Inspiring words..."I love your blog."

I often hear that if you have a blog, you should update it regularly to keep your followers interested. Admittedly, I don't do mine often enough. Unfortunately life gets in the way...house to clean, family to feed, other commitments, blah blah blah. And sometimes, I don't feel that I have anything interesting to write about. However, recently I visited a friend and she commented about something she found recently on my blog, an entry I did a long time ago, and told me how much she loves my blog.

I went through the photos on my phone and found that I had taken photos of things that I had done, but hadn't yet written a post to go with them. The danger of leaving it so long is that I sometimes forget what it was I was going to write a post about. That is what happened with the cheese and chives scone picture here. I can't remember if these are dairy free or if there was anything special about this recipe, other than I used my home grown chives which I have in abundance.

On a personal note, my husband and I dragged the kids along to the Caravan and Camping Show in February. My son didn't want to go, but we gave him the job of using the site map to find the things we wanted to look at. He loves maps and numbers, so he was more than happy with that job. On our way around, there was a kids activity tent to keep the kids happy. From there you could collect another map showing where you could collect a special kids bag and some things to go in it. There was also a competition form to fill in, which I did.

Now, I think the last time I won something other than the odd small lotto win was about 15 years ago, so I got the surprise of my life to get a phone call telling me I had won the competition. I was beside myself with excitement when the lady told me what I had won; a 9 person tent, 4 camping chairs, 4 sleeping bags, 2 lanterns and a camping table. We already have two tents and a camper trailer, so when the weekend came I set up the tent with the idea of sleeping in it for one night and take some photos of it to list it for sale on the internet. My son, who was reluctant to go to the show, was very excited with the win. I reminded him that if we didn't go to the show (which was his desire) we wouldn't have won. The moral of the story being that sometimes doing something we don't want to do can bring it's own rewards.


Of course, I'm just happy to have won a chair that has a wine holder! What will they think of next?


Another stumbling block to updating my blog previously was internet usage. Often we would go over the 2GB of internet that our plan allowed, then it would slow to dial up speed, making uploading photos and updating my blog difficult and frustrating. A recent phone call to our telephone company saw an upgrade of our internet plan which then spurred an update of our home phone and mobile phone plans. It costs us a little more each month, but the advantages are that we have much more internet allowance on our home internet as well as being able to call family interstate at any time of the day which is handy considering the time difference for us (especially during daylight saving months, it can be as much as 2.5 hours). We can keep in touch with family and friends more often. The moral of this story...sometimes you have to spend money to save money.

And if you've been wondering what has been happening in my garden, well, not much. The temperatures over summer means that we didn't get much in the way of productive flowering for our tomatoes, pumpkins and rockmelons. The tomatoes and peas have died, unfortunately. We received just a few small rockmelons and while our pumpkins haven't been prolific in fruit, they are producing lovely large, tasty pumpkins when they do. I wish I had taken a photo of this 4kg pumpkin before I cut it. I have only used 3/4 of it so far and made delicious pumpkin soup and my famous pumpkin, spinach and olive lasagna.

Speaking of the lasagna that I made, I was using gluten free lasagna sheets. I have been trying to eat gluten free foods, but finding things like home made gluten free bread, cakes, etc are very bland and have a sandy texture. If you have any tasty gluten free recipes, please let me know about them either by putting a comment on this blog or by emailing me on paulinestips@gmail.com.

Cheap and Cheerful: Camping

Remember the days when staying in a caravan park was relatively inexpensive? For us, that was the BC days....before children. Now that our two children are over the age of 2, we often find we have to pay for them on top of the site fee at a caravan park. For example, on the Australia Day long weekend we stayed at the Riverton Caravan Park and were charged $28 per night for the site plus $10 extra for the two kids as the site fee only covers two people. Now, the caravan park is quite nice; it's small, has a nice playground and the facilities are clean, but it's not a flash caravan park by any means. I believe it is run by the local council and has a reception desk available during usual office hours. While we were there we took a drive to Saddleworth in the Clare Valley and found a nice little caravan park next to the town oval. We chatted to a bloke there who was on the committee for the caravan park and he said they charge $20 for a powered site and $10 for unpowered, regardless of how many people were staying there, you only pay for the site. The showers and toilets were basic and nothing flash, but he did mention that they had received some government funding and are planning to install ensuites which will make it a bit nicer. There is a playground and undercover bbq area with sink and hot/cold running water. The grassed area was lovely and shady and it was a short walk into town.

