Christmas Wreath

This year will be our first Christmas in our new house as well as our first Christmas with our own Christmassy things. After losing everything from the old house, we celebrated the last two Christmases at Granny B’s and decorated/celebrated with things we either made or decorations Granny B already owned.

Luckily for us, last year we were gifted a handful of decorations from family members. These things were given with our green beliefs in mind (one of these angels, and some handmade gnomes on reindeer). But this year I wanted a wreath to hang on the door.

In an old (2008) Burke’s Backyard magazine, I found a simple how to guide to making your own wreath. Then I spent 20 minutes picking up a variety of sticks from our backyard before sitting down with an old coat hanger and a hot glue gun. And voila, we have our own Christmas wreath to hang on the door.

I love the front cover of Country Style magazine at the moment with their feather wreath (not the bird though), so we think we may weave a few feathers from Little B’s nature collection into our wreath before we hang it up. I also want to cover the hanger in white wool, so it blends in a bit more with our white door.

And what has surprised me is that I really feel a unexplainable happiness that I made this wreath from simple things already in our backyard. I guess sometimes it’s the simple things that give us the greatest pleasure?? :-)

Inverloch Shell Museum

One of our favourite places we visited on our recent holiday was the Inverloch Shell Museum. It is a community museum with over 6000 shells in display. Little B loves everything to do with the ocean and has quite the shell collection himself, so this was a must do for us, but I think most people would find it interesting as well.

The museum cost $5 entry for a family and is made up of collection of shells, crabs and even preserved octopuses. The sheer variety of shells was mind boggling as was the size of some of them. In different corners they have touch tables, where you can touch different shells as well as things like starfishes, and fish bladders.

It is set within the Bunurong Environment Centre, which also had other really interesting free displays. Firstly a dinosaur display provided by Monash University, which allows children to dig for fossils, do dinosaur puzzles and watch the history of dinosaur discoveries in the South Gippsland area.

Secondly more hands on displays about the forests and the seas. Little B loved a faux forest floor where you could search for different objects with tweezers and a magnifying glass.

This area allowed children to put shells into alphabetical order, or draw pictures to add to a collage of the foreshore. It was also really interesting for Granny B and I as it talked about all the environmental conservation measures the local community had taken to eradicate the marine pest, the Northern Pacific Seastar (they removed them all by hand over a 2 year period).

Little B absolutely loved the hands on nature of these displays, especially being able to touch shells and starfishes. He hopes to go there again "really soon" :-)

Fun in the Sun

There’s nothing like a dead computer to give you an enforced break :-) Lucky for me it happened just before we went on holidays to Phillip Island. Change of place and things to do make for great distractions!!

We also were lucky with the weather – while nowhere near hot, it was sunny and mild and we had zero rain throughout the duration of our holiday!! The house we hired turned out to be delightful and a great base too.

:: Lots of mini golf was played. Little B loves to play golf, and really who could resists pirate mini golf around a pirate ship or as a mini-inventor, mini golf around a mechanical invention track??

:: Beach babies abound in our family, so we spent lots and lots of time at the beach building castles, looking in rockpools, walking and flying kites.

:: Our beloved canoe came with us too. Not as much fun as we hoped, but Mr B and Little B stuck almost up to their knees in mud on the foreshore was priceless (and hilarious). Not so hilarious were the muddy shoes or clothes that I got to wash (those shoes above are light pale mauve).

:: We spent time checking out the mangrove walks around Rhyll as Little B loves everything ocean related. I fell in love with their composting loo system and aim to put one in as our second toilet when we extend (and I now have Mr B onside).

:: we spent some time in Inverloch investigating their Shell Museum (another post on this coming up)

:: The final highlight was visiting the museum at the Grand Prix Race Circuit. When he was much younger Mr B was an amateur motorcycle racer and had raced at Phillip Island. My dad was into racing cars and I grew up at the drag races in Adelaide. So it was nice to share these different things about ourselves and our childhoods with Little B where he could put it all in context.

And now we are back - well rested, sunned up a bit (it's of course cold and wet at home at the moment *sigh*) and ready to tackle are garden just that little bit more.

Slow Living Diary October 2012

Once again, I am joining in with Christine from Slow Living Essentials for a monthly reflection of slow living…

NOURISH: Our favourite bickies at the moment have to be these jammy oat biscuits courtesy of Jude Blereau. I’ve also discovered you can freeze them and then warm them back up in the oven without any difference in taste or texture.

