Home made laundry powder

I had heaps of washing to do yesterday, and I ran out of laundry powder on the first load....so instead of going down to the local iga to buy some, I thought I would finally make laundry powder. I have had the ingredients sitting under our laundry tub for the last 2 years or so, just always seemed easier to use the bought stuff. It honestly only took 5 minutes to make, I whizzed it all up in the thermomix instead of hand grating the soap, which made things easier. I also used my hand made soap, which made the end result not quite as dry and fine as if I had used laundry soap. I finished all the washing using this mixture yesterday, and the end result was really good. Even the white socks which get a bit grubby around here, came out really well.

I used:
4 cups grated soap (laundry or handmade)
2 cups borax
2 cups washing (lectric) soda
1/2 cup powdered oxygen bleach (to give it a bit more oomph for the farm clothes)

I will try to make some laundry liquid next time, as I think it will be much more economical to make. I will post about that when I make it. Damian and I spent the weekend working on the soon to be craft studio...I will post some photos about that in the next post, it is coming along really well :)

Organising the craft supplies

The shed had gotten to the ridiculous stage....things keep getting put in there so they are out of the way, and it was getting harder and harder to find a clear path from one end of the shed to the other.  All of my craft supplies have been sitting on a trestle table covered with dust cloths since all of my supplies were moved out of the spare room to do the repairs from the termite damage. So today, I decided I would move all of my craft supplies from the trestle table into the cupboard given to me by Mum and Dad a few years back. I wanted to wait until my craft room gets done and I had painted the cupboard, but things were getting desperate, and I knew that getting the trestle table out of the way would clear out lots of space, and it had a knock on effect in cleaning up the other areas around this as well. So, I'm pretty worn out now, but it has made a huge difference in space in the shed and also to my work area.

I'm looking forward to painting this cupboard one day in the future, not sure yet whether I will go with an aubergine or a shabby chic look yet.

The first lost tooth

Kasey has lost her first ever tooth today. It has been loose for about 6 - 7 weeks, and her new tooth has even been growing up behind it. I would have been taking her to the dentist next week if it hadn't fallen out by itself, as I was, and still am, a little concerned about how far back the new tooth is coming up. I have been getting her to wiggle it, and I could see this morning it was only just hanging in there, and she pushed it out with her tongue accidentally about 1/2 hour later, much to her surprise. So her tooth is now sitting in a glass beside her bed, waiting for the tooth fairy to come tonight...

I have downloaded an app on to my ipad called "home routines" and it is based on the flylady principles. It has morning and evening routines, as well as the 5 zones, and the focus zones for each week, as well as weekly tasks. As you do each one, you can click on it, and it marks it as done, and fills in one of the points on a star on the home page. As you complete all of the tasks, the whole star is filled in, showing you that you have finished it. I have finished most of my morning routines today, and the afternoon one is much easier. I have done quite a bit of clearing out in the kitchen, as that has been the focus zone for this week.  The pantry is nice and clean, and the clutter drawer was cleaned out by Damian yesterday.  I am noticing that since I have been focusing on this, that everyone else has been more focused on keeping their own rooms tidier, (a small miracle where Toni is concerned) so things are very slowly falling in to place. I will have to watch I don't overdo it though, as I was pretty wrecked by lunch time yesterday. Ok, I'm off to work out what we're having for dinner tonight, so I can complete my morning tasks....

My shiny sink...step 1...

Ok..so my sink is usually pretty tidy, the dishes are put in the dishwasher throughout the day and the sink is wiped down regularly. However, in my quest to become a more organised person, I am going to try the flylady way..(.again...)  Step 1 is to shine my sink...this step apparently leads on to other areas of my life and the house...so yesterday I shined the sink by filling each side with very hot water and bleach, leaving for an hour, and rinsing out, and then I cleaned the splashback with sugar soap, and gave it a nice wipe over, and then polished the sink. I also soaked the dishcloth in the bleach to get rid of any germs in it while the sink was soaking. I replaced the hand wash, and put it in a nice new ceramic dispenser that was sitting in the ensuite not being used, and moved the plug, dishrack and detergent underneath the sink. Now how long the dishrack and detergent stay under the sink for, will have to wait and see, as life needs to be practical as well, and if it is a pain taking them out and setting them up, then I will leave them on the sink...but I will try and make it all work.  Sooo..presenting my nice shiny sink....tahdah!!

