Basil Day

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Posted on February 23, 2015

Six months ago, while we were overseas, our housesitters bought a small pot of basil as it was actually cheaper than buying a bunch of basil. When we arrived home I planted it in the ground. It is now doing its best to take over the garden!!

I took this photo yesterday morning. The rain had finally stopped and the sun was shining. You can see the ‘lake’ in the background.

I knew it was collapsing everywhere so I had intended to cut it right back and use as much of the leaves as possible. When I got closer I discovered that the bees were loving the flowers so I could not destroy their fun so I have left the flowers and just picked lots of leaves. Mind you, it is hardly noticeable where I picked them from.

I could afford to be picky so I chose only the best leaves and rinsed them thoroughly.

Then spun them in the salad spinner. As an aside, I only bought this quite recently as I had never really seen the need for one. After seeing my sister use hers, I realised that a salad spinner could be quite handy and I was delighted to find one at Aldi soon after. It cost the princely sum of $6.99.

Next step was to chop the basil in the food processor.

I had about 2/3 can of chopped tomatoes in the fridge so that was added to the mix.

Then I used a small spoon to fill ice-cube trays with the basil and tomato mixture.

Finally, I double-bagged the trays in re-used bread bags and sealed them tightly before putting them in the freezer. The basil blocks will be useful for when there is no basil growing.

Prepared

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Posted on February 18, 2015

Just a quick post this evening as I have doing some preparations since arriving home from work. Yet again, there is a tropical cyclone (hurricane) heading south-west towards the central Queensland coast. It is not particularly severe as cyclones go and is expected to cross the coast well north of where we are, however, we are already experiencing steady rain and gusty wind.

Storm surges are just one of the risks that we are being warned about.

I have cleared things off the verandah, boiled lots of water, charged the phones, know that the car has a full tank of fuel and know where the wind-up torches and radio are. I have 9 ice-cream containers of boiled water which will be frozen in the camp fridge once it has cooled. We have plenty of food and a gas cooktop which can be used for cooking.

We are not at risk of being flooded. The most likely problem is the loss of power. We could also suffer damage from falling branches or other debris, although this is not as likely.

Are you in central or southern Queensland? Are you prepared? Do you have any tips or advice?

Stay safe and if there are a lack of posts in the coming days it may mean that I am offline.

Bucket List?

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Posted on February 10, 2015

Time to take a break from organising, decluttering and the regular day-to-day activities at work and home.

I keep hearing people speak of bucket lists so I decided to investigate a little further. I found this definition thanks to Google:

early 21st century: from the phrase kick the bucket ‘die’ (see kick¹), popularized by the 2007 film The Bucket List.

There are many bucket list ideas floating around on the internet if you care to look but I think this defeats the purpose somewhat as you are really just following the mob. I prefer to carve out my own unique path.

The majority of online bucket lists tend to follow a general focus on travel, extreme sports/activities and philanthropy. Travel is a passion and while we have lots of ideas of places we would love to see both in Australia and overseas, I do not have a specific list of places to go. Extreme sports or activities would probably go on my list of things that I will definitely not do before my time on earth is ended. I would love to volunteer and provide support for those less fortunate , especially when I am no longer working full-time. However, I am not sure that this really fits with a list of things that I want to experience.

I have never considered ever actually writing a list of things I want to do. I think that a list creates the risk that you can become so focused on ticking things off the list that the enjoyment is lost.

That is not to say that I do not have goals and aspirations. I just haven’t written them down and numbered them as 1 to 100.

Do you have a bucket list? What are your thoughts?

Mastering Technology

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Posted on February 2, 2015

Or as it is otherwise known – reading the instructions.

I bought a digital SLR camera before we travelled overseas last year. I have downloaded the instruction manual which is about 350 pages, however, I have barely read it and have just used the camera on the automatic settings.

Last night I decided that I really should figure out how to use the self-timer on the camera. I read the instructions several times, set up the camera on the tripod and hey, presto! I managed to take a reasonable photograph of my self wearing my new skirt.

The thing that I find most difficult about instructions of any kind is trying to assimilate information that I am not necessarily about to use. Just reading something about a particular process or technique and trying to store it for future refence tends to be fairly useless in my experience.

Having used the self-timer function several times in my quest to get a reasonable photograph, I am fairly confident that I will be able to recall this process when I next want to use it.

