Floor cleaning the enviromentally friendly and frugal way...

I really gotta stop talking about cleaning - what is the problem with me??
'But I just had to mention my one other favourite cleaning tool - my microfibre mop.

I find this to be the most environmentally friendly way to clean my floors - I use only about a cup of water to clean all my floors (and I have 'mop-able' floors throughout my house) with not a single drop of any type of chemical / cleaner and my floors always look shiny and clean.

But the very best thing, it is the most simplest and easiest and cost-effective way.
And you can't beat that!

I have had a big clean-out of my DD's rooms - sorting out outgrown clothes, school books and stationary for next year and just general junk! I often declutter their rooms and it is getting easier by doing it fairly regularly.

I'm a huge fan of de-cluttering and trying to keep the clutter down as it makes cleaning soooo much easier.

Now I need to finalise the last of my Christmas shopping and work out what I'm cooking for Christmas day so I may not be around for a while.

I hope you have a very Merry Christmas!

Soil Fixing

Thanks to Gavin at http://greeningofgavin.blogspot.com/ I am hopefully on the way to fixing my soil problems. I've watered it with detergent/water mix to try and help it to be a little less water repellant and the next day I watered the Powerfeed in.

I will see how this goes before I try testing the soil with a PH kit as they approx $16 from Bunnings which was a bit expensive so I'm kind of hoping I won't have to resort to that.

If this crop doesn't end up thriving, I may count my losses and concentrate on working in our homemade compost which should be good enough to use soon - I think and I hope!?

Thanks again Gavin for all your help.

Soil Problems :(

I am very disappointed with the soil in my new vegetable beds. Nothing is thriving and it is very water repellant. So I have some work ahead of me to try and fix it now.....humph!

The plants are not thriving and are very yellow so it seems to be very deficient in something.














This is my sweetcorn - they are actually a lot yellower than they look in this photo :(

And the lettuces are not doing much better...

(Again, they look a lot yellower in real life!)
I planted the chives on the left the same time as the ones on the right which were planted in a different bed. You can certainly see the difference.

Whereas my SFG bed is doing very well and everything grows so much better in it. I have heaps of tomatoes and will probably need to find some recipes to use them up in! Though I have heard that they can be frozen by just directly placing them in the freezer. Of course they are not suitable for salads as such, but great for spaghetti bolognaise, etc type dishes (a staple in our household!) so I will definitely be trying that.

I am very pleased with the beans - we have several nights worth of meals in the freezer now. I have also planted bush beans to compare them to the vine type.

I have little baby capsicums everywhere - they are so cute!! So I can hardly wait for them to mature. The cucmbers are doing well though I have noticed powdery mildew growing on them - possibly due to rain we have had lately? I know last year I sprayed them with a milk and water mixture though I have forgotten the ratio so will have to look that up too.


Growing vegies is certainly proving to be a huge learning experience for me! Off to do some research again....

Christmas decorations!

I love putting up the Christmas decorations - not the taking down and putting away part so much though!

Other than the Christmas tree, which has fairy lights, these are my favourite decorations because they have fairy lights too - I have a 'thing' for fairy lights - love 'em, love 'em, love 'em! They add such a magical feeling to the room. Probably not very frugal nor environmentally friendly but I can't resist them and we only have them on for such a short time.

This idea came from my sister. We bought the garlands on special at Myers and I decorated mine with fairy lights, tinsel and baubles and they look absolutely wonderful at night....

This is also a craft my sister created and I copied! I probably must stop doing that....

This JOY was cut out of wood (thanks to my Dad) though you can buy these from scrapbooking shops or Spotlight and I then modge-podged scrapbooking paper onto them, painted the edges and wha-la! Unfortunately I did mine when I was rushing so I was a little disappointed but it still looks okay - just hope my sister doesn't see it up close! LOL

I can't believe Christmas is just around the corner and sneaking up fast - are you ready??

Cleaning....again

Whilst on the subject of cleaning, I cannot recommend the microfibre cloths enough. If you haven't tried them yet, you just got to! I cannot believe how many kitchen sponges I went through before changing to microfibre cloths. The sponges would get stinky and disintegrate whereas the cloths can be washed again and again and again. And a lot of the time you don't need to use any cleaners with them. You may have to try a few different ones though because the one that I love my Mum doesn't like much at all whereas the one she loves I don't like because I think it goes 'slimy' quickly!

I have also found that using the netting from orange bags works fantastically as a scourer and again, can be used over and over - the best bit of course is it is 'free'!

I also use a homemade general purpose cleaner for most of my cleaning now. This is the recipe that I use:

1 litre water

200ml white vinegar (I use cleaning vinegar)

40ml dishwashing detergent

few drops eucalyptus oil

2 dessertspoons washing soda

I pretty much clean everything with this other than the inside of the toilet and I use it together with bicarb soda to clean the shower recess - I spray it on, then wipe over with some bicarb on a microfibre cloth, then wash off.

