I love jars. I do store some things in plastic, but if it will fit in a jar, that is where it goes. This is my jar cupboard. Many of the jars in here are recycled jars, but there are also some Fowlers Vacola preserving jars, Italian Mason jars, old glass vinegar bottles, and some plastic soft drink bottles. Believe it or not, the plastic drink bottles are the ones I find hardest to get. I use them for my lemon cordial and ginger beer.

I went looking for a preserving jar yesterday afternoon to start off the ginger beer plant and was reminded again of the wonderful collection of jars in my cupboard. I've used a Fowlers jar for the ginger beer and placed an open weave milk jug cover over it. That is to allow the wild yeasts to enter the mix which will give me a good depth of flavour to the drink.

I'm feeling much better this afternoon. It's almost 4 o'clock and I've had the most blissfully lazy day. I even had a sleep, yes duckie, a nanna nap. ; ) I told Hanno I was having a lie down at 9am! The last thing I remember was watching the curtain blowing in the breeze and then I was sound asleep for two hours. I made some fresh juice when I woke up, then drew my second curtain pattern and started stitching. This slow and loopy day has been just what I needed. I think we forget sometimes that we need to take a break from our chores. Working as we do here at home we don't really have days off. The work isn't what you'd call hard work, but it's consistent.

I've just been out to the garden to pick lettuce, radishes, beans, cucumber, parsley and onion for our dinner tonight. I've boiled some eggs and will make some potato salad too. I also cut up a pineapple, added four peeled oranges and water to it and processed it in the blender. That's now in a glass jug, sitting in the freezer, and we'll drink the fresh juice icy cold with our meal.

And now I'm going to start a ginger beer plant so I can make some ginger beer next week. We've no lemons on the tree right now and all the frozen juice has been used, so water and ginger beer will cool us down on those hot days coming soon.

Thank you all for stopping by today. I love my little blog community. : ) I hope you all enjoy the weekend.

There have been many times in my life when I've felt like giving up, but being the queen of stubborness, I refuse to do it. Once I've made a commitment to something, I usually do it. That's not a wonderful virtue, it's just plain mule stubborness. I'm changing that because today, even though I have work to do, I'm not doing it. I'm really tired, so today I'm looking after Rhonda Jean.

I guess the two weeks with my sister here and some extra work I've been doing have taken their toll. I came home from a work meeting at 6.30pm yesterday and I felt as if the life force had been drained out of me. I don't feel any better this morning after a good night's sleep. I feel like falling down in a heap. I need rest. I don't need more sleep, I just need to rest and not do anything. My mind needs a break. Today I will do nothing.

I intend to make breakfast, look around the garden then sit on the front verandah and either read or stitch. I have my second curtain to do and I don't see that as work - it's pure pleasure. All thoughts of what we're having for dinner, ironing, gardening or cleaning, are all being thrown out the door today. Today I will clear my mind, gather my strength, rest and be mindful of the sweet nurturing I'm laying on myself.

This is what I was going to do. Mend a skirt and a little cardigan that has come away from the edging. They're sitting in my sewing room silently awaiting their repairs.

And I was going to sort through this basket of fabric that Tricia brought with her. There is a lot of good fabric in here that will go towards two quilts I want to make for the guest rooms. It won't run away. I'll do it next week. : )

As most of your know Hanno and I took the plunge a few years ago and stopped working. We now use the hours we used to sell to others on ourselves, making an interesting life on our own little patch of Australian earth. I sometimes get emails from younger readers asking about living simply while working for a living. I've said many times that you can live simply anywhere at any time. Simple living has little to do with location, income or age, it's primarily a state of mind.

I want to emphasise first that your simple life isn't a cookie cutter version of my life, or someone else's life you've read about. Every single one of us creates our own version of what our life is. If you were intending to live forever in an un-simple world, you know your life would differ at many points to your friends and neighbours' lives. The same applies to your simple life. There will be points of similarity and points of difference but I hope that many of the new things you incorporate into your life will be environmentally sound.

I believe the best start to any simple life is to decide what it is you want your life to be, write that down and make that the focus of your new life. Know where you're headed but then work with what you have right now. If you feel like your life is a bit out of control, start with small steps towards the life you want - all those small steps will add up to make a big difference.