Tracking 2015

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Posted on January 31, 2015

Today is Saturday. Where did the week go? I am very busy at work so although I have been thinking about my blog that is as far as it went.

Not only is it Saturday, it is Saturday 31st January. The final day of the first month of 2015. 1/12th of the year gone. Have you already forgotten what you resolved to do better/differently/more consistently in 2015 already?

One of my goals was to actually track how much we spend. We have never worked to a real budget – actually allocating a certain $ value to each item/category but we keep careful track of the regular bills – rates/insurances/phone/internet but is the variable spending that is more difficult to calculate. I do not have a specific amount of money for groceries each week as I tend to bulk shop for dry goods and meat and buy perishable items on a weekly basis. I need to average my grocery spending over at least 6 months to get a fair and accurate idea of how much we spend.

As I said it is the last day of the month and we have been shopping so there will be no more spending today. The grand total of our variable spending in January was $5,134.53 – yes, over $5K! Almost exactly half of that was airfares and accommodation for our Singapore holiday later in the year. So, $2,618.73 looks somewhat better. This figure includes food, clothes, gifts, hobbies, eating out, entertainment, alcohol, car fuel and maintenance, haircuts, public transport, pets, medical/dental and incidentals.

Apart from the holiday spending which is really a one-off, the categories with the highest spend were food $623 closely followed by public transport $620. This is really interesting because what finally prompted me to track our spending very carefully was that I wanted to know how much we would need to live a comfortable lifestyle on our terms in our retirement. Giving up paid work is a few years away yet but it is important to budget for life without regular employment. We will still need to eat when we are retired but public transport will cease to be an issue as all of that expenditure is related to our lengthy commute to the office.

Do you know how much you spend? Working or retired? I would love to hear your comments.

Circumstances Change

Adding More Life

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Posted on January 22, 2015

It is nearly 3 years since I wrote this post about extending the use of a pair of 3/4 trousers by making them into shorts. That project worked extraordinarily well as I still have the shorts and wear them almost every weekend during the summer. They are lightweight and comfortable and great for gardening and generally hanging about at home. Imagine my despair a few days ago when I realised that the zip had broken.

I thought that they were finally destined for the bin but after rummaging in my stash of extra zips I found one that would be suitable.

I decided that I had nothing to lose as they were no use with a broken zip so I set to work. In my opinion, there is only one thing more challenging than putting in a zip and that is replacing one because when putting a zip in a new garment it is inserted near the beginning of the construction rather than at the end. Due to the purpose of the shorts, I was not too worried about the finished look.

While it is somewhat rustic, I was very pleased with the end result which is a perfectly functional pair of shorts.

This whole project took me about 10 minutes to complete.

Bedroom Blitz

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Posted on January 18, 2015

First of all, here is an update on the things I am not writing about.

Sewing My Stash Sunday is not happening this week because I simply have not done any sewing.

War on Weeds Update – I am glad I didn’t rush out and buy a heap of vinegar because although the leaves definitely wilted and browned off somewhat the weeds are certainly not dead. I think this would be ideal for liquid weeding the edges of paths and between pavers or even for random weeds that survive the heavy mulching that we generally do when the garden areas are completed. However, it is simply not heavy-duty enough for the widespread weeds that are well-established. Back to the drawing board or more importantly the gardening gloves and get on with pulling out the weeds and getting this particular garden bed established with more shrubs and lots of mulch to naturally suppress the weeds.

On to the focus of this blog post – our bedroom. I decided to seriously clean the bedroom and while it is not completely finished, I did get the wardrobe doors and the 2 large windows cleaned.

The wardrobe was built almost 6 years ago and I must confess that the doors have never been cleaned. There were a few insect spots as well as some fingerprints and some small patches of mould on the off-white vinyl-finish doors. I cleaned the doors using a damp cloth and some of my home-made cream cleanser. The most difficult part was rinsing it off as I could not splash water everywhere due to the carpet on the floor. I finished it off by cleaning all of the metal surrounds as well as the tracks. I do the tracks every few months as they get really grubby. All of the shoes were removed, the carpet in the wardrobe vacuumed and shoes replaced. I have more shoes than I really need but I did not discard any as they all have a purpose and are worn, albeit, some not terribly often.

