A few quick links to elsewhere

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 8 June 2011 in meta | 0 comments

Having a busy (and rainy) day today so no time for a proper post but just time for some links that might interest you a little self-promotion ;)

• After the brief discussion about composting teabags the other week, I did a bit of research about which brands/types contain synthetic fibres (polypropylene) and posted the results on Recycle This. In brief, stapled gusset ones are polypropylene-free but you might have to remove the staple/string. All the rest are heat-sealed and contain polypropylene – the teabags should break down and the synthetic fibres “disappear” into your compost, but it’s up to you whether you want it in there.
• I’ve very much enjoyed Rachel‘s recent tours of her village and garden, and planned to do my own of the awesome woods behind our house (and maybe beyond). But I forgot to take my camera when we’ve gone on long walks around the woods recently and since Lily sprained a leg last week, our recent walks have been shorter. On Friday, we just walked the “lower loop” as we call it, through the horses’ field. I did take pictures of that though so stage 1 of my tour: John & Lily in the horses’ field.
• And those who enjoyed the book pictures a few weeks ago may like my Venn Diagrams of my favourite books.

How I popped my charity shop cherry

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 7 June 2011 in charity shopping | 8 comments

After reading this post on Homestead.org, I thought back to my first time – the first time I bought something from a charity shop I mean.

We didn’t have a lot of money when I was little – certainly compared to many of the people around us – but as far as I recall, we didn’t get any clothes from charity shops – maybe a couple of things from jumble sales when we were very little but not after that. My mum knitted so we had a lot of homemade jumpers when I was under 10 and for casual “playing out” clothes (which, aside from our school uniforms, were all we really wore), I got a lot of hand-me-downs from my older brother – which possibly inspires my not-exactly-feminine style to this day.

When I hit my teens, I started getting a little more interested in fashion – not much compared to most girls but more interested than I had been. That coincided with New Look and the like, cropping up with their cheap clothes and perpetual sales. But while those shops were perfect for little vest tops and minute skirts, they weren’t great for everything – particularly heavy winter coats – and at 16, I also started to like the idea of vintage clothes, so I decided to finally cross that threshold…

It really was a threshold – it felt … wrong. Not necessarily that very first time but over my first year of charity shopping, I remember being embarrassed about going into the shops – hoping no one saw me. I didn’t want anyone to know I went to charity shops. I guess I had embarrassingly inaccurate prejudices about charity shops myself – that they were for poor people, that they were dirty – and I assumed all my peers would have similar ideas, and I didn’t want to get tarred by those brushes. (How times change – I’m now really happy to tell all and everyone about my love for charity shops and the like!)

But despite my worries, skulking into the British Heart Foundation in Southport was worth it: on that first visit, I found a nearly new black woollen winter coat for £5. The coat was a bit too big for me but I didn’t care, I was delighted. A woollen coat would have cost me £60+ new, which at 16 I couldn’t really afford – so big schmig. I wore it every day that winter and when I was done with it – when I’d moved onto charity shop vintage velvet blazers or the fantastic swinging ’60s leather trench coat I found at Barnados for £12 the following year – it went back to a charity shop for someone else to use.

I do wonder if I’d have caught the charity shop bug if that first visit hadn’t been such a success. Over the years, I’ve probably had as many charity shop clothes failures as I’ve had successes – wasting money buying stuff without trying it on – but the successes have been worth it.

Do you remember the first time you went to a charity shop?

(Photo by ell r brown)

Ten things

Posted by louisa on Monday 6 June 2011 in chickens, cooking, DIY, frugal, growing, soap | 2 comments

1. Buff the chicken has been in isolation since last Wednesday since the others started really *viciously* bullying her (as I said on Twitter, it’s disturbing how vicious chickens can be). I think there have been pecking order issues over the last few weeks and it’s stopped her being able to eat properly. She feels very bony (even for a pure breed) and is weak as a result – looking back at old photos of her, the difference is stark. I’m hoping some time by herself and some special food will turn her around but I wouldn’t be surprised to go down one morning to find she’d died overnight. Sigh.
2. We painted the bathroom on Sunday – not the woodwork yet but the second coat of the walls, ahead of the cupboards being fitted tomorrow. One June mini goal down (nearly)!
3. In other housey news, last year we found a hidden coal hole at the front of our house and over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been having it damp-proofed and turned into a utility room. It’s not been cheap but now has a proper full height doorway and is a proper extra room for the house – it’ll free up room in the kitchen too. It should be finished this week, hurrah!
4. While that’s going on at great expense inside, John’s DIY-mad dad is fitting a fence for us outside — to help contain the dog and the chickens a bit more. The fence is going to be rather frugal for a new fence as the lumberyard John’s dad goes to was throwing away about 20 horizontal fencing beams and some posts, because they’d got slightly bleached in the sun so couldn’t be sold “as new” any more. Madness! But useful timing for us!
5. And speaking of freebies, someone was taking a seemingly brand new electric staple gun in its case at the tip last time John’s dad was visiting – they told him it was “broken” but he took it home and found they’d just inserted the staplers in the wrong place. We now have a brand new working electric staple gun for free ;)
6. I never used to use bar soap to wash anywhere other than my hands – it left a film and dried my skin, causing my face in particular to get greasier in compensation. But my olive oil soap leaves my skin clean and soft – and it stays feeling that way for 12+ hours unlike just about every other cleaning method I’ve tried. I very much like it.
7. I made the ugliest soda bread I’ve ever made today – I don’t know what went wrong but it grew really unevenly. Still tasted lovely with soup for lunch though :)
8. Some of my rapini has gone to seed – the heads weren’t big enough to warrant harvesting. Damn the hot spring!
9. Do you make your own quiches? I’m looking for (frugal) store-cupboard recipe quiche ingredient ideas for when we’ve not got much else in — Viksterbean on Twitter suggested antipasti such as olives and artichokes, and that made me think about adding a swirl of pesto too. Any other ideas?
10. Boron would like it to be known that I did not write this post alone. Apologies for the poor quality of my webcam – I only ever use it for these type of pics ;)



