Homemade Bread

Clutter to Cash Update April 2012

I have sold most of the clothing that I listed on eBay.

This has been a net amount of $100 after eBay costs, for the clothing that I had decluttered. This represented half of a 60 litre plastic tub which I no longer have to store in my garage.

I now feel inspired to continue to list the other half of the tub!

Only 2 and a half tubs 60 litre plastic tubs left to go, before all of my excess clothing has been purged.

I have been enjoying the clothing that I have chosen to keep so much more! And these pieces fit in my wardrobe so easily so that I can find exactly what I want to wear.

By the way, I wonder if I can average $100 per each half tub, this will be $600 total!

 

Little white dress

I have been enjoying having my sewing things unpacked and in my new studio. My studio is my creative space where I can sew, write, play the piano and make things.

This week, I made this little dress for a friend’s daughter.

I know it looks like a top, but it is a dress, and when she grows to tall for the dress, she can wear it as a top.

The fabric is the softest cotton, with tiny spots.

One of the things I like about making things for people is that I think about them as I am making the item.

Our move from the city to the country

It all happened so suddenly.

We had decided that we wanted to leave Sydney and had been considering alternatives for our “rural” move.

In our minds, we had lots of time, we were thinking that my husband might be offered a job by the middle of 2012 and then we would pack and move.

But of course, this wasn’t what happened.

Instead, a week before Christmas, D was offered a job in the beautiful Hunter Valley, starting on the 3rd of January.

As this was the beginning of the new school year, this also meant that I wanted C to start at her new school, wherever that was going to be, at the beginning of the school year.

So for the last 5 weeks, we have packed up a whole house (straight after Christmas Day), found a house to move to (hard to do over Christmas) , researched and been accepted into a school with a good reputation, hired a truck and moved everything ourselves ( 9 tonnes of STUFF! – so much for my downsizing efforts). This meant carrying everything down 50 steps to the truck, and then going back up the 50 steps to get the next item. And so on. For 6 tonnes. The other 3 tonnes was from the garage, straight into the truck., so no steps. And we moved an iron framed pianola. Not down 50 steps though.

Then we moved to our new home. It is only 4 years old and I love it. It is located in a semi rural village, on the edge of farmland. It has so much SPACE after living in such close quarters in the townhouse in Sydney.

Then there has been the whole thing of going back down to Sydney and cleaning and performing repairs/updates in readiness to rent it out. And interviewing and selecting a suitable agent. Today was the final milestone, a trip down to Sydney for a final repair, and now it is all over.

We have done it.

C is in her new school in a semi rural setting. The school even keeps chickens! She has made lots of friends already and has 3 playdates lined up already. She catches the school bus and the bus ride is only about 10 mins.

D is loving his new work. He rides his bike to and from work and so is getting lots of exercise. Work is a 20-25min ride away, with bike lanes. So we are glad that we can remain a 1 car family.

I’ve met some of our neighbours and some parents from the school.

I have enjoyed setting up home here, and having space for how we want to live. Such as a reading nook to enjoy my books, and outdoor space which is covered, so even if it is raining we can be outside, a place to sew, meditate and do yoga. And a large family area to just be together.

I am looking forward to getting back to my simple living ways and connecting with my local community.

Spontaneous camping update #1

I made a customised 5 page checklist of camping items. I am a very organised person, I like to plan and make sure that everything goes smoothly.

So, with this checklist ( did I mention that it was 5 pages long?) I went thru the checklist with Mr Techno item by item.
Tent, check, hammer, check, groundsheet, gas stove, check, bbq utensils, check. We did this for all 5 pages of items.

We packed the items into the car.

We drove 3 hours.
We unloaded the car at the camping ground.

No tent.

Spontaneous camping

We are driving in the car right now, heading north about 3 hours of Sydney for a spontaneous camping trip.

I found a camping checklist on the internet yesterday, printed it off, packed the car,and we are off for a couple of nights getting back to nature.

Well, we did pack porcelein coffee cups, our coffee machine, and free trade coffee.

And those smiley cookies from the other day.

And the ipad.

But everything else is back to nature….

Leaving The City, moving to the country

For some time now,we have been considering leaving city life and moving somewhere in the country.

But where do we want to live? That has been hard to decide.

Firstly, it has to be somewhere where my husband can find employment. Fortunately working in health, he is not dependent on needing to live in the city, so that is good.

I would like to head north of Sydney, as i am a warm/hot weather kind of gal.

I would like to be driving distance to the coast, but not too close.

I would like there to be lots of trees and greenery.

I would like to have some land for chickens, a goat, a dog and a veggie garden.

Mr Techno is originally a country boy, and he is yearning for space after living in our townhouse for 4 years in Sydney.

Barbie girl has a list of all the farm animals that she would like, the actual number of each type of animals as well as their names.

We will probably rent our townhouse out for a year, and rent in the country for a year, just to see how it goes.

Sydney house prices and corresponding mortgages are overwhelming. Longer term, it would be great to have a little house in the countryside for around $500k, about one third of what it would cost for us to buy a house in the area in which we are living about $1.5million.

Where shall we go?

Simplicity

This was a beautiful post by the Frugal Girl this week.

I felt so good after reading this post, so I thought I would share it with you.

Enjoy.

Simplicity

Loose jeans

Don’t you just love it when your jeans start to feel a bit looser?
I lost some weight last year. It was eight kilos, which I was quite happy about as I was overweight according to the BMI chart and height and weight chart. I dropped one and a half dress sizes.
But since then, my weight plateaued and I even put on 1 kilo.
Now that I am only working part time again, I have started my daily routine of exercise in the morning, and meal planning and cooking everything from scratch.

This seems to be agreeing with my jeans!

A Day Out

This post doesn’t have much to do with simple living, but I had a ball today with a girlfriend,and I wanted to record it.

I have had a wonderful day with a girlfriend who is newbie fashion designer. She finished her formal fashion designer qualifications last year, and is starting out in the rag trade.

She took me in to inner city Surry Hills, which is the hub of the wholesalers for fabrics and notions like buttons and trimmings where the fashion designers select their fabrics for their ranges. The area has such a raw, creative buzz about it.
We went to a huge warehouse type place where there was every type of fabric in any colour imaginable. We pored over the differnt fabrics, and imagined the things we could make.

My focus was on purchasing natural fabrics of cotton, wool and silk to have a stash of fabric for the coming year, as I am going to be sewing my own clothes this year.

I selected some cotton fabric for a summer dress, wool fabric for a winter dress, wool fabric for 3 tops for winter and some silk, cotton and silk/cotton blend fabric for 3 tops for winter.

I also bought some fabric to make a winter skirt to replace a favourite and well worn skirt that is past its prime. It is one of my favourite skirts, and I am going to find a pattern similar to it, or else take the skirt apart and cut the skirt from the old skirt pieces.

We had a lovely, very late lunch and then coffee, then it was time to head back to the real world and pick our kids up from school!