Month: July 2020

Hello!!
How was your weekend?
I thought our markets were starting back up today so went down for a look – Nope. Not a soul or a stall in sight!

Never mind. Probs for the best. Tasmania hasn’t had any new covid 19 cases for weeks now but Australias numbers are on the rise a bit fast.
The Victorians were being naughty – sadly lots of suburbs have been put back into lockdown and their travel out of the state limited.
I saw something rather funny – a request for Queenslanders not to smuggle Victorians into their state !!! If we were looking from the past into the future and seeing that request… what on earth might we think was going on???

And all my friends from the US – please please please keep a low profile and keep yourselves as safe as possible! Its alarming watching the number of new cases skyrocket!! 🙁

Today… after the non-market I came back home and made use of the three overripe bananas I was saving.
They are now cake!

Jeff has been practicing his handwriting skills in a new notebook I bought to put all my recipes in!
That has been on my ‘gunna’ list for ever and ever.
I found this sweet notebook – then gave Jeff a job!

I like the way the pages have little flowers or butterflies too…

After finishing the banana cake, I had a go at making passionfruit butter!!
I’ve not done it before so I’ll test it out on my toast tomorrow morning and if its ok I’ll get Jeff to add the recipe to the book and share it with you!

I think its basically lemon butter with a passionfruit twist!

I made up some lye and started a new soap – bit of an experiment.
I glued myself to youtube the other night getting new ideas 🙂

If all goes to plan the weird thing below should turn out to be polka-dot soap.

And I am pleased to report that all our clothes came down off the rack this morning nice and dry!
Still super excited so did some more laundry.
I did put them on the line for a couple of hours of sunshine before hoisting them…
Still have that folding and putting away issue to sort out…

Hope your weekend was amazing and Happy Fourth of July to my friends in the US!! (Possibly slightly late but the thought was there!)
Cheers!

Paul dropped in today to help up install our laundry hoist!!
Was so great!! He brought a ladder that was tall enough for our ceilings and sorted us out with getting it all up and working!!

Making sure all the rope is run through the right pulley at the right points

Threading the dowels in

Some adjustments here and there – just making sure I can easily reach to hang the clothes for the first knot tie-off at the wall.

Perhaps I could even up the dowels haha
Anyway, was super keen so did a load of washing which is on there now drying away – I rushed because I was excited so didn’t arrange the clothes in the most aesthetically pleasing manner – and no, not my knickers dangling there on the end haha.

Its reasonably heavy to hoist up with the wet clothes – but I am not short of a muscle or two. And the whole thing didn’t break so… yay!
It sits so high so nothing is hanging too low to be a pest.
I let it down a little while ago to check how things were going. Happy to report there is evidence of drying!!

Sometimes if a winters day is really sunny, I’ll part dry on the line outside. That will make it quicker to finish off inside. (And lighter to hoist)

Hope your weekend is going well!
Cheers

The resident snoopervisor – I started working in the carport and he was out on the back veranda – He didn’t like that at all. Got in touch with his Inner Siamese and set up quite the howl!
So I brought him over so he could see what we were up to 🙂

So what were we up to??
Sharon’s husband Paul offered to come over and help us install a clothes hoist similar to the one they have.
As you know we don’t have a dryer – line drying or heater drying is much more common in Australia than the US – actually its more unusual to find people here that use a dryer over a line.

So far so good…

We’ve put together the bones of it. Paul will instruct where the next holes are best to go and will help with the pulleys – We’ve got a really high ceiling in the lounge room and the idea is to be able to load up the rack, then hoist it out of the way. We have the fire going nightly so might as well make use of it.
Well… we do already but this, if it works, will make it a bit easier and a bit more out of the way!

There are 5 rungs – about 2 and half metres long.
Excited to get it happening!

Then there was Ruby’s sink project… I had something else worked out but in the end we went for mega simple
We cut the pallets down to the right height and simply rested the lip on the pallet edge

Jeff screwed the back panel in and one at the front.
We didn’t end up needing side panels – this finished up being really sturdy

I will put a bucket underneath to catch and reuse the water after washing veggies.
Next step is to get a tap and attach with some polypipe etc so I can just hook it up to the hose and use it easily.
Not to mention probably paint it some obnoxious colour/s!!
But I’ll wait until summer for the painting part.

I am sure the front bit will also be handy for me to hang things on or place things on the shelf bit… who knows!!

The horrible weather didn’t really materialise… so time to put off all the excuses and get into another patch.

As usual the twitch slowed me down and I wanted to quit and head back to the fire long before I got to this point. Had to tell myself not to be so pathetic and get on with it haha
Lovely big fat worms everywhere!

Finally done and topped with straw so it can sit and be happy until needed in spring. Reckon this will be the new corn patch, while the one above can be for potatoes.

Speaking of potatoes…

They are just rocking along in the hothouse!!

Had to get another box of spuds out of the shed for the pantry…
Potato salad…. (they are starting to grow!! But I just knocked off the sprouts. Still taste good!)

Found a few more capsicum for our salads…

These are called ‘Mad Hatter’ Bit small and fiddly – not fleshy like other capsicum but sweet and the bush produced well once it actually started!

We’ve been pretty much without an internet connection the past couple of days – more agonising time wasted on hold and people asking me to turn things on and off and unplug and replug stuff to no avail. 4 hours of my life I won’t get back only to be told ‘we’ll monitor it for 24 hours’
Sigh.
Amazingly it all came back today. I’ll reserve the celebrations until end of weekend haha.

Today I went back up to Sharons with Margie for a foot treatment, lunch and a catch up. Always so refreshing and relaxing!
I took her a basket of veggies and some of the precious garlic salt!! 🙂

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Cheers!