Head in the Clouds – Feet in the Dirt

Lavender this time! I know its a bit ho-hum but so many people (including me) love lavender soap.
I put a bit of the mixture into my dragonfly moulds and I might have let out a girls ‘Squee’ of excitement when I saw the result.

I left the soap in the mould two days this time – I wanted to give it more setting time before disturbing it and possibly breaking the pattern (like in my first attempt.)

Its a hard mould so its a bit more iffy getting the soap to drop out. I ran a toothpick around the edge and exercised some patience and small pressure and they dropped out beautifully. Later when it hardens up I can run a potato peeler around the back edge to tidy it up.
If I was selling them I could imagine these looking very pretty and special boxed up! I might invest in another mould of these as I can only do four at a time.

So – since Jeff spent yesterday on my raised beds, it was only fair to get stuck into the tree today!
The wind was blowing the right way which was handy… and it hardly rained at all.

I moved and stacked a fair bit of the chopped wood

I set aside a lot of ‘awkward’ wood to put into the raised beds as well.
(and chucked some wood ash in just for good measure)

I love my parang! I started slow… just using it to strip some of the needles off the branches into the barrow to dump in the muddy chook yard. I wanted to get the feel of it before going too hard and losing a favourite body part. (I am fond of all the bits really)
Still… I used it to chop through some bigger pieces and its lovely to use. A bit heavy so I had to give my hand a rest every now and again, but I’ll get used to it.

The fire was fabulous to work by. Smokey but toasty.

Jeff was a machine today! He got through so much stuff.
We sort into usable piles as well as burn – we’ve got a pile for the chipper, a pile for using in the garden, one for cutting to fire sized pieces etc.

Clear ground again!!!

The chooks usually stay clear of the fire – or if the chainsaw is out.
A couple do a runner and escape up past the open fence to dig worms in the old compost. Pretty funny.
They are enjoying the nice long grass… no hope of cutting it for a while. Too wet and boggy.

A mere handful of tomatoes left! Not bad for mid winter!

Hope you’ve had a lovely day too but a lot less sore than we are!!
Cheers!

PS – had a chuckle when a friend noticed a comment of mine from a facebook article was pulled out and used in a newspaper article!!
Pet hate of mine is ‘photographic competitions’ where the fine print basically says if you enter, win or not, the people running the event get to keep and use your images forever. To me its just an image grab.
This bit appeared in the article:
“This is how so many places – businesses, councils etc get practically their own free catalogue of photos,” also wrote Lisa Maree Millar. “Very few competitions nowadays lack this clause of ‘we are stealing your photos to use as we please’.”
Ahhhh – nothing is sacred online!!
Link here if you are interested in whole article 🙂

Hello! Monday and its all go here at Norwich House!
Jeff, the madman, ignored the dismal weather and put on the gardening clothes. He was sweet enough to put aside his plan of working on the tree to help me put together the garden beds!

I had to do MORE digging out… but that didn’t take too long. We just had to get them lined up and the space wide enough. Of course… I had to deal with a little more concrete!!
Then Jeff screwed the layers together and we hauled each section down to its ‘forever home’
Cardboard that my young cousin Beau dropped off was put to good use as a liner both on the bottom and up the side of the higher ends

Look! Its a ‘Jeff-in-the-Box’

According to my back and legs tonight, I finished up by vastly overdoing things… five barrow loads of logs (including the nights firewood).
I am only going to do the bottom layer in logs/branches, then get the pruning done and bung those in the beds as well before topping up with the good stuff.

They are pretty solid! Now they are in place I can start leveling out the top area ready for the next steps. I am dying for it not to look so manky.
WE however looked manky at the end of it! Should have seen how the mud was sticking! Every time I walked over to the carport to make and pick up a layer, my boots would pick up stones, woodchips and sticks!!

Entertainment this afternoon for Little Moo

Messy start.

Was practically dark for the last shot… hence the blur!
I am looking forward to getting these filled and planting my strawberries!
Now… to take a leaf out of Pips book – time to snuggle down in a warm bed!

Cheers!

Hi!
I made this tonight. Why? Dunno. Seemed like a good idea at the time!
Its not yarn – its a nice string – hard to crochet with though. I just made it up as I went along.
It ended up being too big for the hoop (this is about 30cm/12inch across)
Still, I tied it into submission. haha
Will see if it looks good on the wall as a decoration tomorrow.

Weather today? Really really cold and someone turned the tap on and off all day. Jeff went out to work through a lot of the tree. I nearly went out then it just poured so I decided to stay inside and finish of my young cousins leavers dinner photos. Another task off the list.

No soap.

Hope your weekend is awesome!
Cheers!!

Hi – did my first solo loaf soap…
The weather is still spectacularly awful, so spending as little time outside as possible.
I’ve been watching some design techniques on youtube and tried one out yesterday.
The colours were meant to be more boldly black and yellow – the fragrance is honey.
I did some more soap this evening and again the colours were not what I envisioned. This will take some practice.

