~living this beautiful messy life~
o0o
One of the things that makes my soul feel satisfied, gives me a sense of pride, and brings me such JOY, is to be able to provide for my family one of the most very basic of foods:
BREAD
🌻
Mixing up some bread dough
Dough proving in a warm spot
1 loaf done.
and some rolls…
All done for the week!
I’ve always been a bit careful of cooking with herbs and spices.
Truth be told, I’m a bit scared of them – as I don’t know how they Continue reading “RECIPE: Butter Chicken”
Its been a damp drizzly cold morning, so I decided to drag out the sewing machine and knock up a few things with some “leftovers”.
First up was a pair of old cotton curtains that have seen better days, and are not longer of use in keeping the heat/cold out of the house, so they were sewn together to make bed/couch cover.
Then I used up a lace curtain, that just doesn’t fit with our idea of ‘decor‘ – which I made into bags to store fruit and veg in, in the fridge – and some will be used to cover ripening fruit, so the wildlife doesn’t steal it all.
They’re welcome to some excess, but they aren’t very good at sharing, so we’d rather it was us to be the ones to decide how much they get – not them! .
Next up is going to be an old super-light-weight shower curtain, that I am going to make into bags to take grocery shopping, so that I can put fruit and veg in them, instead of using the plastic bags that the supermarket provides.
The material even has a fruit & veg motif printed on it, so I reckon thats pretty darn appropriate! 😀
Hope you are having a nice day, and whatever you’re doing – I’d love to hear about it!
Cheers,
.
Today I thought I’d post a couple of easy changes you can make, to simplify your life.
So – without further ado, here are 30 Simple Life Farmer simple life hints! Continue reading “30 simple life hints”
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I pretty much try to single-task these days, just so that I can be more present with whatever it is that I am doing.
I know as a species we’re often quite impressed with ourselves, when we can do a myriad of chores at once, and we convince ourselves that we’re Continue reading “single-tasking”
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Who gives a crap? Continue reading “who gives a crap?”
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I love it when I can make a meal stretch out to feed us a few times.
Not only does it help save food in the end, but Continue reading “multipurpose meals”
One of the things that I’m getting back into the swing of doing, is going to ‘op shops’.
For the uninitiated – these are shops where you can buy pre-loved goods.
These can be anything from building materials, to clothing, to kitchen ware, to electronics, to furniture – pretty much anything you can think of really….!
At the moment, I have a vision of a particular table in my head, so on my way to the grocery store today, I popped in to our local furniture store to see – just out of curiosity – how much this little ‘vision’ of mine would set me back.
WOW!
$599 – and that included 4 chairs. To me, that’s a lot…and as I’m still working at my paid job, that’s almost a fortnights wage for me!! 😐
Lucky I’m not one of those people who feels they have to have brand new!!
I’d also decided to peek in at the price, because one of my favourite Op Shops is only two doors up the street, and I’d planned to visit there for the first time in over a month.
And this morning I scored!!
Nooooo – they didn’t have my “vision table” lol – but they did have some other stuff I’ve been wanting to get a hold of…
I walked out with what I consider to be an excellent haul, and all for under $20.
Gotta be happy with that…!
I got:
– a mid sized wok with lid
– a roasting pan with rack and lid
– an ‘Alladin’ hot food storer
– a yoghurt maker
– 3 books: ‘Blueprint for a Green Planet‘, Family Circles ‘Jams, Pickles and Chutneys‘, and a book on bread-making with a bread machine, called ‘Hot Bread‘.
– a brand new leather wallet with rfid protection,
– aaaand, I even managed to get 3 chokos, which I am hoping that I can get to sprout, after my precious choko vine came to an unintentional demise.
How’s that for a haul eh..!!??!! Second hand does not mean second best!
😁
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Until next time, look after YOU!
And remember – sharing is caring!
Today I had my very first go at dehydrating – pretty exciting stuff I tell ya!!
Ok, so it might not be what gets your average Joe or Jill excited, but I can think of endless possibilities with being able to successfully dehydrate stuff.
One of those is not running out of stuff so often – because you think you have some of whatever-it-is-you-need, in the depths of the freezer someplace…but one of the biggies I can see, will be storage.
We are a family who are very big fans of one-pot-meals, especially when things get busy.
Those one-pot-meals often contain a lot of varieties of vegies, as its a really easy way to ensure we’re getting something nutritious into us.
We are also a Family who will soon be moving into a 63 square metre space – which will have very limited storage.
Part of that limited storage, is not having endless freezer space, and one of the things that takes up a truck-load of room in our freezer, is vegies.
Whether store-bought; or vegies that have been home-grown and then frozen during a glut – they take up a lot of valuable freezer space!
So we’re saving space where we can – and this is just one of those places – food storage.
I gotta tell ya – this is waaaay cool!
2kg of mixed vegies, and about 400g of mushroom, all shrunk down to 4 jars.
And I could have easily done it in two, but as shelf storage in the kitchen isn’t an issue quite yet, I decided on one jar of each for storage, and one jar of each for current use.
I think I’m going to be doing quite a bit of this dehydrating lark, as its a wonderful way to stockpile food goodness 🙂
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Until next time, look after YOU!
And remember – sharing is caring!
As I’ve said before – I’m at the point in my Life now where there’s some things that have taken on more importance than others…one of those things is my OWN happiness.
I’ve worked at my current job for almost 9 years now, and have worked my way up about as far as I am able to, with the way that this particular business is structured.
I’m also at the stage where I am no longer enjoying my job – a job I used to love.
Because of that, I have scaled right back and have gone from working 5 or 6 shifts a week, down to two – and for a day either side of those two days, I’m either talking myself into going to work, or ‘recovering’ from the mental and emotional load that’s has come from being at work.
Additionally, my workload responsibilities have increased dramatically in the last 4 years, but the pay rate has remained static, other than the obligatory CPI increases.
It’s just not an ideal way to ‘waste’ 4 days a week…
As far as I’m concerned, there a lot more useful and productive ways I could be spending my time – and that’s my goal at the moment.
I’m hoping that by the end of the year, I will be able to resign/retire from work – and once again be a full-time House Spouse.
My Love and I have discussed this in depth, and we’re pretty sure that once the house in town has sold – well be able to swing it!
I am currently earning less each month than the mortgage payments on the house in town, so with that mortgage gone, we’d actually still be ‘ahead’, even without my wage!!
Life is not static, no experience (pleasure or pain) permanent, but for now – I simply have to live it, and make the best of it that I can – whilst working toward and preparing for being able to move to the Farm full time; leave work, take up my role of full-time House Spouse, and continue to grow the Life I want and need…
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