If you go down to the woods today…

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 24 January 2012 in green, growing | 1 comment

You might find a pretty much brand new collapsible garden bin.

That’s what I found on my walk with Lily-dog today.

When I first saw it a little way up the hill from the path, I thought it was one of ours but when I got closer, I saw it was bigger and frankly better quality than the ones I use. That part of the woods, which isn’t very popular with dogwalkers but is very popular with Lily-dog, isn’t really near any houses so I didn’t know who it could belong to so … yoink!

Coincidentally, the one I use for cleaning out the chicken coop (carrying the wood shavings from the coop to the compost heap) is just about on its last legs so this was a very well timed find indeed.

By way of thanks to the woods for their offering, I filled it with all the litter I came across on the walk out and back. It was mostly carrier bags, crisp packets and a couple of cans/bottles, but there was also an unused rubble sack which I bet someone lost in the recent high winds. Inspired by Su’s “goals for 2012” comment on Recycle This the other week, I’d been thinking about doing a litter pick in the woods when the weather got a little better – I’m glad this forced my hand sooner rather than later :)

In my life

Posted by louisa on Monday 23 January 2012 in meta | 0 comments

I have a giant to-do list today – work stuff, voluntary work stuff and stuff at home – so I think I need a brief take-stock breather :)

Outside my window is just so lovely right now. It has been raining on and off all morning but right now there’s bright sunshine, an equally bright blue sky and the bottle-green leaves of the holly bush are shining. Someone really supped up the colour levels out there today.

I am thinking about the mega to-do list of doom, about new projects & old stalwarts and how I’m going to make something fun & geeky in a few days when my Fimo order arrives :) I am also thinking about the pack of sweet cicely seeds I randomly found in my desk last week – whether it’s too late to plant them now or whether I should give it a go.

I am thankful that John’s bad back – which has left him pretty much unable to move since Friday – seems to be getting better.

From the kitchen, we just had a bit of a random “what have we got in the cupboard/fridge?” lunch but we’re having a perfectly wintery beany beef stew for tea (our version of this, with cornbread, because mmm, cornbread!) and we had these lemon-garlic chicken thighs for dinner last night – although I couldn’t bring myself to use the same amount of oil or 30 (!!) cloves of garlic as the recipe suggests. I was a little worried that it would lack flavour/punch because of that, but it was surprisingly delicious.

I am wearing just about the only warm top I own which has neither a hood or a pouch at the front. I keep forgetting and try to put my hands in the non-existent pouch. In another clothing-related mishap, I forgot to put on my second pair of socks this morning so even though these ones aren’t threadbare like the other day, I still feel nude in just one pair of socks!

I am creating sadly very little. This will hopefully change soon!

I am going to take the Lily-dog for a walk before the lovely sunshine disappears again – just think, this time last month, it would already have been dark!

I am reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. I’m not that far into it – it’s pleasant enough and there have been some lovely turns of phrase but it’s not wowing me just yet.

I am hoping that I can get back on top of things soon. I feel like I’ve had a mental energy required/energy available mismatch since at least the start of the year – like Rachel, I’ve been largely hibernating and I’m fine with that, but I have to come out of hibernation sooner or later!

I am hearing not a lot of anything, other than the clack-clack sound of my own typing. John is upstairs in a back-pleasing position on the floor so I’m alone in the office, excepting for my canine companion of course – and for once she is silent! Sleepily silent:

Around the house things are still in a state of chaos as the plasterer has pushed us back another week or so. Between last weekend’s coldness and this weekend’s John-bad-back-ness, it’s been a bad fortnight to be living in a half-demolished living room — no stove to keep us warm, no TV for watching films to pass the time… Still though, two good things: the blue winter sunlight is making everywhere look beautifully muted and even though I did it without my glasses on so couldn’t see much of anything, I did a pretty good job of cleaning the glass/mirror in the bathroom this morning :)

One of my favourite things aside from John’s back improving, the gorgeous weather, yummy food and surprisingly clean glasswork in the bathroom, I got a parcel of lovely things through the post this morning. Ok, I selected and bought the (very heavily discounted) lovely things but still, it’s nice to get fun things in the post and they’re all as nice/nicer than I thought they would be so I’m very happy.

A few plans for the rest of the week hopefully getting on top of stuff, hopefully making stuff with Fimo if that arrives soon and a belly-dancing workshop (!) – we’re running the latter for the kids at drama but I think I’ll have to show willing and get involved too, much like I had to do with the Arabian-scale singing last week. I am no more of a dancer than I am a singer. Thankfully the kids at class are far more talented than me!

How’s your day been? What did you get up to over the weekend?