I also started cutting my honey soap wrong to show off the pattern. Once I figured that out it looked much more interesting. (Clearly I need to bang the mould down harder to get rid of those bubbles)

Plus I suck at cutting!!
Eventually I will need to look at getting or making a template with a wire cutter. Also – I think this needed another day curing as I muffed it in a few places. I’ve left a chunk of it to try to cut tomorrow to see if it behaves any better.

A reader mentioned her interest in how this is done!
If you are keen – I’d really recommend going to a workshop to start with. Its just great to talk to someone who really knows what they are doing and get some hands on experience first before going out to buy all the ‘stuff’
While I can’t share Sharons recipe, I can give you the gist of the process below. (There are several websites that have recipes to follow which is good, as you can choose what kinds of oils and if you want to use goats milk etc)
Unfortunately I have not really taken many photos of the stages I am going through as its just not convenient to stop and de-glove and grab camera haha.

The caustic soda/lye is the awkward bit. You’ve got to be so careful with handling it. Good ventilation, no danger of kids/pets getting into it while it is cooling off.
I’ve got it in crystal form and I add it to the water (NOT the other way around)
As soon as the lye hits the water it reacts fast! Heats up and you DON’T want to breath it in! Gloves/goggles are the go. I mix it in with a spatula and go back after a while to remix. (It needs to cool for an hour or so)

You need to get your other bits and bobs ready – the oil, fragrance, colours, (milk) moulds – as once the process starts you need to keep going.
Oh – and a stick mixer!! Very important.
All equipment I use is not used for cooking regular food.

Once the lye goes into the oil (and my case milk) it undergoes a chemical change – and becomes way less dangerous. (as in pretty much not at all)
You need to mix it with the stick mixer until it becomes thicker and leaves a trace on the surface (again this is all best seen) Its actually quite wonderful to watch!

Before it reaches that stage I have normally added the fragrance and set some mixture aside for colouring as well.

Then its all poured into the moulds – colours mixed in as artistically as you like and left to harden.
I can normally take them out of the moulds the following day but they need to cure at least a month before using. So hopefully I am doing all these right!!
The longer they cure, the longer they last in use.

Its not actually difficult – more a matter of getting your stuff together and knowing what to do. Certainly the class with Sharon gave me the confidence to dive in and make it by myself!

Anyway, thats all from me. I think we still have rain ahead, reckon there will be a few more indoor days for me.

Cheers!

Hello!!
Well… the day started off pretty nice!
Sharon arrived with her daughter, a friend and three dogs. (Two of which were beside themselves with excitement at the outing. Travelling in the back seat was hilarious… child beside me trying to feed me a banana and one of the dogs flinging itself over the seat as far as he could go barking and slobbering and thoroughly hyped!!)

We got a reasonable way around the track when Sharon decided to take the energetic daughter and canines back to the car and go down to one of the beaches to play frisbee and have a coffee. (Apparently Lottie ended up practically swimming!! Children! No nerve endings clearly) haha

Since I plan to catch up with Sharon tomorrow I opted out of the coffee and completed the river loop and walked up the highway home.
I am pleased with getting more walks in lately.

There was time for me to get into the gardening gear and get a few things done. Sadly no photos. I was going to go back and take some snaps but by the time I was done, it was pouring, so I didn’t get back out there!

I widened the area I dug for the raised beds so they will be about right now to install once Jeff is between shifts.
I also got into the main garden and did a bit more weeding and clearing.

Mundane tasks like shopping, cooking and cleaning followed.

I am hoping to get some more goats milk off Sharon tomorrow – I am dead keen to do some more soap. I’ve been watching videos tonight about different techniques of mixing colours etc.

Have a lovely day!
Cheers

Hello!!
The start of another week!
I saw a neat little snippet on making leaf mould compost on Gardening Australia and thought it looked dead easy.
It is.

It takes a while and I am considering finding a spot to do a few or a bigger area – then I can forget about them for 12 months, return and use.

Its not hard around here to find some wire.

There is still room in my basket – will have to collect a few more leaves. They are meant to be watered down if they aren’t already damp. After the torrential downpour of last night… mine were fine.

I’ll trim the cardboard back once I am done. (Translation – I was way too lazy to walk all the way back to the shed for a knife)(Plus we were heading out for a walk) 🙂
I put a cardboard ‘lid’ on it too… but will add some more leaves when I get a chance to find and collect more.

It was a pretty nice day mostly – a few spits here and there. Jeff has a couple of nights coming up at the hospital so we thought we should get out today for a hike.

We went opposite our usual route around Anniversary Bay. I was pleased about that… it just seems a little less agonising going backwards haha

A lot of the tracks up in the hills were like little streams. Plenty of runoff from last night.

Sometimes the water was hard to avoid!

Next time I will wear gaiters.

And heading to the ocean!

It was raining under that cloud – we didn’t notice it until we got to the beach and saw the rainbow

Husband at the end of the rainbow. Apparently no gold.

