Apricot mission

Apparently it was too wet during the apricot flowering this year & the bees couldn't do their thing.

Consequently the neighbourhood trees have virtually no fruit.

Yet we go through about three bottles of fruit a week (possibly more now there are 3 fruit bats in the house.

So on Sunday we went for a drive to buy some apricots. Hard to believe after receiving so many free apricots over the years, the plums are still coming in thick & fast. It was worth the drive as we came home with 20 kilos of apricots. The best part was diving in for a swim on the way home, watched by this little baby-in-a-box.


The preserving has begun in earnest and the countdown is on to get it all bottled before we head of camping for the long weekend. A few late nights ahead of me I think!

A month of change - January

I decided to take part in the 'One small change' project a while back. My focus for January was food. Given we are in the middle of the summer fruit glut that involves lots of freezing, stewing, jamming and bottling it was nice to focus on something so NOW.

I've been planning our meals (even if I don't always follow the 'menu') which has made a huge difference. The main way this has helped has been that it creates a shopping list of sorts (rather than wandering aimlessly though the markets & stores without any real plans, grabbing bits & pieces that don't always come together at meal times!). This planning has also helped in reducing our meat consumption substantially, even in peak BBQ season. I discovered I need to leave a day or two unplanned for when I just can't be bothered (baked beans anyone?) or to use up the leftovers that tend to accumulate in the fridge towards the end of the week.

I've been trying to reduce the amount we buy from the big supermarkets which in many ways is easier in Hobart with great fresh produce markets & bulk food stores. However I can't always find the energy to cart 3 kids around town visiting lots of different shops on a regular basis so I've started to develop a pretty good larder in our "garage" so I buy nearly everything in bulk now. Having a deep freezer also helps....like when I found some bananas reduced to 90 cents/kilo on the weekend.....



.....we now have 6 kilos of bananas in the freezer, ready for smoothies, cakes or "ice cream".

The other big part I wanted to focus on was using local produce wherever possible, particularly if it is from our garden...no strapping 3 kids in the car (my dislike of this is less to do with fuel consumption worries and more to do with trying to stay sane!). At the moment this has meant incorporating a whole lot of lettuce and potatoes into our meals.

All I can say is thank goodness for the nicoise salad!

And now for February........our power usage and how we can reduce it.

Friday - the week that was

Sometimes there are just not enough hours in the week to actually write something, but fortunately I'm always taking photos so I thought I'd start to try & just do a little picture round up at the end of each week (when I remember)

So this has been my week:

using the trusty Fowlers


to deal with boxes of apricots


making "ice-cream" (blended frozen bananas and fresh mulberries....it really is like icecream)

Enjoying my fig harvest (there were only 2...both the biggest figs I've ever seen)


lots of spuds pulled from this little patch


Eating our way through the salad garden

soaking up the summer evenings

helping host birthday parties


sharing in the excitement of cubby-mail


fitting in "just one more car seat" (like three is not enough!)


Watching the 'joy of eating' as Leo leaps into solids with gusto!

Lots of giggles with this little babe who keeps all the madness in perspective....

My Creative Space - the real deal

So I thought this year I would show a more realistic approach to how any crafting gets done at my place....in amongst the chaos and general mayhem! Above is another shirt from the 2+2 blouse pattern. In that pile is also a pair of knit pants for Leo (the black & white spotty fabric), and a pair of sailboat pants cut out for Max.

So the creative spaces will be less severely cropped (in photoshop) to exclude the messiness that goes along with;

a) sewing without a sewing room

and

b) sewing with three kids around

I'm also secretly hoping that this approach will inspire me to keep the 'sewing area' (a permanently open horn sewing cabinet in our bedroom) a bit more orderly (note: I did not say tidy....just more orderly).

Having 3 kids under 4 means there is a natural tendency to sew for the small folk of the house but I'm hoping that this year I'll be doing more sewing for myself. I've already sewn up a couple of skirts in the seemingly endless quest to develop the perfect A-line skirt pattern for me. Once this is done I plan to permanently live in skirts (at least until I develop the perfect pants pattern!)