I've also been cooking lots for our canoeing expeditions - easy to eat hand held food like tombolas, gozlemes, the above biscuits, roast vegie tarts. Things that are easy to bulk cook and then defrost or reheat and take in our little thermos jars.

PREPARE: Not food per se but I've been getting ready for Christmas. Working off a detailed list I've been slowly making or buying hand made goodies for family. 

REDUCE: Using Mr B’s old socks for sewing projects (see below).

 
GREEN: I’ve started using aloe vera as a hair product on my hair. Since having Little B my hair wants to be curly but looks more like I stuck my finger in a light socket LOL. After reading about aloe vera, I gave it a try with great results. My hair is so soft and when it air dries it goes into a soft soft curl.

I’ve also been trialing a home-made sugar wax recipe from Plastic Free by Beth Terry for my legs to avoid using razors. So far so good – though very messy. I’m hoping I’ll get better at it each time.

GROW: Our potatoes are growing like crazy and our zucchini, squash and pumpkin seedlings are doing really well in the ground too. Our tomatoes are not so spectacular but since you shouldn’t plant them out until Cup Day around here, fingers crossed they start doing better soon.

We have loads of baby apples and nectarines on the trees too (the benefits of buying a house with established fruit trees though the nectarine is hideously affected by leaf curl). And the almond tree is full as well.

CREATE:  This month I made a spider costumer for Little B out of Mr B’s old socks. They have just the right kink for legs and then finger knitted cords to join them with his black tshirt. I then sewed cardboard eyes onto his black beanie. It was a total hit and I spend a lot of my time with said spider these days :-)

DISCOVER:   I’ve taken a rest from heavy reading this month. Interesting reads have been Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel (a novel look at “life” after death) and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I’m currently ensconced in the sequel to The Passage, The Twelve by Justin Cronin.

ENHANCE: Mr B and I have actually been cutting back on our outside commitments to spend more time at home as a family. Instead we have focused on ensuring that we buy local when we can and support local businesses.

ENJOY: We loved going to the Stringybark Sustainable Living Festival again this year. It is such a great place to go as a family, to see and hang out with like minded people. So many native animals to see and chat about. Little B met Dirt Girl, and they had an amazing nocturnal nightwalk set up inside. I also loved that they had stands for the kids to make Seed Bombs.

The Planks above were a huge hit with Little B. This stand spread across multiple areas and attracted kids and adults alike like bees to honey. We spent about 20 minutes sitting on the floor building. Made from sustainable wood, we now know what Little B is getting for Christmas :-)

We’ve been having so much fun as a family at the moment. Mr B and I have designated one day each weekend that we devote to going out into nature as a family. Mainly we have been canoeing, bush walking and “exploring” as Little B puts it, but it’s been so much fun.

Comparing Solar

With both our solar arrays connected, it was only a matter of time before we started to compare the two. Over the last few weeks, we’ve had some beautiful sunny days (in amongst the throwback to winter *sigh*), so we’ve started noting down what each array was doing.

We have 1kw array of flat panels on our roof.

And a 1kw solar tracker.

Our block is oriented east to west (not the best), so our flat panels receive most of their sun in the afternoon from the west. Our solar tracker obviously tracks the sun from whenever the sun first hits the panels (8.45am) until sundown.

On our best day last week, our flat panels generated 4.69 kwh. BUT our solar tracker generated 8kwh. I was very chuffed to say the least. First of all, because we generated nearly 13kwh that day and we only use 6kwh on our worst days. I’m not that much into feeding back into the grid (though Mr B is). In my mind, as long as we make more than we use, I’m happy :-)

But secondly, because the solar tracker was so much more effective than the flat panels. And now this is where I must divulge that Mr B has been working in solar & sustainability measures for the last 8 years. He was so enamoured by different solar farms that he saw in Germany and Spain about 4 years ago, that he came to Australia with the dream of building solar trackers.

And so it began, working in our garage and in our study. He has mainly worked rurally in Victoria getting his dream up off the ground. Working with farmers, vineyards and small city councils. The biggest solar tracker he built has been for Wangaratta City Council.

So we have always wanted one in our own yard but with all our housing issues over the last few years, it just hasn’t been possible. But now we have one in all its glory (yes I’m biased LOL) and I am so proud of my dear hubby that it lives up to all its promise.