The tide was coming in but there was enough beach left to see some of the sand patterns -and before I had to put my camera away because of the rain!

So glad we got out! I can feel that winter padding melting away!!

Back home I convinced Jeff to help me put together the first layer of one of the new garden beds.

Pretty easy to do actually. I’ll use this one like a template to get my surface area right before the rest get made and assembled. I have to say… there was a fair bit of weight in this!!

I am pretty excited about it – can’t wait to get them all into place and move on with making the area look nice.

I got a present today!!
Jeff has moved way past flowers and chocolates.
I got a parang!! I’d read about them in my ‘Biggles Books’ but never thought I’d be wielding one!!

He said he was sick of watching me hack away at things with my little tiny axe haha.
I’ll report in at the end of the week to let you know if I still have all my limbs or not!!!
Keen to get out there and test her out!

Nice leather sheath and all!!

Did anyone else get a big sharp tool to start their week??
Lets face it. A huge improvement on the cat-wee incident!
This week is looking good!

Cheers!!

Hi!! A bit of blue sky peeking through late afternoon!
The rest of the day was mostly dark and gloomy – but very little wind or rain so it wasn’t a bad day to be out hauling wood about.

Jeff cut up a stack more wood and I moved and stacked most of what he had worked on before.

We will have a bit of work splitting ahead of us too:

Jeff made a temporary boardwalk out of the pallets!! Seriously.. the walkways are treacherous underfoot at the moment!

I also thought it was high time to give the poor chooks a clean bedroom. So out with the old pooey hay and in with the fluffy fresh stuff

Someone got comfortable pretty quick in the nesting box.
Mind you… it didn’t take the rest of them long to work on kicking a fair bit of it back out the door!! Pests.

The compost bay got a nice big top up of straw and chook poo. I then added in the latest load of coffee and it really smelled quite fantastic!
I also think its about time to set up compost bay #2 and leave this one to break down and do its thing.

Most of the white garlic has sprouted!!
It will be good when it is all along far enough to be mulched and then I can pretty much forget it for a few months.

Of course I couldn’t help stop and admire the purple garlic patch. It looks so perfect 😀

The rhubarb that Jeff mowed (eek, I know!!) looks like it will all be fine. In a couple of months I am sure they will all spring back with a vengeance!

My one broccoli that is developing is much too slow for my liking! I know its doing its best…. but… Maybe I should dowse it with some worm wee.

Surprisingly – still getting capsicum off the outdoor plants in mid winter! How does that work?? Its not for me to question. Its for me to say “Thank-you garden, this will go nicely in the spaghetti Bolognaise sauce tonight.”

We had a bit of a look at the timber in the spot for the raised beds. I need to make them a little wider, but that shouldn’t take too much effort. (Famous last words)

Oh – the latest batch of soap – the espresso actually did go ok. It just took a bit longer to firm up. And wow – it looks like chocolate fudge.
I have to get out to Sharons and purchase some more milk. I am totally hooked and need to do more!
Hope your weekends are really fantastic!
Cheers

Yup! We got to Bunnings today.
Its treated pine but with a nice dark stain so a bit different to the normal look.
We’ve gone for slightly shorter lengths – I can make it work in the area and it made a fair difference on the $$ (as in over $70 better)
They were pretty heavy.
We bought 4 of the 3mt lengths and got the shop to cut them into 1mt pieces – they are the side pieces and it was easier to get them in the vehicle. (Plus we don’t have to cut them at all now.)

I am looking forward to actually building them. I hope its as straight-forward as my imagination says its going to be!!

Luckily I took Jeff into town to collect the coffee grounds! The little bin was full to the brim! No way I could lift that myself into the back. I should have gone in Monday but somehow the week disappeared.

So… here is some of the soap I made solo.
The light isn’t great, so the colours aren’t quite right, but nevertheless… you’ll get the drift.
This batch has almost a mauve swirl… I thought it was going to be more brown, but the clay colours do different things.
The fragrance used is ‘Rustic woods and Rum’
It was so strong when I first did it. Happily its calmed down and I really like it now.

This batch’s fragrance is Meyer Lemon. Its quite a sweet scent.
I am liking the swirls.

I tried out putting a loofah in a couple. I will have to do it slightly differently next time but it wasn’t too bad

The batch always has a bit more than the one set of moulds can take.
So I have some random extras. I like the dragonfly pattern 🙂

I think I made a failure tonight. I was so keen on it too 🙁
Espresso. It wouldn’t reach ‘trace’ for ages and the cheap little hand mixer was about to blow up I reckon. I finished using my other one and it seemed to go ok… but its not setting as fast as the others have done so sadly it might be a washout – without the soap!! I used a better olive oil – pure virgin cold pressed, but I wouldn’t have thought it wouldn’t work!
And I am out of goats milk. I’ll have to get in touch with Sharon!
I am not daunted. I am keen to try more.
Should smell the library! No more old book smell… haha. (Which is a bit tragic really)

Hope your day has been great!
Cheers