Happy 9th Birthday

I know this picture is blurry, but is so captures my daughter’s joy and her spirit, as well as her relationship with her dad.

My beloved daughter turned 9 years old today.

We had a party at home, with 8 girls altogether.

There was lots of laughter, lots of hugs, party music, and excitement.

I think that I enjoy the party games just as much as the girls do.

I made the cupcakes as the birthday cake. They had lemon icing and sweets as trimming. I am embracing their icing imperfection:-)

Happy birthday sweetheart.

Love you.

The simple pleasure of making something yourself

Loving my handmade mohair scarf. This photo was taken my my 8 year old daughter.

I have finished my very first knitting project.

It is this very soft, very warm mohair scarf.

It is very satisfying making something yourself, as you can see from my very happy smile in the photo!

What are you making at the moment? Please share in the comments below.

 

 

Simple Living Day

Here are some of the simple living things that I did today :

washed my laundry with homemade laundry detergent

walked 5km  in my neighbourhood for my daily exercise

hung my laundry on the line to air dry

made lunches for  my husband and daughter of homemade bread, banana muffins, and fruit to take to work and school. I wrapped the sandwiches in paper instead of plastic.

harvested my huge crop of rocket (aragula) from my herb garden

enjoyed  a bowl of homemade leek and potato soup with freshly torn rocket in the sunshine for my lunch

ground by hand some rocket into a pesto with improvised mortar and pestle. aka mixing bowl and blunt end of rolling pin!

read my favourite simple living blogs

experimented to create  a homemade rocket, toasted almond and parmesan pesto. Bottled jars of rocket pesto!

listened to my daughter read

cooked a roast dinner from scratch

listed some items of Freecyle to give away

monitored our finances/budget with my husband

talked to my husband about our simple and sustainable plans (in the sunshine)

gave some rocket to my neighbours

cast off  my scarf that I have been learning how to knit

read a chapter of my book from the library “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee.

What was your simple living day like today?

Playdates

Since moving out of Sydney, and moving to a more rural location, I have found it is easier, and much more relaxed to arrange playdates.

For example, there is a little friend who is a neighbours’ child who appears regularly a couple of times a week at our front door, seeing if my daughter can come over to play, or otherwise she stays to play at our home.

I have been getting to know her parents at the School Bus stop each morning as we chat together as we wait for the children’s big Yellow School Bus to roar up to the bus stop and take them to school. I’ve also invited her Mum over for an afternoon coffee and afternoon tea, which was quite lovely.

They live a few houses away, and they play so well together.

Yesterday afternoon, we ran into the family at the shops, and I invited the little girl over to have and early “movie night” to watch a kids movie with my daughter, and to have some homemade popcorn.

When she arrived, she had her best sparkly sequin tights and a new trendy jacket, just as though she were going out on a Friday night. Well, it was Friday night after all.

They had a great time, and really enjoyed sharing the movie together and saying the dialogue and impressions of the characters afterwards.

It is so refreshing that little friends can just pop around, rather than when we lived in the city. In Sydney,  playmates had to be scheduled a week at least in advance, and needed to be fitted in amongst lots of scheduled after school activities and parents work commitments. Children had to be chauffeured to and from the playmate.

Its much more relaxed and natural like this. It feels much more normal.

Simple Lunch

With the cooler weather, I have been making up a soup every week. My lunches have consisted of a bowl of soup, with a handful of shredded organic rocket (aragula) from my herb garden, a dollop of homemade yoghurt, and some freshly cracked pepper.

This is served with fresh homemade bread with a spread of real butter.

 

Learning to Knit

One aspect which I am particularly enjoying about simple and sustainable living is learning something new.

I had a gift voucher that I had won in a school raffle, so yesterday I went to the local craft shop and purchased some wool and knitting needles. This wool is mohair and is so soft! It is the same colour as my eyes. I want to knit a scarf with it.

About a month ago, I asked my Mum to teach me how to cast on and how to do the knit stitch. She showed my daughter and me.

However, then a month later, I had forgotten everything!

Never fear, I found these tutorials on YouTube. This one for casting one,

and this one for purl and stocking stitch.

I cast on 40 stitches, because this looked like the width of the scarf that I wanted. And then I started to knit.

After about 90 mins, I had a few centimetres of fabric, however, I could see mistakes, so I unravelled it and started again.

By the evening, I had about 5 cms of fabric again.

Mohair is such a lovely, warm wool to knit with.

