I’m still here…

…still doing things.  Just not as much as I would like right now as we’re in the middle of a small crisis that requires much time talking over and thinking and obssessing about…so until I’m over that and have had a possible health issue checked out I might just keep as quiet as i can…then one day before I know it I’ll be back with the mother of all catch ups!!  I’m reading, watching movies…a craft project here and there…but not much else at the moment.

Oh, bother…

I forgot to mention about number 92 – getting the summer garden finished.  With one month of summer left and only tomatoes and lettuces planted, I’ve decided to flick to the winter plants as they’re out in the shops now…so yesterday I planted six little cauliflower and six little broccoli plants.  Today I picked up some celery and silverbeet…but was unable to plant them as, well that patch is still full of weeds….an then it decided to spend the rest of the day raining….maybe tomorrow…last day of holiday…a lot to pack in….

And number 95…I gave away my first thing on Freecycle on Monday – an old plastic playhouse thing…someone with four young kids needed it and we’d been to lazy to do anything about it…so I checked it with Blokey and he was ok…and the kids really enjoyed passing it on to someone who will have as much fun with it as they did.

Now, really, I must go…there’s shampoo to make…

P.S.   I really did finally make my Control Journal – number 65….and I’ve been trying quite a few new recipes each week (number 77)…tonight was our first weekly vegetarian meal of brown rice and bean chilli with green salad…everyone ate it and commented on now nice it was…now I have to keep this up as my goal for this year is to eat vegetarian two nights each week…it’s as much to save on the grocery bill as anything!

I picked up a…

…class syllabus for the year from my local quilt/embroidery/knitting/etc shop today.  I could do them all, really, I could – and bankrupt myself in the process…but what the heck…there’s an interesting looking two night  class on applique which I think I might take…or later in the  year there’s a four night class that has some applique as well as learning free  machine quilting…now to convince Blokey I really need to go to this class…….

This being done will satisfy in some part numbers 5 and 7 on the list…

I’ve also been working on number 90…about the rubbish/waste elimination thing.  I told the kids there will be no more individual tubs of yogurt or small packets of chips.  Apart from the skyrocketing cost of the yogurt in particular, there’s the plastic containers that get thrown out each day along witht he chippie packet(s)…so it’s big bags of chippies and 1kg tubs of yogurt – and safe plastic containers that get washed everyday…I just have to make sure I do that every day straight after school.

Little by little, bit by bit….a little becomes a bit more…until it becomes a lot!  I’mhoping to keep myself sane this year as I learn that lesson properly and well….and encourage those around me to do the same….

There’s not been…

…a lot of bloggy action going on here lately.  I’ve been in seriously lazy holiday mode.  However, the lack of actual visible physical progress has been well worht it for some of the ‘invisble’ progress I believe I’ve been making.  One of my main reasons for doing this challenge is to be able to change my mind…change the way I think, the way I do things…actually accomplish some things and maybe in the process change my life for the better.

The kids are back to school next week after six weeks off…and at the end of the week I’m back to work myself and the business end of the year begins in earnest the following week.  I’ve had time to sit and think and mull over some things…listening to thought provoking podcasts, reading through many blog posts by many interesting people.  I’ve come to some realisations and am beginning to make choices about what I am going to spend my out of work time on.  It’s not so much family focused as it is me focused for now.  Last year we spent quite some energy on the kids and I ended the year feeling utterly drained and exhausted by it all.

The only monthly thing I have left to do fro this month is make the Christmas decoration…I’ve read the book, done a small craft project – which is in danger of getting out of hand…I’ve now made six dishcloths and this morning in the shower had an idea for facecloths made in a similar way…and then smaller facial wipe cloths.  I have small amounts of my dishcloth yarn left over so I have begun the prototype for the face wipes.

