Back to Basics Challenge

Sowing seed or Planting

Nothing to report.

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 week ago I got a Freedom catalogue for ideas about paint. I found one from 2007 in my magazine pile that I could finally relate to (2 years behind the times lol). The new one though doesn't have the paint colours in it which is disappointing. DH was nice enough to look at the painted walls in the store.

I bought an Australian Country Collections magazine recently. It bring up issues about keeping books, how much stuff to keep, lots of things about being old-fashioned in a world that is changing away from keeping home libraries etc. I think it is the one pictured, but when they change the picture, I'm sorry I can't tell which month it is from.

I bought Oil of Cloves from epharmacy. I think Shannon Lush uses the Gold Cross? brand.

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

We bought some plaster cleats? and repurposed some wood to make batterns for the ceiling in our room at the new house. It is a 40s house and has not enough batterns to hold the plaster in place. It was OK, but someone has since stepped on it or something, so dh is putting in extra wood and screwing the plaster back up so it looks straighter and not like it is going to fall down. Then eventually we will be able to add insulation as it doesn't have any. I'm sure that will cut down the costs of running the split system in our room, and maybe it won't ice up as much outside on the unit.



As you can see we used sticky dots and I think a stud finder, and that the worst part of the ceiling in the corner has been fixed satisfactorily. We weren't sure. But it was worth keeping the centrepiece and saving money we thought. It is the third ceiling we have ever screwed up. We did the lounge in our first house, laundry in the second.

I looked on ebay for some jeans in the type of the ones that have worn out.

We designed a garden bed to save a rose. My husband had to urgently plant an Apricot Nectar rose that the dog thinks is lovely to chew! The other bed is mostly roses, and we think we have three more roses we can add to the apricot nectar in the coming weeks, plus other things that have outgrown where they are now.

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

I a going through my baby's clothes collection, the edited one, the last one. I took 6 shopping bags or two kitchen bags of clothes to the op-shop last week. As you can see they are nothing to rave about. I think it is just hard to put the last place we lived behind me, it has been years, I think maybe letting some of that stuff go will help. A lot of pieces of clothing remind me of a day and something that happened at the farmhouse.


Today we got another 2 1/2 bags of clothes that our youngest daughter has grown out of or are the wrong shape sorted and delivered to the op-shop.

Learn a new Skill

Nothing that I can think of.

This meme comes from Belinda's blog.