Armed with the knowledge that bookings weren't required, it was first in best dressed at this caravan park, for the Adelaide Cup long weekend just gone we headed off in our camper trailer to Saddleworth. When we arrived there, the powered sites adjoining the grassy area were already taken. There was one more powered site, but no grass and it was next to the septic outlet so was a bit "on the nose." So we set up camp under a shady tree and went unpowered for the night.

That was Friday night. On Saturday morning two of the caravans packed up and left, so we quickly moved camp over to the powered site, set up our camper trailer on the grass and were very pleased with the spot. Even more pleasing was the price. When the caretaker came down later, we paid $50 for three nights accommodation - $10 for one night unpowered and $40 for two nights with power. The kids were happy with the playground, even though it wasn't really suitable for our 2 year old, our 5 year old loved it. If you have ever used toilets in a small town you will know what I mean when I say the toilets and showers were clean enough but not spotless (small spiderwebs and the occassional insect sharing your shower with you). The grassed area was lovely, had shady trees and on two nights we cooked our dinner on the free and exceptionally clean bbq.

One thing I like about staying in these small town caravan parks adjoining ovals is that usually over the weekend there is some sport to watch. We got to watch the cricket matches played in Saddleworth over the weekend. I saw the most amazing thing - the batsman hit the ball high into the air. It would have been a sitter if the fieldsman could have got under it, instead he didn't get there in time. The ball fell to the ground, bounced, hit the wicket and knocked off the stumps! As the batsman walked off the ground my husband and I figured that technically he was bowled out. The fielding team couldn't believe their luck.

Saddleworth Caravan Park isn't widely advertised, they apparently like the fact that their little caravan park is quiet and not too popular. So if you want a trip down memory lane to the days when camping in a caravan park with or without kids was cheap, it's worth checking it out. If you don't live in South Australia, the next time you are driving through a small country town, check out it's local committee or council run caravan park. You may find it a lot cheaper and friendlier than larger caravan parks in larger towns. Saddleworth Caravan Park is also pet friendly (at the caretakers discretion).

Ceiling Fans review...cut the costs of cooling your home and make life more comfortable

Many years ago we lived in the lush, beautiful tropical town of Kununurra, Western Australia. Just about every room in every house there had ceiling fans, and we loved them. Seven years ago we bought our house here in Adelaide, South Australia, and every summer we said "one day we'll get ceiling fans installed." Well,last November that one day came. We decided it was high time to get it done, it wasn't going to get any easier or cheaper.

We contacted an electrician that we had used before to ask what ceiling fans he would recommend and quote for installation. He told us where he gets the fans from and which one he thought we should get so that we could go to their showroom and have a look. So we went and had a look at the Lucci Futura Eco Series fans and the lady in the shop was very helpful. We went and had a look in other fan shops, but the sales assistants didn't seem interested in trying to make a sale, their display wasn't as good or they didn't know as much about the product. We went back to the original shop (the name of the shop escapes me at the moment!) and spoke to the same sales assistant and had a few more questions answered.

We decided the Lucci Futura would be good for the bedrooms. They have three speeds and a light fitting that looked reasonably nice. As we have a low pitch roof with no crawl space the electrician would be unable to get into the roof to install wiring. The fans could be installed where there was a light fitting already, without having to get into the roof space. However, we had to go with using a remote control instead of a switch on the wall. We opted to go for the Lucci LCD Fan Remote Control (Series No. SKU 210013) as it has a temperature control and timer function. We thought this would be handy for the bedrooms as we could set the temperature and the fan speed automatically adjusts according to the temperature of the room. When the temperature drops to match the temperature you have set it at, it stays at low speed to maintain the temperature. If it drops below, it automatically switches off, and only switches back on again if the room warms up. That would mean we wouldn't have kids calling out in the middle of the night that they are cold and could we please switch their fans off!

