Wintry Days

We have had the most amazing weather over the last couple of days. Thunderstorms, endless hours of pouring rain, dark skies and howling winds. It's classic Winter weather, the kind that keeps us indoors. I used to hate Winter but over the last couple of years I have come to love it. I love Winter food, and curling up on the couch with a blanket, and layering skirts and tights and boots, and the fireplace, and mulled wine!

I thought I would share some of the things that have brightened my Winter day, today.

Flowers from my family. The small bouquet is one that Miya picked me from our garden, and the large one was picked by Nath as he walked down to the Post Office to get our mail. I love having fresh flowers on my kitchen windowsill to make smile while I am working.

We stripped the carpet out of the kids' room today, as it was old, stained and still had the faint scent of cat and cigarette smoke from the previous owners. The floorboards underneath are not polished and are pretty marked but I actually like their rustic charm. We picked up a loft bed from Freecycle so we have moved Miya onto that one, Eden onto the pink bunk and Brannen will stay in his cot for now. The loft bed is great because we can utilise the underneath of it as play space. The kids love their updated room.

I am working (slowly) on a patchwork bedspread made out of vintage bed sheets. It is taking me forever to cut the hundreds of squares I need but it will look beautiful when it is done. I bought the most luxurious cotton/bamboo blend wadding for the inside so it will be a lovely warm bedspread (that may not be complete until next Winter!)

 The sight (and smell) of fresh, homemade bread baking - you can't beat it. Even though I don't eat it, being gluten free, I still love having bread baking in the kitchen on a cold Winter day!

Fabulous Friends, Frugal Living, Fruit Trees and a Recipe for Foaming Hand Soap.

 As I type this glorious Winter's day, it is 23 degrees and the sun is shining. After two late nights in a row, all three kids are sleeping and Nath is in the backyard finishing up planting out leeks, onions, beetroot, silverbeet, spinach, cauliflower, garlic, carrots and beans. We have put two new rosemary bushes in the ground and transplanted a third one from where the goats will be to one of the new food-producing beds. Dispersed through the vegie beds are some Sweet Alice seedlings, which attract helpful predators and bees to the garden, helping with pollination and keeping pests in control. We have also planted some pyrethrum, which will repel garden pests, and I can dry the flower heads and steep them in alcohol to make a personal insect repellant. Very useful around here in Summer.

I enjoyed spending a birthday voucher at the garden shop!

My girls are such pretty gardeners!

The garden shed is getting an overhaul today as well, which is just as well because for the almost twelve months that we have been here, it has become a dumping ground for things we aren't really sure what to do with. Time to make some decisions! We will be building a potting bench and setting up the mini-greenhouse so that as soon as the frosts disappear, we can begin propagating seeds for spring planting. I'm collecting all of our toilet rolls in readiness - the seeds grow nicely in them with some potting mix and the toilet roll can be planted directly into the ground when the time comes.

The embarrassingly messy garden shed pre-clean.

We are nearly done, just the shelves to build.

Our growing array of deciduous fruit trees will be planted this week, and the front yard will begin to take shape as the orchard. We will be planting nasturtiums all around the base of the fruit trees to deter common pests and bring in beneficial insects (also, it just looks pretty!) We will plant all the citrus trees in Spring. I can't wait for the apple and pear trees to begin blossoming.

Nasturtium flowers.

 Yesterday, after spending the morning in the garden, I went to a lovely friend's house to help her prepare cupcakes for a kitchen tea while Nath helped her husband change his brake pads and discs. Afterwards, we shared a meal together. A few weekends ago, the same friends came and helped us for a whole day build our fence around the vegie beds and lay out some of the beds. I am loving building great friendships with people who have similar goals to live more simply and make do with what we have, sharing skills and resources and encouraging each other along the way. It doesn't matter if our reasons are to save money, improve our health, reduce chemical load or be gentler on the environment. It's a little like a train; if you are pulling one of those carriages, the others will come along, too. It's exciting to share ideas and learn from each other, no matter which of those values is our 'main motivator'.

Given that Nath only has nine working days left (yay!), I have ramped up the money-saving activities around here. Yesterday I made a lavender foaming hand wash and put some citrus peels in to steep in white vinegar, which after two weeks will become a citrus spray-and-wipe-style cleaner. I was so pleased with how the hand cleaner turned out, I wanted to share the 'recipe' with you.

Using recycled jars - not as pretty but definitely cheap!

In a small saucepan half filled with water, I grated some Velvet soap. I used a leftover piece from making laundry liquid, it probably would have been about a quarter of a bar. I stirred it over medium heat until the soap was dissolved, then strained the mixture through a sieve into a bowl and left it to cool.

When it's cooled down, this liquid solidifies into a jelly-like substance. To this I added a splash of lavender oil (available in the cleaning aisle of the supermarket) and about a cup of water. I poured it all into a blender and 'jooshed' it for a minute or so, until all blended.