To fit my dishrack in the cupboard underneath my sink, I needed to clean out this cupboard (So, there you go, already leading on to the next step)  I threw out a bag full of junk, and relocated a few things that didn't belong there.

So, I have achieved step 1, and I feel like I have gotten somewhere constructive, and I have got some decluttering done at the same time.

Putting the chickens to work today...

I have put the chickens out to work today....they are all in the vege garden for the day, weeding and eating the bugs and slugs, and contributing some fertiliser to the soil! They will be in there for a week or so, cleaning it all up for me, I will put them back in their pen at night and they can go back in to the garden each morning.  They love to do it...I don't...so everyone is happy :)  The plan is to build a moveable chicken run so they can concentrate on 1 area at a time in the future, and turn it over and weed it for me in preparation for new plantings.  Everything here is sooo wet and slushy...it is very overcast today but no rain so far...hopefully things can dry out a  little before the next lot of rain comes our way...I am going to tidy up a little today and put the Christmas tree away and re-organise the sewing table a bit. I have managed to get through most of the leftovers from Xmas day, just a little bit of chicken to use up, which I will make in to a creamy thai curry for dinner tonight.  I had better do the floors this morning as well.... now I just need the energy to do it all..

The girls hard at work

A simple home made gift for a friend....

I'm having a cuppa with Tammy this morning....we don't do a big gift exchange at Xmas...just something small..I have made her a gift basket of my home made soaps as she is always asking me for more...and I have included a jar of chilli jam, strawberry jam and a mini christmas cake, and a few chocolates. I had the basket here in my stash as well as the cellophane etc, so not a big $ cost to put this together, just my time to make the goodies. I also included a home made card, I made this at the last card class earlier this month.

We had a family pre-Christmas get together here on Sunday, as we don't all get a chance to be at the same place on Xmas day. It was nice to have most of the family together.  The weather wasn't the best, but as we have a large undercover entertainment area, it didn't make any difference to our plans. Not too stressful this week, everything is pretty well organised for Christmas, just a few little things to finish off, and my diary is fairly sparse, so I have lots of time to just potter around at home and fnish things off at my leisure. A little bit of running around this morning, but nothing too much. Anyway, I'm off to put on a load of washing and do the floors before I head off for my Tuesday cuppa...

This is on my mind....

I deperately needed to clean the fridge.....we were flat out fitting anything in there amongst all of the half used jars of this and that, and left over containers of things.....it took me about an hour of cleaning, but it looks so much better now...

I have about 4 containers of margarine to get through, I usually use butter, but Damian and Toni keep bringing margarine home from camping trips and working away, so I have to get through all of this first. So now I have visual proof that the fridge was actually clean and it wasn't a figment of my imagination :)

Cardmaking, Sewing and a nice clean house...

I had card making class on Monday.  It is always a nice relaxing day with lunch provided, and we always make some nice, different cards, utilising a lot of techniques. These are the 5 cards that we made on the day:

