reading blogs, research etc. and decided that I wanted to do some sewing again after being totally inspired by Elise's quilt making efforts.  This girl amazes me that she picks up a craft, sees a few tutorials and runs with it whereas I like to go to a class, learn how to do something and then do it.  I like the class because of the interactive like minded people and it's an enjoyable social outing as well.

All that aside Elise's quilts have inspired me to make a triangle quilt for no particular reason other than a TV blanket.  I actually want to make this crochet blanket that Christine at Suburban Jubilee made (I told you everything old is new again) however that could be a 3 year project and sewing a quilt would be an immediate 2 month project so I thought I would start with that.  I headed off to the local quilt shop which has been there for over 20 years and bought some fabrics to start a little quilt.  I went with "grey and blues" in mind but they didn't really have anything that I wanted in those tones and it was nearly school pick up time so I just bought some pinks and blues to start with.

I also recently found my step by step instructions on how to cut the quilting fabric again so after about 2 minutes all of this came back to me again.  One thing that I loved was using this step by step called "half square triangles" to get two triangles sewn together from a square rather than sewing each triangle piece by piece.  I am used to running the thread in between starting sewing once piece and bringing the next piece to start sewing rather than starting, cutting, each individual triangle or square so that was okay but making 2 triangles from the one square sewn together saves heaps of time and was great as I just ran 6 squares one after the next then turned them around and sewed the other side and then cut them on the mat.

Here's to the everything old is new again and who would have thought that I would be making a quilt in 2013?  Stranger things have happened I guess like owning chickens, making my own jam and growing vegetables.  

Apple Pastries for Dessert

The other night when I made Quiche for dinner I made the pastry from scratch and it made two disc's of pastry so one was used for the Quiche and a couple of nights later I turned the other pastry into little Apple Pastries with home made vanilla ice cream.  I just used "pie apples" which is apples in a tin and mixed some Cinnamon and a little bit of brown sugar and popped them into the Pastries or as Alana refers them as "Pop Toasties" and cooked them in the oven.  I also sprinkled a little bit of raw sugar on the top to make them look a bit fancy but rustic.  

James gave me a 10 out of 10 and I gave myself a 10 out of 10 however Sienna is not overly a sweet tooth kind of girl when it comes to desserts so she didn't eat it and just had ice cream instead.  I'm so thrilled that I made this pastry the other night and it was nothing to whip these hot apple pastries up in 10 minutes and then into the oven for about 15 mins.  This pastry is delicious and I will need to make another batch.

Garden Update

Our veggies are growing in leaps and bounds and here's a snapshot of what's happening in our suburban backyard.

Home made Quiche and Pastry

Whenever I have made anything with pastry I have always just purchased puff pastry and used that as making pastry for some reason always intimidated me, a bit like pasta.  After our Baking Day a couple of weeks ago when my friend and I made pastry I thought I would give this recipe a go myself so Sienna and I got to work to make the pastry out of Alana's book "The Homemade Pantry".  Once the pastry was done we rolled it out and mixed up our ingredients for our Quiche and into the oven it went.  Another meal that my kids are impressed with homemade Quiche and homemade pastry.

It's like anything new you do for the first time it's always takes longer than normal while you get to know what you are doing and the next time you know what to expect and are a little bit quicker.  Next time I make this I would blind bake the pastry shell first even though the recipe said you didn't need to to that however I would have preferred the bottom to be a bit more cooked.  We had the leftovers for dinner last night and it was even better than the first night we cooked it.  Yum is all I can say and that motion was seconded by James and Sienna.

The Flipflop Recyclying Company in Kenya - Ocean Sole

The kids are home sick from school today so ABC3 is on and they are rugged up on the couch.  It's cold here in Brisbane today 10 degrees to 20 degrees however it's rainy and no sun so it's actually 16 degrees at the moment.  Anyway there was a show on ABC3 that showed a segment on The Flipflop Recycling Company in Kenya which was amazing.  Apparently lots and lots of thongs (from tourists losing them end up floating in the water ways down to the shores of Kenya in fact it says 400,000 kgs of rubber waste a year and they create masterpieces for sale all around the world.  There are 100 individuals at their workshops in Nairobi, in the city slums and in remote coastal areas providing much needed employment.

The story was a wonderful story of solving a problem in positive way.  The thongs keep showing up on the beaches and instead of people having to collect them to throw away a company was started to collect them and use the thongs to make animals, baskets etc.  The thongs are scrubbed and washed by hand and then glued together and then cut and molded to make things.  I was really taken with this story and it's a wonderful positive way to solve a problem that isn't going to go away as people are always losing thongs in water or leaving them behind on the beaches and they wash up elsewhere.  At the same time it gives people who would otherwise not have employment a job and satisfaction of providing for their family and creating things.

The Flipflop Recycling Company is currently rebranding itself to Ocean Sole.  There's an article here.