This week has been all about sewing for Leo who suddenly had no pants that fit! These were made using a pattern I drafted when Max was a similar size. They are super fast to make up, they fit over a cloth nappy (the major reason I don't bother trying to buy) and they fit & wear well (in my opinion anyway).


You will have to excuse the background, our rugs are being cleaned at the moment. Here he is in the middle of rolling out of the frame and off the blanket!


I can hardly believe I'm already using '6-12 month' tags, the time since this babe was born seems to be whizzing by!



YIKES! How could I forget, pop over to Kirsty's........the Grand Dame of Creative Spaces!

Twenty 10 sewing

I love the Oliver + S patterns and have been wanting to make the 2+2 blouse ever since it arrived in the mail (so many moons ago). Finally I made this one for Adelaide....


as you can see I took the photos after a day of play, with her little shaping still visible.
It is a great cover-up top (from the ferocious Tassie sun - I'm serious) and best of all she announces to everyone that it "is not a sharing one" (the pitfalls of being able to share a wardrobe with your 6 month old brother!)

Now what else can I use some of that spotty fabric for?

I think I mentioned I'm not a New Year resolutions type, I do like the sound of a few goals.

Goals, they just sound so much less .....well resolute!

I'll list a few of my sewing goals soon. Well I'll try, that's the thing with goals, to me they are something to work towards, not a strict plan of attack.

Food miles

Firstly I just wanted to mention how horrible it is to hear of all the sorrow in Haiti at the moment, I can't watch such things being reported (on TV) as it tends to just paralyse me , so instead I've been over here to donate cash, the only thing I can really offer at this stage and one of the things that I hope will be used to help.

This week we ventured out to the airport to collect a box of goodness....


with individually labeled veggies....


I think the food miles count against me as it was produce grown by my awesome folks over on Maatsuyker Island and arrived in a chopper much to Max's excitement. All these organic veggies have had the nutrients literally blown into them as it is a very windy spot out there, the snow peas are disappearing at a rapid rate.


Suffice to say we are having a lot of stir fries at the moment!

A new year - A month for change

I've just downloaded a batch of photos and needed to create a new folder 'Jan10'.

Has it really been 10 years since all that Y2K malarkey?

I've enjoyed my little blog break, lots of hanging out together, sharing the household craziness with visiting family and marveling with Tim over just how fast the kids can turn a clean & tidy (well sort of) house into absolute shambles!

We've notched up another camping trip....


.......and that was the only picture I got. We have a few more trips planned for this summer, and having abandoned the hiking trips of old and embraced the family-style-car-camping, we now own one of these (or a cheaper version)

I'm not one for New Years resolutions however I have been inspired by this. There are so many things that I would like to do, make, change that sometimes it all gets a bit of a muddle with not much focus given to any one thing. I like the idea of making one change each month and being conscious of that decision for the entire month. For this month I want to concentrate on the food we eat at our place. This was partly inspired by an article I read recently in WME which included the following

• food production now accounts for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse emissions and requires almost three-quarters of the world's fresh water supply
• today three quarters of the world food sales are processed items (adding to the resource use)
• half a person's eco-footprint is food related

It made me examine our eating habits and this is what I would like to concentrate on this month

• growing more of our own food
• better planning of our meals to avoid waste
• eating less meat and dairy (I'm struggling with the concept of reducing my butter intake although I know I should)
  

So to get the ball rolling




Frozen peas are considered a real treat at our place (the fresh ones never make it into the kitchen from the garden). Apparently lemon goes with everything at the moment.


I'm off to plan the rest of the weeks menu based on what we have in the garden, pantry, fridge and freezer. I expect much inspiration from my Christmas present.

Also if you have jumped on the kale bandwagon and have a swag of it in the garden but you're not sure what to do with it, do this, so so good.