I poured mine into a foaming dispenser I have from a previous shop-bought hand soap, and had enough left over for three more refills. You could use any pump dispenser but the foaming ones use less than regular pump ones. All up, it would have cost me only a few cents and feels lovely on my hands.

I hope you are all having a lovely, productive weekend, and if you have any more frugal, DIY tips, I would love to hear them!

Backyards, Bees, Buttons and Having Husbo At Home!

This little creative space of mine has been so neglected lately. There is no very good reason for that, just the days slipping so quickly past us and a dodgy camera cord (blogging without photos seems a little boring!)

I guess the big news for us is that Nath finishes full time work on the 19th of this month, and then only has two weeks of part-time work until he is done for good! This is a hugely exciting change for us, as it will free up so much time for us to work together on our goals and family values, work in the garden, produce more of our food from home and enjoy our children growing up. Nath and I will both be studying - Nath will completing his Masters in Mental Health Science, and I will be commencing a new Bachelor course in Sustainability. We will be living on Austudy and Family Tax benefits and making do with what we have. It will be tough, but we have been doing a lot to prepare and we feel we are up to the challenge!

One of the biggest things we have been working on is transforming our backyard from an expanse of resource-thirsty lawn into a landscape capable of producing much of our own food. We have been dipping our toes into the principles of permaculture (and loving the learning around this!) and have created a series of raised, no dig garden beds around mulched garden paths. Most of the materials we used were 'found materials' - horse manure and used straw from a friend's farm, newspaper and cardboard from our local recycling skips, bricks for garden edging from Freecycle, and compost, leaf litter and chicken manure from our own garden. Nath and a good friend built a fence from recycled copper logs, chicken wire and old timber palings from the property's original boundary fence. This fence will (hopefully) keep our free-ranging chickens out of the food producing section of our garden, allowing them access to the orchard and most other parts of the yard.

Before we began, after killing most of the grass off over summer.

Starting the paths with free mulch from the local tip.

Two of the beds built up and waiting to compost down.

Two gorgeous garden helpers.

One side of the garden, done.

Mum watering in the mulch on the newest bed.

Backyard landscaping complete, ready for planting.

Our new fire pit.

Nath building the fence with some 'helpers'.

So cheap and so rustic!

 Speaking of chickens, our chooks are all co-residing happily in the big pen at the back now, free-ranging during the day, and the temporary pen has been dismantled in readiness for the arrival of our mama goat and her baby. We culled all of the roosters except one, and he has taken to his role of flock caretaker with relish. We are being rewarded for our love of these dear creatures with four to six eggs a day.

We are extending our 'livestock', as I have written about before. This week, I ordered our first swarm of bees and a beehive to house them in. We are all very excited about this, especially Eden, who is now a bee 'expert' after spending a term at kindy learning all about them. Hopefully our buzzy friends will be joining us in November. Our mama goat and her yet-to-be-born baby are due here in September.

In other news, I recently took part in a Button Swap that was held over at lovely Taz's blog Butter and Buntings. My swap partner is not a blogger, so I can't link to her, but she perhaps should be! She is a beautifully creative person, and the sister of a very beautiful friend of mine, and I would like to share with you some of the loveliness she put into my bundle of buttons. (I'm afraid my return parcel wasn't nearly as pretty or creative, so I won't share photos of that!)

So beautifully packaged.

So many buttons! All stitched onto vintage-inspired card.

I absolutely love these wooden buttons! So cute!

My button collection has never looked so pretty!

Thanks, Taz, for the fantastic swap, and thanks, Erin for my beautiful buttons!

My Ongoing To-Do List

There is always much to do around here. It can feel like as you tick one item off 'the list', three more jobs pop up. Whether it be housework, keeping lunchboxes filled, garden maintenance or keeping up with the work that animals create, it can be difficult to stay on top of things. I often tell Nath that I can only be awesome at three things at once, and I am definitely looking forward to having him around more!

Some of the things on my list currently are.....

Mucking out chicken pens, and putting the old straw etc onto our compost heap. This weekend we are also doing another cull of our young roosters and old chooks and moving all the other chickens into the one pen up the back. The driveway pen will be dismantled so we can build an enclosure for our goats.

Sewing up a flannelette doona cover for our bed using vintage single bed sheets that my mum gave me, cut into patches. I have finished making winter doona covers for the girls - simply by sewing single bed flat flannelette sheets together.

Finishing (I hope) the curtains for the kids' room. The curtains they have in there currently are a wee bit short and let too much cold air in through the gap. Poor Eden sleeps under the window where the draught is.

Filling up the freezer with bulk-cooked lunchbox goodies.

Weeding some more of the garden.

I'm coming to an acceptance, even a love, of winter clover. It can stay.

Bottling kombucha and making yoghurt.

