Where for art thou compost?

One of the things about moving house is that I have to leave my poor compost bins behind. A weird thing to miss I hear you say but I will miss them. My compost bins have been a saga of trial and error (initially more error than trial). And now just as I have got them to the stage where they break down well and fairly quickly, I am leaving them behind *sniff, sniff*.

But I guess the good news from it all is I wont make the same mistakes again and can start anew, with some new bins. At least the new ones will be within walking distance to the house. At the moment, I put off putting our vegie scraps into the bins as long as possible before I have to abseil down our block to the bins. Lucky I am committed to being green LOL.

Allergy Cheer Squad - I salute you!

Over the course of our allergy journey, we have met some amazing mainstream and non mainstream medical professionals. And I would like to take this opportunity to give them the applause they deserve.

First up, is Robyn Thompson, a midwife and lactation consultant based in Melbourne. We met her in the early days for breastfeeding help. The best advice Robyn gave me was that "every mother should follow their instincts". I use this as my mantra. After all, we eat, sleep and breathe with our children on a daily basis. Who better to know if something is wrong. She gave me the most amazing confidence as a first time mother, and that is priceless.

Another member of my cheer squad, is Jacinta Tobin, a paediatric gastroenterologist who focusses on food allergies and nutrition. She is another amazing woman who backs mothers with complete confidence. She believes that mothers intuition is absolute and works so hard to help. If we hadnt found this woman, we would still be living with one very sick little boy.

Finally, Sue & Howard Dengate have been a fantastic help as well. Their website and books on going failsafe saved my sanity. Salicylates are completely evil where Little B is concerned. He is a nightmare when he eats high salicylate foods not to mention sleep goes completely out the window. This couple answered any and all questions I sent via email, and again made me confident to make the right food choices for Little B.

Confidence especially when you are a new mum can be hard to come by. These individuals made sure that this allergy journey was made as a mother confident that she knew something was wrong with her little boy. A mum who wasnt going to go down without a fight to get the help he needed. Ladies and gentlemen I salute you!!!

Finally some good news....

I'm am proud to say that Little B has been weaned off his reflux medication......finally!! The combination of probiotics and vitamin d has meant that we can be drug free. In fact, the end result has inspired me so much that I am attempting to wean myself off similar medication.

Little B is a lot happier and sleeps SO much better. As someone who could hold the Crappiest Sleeper in The World title, this has been an absolute eye opener and joyful experience for me. Its very odd not to wake multiple times a night, often with screaming involved (from his side only LOL). He is much calmer and eats so much better as well.

Who would have thought it would make such a difference. So I take my hat off to his paed gastro, Jacinta Tobin. She walks off the beaten path and at the forefront of paediatric gastroenterology for allergy bubbas and I admire her determination and spirit.

House of B is moving

We're moving house soon. We've worked really hard to make our current house eco-friendly and sustainable, but the irony is now that we have just got our solar panels we are moving house :-) But we are very excited about the new House of B. It is a larger block, with a house that lends itself better to being made over in a sustainable way.

Also even though we are moving further out, it has greater access to public transport and the ability to walk to local shops etc. So we wont have to use the car as much (have no choice where we currently live - its the car or rock climbing). And the exciting bit for me, is the garden (read lawn and some fruit trees) is a blank canvas for me to redo my vegie garden. And I'm keen to do a big permaculture garden.

Since we move in 5 weeks, I've been indulging my gardening urges by working on Granny B's garden. Another plus for new house is its 6 doors down from Granny B's (yay the walking distance thing again). We've been working hard on putting in spring plantings and enjoying all our mini orchard fruit trees blossoming. Our blueberries are fruiting and so are our dwarf peaches. Yummmmmmmm

Sneaky little vampire loads

I'm proud to say that reducing our electricity usage is really paying off. We are now down to 11kw a day!! *dance, dance*.
By slowly turning things off at the powerpoint and not using other items, I am slowly whittling down dollar amount of our electricity bill as well as kilowatts used.

Biggest culprits so far have been the things that have vampire (standby) power -
* the TV (when not in use we pull the plug out - it spends alot of its life like this LOL)
* microwave (which we turn off unless we use it)
* lights (which we changed to 12 watt leds)
* mobile phone charger (keep unplugged)
* computer (moved to laptop, and use battery until it needs charging)
* digital alarm clocks (we moved to old fashioned key wound alarm clocks).

But one of the biggest culprits has been our cordless phones. Call it a blinding flash of the obvious, but I didnt even think of these until I read a Choice article on them. By going back to an "old fashioned" phone, we knocked $40 off our electricity bill alone. The mind boggles!!!!

But I have more to attack with our house, and with a move to a new house, we hope to bring it down even further.

Go no poo :-)

I have been reading an ever expanding list of blogs recently which have inspired me to try new things at home.

The most successful was has been going shampoo free. Who would have thought it would feel so freeing. I have been in an ongoing battle to find a chemical free shampoo that actually cleans my dirty mop of hair. I would think I'd hit onto a new favourite but it would disappoint after two or three washes, leaving me with limp dirty hair.

I am so happy to say my new process works like a dream. I sprinkle bicarb on my hair when dry, rub it into my scalp. Then jump into the shower and rinse it out. I follow this with a vinegar water mix as a conditioner. My hair has never been this soft or clean. It also doesnt get as dirty as usual.

I'm not the first to try it nor the last I'm sure, but I am so happy to find something that works!! :-)

And thus begins the scented path....

After being inspired by so many green blogs, I thought I would start my own.

I began our families journey 3 years ago when Mr B and I began a business based on solar. With each step into this new domain, we began to focus more carefully on our choices. In hindsight, they were baby steps. We watched our power usage (or so we thought), I cooked all our meals, ate "healthily" and made a tree change to live closer to the environment.

Little B was then born and I began to take my decisions and choices in earnest.

I'm lucky that we already had embraced breastfeeding and cloth nappies. But when Little B was diagnosed with food allergies, I started to take a really good look at our food choices. Boy was I shocked. I thought we done all the "good things" but really we were eating things full of fillers, not to mention pesticides etc on our food.

And with this focus, my eyes literally opened wide to how we were living our lives. Yes we had begun a sustainable business but our lifestyle left much to be desired.

And so began our journey along the scented path...