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This week’s meal plan

Posted by louisa on Monday 6 June 2011 in weekly meal plans | 0 comments

This one feels less varied than normal – but should be quite efficient as a result and not need too much extra shopping, which I like. :) The shepherd’s pie was originally going to be cottage pie but I found some lamb mince in the freezer. Another win :)

Sunday lunch – Saturday night takeout leftovers
Sunday dinner – … Saturday night takeout leftovers (eyes seriously bigger than our bellies!)

Monday lunch – tomato soup with soda bread
Monday dinner – courgette & bacon risotto

Tuesday lunch – leftover risotto & bread (or if we’re lured into naughtiness by Strowger, fish butties)
Tuesday dinner – shepherd’s pie and veg

Wednesday lunch – curried egg mayo sandwiches
Wednesday dinner – pizza

Thursday lunch – samosas and salad
Thursday dinner – leftover shepherd’s pie and veg

Friday lunch – bread, meat & pickles
Friday dinner – spaghetti carbonara

Adventures in frugal vertical gardening: salvaged planters

Posted by louisa on Friday 3 June 2011 in growing, making, wood stuff | 7 comments

A few weeks ago, our next door neighbour with the gorgeous show house revamped his garden for summer. His deck is decorated like a room of the house (including an old vintage dresser, which looks fab with bedding plants draped out of the drawers and is currently topped with a birdcage and some matching framed photos) and he prefers to have just a few pots around the seating area rather than our overgrown scruffy (albeit veg-tastic) garden. As much as I like growing our own food, I do look at his garden wistfully sometimes – so lovely, so little upkeep! ;)

Anyway, so the guy with the great taste was tidying up his garden and at some point in his tidying mission, he decided he no longer wanted four wooden trough planters – he’d had them for a couple of years and they were looking past their best, so he dumped them on the (communal) bonfire heap at the bottom of our garden. I spotted the next time I was passing on the way into the woods with Lily-dog and mentally bagsied them – sure, they were a little past their prime but i) aren’t we all? and ii) they’re nothing a bit of TLC couldn’t fix.

I didn’t actually collect them until yesterday – but on closer inspection confirmed what I’d thought — a couple of bangs with a hammer (to reinsert some nails), a couple of supporting screws and a lick of paint and they’d be fine.

They’d got a bit damp in the recent rain so I let them dry in the sun for a while then wielding my hammer & screwdriver, did my minor fixes. The smaller trough was still in good condition so I just gave the wood a bit of a polish to freshen it up a bit. It’s not perfect but it’ll do as a small herb pot.

The three bigger ones, I cleaned up then slapped on a couple of coats of white acrylic primer. I didn’t want to paint all the way inside, just to roughly where I imagine the soil level will be.

I’d wanted some nice troughs for the balcony for a while – for salad and herbs right next to the kitchen door – and to maximise space, I decided to build another tiered planter stand thing. (The first one of those is proving very useful by the way – it’s currently filled with pots of different salad leaves.) I wanted it to be as simple as possible but the sides of the troughs were too angled to attach uprights to them – I could have attached them directly to the wall with brackets but prefer the flexibility of freestanding stuff where possible, so ended up building another shelved planter stand.

I did start with wider shelves, with room for extra pots on either side, but decided to make it narrower and neater so it would fit better on the balcony and be stronger. I have also added supports onto the bottom of each trough so they can be screwed onto the shelves to make them more stable/less likely to tip over – I just haven’t done that yet because I want to paint everything first. The narrower stand itself is stable but the individual troughs will be a bit top heavy.

The uprights are made from salvaged decking and the shelves from salvaged (due to being warped in parts) battens (both courtesy of John’s dad) – so structurally, it was completely free. I’m not sure where the primer came from (I suspect John’s dad brought that around too, it just appeared in our house) and it will need painting again — I have some leftover gloss paint in fun colours but I think I need exterior paint or an acrylic based paint for outside stuff (don’t I?) so I, gasp, might have to buy a little pot for that bit, unless I can scrounge some off someone else this weekend. Any colour suggestions by the way? (For context, the metalwork of the balcony it’ll stand on is painted black, the walls at that level are exposed Yorkshire stone and the window sills will be black when we get around to painting them.)

Still though, even if I have to buy a little paint, I’ll still be happy with the final cost and the finished item – it’ll more than pay for itself if it grows the herbs and salad I have planned. :)