My kombucha 'mother' is reproducing!

Enjoying the cooler weather! While it is nowhere near as cool as it is going to get, I have been getting into the swing of autumn with blankets in every room, apple with cinnamon sticks and cloves simmering away on the stove, chicken and puy lentil pies for dinner last night, and wearing my slippers around the house! I do think the cooler months are fast becoming my favourite time of the year.

Getting out for a bike ride. (Brannen and I - mostly me, he enjoyed the ride from the back of my bike - rode 12km of hills today to a friend's house and back. The fifteen extra kilos that Brannen provides presents a fairly hefty challenge in getting up and over those hills!)

And, sigh, tackling the ever-growing pile of washing.

What have you and yours been up to?

Preparing For Change

Our family is about to embark on an adventure, one that we are very excited about. I have posted before about our goal to reduce Nath's work hours so that he can spend more time at home, and so that we as a family can live more closely aligned to our values of living simply, frugally, environmentally and in a community-focused way.

After much discussion we have decided that come September, Nath will be taking a year off from work to study from home. He plans to complete the Masters course (Mental Health Science) that he is halfway through, and also complete a Graduate Diploma in Grief and Loss Counselling. These qualifications will bring him closer to achieving his work and community goals in the future.

This decision will mean that he is home, full time. Obviously he will spend a proportion of this time with his head in the books, but he will also be spending much needed time gardening, playing with the kids, becoming involved in their school lives, watching them grow, nurturing our relationship, hunting, foraging, building on local relationships, making, fixing, growing and many other things that he has had limited time to do in the past.

Obviously, we will be living on significantly less money. We are okay with that. We are making plans and preparations to be able to do this without incurring great stress or sacrificing our QUALITY of life. We are looking into getting a milking goat and a hive of bees. We are building up our soils and constructing new garden beds. We are planning what we will be needing to grow, and when, and where. I will be making soap ahead of time so that it cures ready - one less thing we need to budget for. Little things like this, little ways of reskilling ourselves, will make all the difference.

Another change that we are busy preparing for is the change in the air that Winter brings. Winter Official is still a little over a month away, but the nights and mornings are cooling right down already and reminding me to do the seasonal 'change over'. First on the list was our clothing cupboards. I go through each of the kids' wardrobes, as well as our own, rotating summer clothes that will still fit next year to the top shelf, winter clothes to the more accessible shelves, and too small clothes to the charity basket. I 'stocktake' as I do this, making sure that each child will have enough to see them through the coming season, and making a list of things we are short on so that I can keep an eye out at opshops over the next few weeks. Next on the list is shoes. Summer shoes of Miya's that will fit Eden next summer get put away, Eden's summer shoes get handed down to smaller friends, and winter shoes are bought out for wearing.

After clothes comes sheets and blankets. I bring the winter blankets out of storage and give them an air. Some are for putting on beds and some are for a handy blanket pile in the loungeroom - perfect for sitting under and crocheting (or blogging!) I will need more winter sheets for the kids this winter as I have two children no longer in nappies overnight, instead of just Miya, and the odd accident means I need more on hand. Last winter we got by on three sets between the two girls but I wanted to add another couple of sets in case we have a night where both girls have accidents. Also, I anticipate that Brannen may well be out of a cot sometime this winter, so he will be needing single bed sheets as well. I have jumped on Gumtree and found a couple of well priced, secondhand winter sheet sets that I will pick up later this week.

Next on the list is our winter pantry. I stock up on soup staples, like lentils, split peas and beans, and restock my spice cupboard with all of those warming winter spices I use a lot of in the cooler months. Cinnamon, cardamom, chili, paprika, ras el hanout, cumin, coriander seed and curry spices are filled up and I make sure I have condiments like Worcestershire sauce, Tamari, and fish sauce on hand. I have many Fowlers Vacola bottles of passata, whole peeled tomatoes and diced tomatoes lined up in the cupboard ready.

In the garden, we plan what winter vegetables we will be planting. Potatoes, garlic, onions, kale, brassicas and soup vegetables all need to go in soon, so we are prepping beds ready and planning where things will be placed. We need a good stock of wood in the shed ready for when we need the wood heater, so we are making plans to fill our newly completed wood shed with wood from friend's blocks. The chainsaw needs a service so that it will be up to the task of keeping us in wood for the whole season.

I look forward to the cooler season.  I love getting 'layering' clothes out - scarves, and leggings and boots become my uniform! I love sitting in my rocking chair under a blanket with a nice hot cocoa next to me, working on some craft project or another or tackling the mending pile. I love the changes in the garden, everything is lush and green (especially the weeds!) I love the smells that are ever-present in the kitchen.... bone broths and soups simmering on the stove, curries and stews and scones and pies, fresh warm bread on the wood heater..... yum, yum!

Are you excited about the change in season?
What do you do to prepare?