Belinda's Back to Basics Challenge

I found an old Back to Basics Challenge post that I wasn't able to complete back on the 31st of December, if you want to read the bits and pieces we did go here. Basically I wrote this for Working for the Future:

I have been checking out the latest savings club catalogues with the Christmas Hamper clubs and was looking at the cutlery etc. for our second son to take to uni in 2010. At uni, cutlery goes missing sometimes, or gets taken away if you don't do your dishes in a timely manner. If you aren't there at 9am Monday to collect it, out it goes! I don't mind buying the cutlery but as you know it costs a lot. In the op-shop I found a six piece set of Wiltshire very heavy retro cutlery for $4.50! Son was pleased with it. If all else fails someone can use it for building up the muscles in their arms! Yes, it is that heavy.

We bought a UPS battery.

Here is this week's post:

Sowing seed or Planting

Because we have new straw, hubby mulched the raspberries and the loganberries, which I think are actually a cross.

I found a jam melon outside the garden bed, self-sown, I was assured there are others growing in the garden. My olive tree has filled out quite well, hubby says it has been watered well.

Planning for The Future - meal planning, the next seasons garden plan, working out storage plans or more long term goals and projects like plans for digging root cellars

A very impromptu plan was made for a path. We found yet another way that water was getting under our new-to-us house. Being solid brick and not raised above ground level this is good that we actually saw the water coming in. This must be the last or second last place. Last time in was evenly spaced holes that hubby mortared shut, before that it came in the airvents and other places. The house had been lived in since 1940s but several floor have been replaced, and I'm sure we wouldn't wish to do that again, since two are very nice tung oil stained original floor boards.

The path is going to start life as a trench, then after we shift some plants in the cooler weather it will be turned into a path. The trench is getting dug today so any remaining water can drain into it. We were soaking a tree that was dying. We are not on restrictions there.

It rained and the water that got in prior to this actually came back out into the trench, so we are pleased about that.


Pictured is the building materials, the plants that have to be moved, rocks that came up while digging plus the rocks from the garden edging, and dirt from under the house.

I put a watch on ebay for some board shorts to see if I can get more involved and begin taking the kids to the creek or river again.

Working for the Future - storing food, managing stores, preserving, building that home made cob or solar oven, adding house insulation, saving for manual grain mills etc

The new UPS battery works because we had a brown out a few days ago and I heard it beep.

Because hubby has been cleaning up, he found the missing training wheel for our daughter's bike. It hasn't been put on yet though. We find we have not kept up as much as we would like at this house while we are looking after the other house, but considering we are doing quite well.

During the week we moved the dishwasher that was working well and put it in place of the one that is hard to start. We put it in storage until we are going near the repair shop later in the year.

Hubby found a modern door at the tip. He wasn't able to retrieve it but was able to salvage the nice door knob. Since then I thought of a door we have at our renovation project, ie. our new house that we haven't moved into yet. It has holes for a door knob and part of a dead lock. We checked it out and by removing the part deadlock, moving the door stop up onto a higher place, the whole thing will look nice. We do need a metal base plate, but hubby thinks he has that covered. The door knob is brushed aluminium.

Building Community - volunteering, donations, joining an existing community group, forming your own community group, taking a cake to a friend having a hard time, calling someone you just let drift out of your life, etc

Although we had done it once before, my husband and I and the kids went through our old shoes boxes. By the time we were finished the shoe box we have now looks much more inviting. Basically hubby took away a large box of shoes to the op-shop.

Learn a new Skill

I learnt about the text option on the camera.

Belinda's Place