Basic beans.....

Too easy, I should call this "walk away beans"!

Cover with water, and walk away, let your favourite dried beans soak overnight.

Rinse and cover with plenty of water, set to simmer and walk away!

Once cooked, fry up some onion & garlic, throw in a tablespoon or so of your favourite herbs and a couple of cans of tomatoes. In this case I added a big handful of kale I had dried previously, all crunched up, but there is so many other vegetables you could hide in here! Hehe!

Anyway throw in the cooked beans and walk away again. I left it long enough, to cool, and marinate the beans a little. Yummo. All organic, full of flavour, real food. Approved by two toddlers, and me! :))

Great fitness app.

As the weather has cooled off with all of the recent rain, I have found myself getting right back into running, after struggling so much keeping it going with the summers heat and humidity. Anyhow, I have found a great app MapMyRun. You may have already heard of it, but is fantastic for logging your runs and watching the improvements over time, it uses gps tracking, has web links, online communities etc. And a bunch of other functions i don't use. lol.

I had to share, as my personal training is another area I want to get back into. My most enjoyable and fulfilling job was personal training. I want that back, at least part time while I'm doing everything else! Haha!

Be sure to let me know of any other running of fitness apps you have found!
In the mean time get MapMyRun and go running! :D

What the actual....????

Remarkably phallic appearance no? An outrageous smell to boot! this fungus-ish thing has appeared in my garden this morning! Does anyone know what this doodle fungus is? (Ok, doodle fungus was a little much, my apologies!) but seriously, I am getting i am getting a lot of mushroom/ fungi activity in the garden with all the rain, but I have never seen anything like this!

Lather test: Sherry

The saponification process is said to be complete roughly within a week, then it really just needs to dry out to create a harder bar of soap. I was interested in how she would lather... ....So here is a lather test using a scrap of my Sherry soap one week in! :) pretty happy with it :)

Soap Batch # 2: Tropical Delight.

My newest batch of soap is "Tropical delight" and is a blend of sweet and fragrant mango, with sensually smooth coconut and macadamia oils. It also contains shredded loofah for a gentle exfoliation.

It contains:
Coconut oil,
Sustainable palm oil,
Olive oil,
Macadamia oil, and
"Mango Lassi" fragrance oil.

Then to dress up my base recipe, Tropical Delight, I decided to make mango sorbet style soaps. To do this I split the recipe into two. One bowl had 2/3 of the total mixture. To this I added some coloured mica in a coral colour, and some left over natural food colouring I had, (I wouldn't normally, but the colour of the mica wasn't quite right for what I wanted), and a added some yellow/ orange glitter hexagons I had left over from my nail art stuff. The shredded loofah also went in to this mix. The other bowl with the last third of the batch was left plain, with the only addition being a small amount of shredded coconut.

And this is how it turned out......

Sherry: Soap batch #1

"Sherry" is the name my husband came up with for this recipe, drawing letters from the recipe ingredients (Shea butter and cranberry).

Sherry is a soft and luxurious, moisture rich, all natural soap. Lightly fragranced with cranberry and fig with a delicate and deeply cleansing French pink clay.

Sherry contains:
Coconut oil
Olive oil
Palm oil (sustainable of course)
Shea butter
Cranberry and fig fragrance oil

Sherry is the recipe featured in my first ever "from scratch" batch of soap. With this recipe, I made little cranberry and fig tarts and muffins. This was achieved by splitting the mixture into three portions; one plain to look like whipped cream/ icing, one with the pink clay as the pie filling, and one with medium ground spelt grain to achieve an attractive and interesting pastry like look as well as a gentle exfoliation! I did add a little glitter too, just on the top, I couldn't help myself. I think it looks good enough to eat.

Peppermint delight.

"Mum can we make a special drink with parsley and milk please?" My 3 year old son is referring to a milky drink we make with fresh peppermint (Or should I say he makes). It's as easy as grabbing a little handful of fresh peppermint leaves, grind them up in a mortar and pestle with or without sugar. Add milk. Yum.

Cleaning without the nasty stuff!

We have replaced many of our detergents with natural "non nasty" types with great success!

In the laundry i am using soap nuts. I thought the washing powder and fabric softener would be the hardest to "give up" but alas, I like the smell of soap nuts. Also, our clothes are the softest they have ever been, and the nuts are equal for stain removal, amazing! And you can compost the soap nuts and reuse the water on the garden etc. bonus!

