After I wrote the first post in this series (see here), I was surfing around and found an even more amazing way of growing veggies in a small space - growing tomatoes upside down! Louise also mentioned this in a comment (thanks for dropping by!). She tried it and it worked for her, although she said she would try a different variety of tomato next time.

This is soooooo funny!!! I will have to try it! I just have to find a good bucket… there are cheap ones at Safeway, but I think the handle needs to strong, so I will look at a hardware store I think.

It is really just a matter of using our imagination, isn’t it? Sometimes we are held back by convention and the way things “have to be”. I think in some things we need an open mind and be willing to try something new.

On to our veggies in pots…. We planted them on the 25th of July. I took photos of them today - almost two months later.

The peas are getting there, as you can see below. We will add some more stakes in a teepee fashion for them to climb up. The pan next to the pots are for gathering drips of water off the table. We use it on the plants.

The lettuce in the mini hothouse started off quicker than the seeds planted in the garden. They were protected from the occasional frost, and now they need to be planted in something bigger. We put in different varieties of mixed lettuce and e rocket too. As you can see, one variety lettuce did not have many seeds come up at all.

The lettuce in the garden took much longer to come up and was also hit by a frost one morning. But, it has now recovered nicely and is bigger than the ones in the hot house! In fact, some of the plants would do well to have their outer leaves picked and put into salads. They also need to be thinned.

I put some Nasturtium seeds in a pot as well. These are so easy to grow and can be used in salads. They are also coming along nicely.

Finally, Robyn gave me a head of lettuce that came up from seed in her veggie garden. Instead of using it right away, I gently took it out of the ground, put it in a pot, and sat it on my kitchen sill. I’ve been picking the outer leaves for weeks now, and it is still growing new leaves in the middle! It is handy for when I just want a few leaves of lettuce on a sandwich.

I will keep you updated on the homestead happenings on a small block of land! It is possible to grow some things without having acres of land! Not as much of course,… and I’d still like some acres…. but, for now… this will do me fine!

It’s been a while since I wrote an entry for this. I think it is important, though, to regularly count our blessings. Sometimes we think so much about what we don’t have and don’t appreciate what we do have. It is so easy to focus on the problems we may be experiencing. For some of us these are big things, like sickness, family problems, loss of a loved one….etc. But I know often it is the little things that get me down.

I was reading this blog entry this morning by Patty at Morning Ramble. She talks about this verse:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble,

whatever is right,whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,

whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or

praiseworthy—think about such things.”

Philippians 4:8

Yes, we need to be thinking on the good things. Often it is such a mindset. To me this is part of counting our blessings. If we are thinking of the true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy things in our life, we are thinking about our blessings. And if we fill our minds with these things, the little things that niggle us, will fade away into insignificance.

Not only do we need to think about these things, but we should talk about them, as Patty mentioned in her post. We need to share our blessings with others - tell them about what the Lord has done for us! It doesn’t have to be something major, some great miracle… it can be just the small, precious moments that He gives us. The cuddle from one of our children. The smile on a stranger’s face that cheered your heart. The phone call with an old friend.

The little things in life - my blessings….

If you want to join in with sharing your blessings, visit Down on the Farm

with my blog Why does Frugal Friday appear in the right hand column, not under the previous post as it is supposed to? Grrrr! In my usual non-technical way, I am hoping that if I ignore it, it will behave and return to its proper place. My next option is to pray for it (is it wrong to pray for a blog entry?). Final option is to run to dh and say, “Help!!!” …. and hope he knows what is going on!

Anyone else had this problem and can help?! I wonder if I wrote a whole bunch of posts and just got rid of it off the front page….. But then will the next post misbehave and take its place? Oh, the joys of blogging…..!

Back at the end of July I had the urge to plant some things. In case you didn’t know, we are currently renting a house - a big one, with a small garden. Not knowing how long we were going to be here, I decided that if I had the urge to plant, it had better be in pots.