Innate Curiosity - Silver Fox Style

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~ The cure for boredom is curiosity ~ there is no cure for curiosity ~

   Dorothy Parker

I celebrated my birthday over the weekend. My beautiful family treated me to lots of cakes, love and pressies (yay for my new Fiskars secateurs). Not an important number but I love to reflect nonetheless.

I decided on my last birthday to stop colouring my hair with henna. Instead I’ve been growing the colour out. I now have a beautiful skunk stripe grey streak at the front down to bob length. And the rest of my hair is speckled with silver strands (which strangely enough I quite like). Unfortunately I don’t like my hair that short, so there is an obvious colour difference between the top of my hair and bottom. I'll post pics when I'm all grey.

And on my birthday I discovered a new young grey role model – a young silver fox - Sarah Harris. She is a writer for Vogue who has completely grey / silver hair and boy does she rock it!! :-) Inspiration enough for me to keep going with my hair.

As for my Dorothy Parker quote, I think as I get older I just get more curious. I’m not interested in the status quo or what’s cool or trendy. I’m not interested in the “shoulds” or the “ought to’s”. I still want to change the world. And I'm innately curious about what everyone has to say about the state of our world and how we will change it.

Looking back over the last 5-10 years I’ve changed so much in my beliefs, my views of the world, how we chose to live our lives but I realised yesterday that I’m content. I love my garden, I love my life, hey I’m even loving those grey hairs…we have so much further that we want to go on our sustainable path but as we make our way there, I’m happy!!

Slow Living Diary September 2012

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Once again, I am joining in with Christine from Slow Living Essentials for a monthly reflection of slow living…

NOURISH: I’ve got back into the habit of making more of our own dips (hummus, spicy pumpkin) to have as snacks.

PREPARE: I’ve started buying all our nuts loose and in bulk. I was surprised to find out how much more cost effective it is. I’ve also found 4 and 5kg paper or cloth bags of oats that I can buy from a local store.

REDUCE: I’ve been making head way with my personal plastic challenge. I’ve really been rethinking what I buy and am finding that I’m making a dent in what we buy in plastic. It helps to have the visual aid of keeping all our plastic for 1 week at a time. Shows me where it comes from directly, rather than in some sort of abstract manner.

GREEN: Our beautiful solar tracker was finally connected and she works so much better than our flat panels. It also means that we now have time of use on our meter. So I’ve been working extremely hard to make sure that we use as little electricity during the day as we can. I’ve also been using the timer on our washing machine to ensure that we only wash during off peak hours (5am).

The hardest bit has been being super organized about the washing – no more 3 loads in one morning. But there is something nice about the washing being all ready to hang out when one wakes up.

We’ve also finally started a compost bin for our cat litter after reading helpful posts like this. Little B and I spent a day decorating the bin so that no one could make any mistakes with the compost it generates.

GROW: I’ve planted out 4 kinds of tomatoes (Amish Paste, San Marzano, Cherry Roma and one that's good for drying) - 9 plants in all and my squash, pumpkin and zucchini seedlings have just about grown enough to go into the ground. Crazy though - we planted our tomato seedlings one week earlier than we normally would swayed by the warmer weather..two nights later we had a frost. My garden bed was the one with every bucket available tipped over each tomato plant. Good news...no damage done :-)

CREATE:  This month I had great fun making our Super Hero teepee. It was so successful that I’m in the process of sourcing secondhand material to make an outside one too (turns out queen size sheets are the go :-).

DISCOVER:  My favourite info books this month have been A Story of Seven Summers by Hilary Burden and How can I be prepared with self-sufficiency and survival foods by Isabell Shipard.

My favourite fun reads have been The Boy Who Fell to Earth by Kathy Lette and Runemark and Peaches for Monsieur Le Cure both by Joanna Harris. (I do have to say though that I preferred her last book about Vienne, The Lollipop Shoes).

ENHANCE: I helped update the website for a local community group.

ENJOY: Helping out on the zoo excursion for kindy – 23 kids, 8 adults from The Dandenongs to central Melbourne on the worst weather day imaginable (it hailed numerous times). But oh we had so much fun despite this!! The kids were so excited, a butterfly landed on a mum's face in the butterfly house, and Little B was sooo excited to have patted a frog!! :-)

Kiteflying with Little B – it’s so cute the way he gets such a buzz from it. And on really windy days it can be quite exhilarating (even for us big kids).