Tuesday I had my weekly coffee with Tammy, and afterwards I went home and started on cleaning the house. After doing the bathrooms, I decided to redecorate a little, and went to Loot and bought some flowers, and some potpourri and a couple of decorative items to go with what I already have here in vases etc. I am really pleased with how the bathroom has come up, and Toni says it looks like a resort bathroom now, don't think it's quite up to that standard, but it does look nice, and the kids have managed to keep it tidy for a whole 24 hours now....amazing.....I finished cleaning the house this morning, I only had the floors to finish off, and the house looks so much better, and I always feel really great and organised when the house is tidy...I also caught up on the washing and did a quick grocery shop before Mum came down today to pick up her sewing machine that I picked up for her yesterday. Mum spent the day here sewing and learning how to use her new machine, and we had a nice girly sewing day. Tomorrow I have embroidery club in the morning to sew up the owl...should be fun as I haven't ever done anything like this before. I will post some pics tomorrow after class as it is very cute...I have a really bad cough at the moment, it gets worse late afternoon and evenings when it's a bit cooler, and my stomach muscles are quite sore from coughing...I hope it clears up soon as I am definitely over it....I have a bit of paperwork to catch up on tomorrow afternoon and Friday, so hopefully I can get that out of the way if I can be organised....here's hoping....I am in the process of ordering some books through amazon at the moment, I will try and finish the order off tonight, just want to have a good look and make sure there isn't anything else that I want....Radical Homemakers is one of them, and some homesteading and country living ones, I will have a look at some sewing and craft ones as well before I finish off the order....

Busy baking day.....

I thought I would catch up on some school lunch baking today, it seems like ages since I have had a baking day, and the school munchies were in serious need of some topping up. I made some pikelets:

I also made some choc chip muffins

And also some cheesy vegemite scrolls

I also put on a batch of skim vanilla yoghurt using the simple savings recipe, I have tried the suggestion of another forum member and used long life skim milk, instead of full cream powdered milk. It seems to be thickening up ok, so I will see how it is a little later on tonight. I have never been able to get a skim version of the simple savings yoghurt using powdered milk to work, so if this works it would be great, it works out about the same cost, maybe 20c a litre dearer using the long life milk.  I usually use full cream powdered milk with a couple of tablespoons of the greek yoghurt starter powder and it ends up so thick that the spoon leaves a scoop mark in the yoghurt, I don't think the skim will end up quite so thick, but as long as it is thickened to a point, then that's fine with me, as I don't usually eat too much of my home made yoghurt because it's not a skim version.  I also gave the pantry a wipe out and cleared out some old, unidentifiable stuff in the bottom of the freezer as it's bin day, so my baking will now fit in the freezer!  So it's been a productive day in the kitchen.

I also sowed about 60 climbing beans, 70 peas and 8 golden nugget pumpkin seeds this afternoon. The corn I planted a couple of weeks ago is starting to shoot through the mulch, but no sign of the (kent/jap?? not sure which one they are) pumpkins yet...not sure if they will take as the seeds are a couple of years old, so I may have to dry some more and plant them out if the ones from a couple of weeks ago don't take...

I am going to have a look at the Ekka program, I would really like to go this year and watch the ring events and look at all of the judging etc....Damian loves the woodchop, I love watching the horses and the sheep dog trials and the night time events....Kasey, well she just loves the rides and side show alley and the showbags of course....so with the clash of what the adults like and what Kasey and her big brother and sister like, it makes it hard to go and for us all to enjoy ourselves.  May have to make 2 days of it, 1 for Kasey and 1 for Damian and I....just don't know if I could stand 2 days of the show....we did go last year, and we usually make a point of only going every 2nd year....we'll see what happens....

Home made Woolwash

I have made this wool wash, rather than buying it, and it works brilliantly. It leaves the woollens really soft and smelling lovely, and I also use it when I am wanting to freshen up sheets and doonas etc, and for sterilising these items while they wash. It's also great for towels. I have had this 1st batch for at least 6 months, and I freshened it up a week or so ago by adding some hot water to it, as it had hardened up and was becoming hard to scoop out. It is now really good again, and should last many more uses before I need to make any more. This is the recipe:

Home Made Wool Wash
200ml methylated spirits
300g lux pure soap flakes or grated laundry soap
100ml eucalyptus oil

Mix all ingredients and store in a wide necked jar.

Use 1- 2 tablespoons per wash.  Mix with hot water and then add to a warm wash.