So that was the bedrooms sorted out, but for the lounge room and dining room we wanted a fan with a really slow low speed. There is nothing worse than sitting at the dining table enjoying your meal but getting a thudding from the fan blowing air on you. The Lucci Airfusion Climate II DC ceiling fan has speeds, with the lowest being so low it feels more like a gentle breeze or slight airflow you would get from having a window open, rather than a fan on. Much more pleasant for sitting directly under when eating your dinner. A remote control is included, so we didn't need to get them as an extra. Another advantage of the DC fan is how efficient they are...on the slowest speed they use 4 watts. You can get them with a light fitting, but we weren't going to need that for the lounge room and dining room, as we didn't want the fans where the lights were.

We only had to wait two weeks for the electrician (Robertson Brothers) to come and do a very professional job of installing them. Oh, I've just remembered the name of the fan shop, Beacon Lighting at Mile End. Robertson Bros supplied and installed all 5 fans and remotes for $2,200.00. I thought that was very reasonable, given the difficulties in installation. If you were to go for switches instead of remotes for the Futura fans, you would save more, as the Lucci LCD remotes are $100 each,

It's funny how things look differently installed at home than they do in the showroom. In the show room we preferred the look of the Futura fans to the DC ones, but once installed, thought the DC ones looked fantastic and blended in really well with the house, while the Futura ones looked a bit old fashioned. Nonetheless, we are extremely impressed with our choice in fans and remote controls.

This summer we have hardly used our air conditioner. Instead, we have used the fans a lot, keeping the house at a comfortable temperature both day and night. We have solar panels and consequently don't get electricity bills, but it will be interesting to see how much our usage is compared to previous summers at the end of this one.

The new fans are so quiet, sometimes you forget that they are on, except for the feeling of a breeze inside the house!

Two in one recipe: Peach and rockmelon juice and peach, rockmelon and passionfruit sorbet - egg free, dairy free

I have a juicer which is great but I find that, during the process of extracting juice, there is a lot of pulp left behind. I don't want to waste the perfectly good fruit pulp, so the other day when I made this Peach and Rockmelon juice, I used the pulp left over to make a very yummy sorbet.

For the juice:

1/2 rockmelon (cantaloupe)
4 peaches
2 oranges
1 tablespoon lime juice

Juice the fruit according to the instructions for your juicer. For example, I have a different attachment for doing 'fleshy' fruits like the peaches and rockmelons and another attachment for juicing citrus fruits. Months ago I juiced a heap of limes and put them in the ice cube trays in the freezer. I picked out enough cubes of frozen lime juice to make about 1 tablespoon and added them to the rest of the juice.

For the sorbet:

Collect the pulp of the peaches and rockmelons from the juicer.

In a saucepan, place 1 cup of sugar to 1 cup of water and slowly bring to a boil until sugar has dissolved. Put aside to cool completely.
Once cool, stir into the pulp along with some passionfruit pulp and seeds (or omit if you don't like passionfruit).
Place into a shallow freezer proof plastic container and freeze. After a few hours (when it is almost frozen solid), pull out and beat, then place back into the container and freeze again. If you leave it longer (I left mine for two days!) and it is frozen solid when you pull it out to beat it, just let it sit at room temperature until it softens.

Many sorbet recipes say to whip raw egg whites into frozen mixture when beating it. With two young kids in the house I wasn't keen on using raw eggs, so left them out.

Last night we tried the sorbet and it got the thumbs up from everyone. My husband was impressed that it was so tasty, and bar the cup of sugar, was relatively healthy.

Peach, plum and fig smoothie - dairy free

The best things in life are free and free fruit can't be beaten. I made a delicious smoothie from some 'free' fruit that we had - yellow peaches that we had growing in our garden plus some our neighbours gave to us, white flesh peaches that a friend gave us, plums from the next door neighbour and some figs a neighbour that I only met today while walking past his house and striking up a conversation about his fig tree. I peeled the peaches and chopped them roughly, chopped the plums and the figs and blended these all until smooth. (My mum would love this as she has extolled the virtues of her Nutribullet to me in a previous conversation!). I also added some lime juice that I had frozen from limes given to us by the same friend who gave us the white flesh peaches...I don't know if I would add limes again, the flavour didn't quite go with the other fruits. You could change the amounts of each fruit to your own taste, but I did 2 x white flesh peaches, 1 x yellow flesh (Million Dollar variety) peach, 1 x fig and 1 x plum.