I think last time I mentioned being fascinated with the care2 website..and a blog about self-sustainability in the middle of the city.  On Sunday I ran out of dishwasher powder…I has written down a recipe for dishwasher powder from the “Towards Sustainability” blog…and ran a load using that which was quite a success…I made one tweak to this and I’m quite happy with the results so far.  Today I have run out of my usual cleanser so i guess I’ll need to make up that recipe and see how it works…which if successful will also help the eldest girl of the house who is now showing signs of her first small acne outbreak…I’m hoping that by using all natural products she may avoid the bad acne problem her mother had when she was her age.

I also finally washed my kitchen floor the other day using the floor wash recipe off care2…some liquid casitle soap in a bucket of warm water with a few drops of essential oil.  I presprayed the floor with a water/liquid soap/vinegar spray to losen any tough dirt…it took me five minutes and no scrubbing whatsoever to thoroughly wash the floor and it smelled divine!  No more bleach and water…or any other chemical concoction!  Today I’ve sprayed the dining table with a teatree oil and water mixture to allow some of the hardened bits to soften and then slowly wiping off each area…then I’m going to rub in an table oil mix to make it nice….no more Pledge.

I have also taken a small step toward attending the Easter quilt symposium being held here this year…I’ve just got to send in my registration form and I’m there!  Wooohoooo!!  And there are two classes I’ve seen I’d like to do…only thing is I need to choose one as I don’t think I can stretch the budget to two…so I’m going for the applique class as it also fits into another of my goals to learn as many applique techniques as  I can…

I’ve been on…

… a wee bit of a holiday!  Didn’t go anywhere or do anything…still had to work…but there were no kids around to deal with so it’s been blissfully silent around here for the past week.  And tomorrow morning the first one gets back….the second on Thursday some time and the last one next Sunday.

Needless to say in this time I have, despite my intentions otherwise, done nothing.  Nothing, that is, except sit here and read my way through a website I stumbled across the other week and signed up to for some emails.  I spent night after night going from one article after the other and completely rethinking my approach to the way I treat my environment.  I can’t really say that this relates to any of the goals I have put down…but in general it fits well with the spirit of some of them – 91, 92 and 93 – I guess.  I made my own eco cleaners from easy, inexpensive recipes off the site…not too bad either.  And for the first time in ages m y kitchen bench was clean and clutter free!  And I threw out my rubber gloves.  Next I want to make my own ‘personal care’ items…no more chemical laden cleansers and moisturisers…amazing that it can be done for much less than what you’d purchase things for in the shops…and vinegar it seems is in everything…smells like puke but it does the job!  I’ve begun to realise what a concoction of chemicals I’m covering myself in every day and I don’t like it one bit.

I watched a few movies too…let me see…’Mamma Mia’…’Vicky Christina Barcelona’….’Sex in the City’.

There’s also a possibility I could have a replacement for this dodgy ol’ laptop tomorrow.  I’ve been looking at an Asus eee 700 for a while…and the 900 too…watching the prices…and the 700 Linux version has now hit $300…so Blokey is going to have a poke around tomorrow to see what he thinks…the only thing that bothers me is the screen size ight not be sorkable but as it’s got a different version of Linux that what I currently use which was made specifically for the eee then it may be ok…I’ll let him decide, I had a go a while back and it looked as if it would be good…half the size and wireless to boot!  Browse in bed baby!  Woohoo!  And as most of the things I do are all web-based or can be made to be web-based then the 4gb flash is not an issue…mind you external harddrives can be bought!  It’s got to be better than this antiquated thing which opens random bits without warning…not to forget the loose rattely keyboard…and so much more!  Hahaha

Oh yes, I still have the photo of the dish cloths from last week to add…I love them so much I went and bought enough coloured yarn to make four or five more…I’m going green baby…just watch me!

PS…the website I mentioned earlier is www.care2.com …most of my time has been spent under the ‘healthy & green living’ tab.