I love walking past that cleaning aisle!

Cleaning.....ugh!

Cleaning is not a favourite word of mine and certainly not my favourite thing to do. But I have found a way to actually make it a little more enjoyable. I have been downloading things to my MP3 to listen to whilst I work.

Lately I have been listening to some interesting sermons from www.sermonaudio.com by Dr John Barnett which I know wouldn't be a lot of people's cup of tea but nevertheless I feel as though I am achieving two goals at once - getting the cleaning done and learning something. And the best thing is sometimes I have to FIND extra things to clean or declutter because I have finished cleaning before whatever I have downloaded has! LOL.

Now I am sure there are lots of interesting MP3 downloads out there in internet land on living frugally, being green, etc so if you know of any please let me know as I haven't had time to really have a good look!

Happy Cleaning!

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

At last, my tomatoes are finally beginning to turn red. I did not think it was ever going to happen!














Rhonda at Down-to-Earth blog picks her tomatoes green and ripens them inside so I am going to experiment and do just that.


I have noticed a little green stink-bug type looking thing on them lately which has me most concerned so I need to go and look up on the internet what he might be up to on my tomatoes. I've go my suspicions it's not anything good!

I am very impressed with these bush tomatoes - each plant has at least 30 tomatoes on them so I should end up with a minimum of about 180 tomatoes! Yay. We love tomatoes - DD's eat them for snacks. They are just the Sunnyvale First Prize tomatoes and I will be definitely be growing these again (as long as they taste good of course!)

Now off to do some research on those bugs....

Night Light

My youngest daughter still likes to have a night light. Even though we have changed our globes to the more environmentally friendly ones that are supposed to cost less to run, I still wasn't happy with having to leave that light on all night.

Here is our solution:

Solar lights - they are just like the ones you have in your garden. Originally we headed off to Bunnings to buy a couple of the outdoor ones you stick in the ground. We thought we would just sit them in a pot or something when we bring them indoors, but we found this one on a nice little stand with 3 separate lights - so we can put one in the hallway, one in the toilet and one in her room if she wants.

We take it out first thing in the morning and leave it in a spot that gets sun for most of the day and then bring them in at bed time. Free light! I love it!

I've been tagged!

I was tagged with the "The Tree of Happiness". Thanks Gavin .
The idea of this tag is to list six things that make you happy and then tag others with it and spread the love.

I don't know much about 'tagging' and I'm not much of a blogger because I am not much of a writer - it certainly isn't my gift! So I always keep things pretty simple so here goes - in no particular order:

1. My family
Where would I be without my hard-working husband (who is also a great Dad) and my two wonderful daughters?

2. Organisation
It helps my home to feel more peaceful if it is kept organised and running efficiently (and helps me to feel more at peace also knowing everything is clean and running smoothly).

3. Our Vegie Garden
We only just began vegetable gardening last year. I love being able to go out into the garden and pick fresh vegies - yum!

4. Living Simply
I am enjoying endeavouring to live a more simple life. In all honesty I am tired of 'materialism'. I don't believe that having a big house, brand-name clothes and an expensive car makes you a better person even though society tries to tell me otherwise....constantly.

5. Living Frugally and being Green
I put these two together because I think they actually go together a lot, fortunately! For example, making my own cleaning spray - it saves the environment and saves me money. I am endeavouring to try and see budgeting as a challenge rather than a deprivation. Sometimes I enjoy the process and other times it can be frustrating!

6. My faith
This gives my life purpose and meaning even though I constantly stumble and have so much to learn.

Now, I am going to tag a Secret Hippie because I would love to find out a little bit more about this lovely person.

Another favourite organisation trick....

Why oh why did I not do this sooner?





I don't know about you but we tend to have dozens of cords that belong to who-knows-what. Well I sat my husband down one day and we went and sorted out what cord belonged to what. I promptly labelled them, tied an elastic band around them to keep them neat and now I don't have to go and ask my DD13 every time I want a particular cord if I have the right one or not!!

So simple, but oh so much easier.

Bean obsessing...

Well, we ate our little stash of beans for tea tonight and my DD's comment was "Mum, these beans are really nice!"

When I was cooking them they had a really strong bean smell and when we ate them, they had a really strong beany, fresh taste - I guess we just never even really knew what fresh beans really smelled and tasted like!

My bush beans that I recently planted are starting to sprout so we should be able to eat yummy fresh beans for some time and hopefully have some left for freezing too.