It was absolutely delicious an soooooo refreshing. I could have used my juicer instead of the blender, but I really wanted the advantage of having the fibre in the drink rather than just the juice.

Getting zapped from your trampoline mat? An easy solution to stop getting static shocks from trampolines

We recently got our kids a second hand trampoline, but were disappointed when they jumped on it and started to get static shocks from it. Consequently our son now refuses to jump on what he described as the best present ever when we gave it to him. So my husband did some research on the internet to find a solution.

He found an easy and effective solution was to dilute fabric softener in water to the approximate ratio of one part fabric softener to 10 parts water. Put it in a spray bottle and spray evenly over the trampoline mat. Allow to dry.

This certainly fixed the problem for us, although needs to be reapplied after rain as it washes it away.

From what we've read, this seems to happen with nylon trampoline mats. We were disappointed as we were told it was a good quality, made in the USA mat. We may eventually replace it with a good quality made in Australia mat, and see if that makes a difference.

Until then, we will keep up with the fabric softener solution.

2014 Pauline's year in review

Another year has passed and I find myself reflecting on what I have achieved this year towards my goals of living a little more frugally while not compromising on quality of life, treading lightly on the earth and reducing waste.

I'll start off with my garden. In 2014 from my garden I picked: zucchini, basil, spinach, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, parsley, rockmelon, pumpkin, lemons, lettuce, capsicum, mint, olives, eggplant, oranges, thyme, cos lettuce, leeks, carrots, mushrooms, snow peas, silverbeet, chives, garlic chives, pineapple sage, peas, coriander, beans, lemon verbena, red onions and plums. We didn't get any apples off our tree this year. The total amount of produce picked from our garden this year is 235.8kg, up from 125.6kg in 2013 and 104kg in 2012. This year I planted passionfruit so it will be a few years before that produces. Also last year I planted asparagus, so should hopefully start getting some off that next spring. We also planted a peach tree which has fruit on it and will hopefully be eating them in the next month or so. We also have a fig tree but it hasn't produced fruit yet.

I read a bit more about gardening tips including companion gardening. After three years of having a vegie patch, I have noticed the favourite spot in the garden for the basil...in the dappled shade from the next door neighbours peach tree. I also discovered that the coriander likes to be near the tomatoes and in the dappled shade of the lemon tree. I planted one coriander in the ground and it was going so well in that spot I moved the ones I had in pots to the same area and they thrived.

I have been noticing how much of our food comes in packaging and trying to cut down. I no longer buy pre-packaged carrots, but buy them loose and take my own plastic bag to put them in. Having said that, my favourite fruit and veg shop had all their peaches and nectarines in plastic containers this year that weren't particularly reusable or recyclable, which was disappointing. Hopefully next year we will have our own peaches and not need to buy so many.

This year I made my own dishcloths from old towels and scrap material and they have worked out really well. I am endeavouring to make more clothes for my family this year.

I hadn't updated this blog for about two years until one of the Channel 7 producers came across it while surfing the internet. The next thing I know I'm on television on the Today Tonight Adelaide show under the title of Urban Farmers. For some time afterwards hits on this blog skyrocketed but have slowed down a bit now.

With a 5 year old and an almost 2 year old, there doesn't seem to be a lot of time for making things by hand to reduce waste and live frugally. However, as the kids get older I have more time, so expect to be able to do a bit more this year, especially as my oldest starts school this year.

Thanks to all my friends who tell my of how I have inspired them to plant something in their gardens or go back to making things like candied peel themselves instead of buying products. And thanks to my Facebook followers who have spurred me on to greater things.

I don't tend to make new years resolutions as I'm not good at sticking to them, but I will continue on this journey and will post onto this blog when I get a moment. I hope you all have a great 2015!