So, I bought a bag of potting mix, pinched some pots from Robyn, and got started. The kids helped and were somewhat enthusiastic. Well, Daniel mostly ate an apple and watched, and then planted his core in a pot…

Matthew, who hates to get his hands dirty, planted some peas in a pod pot, and helped me by putting the seed raising mix for the lettuce into the mini hot house, which I still had tucked away in storage.

Elizabeth, as usual, was most excited and worked the hardest. I couldn’t keep up with potting mix. I finally let her plant some seeds in a spot in the garden. That kept her happy. Here she is planting her peas:

I have loved to plant gardens ever since Daniel was just a baby. There is just something about growing food for yourself that is so rewarding. We have not always had a lot of space to plant, but I made sure I planted something wherever we were, even if it was just lettuce or herbs in pots. I have planted tomatoes in the middle of the desert! Yes, they grew!!

I came across this the other day:

In the Bag

How neat is that?! Growing veggies in plastic bags - it’s worth a try! You don’t need to live on acreage to plant veggies. You don’t even need a large backyard. Pots and plastic bags will give you a little bit of that fresh taste of homegrown food.

This is my second post for today - see below for Monday Meanderings.

Hosted by Tiany

I haven’t participated in Monday Meanderings the past two weeks and I have missed it! I really stayed on track better with a weekly plan and menu. So this is what my week is going to look like:

1. Bibles Study/Devotions

Homeschool Devotional/Study. I am behind in my lessons with this study I joined online, so I want to try to catch up this week.

2. Must Do

- continue to convert some of my Homeschooling & household forms to pdfs to post on this website

- catch up with emails

- enjoy my in-laws as they visit this week

3. Zone

Zone 2 this week – the school and sewing room. I am a week behind with my zones, because we’ve had a lot on and have been a bit under the weather. Not to worry, the zones are meant to help us, not make us guilty. So I hereby declare a change of zones. Hey, I might even get a little bit of work done on zone 3 as well!

4. Train Them Up

We’re on school holidays!!!!!!!! Yay!! Officially they start next week, but since my parents came last week and my in laws are coming, we decided to take the two weeks off earlier. So last week we had no school, and this is our second week.

In the midst of our vacation, however, I am still getting the children to do things around the house. We are having some fun together while still trying to do our normal chores.

5. Menu Planning

Hosted by Orgjunkie

I HAVE to plan this week’s menus! My in-laws are here! LOL!

Monday

Chicken Soup and Biscuits

Tuesday

Roast Chicken, Chicken Wing Casserole, Roast Potatoes & Veggies

Wednesday

Irish Stew with mashed potatoes & Veggies

Thursday

Macaroni Beef with salad

Friday

Leftovers

Hosted by Biblical Womanhood

The results are in! Let me recap while I tell you the results.

We took a two week period and set that aside for our experiment. At 11 am on the first Monday morning, we took our first meter reading, which was 8064. The rest of the week we just lived life normally - we used all of our appliances, but left them all plugged in on standby. The microwave was on all the time. The chargers for phones were left it, even if there wasn’t a phone charging at the end of it. The tv and sound system was on standby. Etc, etc, etc.

The following Monday at 11 am, we wrote down the meter reading again. It was 8201. Then we went through the entire house and turned EVERYTHING off at the power points - except the fridge and freezer, and the computer we use as a server. We snuck out to the meter box and looked at the little disc that spins around… it was going considerably slower!!! That was quite exciting, and so our week started. It was fun at first….. everyone kept checking up on each other, making sure lights were turned off the instant someone would leave the room (much to the annoyance of the person who was just getting something from another room and going straight back to his/her room). Lots of giggles….

The microwave was turned off at the power point (we don’t use the clock on it anyway), and plugged in as we needed it. The printers were the same. Only turned on if needed. Other than these small changes, we lived life as normal. We used appliances when we needed to. We used the computer when we needed to, but we didn’t spend a lot of time on it and turned it off right away. As the week wore on, we forgot at times to police each other so intently, and lights were left on a little longer before being discovered, as was the microwave which we actually had to move away from the wall to switch off!

The following Monday at 11 am we took the final reading, which was 8310.

