In the garden...

Sometimes I curse having such a large yard.  We haven't gotten around to much of the landscaping we'd planned when we first bought the house 5 years ago, and often it just looks like a weedy mess.  But it never ceases to provide things to explore, explain and play with.

Geekling talking to a praying mantis we caught and kept for a 'sleep over'.  Any bugs we catch have a maximum one night stay.

Here's a little more about our bug catcher and other bugs we've had visit

Feeling a snail crawling on the skin

 Dancing with a "ribbon leaf" (lemongrass) on the trampoline

Eggs from our very own chickens

Other garden delights include:

• blowing gently on a spider on his web to make him 'dance'
• finding the odd brightly coloured gum leaf in our mostly non-deciduous yard
• picking flowers and leaves and using them in crafts or in the bath
• smelling and tasting herbs and vegies from our vegie patch
• playing fetch with our dog
• weeding and feeding the weeds to the chickens
• watering plants
• painting the fence with water... the list goes on!

Chicken pen

Two reasons its been a bit quiet on this blog lately:

1. My laptop is dying

2. We've been spending our weekends building a chicken pen for our chickens.  And here it is!

The frame is made from recycled pool fencing that had been sitting around hubby's parents place for the best part of the last decade.  While it is excellent to be able to use the gate part, I wouldn't recommend it as it is SOOOO heavy.  Or at least I would not recommend situating the new chook pen at the very far uphill corner of the yard.

The frame posts are secured with recycled star pickets donated by our neighbour.  It is covered with chicken wire and recycled corregated iron from the nearby Dakabin Tip Treasure Market.  We ran bricks around the outside to stop the dog (or anything else) digging under it.

The chook house is a dog kennel I purchased recently on ebay for $10.  The lid is on a hinge so lifts for easy access to the eggs (when they start laying) and for cleaning.  The ramp is made from a bit of pine with backyard sticks glued to it.

The chooks seem happy enough with it but they haven't yet worked out how to get up into the chook house which I find odd since I thought they naturally go to the highest point.

Chickens!

Geekling's daycare recently had a hired chicken hatching, and when the chicks reached 2 weeks old they offered them up to parents to take home for free.  We were told that Geekling LOVED the chicks and had been meaning to invest in some chooks for some time so we took 3 home.  And here they are:

We're still deciding on names.  I'm leaning towards "K", "F" and "C" but we might wait to see how many are roosters (which we'll have to get rid of) before we try themed names!

Geekling does indeed love the chickens.  Here he is reading one of his books on chicks with his Daddy.

They're still in a (bigger) box in the house and will stay inside with us for a couple more weeks.  When they are about 6 weeks old they will venture out into the back yard.  In the meantime we are going to fence off part of the yard away from the dog and build a coop :)

Reducing waste in the home

I'm a bit of a greenie at heart and fairly frugal, so my motivation for reducing waste and converting to reuseable products where possible is two-fold: save the environment and save money.  It is also very satisfying to glide by all the products you no longer need in the supermarket - our fortnightly shops are usually $120 - $140 which I understand is pretty good for a small family.  Here are examples of reuseable products or other ways that we reduce waste:

• Watering down products - You'll be amazed the number of products you can water down or use less of.  A plumber friend told me it is actually better for your dishwasher to use half measures of powder!  Try using half as much powder in your dishwasher, clothes washing and using less shampoo and conditioner.  I also tend to water down my liquid soap, shampoo, conditioner and moisturisers with about 1/3 water.  Lastly, once your white vinegar gets half-empty, top it up with water and leave it in a sunny spot for a couple of days and it will reach full-strength again.  You can continue doing this 3 or 4 times with the same bottle.  Vinegar has a myriad of uses around the home - try using it in your house cleaning.
• Make your own - we make our own bread, pizza bases, yoghurt, muffins, meatballs, pikelets and more.  We save the end-pieces of bread and any imperfect slices, blitz them in the food processor for home-made breadcrumbs.
• Grow your own - herbs are the easiest way to get started and save so much money by not buying fresh herbs by the bunch.  The best bit is the more you harvest, the better and faster they grow!  Vegies and fruit trees are also a fantastic way to grow your own but I must admit we've had mixed success with those.
• Use less meat - In stir-fries, curries and other dishes we generally use 1/3 - 1/2 of the meat a recipe requests.  For dishes in which a fillet is the main component we try to stick to the 150 - 180g serving size per adult, halving one fillet between us if necessary.  As meat is often the most expensive ingredient in a meal, this can save a lot of money!
• Find uses for kitchen scraps and leftovers - use leftovers as pizza toppings or sandwich fillers, or freeze unused portions of wine and sauces in ice cube trays or zip-lock bags and meals in single or kid-sized portions.  Use stray vegies at the end of the fortnight to make stocks and freeze.  Feed scraps to chickens if you have them (or someone elses' if you know anyone with chooks) or start a compost or worm farm.
• Tea towels, handkerchiefs and terry towel nappies - We generally don't buy tissues or paper towel, but use reuseable cloth options and simply wash them and reuse.
• Feminine Hygeine - I use a Femmecup, which is basically a small latex cup that is inserted much like a tampon, emptied, rinsed and reused over and over.  I haven't purchased pads or tampons in a long time, and it paid for itself in a matter of months but has an expected lifespan of 10 years.  There are many other brands available or other options such as cloth pads.
• Nappies - we use modern cloth nappies full time.  They are just as easy to use as disposeables, and so cute!  Almost all of our nappies are "one size fits most" and have been used since Geekling was 2 weeks old through to now (almost 20 months and counting).  Here's a couple of photos of Geekling in the same nappy at 5 weeks and again at 1 year - the same nappy still gets used but I don't have a more recent photo.

Egg carton treasure hunt

One of my favourite ever blog posts from Chasing Cheerios (which inspired ) is one in which each cavity of an egg carton is painted a different colour, then a garden scavenger hunt takes place to find items to match those colours.

(Much like this picture from Family Fun)

I've come across so many more similar posts recently that I had to collate them:

Chasing Cheerios
Dream a Lil Dream
Preschool Lesson Plans
Mommy Press
I am Momma, Hear Me Roar

I just love this idea, and can't wait until Geekling is able to sort by colour.  He is able to match containers with lids, and shapes to solve the Shape-o so hoping to work in this soon, especially as Spring isn't far away :)

Homemade colourings

I came across this fantastic post on making homemade natural food colours.  They make great paints or can be added to playdoh or perhaps edible items that are complimentary in flavour to the items used to colour.

Update: Since this post I've found a couple more interesting and helpful articles on homemade natural colours:

Blue food colouring from red cabbage and baking soda

A fabulous selection of colours - red/purple, pink, yellow, brown

Purple from red cabbage, Red from dried hibiscus tea, Yellow from Tumeric and Green from japanese matcha green tea powder - a great link with photo instructions.

I once found an amazing post with all the colours of the rainbow and am desperately trying to find it again but not having much luck - I'll link it if I find it!