Category Archives: Homemaking

No Visible Change

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I have spent most of today decluttering but I have very little to show for my efforts.

This is the view of the storage in our office and it looks exactly the same as when I started.

The reason is because I sorted out some of the paperwork which lives in one of these drawers. Some might say that it is not clutter if it fits neatly in a drawer. However, these are papers that are no longer required for a variety of reasons so I shredded them.

The drawer now looks like this. There are now 6 cardboard folders for different categories – 2 were discarded as the contents were all obsolete. It is hard to believe that we once had a 4 drawer filing cabinet.

I ended up with half a bag of shredded paper.

So, why bother doing this when I have plenty or space to store it? The documents I shredded are entirely obsolete and/or I have digital copies. They included tax returns and bank statements more than 5 years old and the like. I generally clear these things out every year or so. By having less it make the important things easier to locate when required.

Rhubarb Is Ready

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I have been away from the blog this past week as other things have taken precedence. We have enjoyed visits from two groups of guests. I has been a delight to show them around our town and the surrounds.

Here are a couple of photos taken from the summit of Mt Tarrengower which overlooks the town.

An almost full moon as we looked east towards the town.

Sunset in the opposite direction.

Our house guests of the past few days departed this morning so I need to get back to some food prep and meal planning. The first step was to cut a generous handful of rhubarb from one of the clumps which are happily growing near the back fence. We usually have some stewed fruit on our cereal each morning so I chopped and stewed the stalks and have containers of stewed rhubarb ready to go in the freezer.

An Average Autumn Day

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Although I often post about the significant and eventful happenings here, there are many days that just hum along as we do the things we do. I find this particularly so during autumn as the extreme heat and occasional storms of summer are behind us.

Autumn weather brings a benign mildness as the leaves begin to turn and we continue to harvest the last of the summer produce.

An outdoor view.

Picked from the garden.

The tomatoes I grew were from gifted seedlings from 3 different sources. I am not sure of all of the varieties but some were definitely ‘Beefsteak’ which is now my favourite tomato. So, when I discovered that one of these tomatoes had been attacked by some wildlife I decided that it was the perfect specimen from which to salvage some seeds.

Tomato seeds drying on some paper towel.

I did two loads of washing which included our bed linen. I remade the bed with the freshly laundered linen after it had dried in the warm sun and breeze.

An inviting bed at the end of the day.

Pruning and Planting

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We have plenty of plans for developing various aspects of the garden further but in the meantime we are pleased with the parts which are established.

GMan recently participated in a one-day workshop on pruning techniques and more particularly, the benefits of summer pruning of fruit trees. He has since purchased some new equipment and yesterday he applied his newly-acquired knowledge and pruned our 3 espaliered fruit trees. There are 2 Nashi pears and a nectarine.

Meanwhile, I have planted a punnet of pea seedlings.

The summer garden continues with tomatoes and zucchinis ripening and ready to pick every day or so.

I have at least a dozen packs of grated zucchini in the freezer which I can use to make zucchini quiche throughout the year. Of course, we have had fried tomato and zucchini as a side dish with plenty of meals recently.

The tomatoes have been especially prolific. I used 6kg to make sauce and there is more than enough to eat with almost every meal. There is nothing like the flavour of homegrown tomatoes.

This is what is on a rack on the kitchen bench at the moment as I constantly use some then add more from what I harvest almost every day.

Wardrobe Wonder

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It seems like forever but in reality it is a bit less than 6 months since we emptied and dismantled our walk-in wardrobe in preparation for the extension of the pantry. This post from October last year explains our plans.

Once the pantry was finished GMan still had to do some finishing filling of gaps and nail holes then he painted the whole wardrobe area and then it was time to decide on the fitout. After researching several options we decided on the Boaxel range from IKEA. It is very similar to the system we had installed in the wardrobes in our previous house. Unfortunately, the shelves we wanted were on backorder so that added quite a delay.

However, we picked up the remaining components on Tuesday when we went to Melbourne and we have spent the last couple of days working on assembling it.

The size of the reduced wardrobe is 1800 x 1800mm (6 x 6ft). It is not huge but definitely enough for our needs. We have a total of 3.2 metres of hanging rail as well as several shelves for shoes. I have a couple of handbags which will live on the shelf below my shirts and tops. The high shelves will be for a box of beanies, gloves and winter scarves as well as hats and a couple of small backpacks. The hooks at the end hold belts and dressing gowns.

We are really pleased with how it has turned out.

The view from the doorway.

My clothes and shoes as well as longer coats and suit bags.

GMan’s clothes and shoes.

