Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from February, 2013

Wordless Wednesday - Aren't they beautiful?

Aren't they beautiful? My oldest niece and her two girls at the wedding of my second oldest niece! We had lots of fun didn't we girls? Joining in with Project Alicia for Wordless Wednesday once again. Lots of beautiful images over there if you are in the mood to browse!.

Treating scaly leg mite in chickens!

If you have chickens, sooner or later they are likely to get scaly mites on their legs. I didn't pay much attention when my chickens first got it and by the time it had registered that there was something wrong, its quite painful for the chookies and quite hard for the owners to get rid of them. I know that one of the main causes of the mite for me is sugar cane mulch. Either the mites are on the cane when it arrives (which I suspect) or there is something in the sugar cane that brings the mites out from their hiding places. Once I switched from sugar cane as litter on the ground for them to scratch in and also in the coop and bedding boxes, I got rid of my mite problems almost over night. Two of my chookies have got a slight case and I thought I should get onto it before it gets to the stage where its got to be very painful, like in the picture below. Picture from Backyard chickens.com This is a reasonably advanced case and as you can see the scales have lifted from

Using eucalyptus oil to remove stickers and labels...

I have a lovely little side table that was made by my Father-in-law a few years ago that sits beside the couch. It's great for snuggling up with a book on a rainy day (plenty of them at the moment) and being able to reach the cup of tea no matter which end of the couch you want to settle in on. The students also find it great to balance their laptops (or are they i-somethings these days?) while they share their Australian adventures with their friends and families back home. Basically its a great little table. It turns out that its was also the perfect size, two Christmas's ago, to land a remote controlled helicopter on. So good, in fact, that it got a brown box tape "H" stuck to it. After Christmas was gone and the helicopter has fallen from favor, I bought my wee table back to the couch and took the "H" off, denoting its use as a coffee table instead of a helipad for the time being and lived with the "H" in sticky stuff for the next 18 month

Wordless Wednesday - Some days just require a hot chocolate...

A hot chocolate made at home is some how messier than one you get from the shops... Linking up with Wordless Wednesday at Project Alicia - come and have a look at other wonderful images!

Fixing a wicker washing basket!

Under the funny shaped cabinet in the bathroom we have a wicker basket with a cloth lining to collect all the dirty clothes before they get washed. It took me a while to find one that was the right height and width to fit under there and so when it started falling apart, I didn't want to have to go through the performance of visiting every place in Queensland again, in order to get a new one. One morning while I was getting the washing out of the machine, I spotted a bunch of wire that the husband had bought home from some job and was sitting in the laundry (I don't know why he thought that was a good place for it to be...) and it triggered a though - what if I were to wire the basket back together? And thus the bionic basket was born! Here's what I did... Basically, I used the thickest wires to rebuild the basket where the wicker was missing from the handles which is where most of the damage was from pulling out the heavy basket was. I then used the smaller ones to tie

Wordless Wednesday - One for you and one for me.

One for you and one for me... Will you be my Valentine? Linked into Wordless Wednesday at Project Alicia - come and have a look at other wonderful images!

Slowing down the Slow Living Essentials way - January 2013

I have been following Christine at Slow Living Essentials for a while and last year she started a monthly round up to record on our blog, how we have "slowed down" under nine categories - I have been doing this for the last year and really got a lot out of it. This is my January reflection on Slowing Down - the Slow Living Essentials way! (Sorry its a bit late - Massive Blogger problems due to uninstalling "Google Chrome" because I wasn't enjoying using it but it turns out that I cant get Blogger to run properly with out it - Google and Microsoft are fighting it out to see who will rule the world methinks!) NOURISH: Make and bake as much as possible from scratch. Ditch over packaged, over processed convenience foods and opt for 'real' food instead. I have been back at the library getting out various cookbooks again. Since we have a house full of students again, I have to cook proper meals and am having fun exploring Jamie Oliver books (a recent dis

Scotch eggs made with quail eggs!

For the Husbands birthday, he requested a few "delicacies" from the Motherland. I got left with the task of delegating the outsourcing of these bits and pieces to the various friend and relatives with the skills to cook or procure these exotic dishes. Somehow, I ended up with the scotch eggs. Now, although we have slightly more than the council approved number of chickens and certainly no shortage of eggs, I thought that for a nibble platter, even half a scotch egg would be a fairly big morsel - and then I found some quail eggs at the markets and thought; "Now, that would defiantly be the way to go!" Here's what I did... I admired them for a long time - I think they are sooooo pretty with all their colours and different markings. So different from plain chicken eggs! And so small! I knew that the cooking times would be very different from the usual chookie egg and I found this great blog  where all the hard work has been done and she has done th

Last night's leftover lunch ideas!

After Christmas, I had a number of left over bits and bobs that I turned into dips and muffins to use up when I couldn't convince the family to have another plate of leftovers for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I sort of opened the flood gates for ideas of what you can do with leftovers to make a new meal - that doesn't look like you are trying to get the family to eat leftovers.. again. Here's some of my idea's... Mixed Dip Lunch! Lots and lots of small amounts of things can be turned into dips and eaten with toasted mountain bread slices. Cheap, quick and easy - and everyone seems to like it. In this picture there is an olive tapnade made by putting olives from various jars into a blender with some nuts and whizzing up until they are smoothish. A feta dip made in the blender, again with feta, fresh or roasted garlic and a splash of milk to make it creamy. And a beetroot dip made with leftover veges from last nights roast mixed up with a bit yogurt (or so

Putting Christmas decorations away....

Ok. So its February, and I have just got around to putting Christmas well and truly to rest for the year. I mean last year. Considering that Hot Cross Buns have hit the supermarket shelves already (Isn't Easter in April?) I'm thinking that maybe I should leave it up and just do the Christmas thing 24/7/365. It looks like the way the advertisers want us to go... Anyway. Since I had plenty of time and room to sort out my Christmas stuff, I decided to do it properly. Here's what I did... All the decorations that could be put back into its original packaging was put back into its packaging!. I discovered that rubber bands work well as a way to hold the packages shut rather than the sticky tape that they came with. I had a bit of a cull at this stage too. I donated to charity all the decorations that I didn't like, don't want to use again or are not "my colours". It means that I'm not storing something I don't like and wont use and they are g

Begining of year freezer de-ice, defrost and clean out!

I was so sure I had some tomato puree in the freezer last week and do you think I could find it??? No. Enough ice in there to start the next ice age but it seemed there was no tomato puree, not in the first five layers of ice at any rate. I decided that I needed to give the freezer a bit of a spring clean (although its high summer here at the moment). Now, cleaning the freezer out has always been a bit of a chore. It takes for ever, the food melts long before I have got all the ice out and I often wreck the thing I have using to bash all the ice out of the freezer with. We aren't discussing the dings and dents that I have managed to put into the sides of the freezer either, by the way... I decided there must be an easier way than wrestling with huge chunks of ice that don't want to be evicted from the freezer and so I googled "cleaning your freezer". It turns out there are MUCH easier ways to do this than a morning of ice bashing.. Here's what I did... Fir
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...