The other task was an even bigger undertaking. I dislike cleaning windows at the best of times but the two on the side of our bedroom really do my head in. The accumulated dirt and cobwebs made these unsightly and since we have no curtains, that is the view I wake up to each and every morning. They are sliding windows with Crimsafe screens. This is not so much for security to stop intruders but to prevent anyone falling out through a normal flyscreen as there is no verandah on this side and it is quite highset. I can remove the sliding panel of glass and clean that but I have no way of cleaning the outside of the fixed panel nor the screen apart from washing it from the outside. Due to the height this entails assembling the scaffolding that we have and using the Gerni to blast the window and screen from the outside. I did these 2 windows as well as the screen on a small panel of louvres at the top of the stairs and the window in the sewing room which has the same outlook.

These two jobs took the best part of the day but I also managed to vacuum the cornices to remove any cobwebs as well as vacuuming the carpet.

The things which didn’t get done were the window above the bed which is easy because it is over the verandah, dusting and polishing my dressing table and cleaning the light fittings. All of those will need to wait for another day.

War on Weeds

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Posted on January 15, 2015

It is the height of summer here and over the past 4 weeks we have been blessed with warm to hot days (27 – 32C) and intermittent showers and storms. The rainfall has been over 100mm in the last fortnight. Your can almost hear the vegetation growing and everything is green and lush.

Unfortunately, the weeds are loving the weather and thriving as much as the plants that are supposed to be growing.

Since we live on an acreage, we are never going to have a pristine garden but I do prefer not to have it overgrown with weeds so it seems to be a never-ending battle to keep them at bay. The Duke tends to use a combination of whipper-snippering, glyphosate and simply pulling them out. The glyphosate is banned from anywhere near the vegetable garden but unfortunately it has been a necessary evil on other parts of the block.

I recently received some information from my friend, S, over at My Life is A Balancing Act. Although she hasn’t posted this on her blog, I think it is worthy of a mention.

Super Effective Weed Spray – Cost: $2.50 for 4 litres weed spray

4 litres white vinegar
1 cup salt
1 tbsp washing up detergent
Mix well. Spray on weeds to kill them. This is a very effective weed spray so only spray it on the things you want to kill. It is excellent for weeding paths and pavers and along the edges of garden beds.

It sounds easy and even piqued the interest of The Duke.

Before I rush out and buy a bulk quantity of vinegar I decided to test it out. There is no shortage of places to try.

This is a patch of the weeds in what can best be described as the future garden bed in front of the verandah.

We have planted several hibiscus shrubs that are the beginning of the new plantings and there are some old shrubs which will need to be removed but there is a lot of bare earth which the weeds are really enjoying!

I had 1 litre of white vinegar so made up a 1/4 mix of the recipe and filled a small spray bottle.

I sprayed weeds until I had used up all of my mix so now it is just a matter of waiting. According to S, I should see wilted and dying weeds within 24 – 48 hours.

I will be back on Saturday with an update on this project. If it shows signs of being successful, I will be looking for somewhere that I can buy a bulk quantity of vinegar and also buying a backpack sprayer as S suggested because my hand is exhausted from just spraying a small area of weeds.

Planning a Picnic

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Posted on January 12, 2015

On Saturday we were going to be out for the whole day so I decided to pack a picnic lunch. We knew that we were going out for dinner so it seemed ridiculous to consider ‘eating out’ twice in one day.

This is where we had our lunch. It is not out in the country but a suburban park about 4km from the Brisbane CBD. There is a bus depot across the road and a major freeway and interchange a few hundred metres in another direction, yet it was a quiet and peaceful oasis where we stopped for our picnic.

We unpacked our picnic set and cloth, added the food and drink and we were ready to tuck into our feast.

I had made a mixed salad of lettuce, capsicum (red peppers), cherry tomatoes, cucumber and cheese as well as a couple of hard-boiled eggs. There were rice crackers and some mango chutney as well. I packed some walnuts and dried figs to finish and the whole lot was washed down with lemon cordial and soda water.

A pleasing note is that the lemon cordial, mango chutney and soda water were made at home, the chickens provided the eggs and the cucumber and tomatoes were picked from the garden.

Just a few minutes spent planning meant that we saved at least $30 and were able to enjoy some of our favourite foods in a pleasant setting rather than doing battle with holiday crowds at a cafe or food court.