Slow Living Diary - August 2012

I'm joining in with a community of bloggers started by Christine over at Slow Living Essentials.  Christine had this fantastic idea at the start of the year to focus on 9 elements that will help to maintain a focus on slowing down and enjoying the simple things in life.  I only found Christine's blog half way through August but thought that it blended well with what I am trying to achieve on my blog so I wanted to get started straight away.  The idea is post at the end of the month (or the start of the new month) and reflect on the 9 categories and share your achievements (or even lack of) for the past month.   I've included Christines description for each category in italics next to the title.

Nourish : Make and bake as much as possible from scratch.  Ditch overpackaged, overprocessed convenience foods and opt for 'real" food instead.  Share favourite links/recpies/tips from the month.
Cooking from scratch is pretty normal for me.  I think my best effort in the past month was my Zucchini pesto and chicken dish made with my Spirooli.   You can see the whole blog post here

 

 Prepare: Stockpile and preserve, Freeze extra meals or excess garden/market produce.

Having only just moved in the last month I haven't done a lot of this.  However I did shop in bulk and stock the freezer as well as making a couple of weeks worth of meals for Layla (the dog) and freezing those. 

 

Reduce: Cut down on household waste by re-using, re-purposing and repairing.

Not sure if this counts but we did sell some unwanted furntiture on e-bay at bargain prices to help out others and cut down on the excess "stuff" in our life.

 

Green: Up our lives. Start (or continue) using homemade cleaners, body products and basic herbal remedies.

I discovered the wonders of Coconut oil.  Not only is it great and healthy for cooking it makes the best mosituriser.  This is all I use now and my skin seems to love it.  It has also cut down on all those little plastic bottles that used to fill the bathroom shelves.  (ahh just realised this also fits the Reduce category).

 

Grow: plant/harvest. What's growing this month?  What's being eaten from the garden.

My favourite category and on moving into our new house the first thing we did this month was plant.  We now have herbs, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and bok choy growing.  Check out my planting post

 

  

 

Create: to fill a need or feed the soul.  Create for ourselves or for others.  

My other favourite :-) I finished off some dishclothes and face washers.  I made a little crochet purse and finished off this mat just in time to go under my anniversary flowers.  

 

 

 

  

Discover: Feed the mind by reading texts relevant to current interests. Trawl libraries, second hand shops or local book shops to find titles that fill the need. 

I enjoyed re-visiting my gardening books to learn how to grow herbs and vegetables in pots in the new house.  I've only been used to planting in garden beds, so this is new and experimental.

 

Enhance: community: possibilities support local growers and producers.  Help out in your community. Start a blog!

I started blogging again after a 3 month break while we got settled after the move.  I found the local growers market and have been supporting it every Sunday morning usually while others are sleeping. I have also really enjoyed reading other blogs and I'm just amazed at how many inspirational and talented people there are out there.

 

Enjoy: Life! Embrace moments with friends and family.

I had a couple of really nice dinners with some special friends this month.  I've also bought some beautiful framed prints. These are from a very talented photographer.   I posted a pic below but please check out Jen Waltmon's Red Bubble site  Thanks Jen I'm enjoying them immensely !

 

 

 

Thanks Christine for starting the Slow Living blog idea. I look forward to having a whole month to reflect on next time.

Jen



 

 

 

 

 



Sunday Projects

I'm off to a good start, I've been to the market and bought a punnet of lettuce and a few herbs.  I then came home and potted them and re-potted some of the lettuce that had grown from seed all too close together.  I'm now calling this the table garden.

 

I have a few unfinished projects that I'm going to start to finish today.  I have some cloths to finish off and I might make a table mat with all the little squares.

 

 

I've picked up this magazine rack at an op shop over a year ago.  I have taken the old cover off to use as a pattern and I have sanded it back and lacquered it.  I just need to make the cover next.

 

 

Shame I also have to do things like grocery shop and clean the house today !

 



Loving my Spirooli

The Spirooli loaded and ready to go

I bought this last year when we had an abundance of zucchini in the garden.  Last week I bought some beautiful zucchini at the market so got it out again to make some zucchini pasta  Well it's not actually pasta, it's just zucchini, and I served it with other vegies and some pesto.  Healthy low carb and delicious. I got my Spirooli online at Raw Pleasure

In action
 

Dinner
 

Early Sunday Market

The sun coming up over the market

I finally found a market close to home that isn't one of those fancy markets where everything is expensive and "special".  This is just your ordinary farmers market with a bit of 2nd hand stuff as well.

I loved buying my fruit and vegies at the market when we were in the country and now I can do the same here without it costing a fortune.  I do this early while Garry is still asleep.

Today I was looking for some Basil to plant but I'm told I'm a little early for that.  So I just got a few silverbeet plants to add to my growing garden.

Layla was very lucky, she got a special cushion for the back deck. 
I think she likes it she's been like this for a few hours testing it out :-)

Hello Blog - The Start of a New Garden

Our Back yard with not much going on

I've missed blogging but I wasn't really sure what to blog about now that we are back in the city. 

As the weather is starting to warm again we decided it was time to do some planting.  This was all the inspiration I needed to blog again!

Garry doing all the work.  Layla taking it easy.

As we are renting the house and sharing the backyard with Layla we have to think carefully about this vegie patch.  We had some lettuce that had grown from seed in a few pots and a bit of parsley and that was about it. 

Today in the green pots we planted cucumber and Tommy Tomatoes and I'm hoping they will grow over the lattice work of the carport.   I will move them further apart as they grow.  They are on bricks so that Layla hopefully can't dig in them.

I've also planted some chives and am planning on going to the markets in the morning to see what else I can find.

Stay tuned and see how it all grows (or doesn't).

Ok watch this space hopefully the white lattice will be full of green soon

Goodbye Blog

Sadly this will be the last post to this blog.  We are packing up to move back to the city for employment reasons. It's been a great experience and one that I will miss a whole lot.  Thanks for following and all your lovely comments.

Jen

Easter Monday

A perfect morning for a walk.