Work on one goal at a time, you'll probably find that whatever you work on will lead on to other things. For instance, if you want to change the way you shop for groceries, focus on that. You'll find that when you get into it, you might want to plan your menus, you might decide to stockpile, and to declutter to make a space for your stockpile. You might start cooking from scratch, so that will involve learning how to do it and finding recipes your family enjoy. The same will apply if you decide to grow vegetables. You'll learn all you can about gardening, but that might lead you to worm farms, compost heaps, chickens and preserving.

Forget all the grand gestures - small things matter. Make your lunch when you go to work, take a thermos flask of coffee or tea, always take a bottle of water with you when you go out. Your water bottle should be one that is reused many times. Stop buying water unless you absolutely have to. Add the money you would have spent to a change jar. When it's built up, pay it off your credit card debt, or pay an extra mortgage payment. If you have no debt, start a savings account to help you buy your own home, or donate your savings to your local homeless shelter or neighbourhood centre.

Say NO. Make your time your own, stop giving it away to insignificant things and people. Make sure the time you spend away from your own home and family is spent in the most worthwhile way. Time is really all we have. Use the time you have wisely. Stop shopping for junk, stop going to shopping malls - they will create a need to spend, if you habitually watch TV, stop. It all wastes your time. When you have some spare time, do something you love. Write down what you value and make sure you spend your time in line with those values. Now that you're living in a new way, you'll shed a few things that you used to do but now get in the way of living the life you want. Stop multi-tasking, stop living on auto-pilot. When you decide to spend your time doing something - be mindful of what you are doing. Concentrate on your tasks, think about them, make sure they matter and do them well.

Find beauty in your own life. That might be through obvious things that everyone would recognise as beautiful, but it might also encompass a passion for bee keeping, teaching yourself how to speak a foreign language or volunteering your time to a local cause that means a lot to you. Create a new standard of quality for yourself. Make sure you do everything to the best of your ability.

Learn to be frugal. Reuse, repair, recycle and make do with what you have.

There will probably be a long period of time when you feel like you're using simple living strategies but not really living simply. But you will come to the point when you feel it all falls into place and that you've built your version of a simple life. And when you do that, when you reach a point when you feel comfortable with your life, you know you're growing stronger and what you're doing is significant, you will begin to thrive and then no other way of living will be good enough for you.

My sister started her long drive home this morning after two weeks of merriment, sharing, eating, remembering and sewing together. I sent her off with a small comfort pack of spinach pie, leftover from our dinner last night, three yoghurt pikelets and a bottle of water. She will have to stop for a cup of tea. Thank you all for your kind words and good wishes for both of us while Tricia was here. We had a really good time together.

I will announce the swap soon and intend to have swap partners contact each other. The contact won't happen through me again as last time there were so many people, it became very unsimple and drove me - and Sharon who helped me, a bit crazy. Sharon has offered to help again, she lives in the US. As I have equal numbers of readers in Australia and the US, I'd also like an Australian to help too. You need to have the time to do it, so if you're working or have young children, it might be a bit of a stretch. If you live in Oz and can help with the next swap, please email me. Thanks everyone.

Oh, and the swap will be for the symbol of this simple life - aprons!

I had to buy tomatoes yesterday. We had some of our own and some from my step son's garden but with three avid tomato eaters here at the moment, the time came to go to the store to buy them. Yikes! $5 a kilo for plain old tasteless tomatoes, $10 kg for the "vine ripened" ones. I had a look around at the other vegies - $7/kilo for capsicums (peppers), $4 for a lettuce, $3.50 for a bunch of radishes and the long cucumbers were $3.80 each. It would have cost about $20 just for a couple of salads. I hate to think what the same vegetables would cost if I was buying organic produce. Luckily I only had to buy the tomatoes, we had everything else.

That's the great benefit of growing your own, not only are they organic, they're also fresher, tastier and you're protected from the spikes in prices when there's been a drought, storms or cyclones.

I've written about starting a new vegetable garden here so I won't go over that again. I want to give those of you who have started your first vegie gardens, or who are about to, a few tips that I hope will help you grow your vegetables.