Another one bites…

the dust! I’ve just completed my small craft project for January. That’s too cool! I made dish cloths…hahaha. They’re not bad as dish cloths go. They’re (oh, yes, I made two…even better) made of some bamboo yarn I picked up earlier in the week. I would have finished them sooner except I had to look for needles…which were not very forthcoming…however, on one search I was able to find the patterns for my 50s dresses stitcheries…so that was a better outcome! I made on last night while watching ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’…and another today waiting at the airport for Thing Two’s plane to firstly arrive…and then leave. I finished it just now watching ‘Definitely, Maybe’. I really should have waited the extra hour or so to watch ‘Mamma Mia’ I think.

And now, as it is just gone 9pm there is nothing left to watch on the telly and it’s too early for b ed…so I might drag out the stitcheries and the patterns and see what I need to finish the current one. I downloaded a free audiobook today of ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’. I subscribe by email to LearnOutLoud.com. I get emails every day of what ever is the freebie for the day…sometimes I get them…Friday is usually a whole book for free…and as Blokey and I had been discussing the movie that’s currently out I thought I’d see what the story is about. I told him I wasn’t really interested in seeing it as I’m not a great fan of Brad Pitt…but I’ll see what the story is like and then maybe go see it with him this week while we have no children around.

I’m still reading ‘Think & Grow Rich’…it’s interesting…the language is older but stronger than you hear today, in a way…I’m liking it so far.

I shall post a photo of my finished dish cloths tomorrow. The pattern I got from weefolkart.com…I’ve managed to get their button/linky thing up over there <<<<<…click on it to take you to the website…it’s a really neat place to go for ideas and see some well talented women displaying their handworks….thanks ladies for sharing your patterns!

I’ve found something…

…new to try!  One of  my goals for this project is to use YNaB to control our spending habits…we’ve come across a few problems with it and it’s ended up being more frustrating than it has helpful.  In all my time-wasting blogsurfing last night I came across one called ‘almost frugal’…and there was a giveaway in progress that included a nifty new budgeting programme I hadn’t heard of before…and I’ve gone through quite a few in the search for budgeting perfection!  I went to the website where, lo and behold, it’s being developed in New Zealand…how cool is that!  Well, I guess if you’re me it’s cool…hahaha!  Anyway, by this morning there was an email in my inbox with an invitation to join the beta test…yay me!  I’m not sure if it was my begging, pleading email to let me in early or if they didn’t have much of a queue…!  It’s a web-based product which I think is so much better than and offline product…especially after a few of my experiences.  YNaB I think is really good…only thing is it’s not for Linux – I tried using Wine but it barfed…so had to put it on Blokey’s laptop thinking that would motivate him to take some interest in where our money goes…it did but then he started hitting a few problems, found it awkward to use…it worked for a time and then the build-up to Christmas started and we lost momentum (and all our schelduled payments due to double ups when importing bank statements – frustrating!)…I had tried some time ago on my Google Calendar to put some information about upcoming income and expenditure…similar to what PocketSmith have done but obviously they’ve done it ever so much better…so far no bugs or problems but I’ll wait until Blokey comes home and let him have a really good look…cool thing is we can both be looking at this at the ssame time (well, we haven’t tried it yet but here’s hoping!). We’re still going to go with the YNaB principles of building a buffer and making an emergency fund as well as keeping track of every thing we spend money on…this also fits in with the goal of getting rid of rubbish and decluttering…it’s not just about getting rid of physical objects…clutter comes in many forms…and I have much of many!

The other thing about PocketSmith is the lovely clean interface…nice colours…not cluttered…gentle on the eyes…so here goes something new – PocketSmith – the future of budgeting!

I didn’t…

…get the photo of that skirt in the end….Miss Skinny-legs, though, adored the skirt and made the other two jealous – although only Thing Two gave a loud verbal indication…I told him I’d make him a skirt just like it and he grumped at me!  How rude!!  Oh well.