I’m a beginner knitter!

 

Homemade Snacks for School and Work Lunches

One of the things that I have stopped buying is prepackaged snacks for school and work lunches. I make lunches and morning teas for my husband to take to work and my daughter to take to school.

I always send a piece of seasonal fruit.  In summer it might be grapes and strawberries, in winter it might be apples and Queensland bananas.

In addition, my husband and daughter like to have a sweet treat , so I have started to bake something each week. I do the baking with my daughter, so that it is a weekly activity that we like to do together.

Here is what we made together last night.

In Australia these are known as ANZAC biscuits. This recipe makes 24 golden biscuits. We love them!

ANZAC biscuits.

1 cup of rolled oats

3/4 cup of coconut

1 cup plain flour

1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate soda

2 tablespoons boiling water

1 cup sugar

125g butter

1 tablespoon golden syrup

In a large bowl mix rolled oats, coconut, sifted flour and sugar.

In a medium saucepan, gently melt butter and golden syrup.

Mix bicarbonate of soda with boiling water. Pour this into the saucepan mixture.  It will froth up.

Pour this mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients.

Spoon dessertspoonfuls of mixture onto a greased oven trays. Leave room for the biscuits to spread.

Bake in 150 degrees Celsius oven for 20 mins.

Allow to cool on tray.

I have a glass cookie jar that I like to keep them in. There is something very comforting about having a jar full of homemade cookies.

The simple pleasure of growing and sharing my own herbs

Earlier this year, I started a herb garden.

I have been enjoying fresh herbs grown in my little herb garden. There is mint, basil, coriander and kaffir lime leaves as well as rocket and lemongrass. I like to cook Thai food and many of these herbs are used in my meals that I prepare. Fresh herbs really give a lift to the simple food.

I have just been outside in the dusk, watering my herb garden. My rocket  (aka aragula) is growing profusely.  We have enjoyed it as a rocket and parmesan salad, on sandwiches made with homemade bread, stirred through pasta with olive oil and lemon dressing and of course with some freshly cracked blacked  pepper.

I picked a large bunch of rocket and passed it over the fence to our new neighbour.

It feels so good being able to share food that I have grown myself.

Homemade Bread

Changes I’ve noticed since we moved to the country

It has been 4 months since we uprooted from Sydney and moved out to the country.

Here are some changes that I have noticed.

My husband started riding a bike to and from work. He has become incredibly fit and has won the weight loss competition at work. He has lost 7.5 kgs and is developing a 6-pack ( abs!) and is very muscular and healthy. He is looking well, has lost the dark rings under  his eyes, and no longer looks exhausted. Cycling is also a good way to manage stress at work.

Our home is becoming a much nicer place to be.

We have space outside for my herb garden, and I have been eating fresh herbs daily, which makes home cooked meals even more delicious!

My daughter is becoming much healthier. She can play outside now with her netball, and practise her cartwheels outside on the lawn, and she seeks to go outside to play. She has started to play netball and dance class at the local School of Arts with some of her school friends. She has settled well into her new school, has a great teacher, catches the big yellow school bus to and from school with her school buddies, and has the neighbours children come over to play several times a week. Her social and physical life is thriving. And yet there is still loads of down time, baking cakes and cookies, reading, watching movies and seeing family, as well as planting flowers in the garden and waiting for them to grow.

I have been slowly decluttering. I realise this is a slow process and it will take some time. I feel like we have slowed the bringing in of “STUFF” to our home, although there was buying of stuff around the bike for my husband and his cycling peripherals.

I have been exercising almost every day. My exercise consists of a variety of running, walking, yoga or the exercise bike. In the first few months following the big move, I was also swimming every second day, but now the weather is colder, I will restart swimming again in October. I have lost about 2kg since the move.

I am cooking almost everything from scratch. We are eating so well. I am baking my own bread, making yoghurt, trying to buy the freshest wholefood ingredients that I can. The amount of processed food that we buy and eat has decreased substantially. I thought it was low before we moved, but now it is even lower. Our food bill has decreased from $140 to $120 per week for 3 people.  Nine years ago before my daughter was born and we were both working full time the food bill just for the 2 of us was around $200. And that was without including food for bought lunches.

The two downsides of this is that cooking from scratch is very time consuming.  The second downside is that there is so much more washing up to do! However, I do enjoy cooking and I like healthy food and its benefits, so it is totally worth it to me.