Almost all uncontaminated soil will grow food, but with a bit of help, the soil in your back yard will produce very good crops instead of mediocre ones. The one thing that will make the biggest difference is to add aged manure to the soil. Your aim should be to add as much organic matter as possible, but if you can only add one thing, let it be old manure. If you can add compost with the manure you're on your way to good soil, and good soil will give good crops. If you're lucky enough to have your own animals, when you buy manure, or if it is given to you, make sure the animals have not recently been wormed. Manure from wormed animals will kill the worms in your soil. You want to encourage worms, they enrich your soil. At the same time you're developing your vegetable garden you should also start a compost pile or bin. The two go hand-in-hand.

So let's imagine you've added some aged horse or cow manure to your soil, along with your homemade compost. You dig it in (my preferred way) or you add it to your layers in a no dig garden bed. If you can afford to buy a good organic fertiliser, do so, if you can't, buy some blood and bone and sulphate of potash and use them. The blood and bone will add nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus - all necessary for good plant growth and the potash will induce flowering. The ratio is one handful of potash to 10kg of blood and bone. Sprinkle that over your new garden and dig in, along with the manure and compost.

Now you're ready to plant your seeds or seedlings. You're planting into good soil, so you want to give your plants the best chance to thrive. Get yourself some seaweed concentrate. I use Natrakelp when I can afford it and Seasol when I can't. There is some good info here about organic fertilisers, including Natrakelp. Seaweed concentrate, properly diluted, will help your seedlings over the shock of transplanting. I water my plants with a weak solution of seaweed concentrate every couple of weeks to keep everything healthy. A good trick is to pour some diluted seaweed into a small container before you plant your seedlings. Allow the seedlings to sit in the seaweed for about 30 minutes before you plant. Then plant out and water in. Then pour on some more seaweed to settle the plant in nicely.

Now a word of warning. Never over fertilise your plants. If you start your garden in a similar way to the outline above, you won't need to fertilise much at all. I make up a liquid comfrey fertiliser or worm juice for the leafy greens and apply that every two weeks. Things like tomatoes, peppers and beans, I just plant into rich soil and keep watered. The rule of thumb is you give nitrogen to the leafy greens and a small amount of potash (when planting) to the fruiting plants like tomatoes, beans, zucchinis etc. Give a good deep watering maybe twice a week, depending on your climate, and three times a week in the heat of summer. Try to water your plants in the early morning as this will help you avoid the diseases of humidity like powdery mildew.

There are many reasons to start growing your own food. It's really enjoyable, you can grow organic food for a minimal price, it's as fresh as it can possibly be when you eat it and it has no pesticides or herbicides. But now it will also save you money and ensure your supply of vegetables when the supply might be a bit tight at the shop.

It never occurred to me when I was a spender that I was actually giving away my independence. I thought the opposite. I believed I was the queen of my realm and the more I had and the more dollars I spent, the more power, strength and independence I had. When I stopped spending I realised how pathetically wrong that was.

What I was doing was working in a job I didn't like so I had enough money to pay for a lifestyle I didn't want to live. I was shopping for clothes and shoes to make me look like everyone else, I was buying things for my home to make me feel comfortable in a place I didn't take the time to feel comfortable in, and I was buying foods to comfort and nurture because I didn't feel at ease in my life and I didn't have the time or energy to cook the foods I liked. And the strangest thing is that when I was doing that, I didn't think about the sadness I was feeling, I didn't realise I was unsatisfied and I didn't see the need for change.

I only realised that need when I took myself out of the shopping frenzy and sat alone on my verandah and thought about what I was doing and how far from my ideal life I really was. When I stopped shopping, I saw it in a brighter light and when I saw its ugly side, I didn't want to go back there.

I realised that I could do all those things I used to spend my money on. I could make clothes, I could cook well, I could do my own housework, but when I started doing those things I found that I'd lost many of the skills I grew up with. I'd forgotten how to sew and knit because I paid someone else to make my clothes, I'd forgotten how to cook well because I'd been buying all sorts of foods that didn't require me to exercise my mind and spend my energy on making my truly favourite dishes. When it came to housework, all I knew was to get the Chux and Mr Sheen from the cupboard and wipe. I was really pathetic - a grown woman who didn't know how to look after myself or my family properly; I'd forgotten the skills that all my great grandmothers had passed on to me - I, my friends, was a modern woman - I was dependent on others to help me live.