Do you darn?

Posted by louisa on Friday 20 January 2012 in frugal, making | 15 comments

These are the socks I’m wearing today:

(Well, the “undersocks” I’m wearing today – I’ve got some big fluffy ones on top – I feel nude if I’m wearing less than two pairs of socks in winter :) )

I’m good at stitching up small holes in socks but when it comes to threadbare patches like these … well, there’s a reason why these threadbare bits are so big!

I’m always more inclined to fix thick socks than this thin sort as I don’t think my needle skillz could manage a very good job on these. But a whole load of my socks have gone this way recently (especially “novelty” ones like these, which I got as Christmas presents when I still got Christmas presents a decade ago) and I’m thinking I need to do something about it — because my sock drawer is rather depleted and I’ve used up all my old worn-out sock reuse/recycling ideas for the time being.

So do you darn? How easy is it to learn how to do it properly/neatly? Would you darn this type of sock or save your time for better quality ones?

Our mouse in the house

Posted by louisa on Thursday 19 January 2012 in house | 16 comments

We have a mouse in the house. Or rather a couple of mice who either hate each other or like each other very much according to the squeals we heard between the floorboards last night.

We live next to woodland and we first heard the scratching/squeaks when it suddenly got cold last weekend so we’re not exactly surprised when we have rodent guests. I’m calling them mice but they’re probably actually something else – we had a single vole-ish thing nibbling on our spare bags of chicken feed in the garage last year and we had a family of shrews living in the back of our woodpile the summer before last — living there, dying in our dining room courtesy of Carla-cat’s late developing hunting skills. Carla-cat was 12 then and in a fortnight racked up more hunting “triumphs” than the whole of the feline team had racked up in the previous decade put together — when we had four cats in the old house, their hunting “success” list was: a mouse, two birds, an already dead very frozen magpie, a chipolta sausage and a piece of KFC chicken.

The cats – just Boron (who is ninety-hundred years old & toothless but was once a semi-feral stray) and Carla now – are being less than effective regarding our current rodent-adjacent situation. They’ve had a couple of “ooh sniff sniff sniff” moments but don’t react at all when the sound of under-floorboard mouse fighting/sex echoes around our empty living room. Lily-dog – who is also ninety-hundred years old – raises her ear slightly but doesn’t bother opening her eyes from her blissfully slumber. A crack team, ready to leap into action at any minute.

But because of the cats & the Lily-dog, we’ll have to be careful about how we deal with the current situation – no poisons (in case the mice die somewhere they can be eaten/sucked on) or traditional traps where the cats/dog could get caught. We’ll try to get a humane mouse trap (essentially just a one way box) but I’ve heard more people complaining about those than have had success with them.

Have you had any unwanted rodent visitors to your house this winter? If so, how did you deal with them? What would you recommend? Can I use this as an excuse to get a new cat (or five) with teeth and energy? ;)

Our office

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 18 January 2012 in house | 6 comments

The other day Susy of Chiot’s Run gave us a virtual tour of her home office, which she very aptly titled Where the Magic Happens. (Apt because Susy’s blog – and her new food/cooking blog Eat out of the Bag – are lovely, magical places and if you don’t visit them already, I’d highly recommend you do so!)

Despite wannabe illusionist John’s best efforts, nowhere near as much magic happens here, but I thought I’d share some pictures of our office anyway. We have both worked from home for about six years now so it’s an important space in our lives.

See that little table at the bottom of the picture? It’s 87cm square and that used to be our office in our old house. It lived in our living room and was also our dining table and, since it was right next to the front door, the place where all our junk got dumped on the way into the house. The two of us squeezed our laptops, and invariably a few cats, onto it for a couple of years — which made it all the nicer when we moved to our new house and got to have a proper, dedicated office with proper dedicated desks even if one of us can’t keep her desk tidy. That’s my actually-pretty-tidy-for-me desk on right, John’s on the left and now the little table is where our friends sit when they work from here for the day. It used to get tidied away to the far corner of the room after every visit but now we’re lazy and it stays there all the time. Thankfully the room is big enough to handle our laziness.

The room is also big enough for a sofa – which is widely regarded as Lily-dog’s sofa. The cats/us/guests occasionally sit on it but usually only if that’s ok with Lily. The sofa was an eBay bargain – we had a small budget for it but managed to find this one & get it delivered for less than half the budget – but still gets covered with old blankets to soak up the daily dose of muddy dog stench ;) I love the colour of this blanket – so vibrant even though it was my grandparents’ and thus considerably older than me!