Craft room, op shop finds and some scrapbooking

Wow, what a busy few days it has been! Time has just flown by, I can't believe it is halfway through the weekend already....

Thursday, I transferred my craft things from the office to the spare room. Here is how it looked after I had moved everything in, and before sorting...

Here is how things looked after sorting :)

This cleanout took me all day. I haven't managed to get to cleaning up the office as yet, but having all of the craft things out has made things much less cramped already, so I should get to the cleanup next week. On Friday I had to do some running around, I called into Endos, and picked up a fantastic little binder case for $6, which is exactly the right size for scrapbooking cardstock and paper.

I also picked up a hair straightener for $4, it has ceramic plates, so is really nice to use. I then went to Lifeline and picked up a lovely chair for the desk in the craft room, I am going to paint it white and shabby chic it.(Photo to come) After that I went to a scrapbooking crop, we went to a different place at Woody Point, as our usual place cancelled their crop as she wasn't well. The ladies there were all really lovely, and one of the owners there is an ex florist, so we had a great chat about the industry in general and particular florists and what they are doing now. The shop was very, very small though, and we were all pretty cramped, this was the only drawback though, and both Ann and I had a good night there. I started on a paper bag album for our Easter photos. I managed to get all of the pages covered, and a couple of pages completed, but it will probably take me a few crops to finish it off. This is what I have done so far:

This is the front cover:

This page is one large page and a smaller fold over page attached, it is quite eye catching.The colours haven't really showed up that great, they are much nicer in real life.

Today, I went to a card class, and made these cards

after that I went a did a couple of 

wedding quotes, I didn't end up getting home until nearly 7pm with dinner, so it has been a long, few, tiring days. I did finish this dishcloth while sitting down after dinner..

I think I will be having a sleep in tomorrow. :)

A bit of room organisation...

Yesterday morning I went to an overlocker inspiration session at the sewing centre, they had a husqvarna rep there showing us all the different ways you can use your overlocker and the different feet you can use, I didn't realise how much extra you can do with the overlocker other than neatening edges, it was quite worthwhile, even though the focus did seem to be on that particular overlocker and a bit of a sales pitch, but if I can transfer the information to my overlocker and play with the settings a bit, then I should get quite a bit out of it. I caught up on a bit of paperwork last night, and finished another bouquet preservation, so that is now ready to go to the framer.

Today I have had a sleep in, thought I would take advantage of school holidays....I am in such a positive mood today, I think it's because I haven't really got too much on this week, and I have time to breathe...

Today I would like to give the office a bit of a cleanup and transfer some of my craft things into the spare room and tidy that up a bit, with Damian and I both working out of our office now, it really seems very cramped in here, and has become a bit frustrating, so I am going to see if I can sort it out a bit. I also have some more washing to catch up on....I had piles of it after our time away...but should get through it today, and I want to get all the sheets washed as well. I have also made a start on my recipe blog, I have been collecting recipes over the years and have been keeping them in a word document, and I made a start on trying to index it all out, but it will take me months, and as I keep adding to it, it alters all the page numbers and index etc....arghhh...just too hard...so I thought I would keep a separate blog for this, and add all of my recipes into that and use separate labels to index them. I would like to eventually do it up into a recipe book for my children to have with their favourite recipes. I have only put 1 recipe in there so far, but will add to it over the next few months so that it becomes quite comprehensive.

I have to remember to ring my sister Kerrie, it's her birthday today.  Okay, off to do some organising. :)

Pantry Cleanup

I have cleaned up the pantry today, so much for a quieter day, but you have to do these things when you are in the mood for them. There was a fair bit of stuff in there that didn't need to be in there, and now there is heaps of room.

This is before:

This is after - much better :)

 

Now, I am pretty exhausted. Have to go up and lock the chookies up for the night, and then cook dinner.... sometimes I really wish I had a maid.... or a cook.... or both :)