Baking Soda Shampoo

Ok baking soda is not really shampoo, but it sure has been doing a great job with my hair. Many times I had trouble with shampoos, my skin reacting to them. Then buy the ones I didn't react to cost more money.
Then thanks to Pigs Tits and Parsley Sauce, I gave Baking Soda a go. And love it, it's cheap, easy and I feel so clean afterwards. And then using vinegar for conditioner is a bonus.
But just this week I read about Apple Cider vinegar instead of white vinegar. (Was a blog post from last year) Got to give that a go :) Found in my pantry Honegar - naturally fermented from New Zealand apples with raw honey. Mmmmm sounds good for a conditioner :)

My baking soda and vinegar bottle. Easy to use in the shower.

Amazingly I don't smell like vinegar afterwards. But my hair is easier to manage, and no skin reactions. Kids happy to use too. Now if I wasn't so scared to try, I would make my own soap.

Autumn Veggie Garden - Welcome the Greens

Planted out a lot of seedlings on the 21 April. Filling up our veggie garden again.

So thankful for our veggie garden, it blessed us with a lot of food for Summer. Now with this next lot of plants, should help us through autumn and winter.
Have planted out celery, Brussels sprouts, sliver beet (have some colourful ones as well as the good ole green kind), cauliflower, broccoli, pak choi, and kale seedlings. Also planted some pea seeds.
Later on will plant some bean seeds.
One of the things I have done this year is re-planted our capsicum plants into pots. Somewhere I heard to do that as they can keep giving your more capsicums and grow into bushes that keep giving for a few more years. And I have to say it's true so far. We are getting lots more capsicums.

One of our 4 capsicum plants i have re-planted. Look at all those capsicums! Very handy for soup, stews and stir-frys.

Veggie garden this morning 26/04/2013, the celery at the far end is what we planted first and have already used some in making chicken stock. Love watching plants grow.

Starting Kombucha

Thanks to a dear friend we got a scoby/mother, and some Kombucha tea. I love it and hubby is getting use to it. DS8 and DS13 both had half a cup no problems. DS14 couldn't understand why would we want to drink a cup of vinegar ha ha, think it's just his taste buds have gotten use to the sweet stuff he spends his money on. So we have made some up which is easy to do. I can make ginger beer so why not Kombucha (kombucha is easier)

Here's the scoby ready to go. Same dear friend also told us where we could get a large jar. Which was helpful as the ones I wanted to use were just under the size we wanted.

All made up and ready to set aside and wait. The lip on this jar was perfect for my tea towel and rubber band lid :)

Now we wait, and that is not easy :)
I'm buzzing about the health benefits. Sort out my tummy :)
It's good for your digestion, detoxification, immune boosting, all things that I need. Also read that it helps with joint care, which would be wonderful help with my hips.

Preserving

My small preserving cupboard is full this year

I might have been quiet in blog land, but I sure have been busy at home. After making over 40 jars of food (some given to others). I realised we need a better place to keep our preserves. So I have been in the hunt of a secondhand pantry, to go into our garage. That would free up more space in my little kitchen again. We had a good year for peaches, our tree blessed us with heaps.

One of the reasons I have been so busy is I'm now homeschooling my DS8. He can be a bit of a handful (more so when he is sick). But he is progressing with his learning, even doing maths out of school time hours. Still have a lot of work to do on his writing.
One day at a time :)

Other exciting news is we have been making progress with our garden. (not that you would think so at the moment, with the mess out there) We are working on a new fence behind our garage and clothes line area. No more jasmine trying to take over my clothes line. More light, more space. Our dear grapefruit tree is having a new lease on life with room to grow and breathe. The fence that was there before was built on our side and took a chunk of space from our land. It also gave a great frame for the jasmine to grow, and a wonderful living space for rats. No wonder our cat would go crazy with that fence, walking up and down beside it. But now it is gone and new frame work is going up on the fence line. Waiting on some secondhand metal fence materials (and one day a fresh paint).

