Cheese!!!!

Our cheese making efforts for last weekend, hoping in a few weeks we get a yum farmhouse cheddar for the lunches. Harder than it looks to keep the temp to 32 degrees but hopefully it turns out.

Packing the curds into the basket.

The absurdity of piling my kettlebell and hand weight to reach the requisite 10kg.

Which tipped over overnight leaving a slightly odd shaped cheese.

On the plus side we also ended up getting some ricotta out of the leftover whey! Nom nom nom ricotta-filled ravioli!

Kitchen crazy

Well we had an absolutely lovely day with a visit to an open day at a local community garden. It was buzzing, literally, with bees as well as people. We bought a stack of seedlings for our vege garden, I see lots of summer tomatoes in my future, nom, nom, nom.

When we came home I made some more bread and rolls plus some cha lua for sandwiches. The husband marinated some pork belly and cooked that up too. It looks delish!  

Dreaming Tiny

I guess you get to a certain time in your life when you wish it was simple. Juggling bills and loan repayments, thinking about whether you will have enough money to retire on when you can't seem to save enough for a holiday. Or if the hot water system blows, how will you pay for it.

Working full time and managing financially ok but just ok, treading water...  Living reasonably well but are we really living. Like that old adage "work to live or live to work".

We dream of self sufficiency, living on the fruit and vegetables we grow, the eggs from our chooks and harnessing solar power. Living on a suburban block we have the chooks and vegetables going, our 12 or so espaliered and dwarf fruit trees are yet too small to fruit, and the solar power gives us some savings on the electricity bills. 

But we want more....or actually less..

We talk about land somewhere and a tiny house. Wind and solar power, composting toilet, fruit trees, veges and goats, making our own cheeses and bread, preserving what we grow.

But how? Are two people who grew up in the burbs cut out for going country? I honestly don't know. I'd like to try but once again it comes down to $ and permanent employment. Even if we sell up everything it wouldn't last long. Sure we could buy land and a little house and set ourselves up with a bit left over but country towns aren't known for employment opportunities and I think total self sufficiency is a bit of a myth. Money is still needed for some things.

Well I'm going to bed and dream a little more of my tiny house....maybe dreams can come true....

Mount Washmore

Two large baskets of washing needing folding, one frozen shoulder and a total lack of interest in said folding. This can only mean one thing. 

I will be digging out underwear from the yet to be folded basket yet again tomorrow morning. Note the use of the word ... again...

Hooking pretty

Well as I'm crocheting a lot more these days ( I will actually finish something eventually too)  I thought I'd try to make some polymer clay crochet hooks to help with the soreness in my hands. Sorta pretty aren't they? Hopefully they will work out well. There are a plethora of YouTube clips and online tutorials on how to do these, so really no excuse not to try it out. These are pretty exxy to buy and the 4 blocks of clay only cost me just over $20AUD and I used a quarter of each which made 3 handles. Works out at about $1.70 each plus the cost of the metal hooks which I already had. Bargain!

Well I am a messy cook...

Well I did get into it today and made a banana bread (still in the oven) a blood orange pound cake (also still in the oven) and some egg mayonnaise. Hence the large amount of debris. But don't those blood oranges look amazing?

Blood orange poundcake recipe I found here:  http://whiteonricecouple.com/recipes/blood-orange-buttermilk-pound-cake/

Thank goodness for the thermomix, I wouldn't attempt half the things I make if I didn't have one.

I have also started a crochet along I found on Facebook called The Spice of Life. I've just started so let's see if I finish it (I'm trying to ignore the other unfinished blanket in my pile of yarn...whoops. Still it's also looking good so far.

so many unfinished jobs

I have trouble finishing things, there are multitudes of half finished craft items in my incredibly messy sewing room and a file full of half finished courses that I decided weren't for me after all.
Don't get me wrong there is a lot of finished things too, I have a wardrobe full of clothing that I've made and worn to death.

I'm guessing this blog is going to be a bit of a catalogue of things I start.....and a celebration if it gets finished.

My oldest unfinished job would have to be a patchwork cushion from year 9 high school, still in the bottom of my sewing cabinet. Must be nearly 30 years old. OMG IT'S VINTAGE!!!  It has gone through multiple house move yet stayed with me and has yet to be hit by my latest efforts to declutter by my yet to be finished, Marie Kondo method. Surprise, surprise...if I manage to dig it out I'll post a pic.