Completed Curtains

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It is over 4 months since we made our first enquiries to get some screens and curtains. You can read about the initial contact and see the curtain fabric sample here. There have been a couple of significant delays. The fabric I chose for the curtains was not in stock and secondly, we changed our minds about the screens for the existing large doors in the front lounge as we decided to change the doors and therefore, the type of screens required.

The new doors were installed about a week ago.

The old ones being removed.

The new doors with the curtains drawn back. The configuration of the doors are the same, however, they are aluminium framed rather timber framed. This means they a much easier to slide, screens were simpler to fit and of course, there will be no constant maintenance of the timber. This is a significant issue as they face north and receive the full force of sun as well as wind and rain. Finally, I was actually surprised at how much more light is let in due to the narrower framing.

Here is a view with the curtains drawn.

And a close-up of the fabric.

I have made curtains before but I was not prepared to tackle a job on this scale. I was very happy to leave it to the professionals to make and hang these.

There is one more job to be done before these room is totally finished. There is a small window in the other corner which we having replaced with louvres to maximise the ventilation. That will installed later next month then I will order a new blind. I am thinking of choosing a plain colour – possibly a darker blue as seen in the curtains.

A Successful Experiment

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I have been occupied with some non-blogworthy business so not a lot to share at the moment.

However, the dehydrator has been working overtime as I dried a couple of lots of sliced nashi pears. This has been a raging success and I will definitely be some more over the next few days. The pile of fruit spread on the dining table is gradually reducing.

This is what they look like.

More importantly they taste absolutely delicious.

We went out to lunch with friends today and had our main meal so didn’t need too much for dinner. I did not take a photo but we had a small platter of crackers, dip, camembert cheese and the dried pears which was very tasty indeed.

Netted Nashi

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I showed you a few months ago in this post that we had netted the entirety of our three espaliered fruit trees – one nectarine and two nashi pears. That decision proved to be really successfully with us not losing any fruit to the birds and other wildlife.

We have removed it gradually as the fruit ripened on each tree. First, were the nectarines, then one nashi and a couple of days ago we removed the netting completely and picked the nashi pears from the last tree.

There were well over 100 fruit.

GMan had stewed and frozen all of the fruit from the first tree and did about another 40 of these. I am now experimenting with dehydrating slices of them for snacks and have given some to the Community Pantry.

The next job was to fold the netting up and put it away for next season. We spread it out so that we could remover any leaves or debris and it noticed a jagged hole of about 8cm across in the middle of the netting. I am not sure whether it was caused by an errant branch growing through or a possum munching through it.

Anyway, I decided to mend the hole before packing the netting up. It is nothing fancy but will work well.

A few days ago I saw an ad on Facebook for a hands-on workshop on ‘Summer Fruit Tree Pruning’ in a town about 45 minutes from us. This seemed like a perfect opportunity so GMan has signed up and is going along on Friday. Hopefully, he will be able to apply his new-found knowledge to our trees.

Stocking the Pantry

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Today has been a mixed bag, as usual.

Bed changed, 2 loads of washing done, some volunteer admin work and visitors this afternoon for wine, cheese and chat.

Somewhere in between all of that I made time to make another batch of tomato sauce for the pantry.

We have almost finished the last bottle from last year and this is the first time in several years that I have almost run out. I am hoping to make more batches to stock up.

I had less tomatoes than the recipe so I did some quick calculations to reduce the other ingredients proportionally. I took a fairly easy option by chopping the tomatoes and onions in the food processor before simmering them with the sugar, vinegar, salt and spices. You can find the actual recipe here.

We are expecting tradesmen tomorrow to remove and replace some doors and windows so I will hopefully have interesting before and after photos to share before too long.

Acquisitions

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I have had my head down working on an admin project for a volunteer job that I am doing so there is not too much to report on the home front just at the moment.

However, our next door neighbour kindly dropped in a box of home-grown tomatoes and a zucchini a couple of days ago. I plan to make some more sauce with the tomatoes and the zucchini will be used in a meal in the next day or two.

Meanwhile, I took a break today and we went to Castlemaine to do a couple of things and I had time to pop into one of my favourite op shops. I found these small glass serving plates for $1 each. There are 7 of them and I will use them at a function next week at the local film society. Other than that, I think they can live in my sideboard and certainly get some use. They could be perfect for those occasions when a huge serving platter is not really required or appropriate.

The other thing to note is that we are finally enjoying some more moderate weather than the heatwave conditions we have endured recently. In fact, the forecast for tomorrow is only 17C which is much better than 37C (or more). The next 7 days are looking rather pleasant though some rain would be nice for the garden.