Our office is on the “lower ground floor” of our house – our house is built on a slope so there are more floors at the back than the front – and looks out over our garden and the woods beyond. When the houses were originally built in 1897, this would have been the kitchen hence there being such a large fireplace opening:

It also means there is a “back door” opening right out into the garden, which I think is Lily’s favourite thing about the room. When it’s warm, the door stays open all day and she & the cats patter in & out all day, while we listen to birdsong & chicken noises from the garden.

We’re not very good at hanging pictures on walls for some reason so there isn’t much to share in that regard but I do like this little print John bought in London last year – socks arranged like chromosomes.

Artwork aside, we have customised our own spaces. Me with all my clutter:

And John, with his stars and insects.

Whatever you do – whether it’s paid work, self-employed stuff or homemaking, what’s your main workspace like at home?

Frozen days

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 17 January 2012 in chickens, growing | 1 comment

I took these photos yesterday but between one thing (Strowger ;)) and another (getting obsessed about doing something pointless & time-consuming that wasn’t on my to-do list), I didn’t get around to posting them. However, thankfully it looks just the same out there today – just less sunny and more icy – so I can post them today without it being incongruous ;)

Along with most of the UK, we had our first properly frozen days of winter over the weekend. It’s been so mild for the last month that they came as a bit of a shock to the system really. Because it’s been so mild, the garden is still quite green in parts, albeit mostly weedy green ;) If I was taking part in the Salad 52 Challenge, it would be mostly bittercress at the moment – icy bittercress:

Further down the garden, all the moss tendrils on the stone raised bed walls have their own white highlights and the blackberry bush reminds me it needs cutting back:

Last year, with all the snow, we didn’t have a just-icy period so this is the first time I’ve seen the greenhouse iced up. It’s also the first time I’ve seen frost looking really like patterned window glass.

Of course, the only reason I’m really venturing out into the garden at all is to do chicken things – chilly jobs in this weather. The gate into the run has swollen and is frosty so I have to give it a good wack with my bum to open it, especially when I’m carrying things. I’m glad that I have put so much time, effort and food into developing a bum with sufficient girth to achieve such a task over the last few years ;)

All the structure of the run – including my new roof – is coated in glassy white crystals. It looks so cold:

But the chickens themselves are fine. After four frozen days, I’ve got into a good routine for defrosting their big new drinker so I can do it nice and efficiently before my hands drop off from frostbite. I’m very glad they got a new batch of woodchips at the start of the year though – they don’t freeze as solidly as mud/the ground did last year and so they can still have dirt baths in their favourite spot under the coop and scratch around plenty too:

Looking up from the chickens, the sky was a lovely soft blue yesterday but the sun surprisingly strong (for winter):

It was certainly enough to i) lure Boron-cat from the house and ii) reveal he’s secretly ginger ;)

Is it icy where you are? How are you/your animals & garden dealing with it? And those in the Southern hemisphere: come on, make us jealous by telling us how lovely & warm it is where you are :)

Portion control

Posted by louisa on Thursday 12 January 2012 in frugal | 18 comments

I was in a bit of a sleep daze when I had a shower yesterday and accidentally lathered, rinsed and repeated. I’m not a girl who usually repeats, no matter what the side of the bottle says, but it reminded me of an old article that I re-read recently.

The article was about portion control – not food portion control for dietary reasons but other things for frugal reasons. The article starts at the point where the author, JD, realised he could try putting two teaspoons of cocoa into his cup rather than the recommended three and seeing if it made a noticeable difference. It didn’t – or not enough that he cared – and would save him about 29c a day. It made him start looking at other things to spot the difference between the manufacturer recommended amount and what was actually needed – because obviously the manufacturers have a vested interest in people using more than they need. He advocates that people start reducing quantities of various things (like shampoo, toothpaste & washing powder) until they notice a difference – it’s not about compromising on standards, just not using unnecessarily big portions of things when a smaller amount will get the job done just the same.

I’m going to try experimenting with some things – especially things that are now said to be concentrated (squash/cordial & washing up liquid are two things that spring to mind) because I think old pre-concentrated habits can easily lead me to use too much. I think I’ll also drop the amount of shampoo I use – less for each wash and definitely no more sleepy repeats ;) – and face cleanser/moisturiser to see if that makes a difference. And in the kitchen, I’m going to play with using powder bouillon (rather than set size stock cubes) and stock dilution levels to see if it makes much of a difference once we’ve added all our other flavours and spices on top.

Have you noticed you can use less of something than manufacturers suggest? Have you tried reducing the amount of something – good results/bad results? Have you noticed having to change the amounts used as products get better/worse? Do you use too large quantities of things out of habit?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this!