In the kitchen I don't use a lot of chemicals aside dishwasher detergent and liquid detergent. We are in the process of using up leftover dishwasher detergent, but I have has a lot of success with simply bicarbonate of soda and vinegar as the rinse. I love it! Now there is no foul taste when I touch my lips to a coffee mug or smears on my glasses. So we will continue with this. Soap nuts as dishwashing liquid experiments have been good. But I plan on making natural liquid soap from my "bar" soap scraps etc. Will see how it goes!

In the bathroom we are experimenting with bicarb and apple cider vinegar as shampoo and conditioner too. My sister is having great success with it. She has scalp "issues" too, so I am pleasantly surprised. I on the other hand I am finding I miss the lather, so will be trying to make my own natural liquid soaps to get that squeaky clean feeling. I plan on making a leave in balm too, as a conditioner so I can still get the occasional highlights or foils, and still be able to brush my hair! I have tried a coconut oil based one, but it was a little too much, the fragrance was divine though! The kids are still using up their shampoo's etc. so this allows me a little more time to find out what will work for them, and some bottles I can reuse! but no more buying chemical laden rubbish! I am aware this looks remarkably "raging hippie-ish" but I assure you I shave my armpits and wax my legs! Haha! I just want the best for my family, and my precious earth.
Almost forgot....I have made some of our own luscious lip balms and hope to experiment with make up at some point in the future.. But next on the list making my own deodorant and toothpaste! No nasties! Stay tuned for for those recipes/ experiments!

What a harvest!

My drawings......

So the best I have ever drawn in my life is a deranged stick figure. I'm not sure where these came from, I just felt like drawing. Weird. The hibiscus was inspired from a flower bed my daughter and I made. The tree is all about me. I even wrote a poem thing, ridiculous really. But it made me feel really good. Like "perfection is in the imperfection" type of thing. The third and final was inspired during the flood when everything was so dark and destructive. Which inadvertently matched my mind frame at the time. As you can see I'm no artist, and sharing these is about as far 'out there' as i go, but...... I like 'em :)

Back to school supplies....

Ahhh that time of year again......Just in time to save my sanity...Or is it?

Anyway, as usual I HAVE to buck trends and norms. Only this time I have taken it to a whole new level. I mean really who makes there own pencil cases, library and tool bags?? Crikey, why not just buy a boring old plastic backed rubbish for 2 quid like everyone else?

I have two girls at primary school, and ideally I would have liked them to do it themselves (bar the zipper) as my oldest at high school has done, but we just didn't get time. So here is what I come up with just a couple of hours :) The girls picked their fabrics and we went bananas. Cost = $0

Pencil Case, Tool Kit (extra bag for stationary spares stored at school) and Library Bag.

Hair Accessories

Not too bad for a couple of hours work ad a little imagination. I'm sure the girls appreciate having some things with a little personality and color too :)

A teaser.......

Beautiful life

Every morning, coffee in hand, I walk around my garden. In my most sacred of places I find happiness that is real and measurable (and photographable...word?). Although many parts of the garden are either bare, spent, or flood damaged, there is still so much I'm proud of, and every day I find something to surprise and delight.

a new direction........

So here I go again mixing things around, never really making up my mind. Maybe because I haven't found anything that fits.

The dilemma ; how in the hell can I do what I want and get paid for it......?? Basically.

I have an interest in so many things, I like and thrive, on the variety. Once a month or two I might make a cake. But more often I am likely to make bread one day, soap the next, the day after I may transplant a bunch of seedlings or make a batch of cheese or yoghurt. I don't want to be known for just making cake, it is not who I am, I am not  "the cake lady". I can (and will) do it all.  Everything I do I put my heart and soul into...Otherwise what is the point in doing it???

I need a way that I can record things (hence the blog) and sell things, but not have them all in neat little boxes or too many separate forums/ sites/ pages to maintain. I have upgraded to the new iPhone so I can take better pictures and blog on the go. (This should help a lot, as photo taking/transferring/uploading is annoying and tedious). Not to mention being able to post more often!

I want a place (and a name) for my stuff. I have far too many interests (for example: I cannot sell my beautiful handmade soaps under the title "Karlie's personal training" or my organically grown vegetables under the "cake" business. There is a lot in a name. I am sure "One Stop Shop" will probably change too. But for now I am happy with it, and it is the only thing I have that fits.

Anyway, as always with every change I make, I hope you understood the statement I felt I had to make about it. LOL As always, I am just trying to simplify life, and do what makes me happy :))

Thanks for reading :)