Organisation Central

Members on Simple Savings site were discussing their favourite organisation tool. This has got to be mine. It is a little organiser that sits on my kitchen bench. At the back I have my household notebook which has everything in it to keep us organised - calendar, school info, medical info, phone numbers, finance/budget, etc. In front of that I keep my blank shopping lists ready to grab and fill out and behind these I have pre-printed absentee notes for school - I just have to fill in the date and reason for absence. I keep pens, scissors, stickytape, spare paper, etc all in here. It is much better than having them lying all over the kitchen bench :)

Organisation Central

Members on Simple Savings site were discussing their favourite organisation tool. This has got to be mine. It is a little organiser that sits on my kitchen bench. At the back I have my household notebook which has everything in it to keep us organised - calendar, school info, medical info, phone numbers, finance/budget, etc. In front of that I keep my blank shopping lists ready to grab and fill out and behind these I have pre-printed absentee notes for school - I just have to fill in the date and reason for absence. I keep pens, scissors, stickytape, spare paper, etc all in here. It is much better than having them lying all over the kitchen bench :)

I'm so impatient!

Everything seems to be taking FOREVER to grow this year or is it just my imagination? I have had lovely green tomatoes on my tomato bushes for what feels like forever and they just don't seem to want to turn red! Do they know that I am waiting, hovering ready to pounce on them as soon as they turn red or what? My seedlings seem to be growing painstakingly slow if at all, the capsicums don't appear to be doing much at all either. My rockmelon and pumpkin seedlings have finally grown a third leaf! I'm so impatient! I'm busting to see more output for all the input we have done!

BUT I did actually get to pick a nice handful (175g) of beans today to add to my teeny stash in the freezer and there seems to be quite a few baby ones so that is something! I worked out that I have 14 climbing beans planted so I would hope that I am going to get a lot more yet :) And the worms seem to be thriving, which is good.

Patience is a virtue...

Worms!!

I was going to put a picture of our worm farm on here but of course the camera batteries are flat. Doesn't anybody know how to change them in this house?? After all, they are rechargeables, grrrr.

Dear friends who moved to Tasmania, gave us their worm farm which is basically made out of a big plastic drum turned on its side and a square hole cut out of it. A lid was made out of another piece of plastic. We drilled holes in the sides as we didn't feel the worms were getting enough air. We filled it with compost and shredded paper and have a 1000 worms in there purchased from Bunnings (they are not cheap!!). Each week I go out and give them a bucketful of scraps which I keep on the kitchen bench and fill up during the week. If I have too many scraps, they get wrapped in newspaper and put on the compost heap. I learnt to actually dig a hole in the worm farm to put the scraps in and cover it up otherwise it attracts all the little flies. We have not had a problem with the flies since I have been doing that. We then covered the lot with newspaper and wet it all down. Now we just have to sit tight and wait for all those lovely castings....

I will post a picture when the camera batteries recharge.

I have been picking beans as they mature and just placing them straight into the freezer, not even blanching. Tonight we discovered we didn't have any greens for tea so I went out and picked the ones that were ready and with the ones I already had in the freezer we managed to have our serve of greens. They were very nice indeed.

Homemade Present for a Friend

I have a very talented and very lovely friend who is making me a quilt for the end of my bed for my birthday. (I told you she was lovely). Well, I wanted to make her something in return but I haven't really been blessed in the creativity department but I really wanted to make something - to put in the time, effort and love as she has. The only hobby I occasionally get to indulge in is scrapbooking. So I decided to make her a scrapbook calendar. I couldn't afford to buy much in the way of nice accessories unfortunately so I had to use what I had - which wasn't much! Because of this I am a little disappointed in them and I sincerely hope she won't be disappointed. I've agonised over whether it is good enough to give to her so much that I don't think I will make something for someone again in quite some time! A few shots:

Beans - note to self.

I planted about 10 climbing bean plants but am finding that I am not getting nearly enough for us. For example I picked about 6 beans that are ready today - there are a dozen more not quite big enough yet. So what do I do with 6 beans,whilst waiting for the other dozen? It is such a nuisance when you can only pick them in dribs and drabs.


Note to self, next year, PLANT MORE BEANS!!

According to "Growing and Using Vegetables and Herbs" by John Mason, I will probably need at least 40 plants to feed my family!? I think I may try bush beans as I have limited vertical space to grow the vine type ones, hence why I have so few.

So, what to do with 6 beans? Blanch and freeze? Not very economical. I found this info:
Freeze blanched beans 10 to 12 months at 0ºF. Unblanched beans will hold up for 6 months at 0ºF. I might put them in the freezer unblanched for now and just keep collecting.

Oh, never mind..........................the kids just ate them raw!

Compost

Another new thing I am trying - making my own compost. We made a composter out of free pallets. We levelled out an area down the side of our house and cable-tied 4 pallets together to make a box shape to put the compost in. We then tied 2 more to the side of this box as a 'holding area' for leaves, etc to enable us to add them as the compost heap requires it.