Tomorrow I think we’re going swimming in the afternoon which sould be fun…although I’m still feeling a bit rough after last week’s illness…and I was talking to my Mum tonight who’s just got back from staying with family down south for Christmas – she’s had something similar since Boxing Day and is only now getting back to normal – yikes!

I received an email earlier about a summer mystery quilt from one of the blogs I subscribe to…I really want to have a go at it…I think I shall have to pull out all the old bits stashed away somewhere and see what I can find…the kids still haven’t got me anything for Christmas (vis Blokey!) so maybe I might be able to buy some fabric for it and add the rest from my stashy thing – I really think it’s too small to be called a stash…even though it’s ‘stashed’ outside in the smelly, yukky room under the garage where noone goes.

I found my stitcheries last night…two out of twelve completed…this is goal number 14 on the list. Well, one isn’t entirely finished!  And it was begun at the same time as the enormous Lillebet’s Garden.  Both were online BoMs.

destined to be another quilt...eventually

I’m trying to find the quilt for goal number six as I’ve also located the remaining background white fabric so I can finish it off to where I’ve decided it will end for me to complete it.

too long in the making...it has to end!

The way I had planned it originally (fifteen years back now) when I first began it was that it would have another complete round – equating to half the entire size of it.  I really can’t envisage me waiting another fifteen years for that to happen so all I’m going to do now is finish to two final elipses at the top right there and quilt the gosh darn thing…so I have something warm to snuggle under in winter – yay!  I still have the blue spokes for the rest of the quilt to find something to do with…but I think I shall machine sew them rather then had piece as I have the DWR.  This was the first quilt I began – why oh why I have to choose big things I’ll never know – almost like asking to fail.

However, I am now going to prove to myself that I can complete things…and that’s where I’ll leave it for now!

Not much …

…happening here today.  I spent most of last night and some of today hunting out websites to help me with some of my goals…I found a couple of tutorial websites for learning HTML and CSS while I was originally searching for photography tutorials…which is cool because now I have all three covered.

Last night I went looking for ideas for my monthly Christmas decoration and small project goals and found a whole heap of ideas and websites…so I’m quite happy about that, I can go to where ever depending on what I feel like doing at any given time…which suits me fine as I tend to flit from one thing to another more than I stay static on one thing.

Another one down…

…I’ve finished the ruffled skirt tutorial from Tania Whelan of Grand Revival. A photo will be posted tomorrow as it is now dark outside and the inside light in this house is rubbish!

Also, I was wandering around looking for small projects to help with two of my goals…one making a Christmas decoration each month and the other of finishing a small craft project each month. I was clueless as to what to do so I began a search and through one website after another I finally came across a blog called ‘One Pretty Thing’…there is now a link over there<<<<<< it’s the most incredible blog of it’s kind I’ve found…every day there are links to several gorgeous handmade projects….I have to keep it so I can go back and find something new each month….something cool….some I can give away as gifts eventually I hope. I’ve long harboured that wont to make handmade gifts but mine usually turn out less than cool…I suppose it all takes practise…and just doing something, anything is a sure way to practise. For example Thing Two and I made some soda crackers today – first time….after they were baked and we prudently tried them out we decided the thinner ones tasted the best….so next time we make them we know how thin to go. A few weeks back he made a choc self saucing pud which turned out doughy and not terribly edible…we found a great recipe in a new book I got for Christmas by one of my favourite cooks Sophie Grey and it was honestly the best choc pud I’ve tasted…and believe me, I’ve probably had more than my fair share (which is why I’ve put up the goals to lose weight!!)…the soda crackers were her recipe as well out of the same book…she’s my hero as I learnt to cook from her books…and now my boy heads to her books before going anywhere else when he wants to cook!

I planted some lavendar in the garden today finally…tomorrow I hope to plant what’s left of the corn and beans…but I need to weed the patch first….as well as arouns where the lettuces are, which we must be able to start eating some time soon.