Now if we could just get the other fence done on the other side near my apple tree, and the new chicken palace done I would be very happy :)

Was lost with the kids returing to school

It sure has gotten busy at our little house with the kids going back to school. And now I have one of them home for homeschooling.
So DS14 and DS13 are both at high school, catching the bus helps with our petrol costs. At the same time giving them some Independence.
DD11 is back at primary school going into her senior years. She is doing well and making new friends.
DS7 (soon to be 8yrs) is now been home schooled. Gone are the stresses he was having at school. DS7 has Aspergers and needs some extra time and attention. But was not given the support he needed to fit in at school. He better at home, and we are spending some days building the routine we both need to get into.
But I'm still going with the $100 Food Shop :)

Week Four $100 Food Shop

Was able to keep to the $100 last week. I was under until thought why not stock up on on canned chopped tomatoes. At .73c each they are worth it and are great to add to casseroles or making pasta sauce. So we now have 9 cans at the bottom of our pantry. Then I saw baked beans also at a good price of .85c each these are great to stretch mince out or a quick meal on toast. So we now have 9 cans of them too.
This week I aim to get cans of chickpeas to build up our pantry stockpile.

Week Four $100 Food Shop

Menu Plan
Breakfast: cereal or toast
Lunch: leftovers, sandwiches or fritters and chips
Snacks: Chocolate cake, cookies
Tuesday: Chicken Buns
Wednesday: Mince dish (with rice, baked beans, chopped tomatoes and veggies)
Thursday: Salmon and kale quiche
Friday: Corned Beef with mashed potato and mustard sauce
Saturday: Cold Corn beef with salad
Sunday: Homemade Hamburgers
Monday: Beef or Chicken Stir fry (uses up veggies)

Shopping List
Kids cereal (whatever is on sale)
Muesli (bulk up with rolled oats)
White sugar
Plain Flour
Icing sugar (if our food processor was better would make it ourselves)
Pasta (good to have on hand)
Mayo (used for the chicken buns, DH would make some but is doing more at work while his workmate has his holiday, so comes home tired)
Fruit - apricots are on sale
Milk
Cream
Cheese
Cocoa
Buy bulk canned chickpeas

Week Three $100 Food Shop

Last week (week two) we spent the whole $100 on food. The main reason being the heat wave we had. The children started drinking more milk because it was chilled in the fridge. So we had a talk with them and filled a large 2 litre bottle with water, that they could have instead. But I also crumbled with the heat and brought a box of ice blocks and a tub of ice cream. So this week I need to get on to making our own ice blocks. We were given some fruit juice which would be perfect for that. I'm still very happy we made it through the week not spending more then our $100 budget.

Now ready for Week Three $100 Food Shop

Menu Plan

Breakfast is cereal or toast
Lunch sandwiches or fritters
Snacks we have chocolate cake (DS13 made for us), 100s & 1000s biscuits, and fruit (apples at the moment)
Dinner
Tuesday: Ratatouille (using our courgettes, and my mum's green pepper) with toast.
Wednesday: Pasta Dinner from our freezer (when we had leftovers from a large pasta dinner)
Thursday: Tray Baked Lamb with Cous cous (another dinner using our courgettes)
Friday: Pumpkin Curry with rice
Saturday: BBQ sausages with salad
Sunday: Chicken Stir fry with rice
Monday: Corned Beef with veggies

Shopping

We are out of white sugar so need to get for making Courgette Jam (yes another thing to use up more courgettes) and our ginger beer. Will also get some flour for baking. Happy to see butter on sale this week 2 for $6, so will stock up our freezer with more. Great for baking :)
Don't need to get milk yet, after talking with kids we are stretching it out again. I will make up some powder milk for baking, have been lapse in that. Need to get more kids cereal, sometime the kids will have 2 bowls for breakfast. I also have to get DS7 pasta, he is hard to feed and this is one thing I don't mind getting. We are working with him to try more but it's slow work. Also on list is cinnamon (baking), eggplant (ours not grown yet), can tomatoes, and chicken breast for stir fry.

I'm excited because of doing this challenge we will have a $671.10 debt paid off next week YAY!
That motivates me to keep going.
We are also using up what we need to from our pantry, fridge and freezer :)