It is amazing how much stuff you put in there and it just keeps breaking down to practically nothing!

We have just put in lawn clippings, vegie scraps and leaves we have swept up. We turn it each day with one of those cork-screw type things you can get from Bunnings. It would be easier if we had made it so you could open the front pallet like a door but the area where it is located doesn't really allow us to do that easily so we just reach over the top to turn it. It is breaking down really well and when we turn it there are worms everywhere!

I can't believe I can now get excited about worms and rotting leaves and vegies, etc!!!

Thanks DD!

A BIG thankyou to my lovely DD13 who made my banner for me - where would I be without her technological know-how?? Bannerless I tell you! Well, not totally, a plain old usual one... That is an actual photo of our vegie patch too!
Thanks my clever DD!

Seedlings

I transferred my Grosse Lisse tomato and Tommy Toe seedlings to these neat little newspaper seedling pots. Here is a link on how to make them: www.nuganics.com.au/2008/01/18/how-to-make-seedling-pots-from-newspaper/

I did have to put a little bit of sticky tape to keep them together. I did try the origami square ones but found they collapsed a lot easier and these round ones are much simpler and quicker to make I think!

I may have transferred my seedlings too early as I had read on Rhonda's blog "Down to Earth" that she transfers them when they are about 8 - 10cm tall. Oh well, they weren't far off! I planted them quite deep into the newspaper pot, all the way up to the top of the stem. Fingers crossed they will survive...

Vegie Patches filled

Lettuces and Broccoli in one bed....

Sweetcorn all planted up - haven't ever grown these before so should be interesting to see how they go.

We really need to mulch but I need to find a source for it and then the money to buy it! I had heard Lucerne or Sugar Cane mulch were supposed to be good so I will start to keep an eye out for them.

The third bed has a directly sown zucchini seed which hasn't sprouted yet. I will also be putting in my Grosse Lisse tomatoes, Tommy Toe tomatoes and capsicums in this bed once they are ready to transplant. This is the first time I have endeavoured to grow from seed and transplant. Previously I have only directly sown seed.

Leftover Sausages?

I don't know about anyone else but we always tend to cook too many sausages when having a BBQ - now I will be tempted to do it deliberately because it made for a nice, easy and tasty meal the next night using this recipe:

SAUSAGE & POTATO PATTIES

1kg potatoes chopped
6 thin sausages
2 green spring onions, finely sliced
¼ cup finely grated parmesan
¼ cup finely chopped fresh parsley (we only used a little bit - not big parsley lovers)
1 egg
¼ cup packaged breadcrumbs
S & P

Boil, steam or microwave potatoes and mash.
Cook sausages until browned, thinly slice. (Use leftovers like we did!)
Add sausages, onions, parmesan, parsley, egg and breadcrumbs to potatoes. Season.
Divide into 12 portions (about 1/3 cup mixture per portion) and shape into patties.
Fry.

Nice with salad.

Life's Choices

Life is all about choices isn't it? Well I have chosen to endeavour to live my life in a more simple, frugal and environmentally aware manner. As I see it, it can only enhance my life by enabling me to save money, save our health (physically and mentally) and save the planet!

The first big step we have taken is to build a vegetable garden. This is the raised garden bed we built last year: We decided to start small to see if we would enjoy it, be able to cope with it and most of all, actually grow something!!

Well I thought there was nothing better than to be able to go out and pick a freshly grown capsicum for our salad and my little daughter loved to eat the apple cucumbers straight off the vine! I found it an amazing experience to plant a little seed and to watch it sprout and then grow into something you can actually eat.

So this year we decided to expand and my dearest, most patient husband built me three more raised beds: (He did a GREAT job!)

The first bed was made from old railway sleepers my dearest brother was getting rid of from his garden so they were free! (Thanks Bro!) It was based on the square foot gardening method - it was filled with 1/3 compost/manures, 1/3 cocoa peat and 1/3 vermiculite which seemed to work quite well.

We had to buy the sleepers for this lot unfortunately as they are not cheap but hopefully will be worth it in the end! We put weed mat and cardboard down in the bottom of these beds. Luckily there was a council clean-up at the time we built these and I managed to get heaps of cardboard off the side of the road much to my littlest daughter's disgust! She said she didn't mind 'scabbing' for good stuff but not just for CARDBOARD! Oh well, it saved me having to chase up shops etc for their old boxes....

We then filled them with a 'veggie mix' soil blend and added heaps of different types of manures and the vermiculite (I find this makes it a nice light blend). We didn't add the cocoa peat this time as I had heard that it may not be the best for the vegie patch but I did add some water saver granules. So it will be interesting to compare how these beds go.

I will take some photos of them now they are filled for you to see as soon as I can!