One thing I would like to point out right away, is that our readings were not entirely accurate. Our electricity meter is not digital, it is just one of those number things that turns around and we just had to pick the number it was closest to. Since we only did it over a one week at a time period, I don’t think it would be as accurate as if we had done it over the period of say, one power bill.

None-the-less, it was still an interesting experiment. The first week we used 137 kWh, which, as I compared to our last bill, was on par with using about 19.57 kWh per day. The second week we used 109 kWh which was 15.57 kWh. So, yes, it was less in the second week, as would be expected. Working on 14c per kWh on our bill, we saved $3.92.

Then comes the next question. Was it worth it and what did we learn?! Is saving $3.92 worth saving per week? That adds up to approx $204 a year. Is this worth the hassle of not having things instantly work for us when we press the remote or switch on an appliance? Is it worth the time waiting for your computer to reboot after your last session? I don’t think I can really answer this for everyone. One thing I can say, is that it really wasn’t much effort to turn everything on and off at the power point once we got into the routine.

$204 a year is not a huge savings. But, every little bit adds up. I think to see greater savings, we would have to take more drastic measures. I don’t know the average of most people’s kWh usage. I’d be interested to know, so leave a comment, and if it is way lower than what we are doing, let us know how you did it!

I started this raw edge quilt before I did the raw edge kitchen mat. I finished it a few weeks ago, and am finally getting a picture up to show you. It was easy and lots of fun! The most tedious part was doing all the snips around the edges. I think it has come up well though.

This next photo was taken on Father’s Day, which here in Australia is the first Sunday in September. Robyn, her dh and youngest son joined us. My parents were visiting my sister and my dh’s parents were still on holidays. We had a lovely meal together and afterwards we played games. While the rest of us played games, these two were sitting at the table knitting - Elizabeth and her Nanna! I just love this photo. It is what families are all about.

I’ve been meaning to get started on Christmas gifts and projects. I kept seeing all the fun things Debbie J. at Homemaking Dreams was doing, and then I finally dragged out my Christmas stuff and got going! I’ve started with stockings. I had a bolt of this cute fabric which I used to make this stocking:

I also had a couple of meters of snowman print, which also transformed into a cute stocking:

And, I’ve been cutting and sewing strips to make a Christmas Fence Rail quilt:

I am hoping to make some table runners, placemats and other things for Christmas. That will keep my hands and needles busy, won’t it?

I can tell that a lot of people were praying for me today. I felt so much better when I woke up this morning and my talk at the ladies meeting went quite well. I am not a public speaker - I much prefer to write! But I think it went ok. I’m glad I did it, as it was taking me out of my comfort zone, but I am also glad it is done and over with! LOL! Thanks to all who were praying for me. I really appreciate it.

I’m off to bed now, and hope to find a bit more time tomorrow to blog properly. I feel like this week has just zoooooomed by!

I’m heading to bed early. I think I might have caught what Mum has… I am blocked up and running a temperature. I need a good sleep because I am speaking at a Ladies meeting tomorrow morning! Please pray that I will feel better and that God will use me tomorrow as I speak about being godly women…. I will share some of what I will be speaking about on my blog one day. For now, to bed!

I’m back! I’m back! I’m… well, nearly back I need to report on our electricity experiment, but will do that later today…

It’s been a busy start to the week with my parents coming to stay for a few days on Sunday afternoon. Poor Mum had a terrible cold and they went home yesterday instead of staying longer. Still, we enjoyed our time together and now I have a bit of catching up to do on washing and housework! When I have visitors I try not to be madly racing around the house doing my normal chores. It makes for more work later, but I would rather sit down with my guests and enjoy them. Housework will keep!

It reminds me a bit about Mary and Martha, I suppose. I am usually a bit of a Martha, always having something on the go. I am trying to be more organized so that I can take the time out to just sit with people and ignore all that needs to be done around the house - because there is always something I can spend my time on.

I’ve got lots to tell you all - sewing news, homemaking news… but for now I have, ahem, a hundred and one things to do, so I’d better at least get the dishes done and the washing in the machine…. right?!

See you all later