You don't have to be a genius to shop, you need limited skills to be good at it - all you need is money, or credit, and time. All that time to spend walking through shopping malls searching for something made (usually) in a foreign land by people who are probably underpaid, producing millions of products exactly the same as the previous million, and the million that will follow.

On the other hand, not shopping requires a multifaceted strategy. You need to know how to create, cook, clean and sew, you need to make do with what you have, to reuse, recycle and repair, you need to barter, grow food, preserve, and you need to love doing it. You have to discover for yourself the true beauty of being able to look after yourself, your family and your home with a minimum of outside help. The beauty of it is there if you look.

I am much richer now than I've ever been in my life. I know how to live now. I have the skills to survive a crisis, I have the strength and knowledge to produce my own food and to store it. I can clothe myself and others. All these are real life-engaging and self-empowering skills. But the real skill here is to do it and love doing it. Relearning those lost skills, and then loving the doing of them, is an act of subversion because you're not doing what women and men in our times are supposed to be doing. Nurturing your family and yourself with cooking, gardening, housekeeping, dress making, knitting, making soap, baskets, shawls and jam, and all the other things you learn to do in your post-consumerist life, not only enriches your spirit but it makes you an independent force. Ladies and gentlemen, may the force be with you.

I read the following quote for the first time on Jewel's blog. It really sums up, in an eloquent way, how I feel about my home.

If you wanted to gather up all tender memories, all lights and shadows of the heart, all banquetings and reunions, all filial, fraternal, paternal, conjugal affections, and had only four letters with which to spell out the height and depth and length, and breadth and magnitude and eternity of meaning, you would write it all out with these four capital letters: H-O-M-E.

Thomas DeWitt Talmage

My home is such a joy to me nowadays that I fret when I'm away from it. When we went to Brisbane on the weekend, looking for, and not finding, our kitchen appliances, I said more than once, "let's go home". And I meant it. I don't like what I find when I go out. Generally, people are more social but less socialised. There is pushing, rudeness and a "me first" attitude.

I am content at home. I know each and every inch; all the trees, smells and breezes. I know the length and breadth of this place and nowhere else is as comfortable to me as my home. And as the quoted paragraph above says, all tender memories and eternity of meaning are bound up here. It's my important place. It's where I've buried my soul and where I will live until I cease to be.

I spent Sunday afternoon relaxing and stitching on the front verandah. Hanno was out, Tricia went to visit our cousin, and I was well content to stay in my place. I'm enjoying making these curtains for the kitchen. It seems to me that stitching something functional, something that will serve for its usefulness rather than it's beauty, is more rewarding than a merely decorative piece. With each stitch I feel I connect with my female antecedents as I am sure they did similar work at many points in their lives. All the sounds I hear while stitching, all the bird song, the children at play, the wind rustling leaves and a rooster crowing in the distance are all sounds my great great grandmothers, and their great great grandmothers, might have heard while they sat stitching. There is a connection there, made only because I sit at home and stitch. I am privileged to feel that connection.

A friend asked me the other day why I bothered stitching because it was so slow. She thought I should buy fabric already patterned or curtains already made. I mumbled something about enjoying the sewing then we talked about something else. I thought about that again later and one of the main reasons I like stitching by hand is that it is slow. That slow, rhythmic repetition is part of the charm of it. How many solitary active things do we do now that slow us down enough to allow concentration and mindfulness. Not many.

Maybe the world is being divided into shoppers and stitchers. If it is, I think the shoppers will win all the battles, but the stitchers will have beautiful curtains. : )

Here are the curtains Tricia made. I'm really pleased with them, they feel fresh and make the kitchen look bigger. I noticed that Hanno has installed one pull back hook higher than the other. : \ We'll have to adjust that. I have to buy a few hooks for the top of the curtains as there are a few missing, but when they're all fixed, I'll happily live with these curtains for many years. The curtains I'm stitching will take another couple of weeks but I'll post a photo when they're finished.

Tricia saw my other pottery crock when I featured it on the blog a while back so she bought up this much bigger crock for me to use. This one has a water filter inside it but if you take it out, the crock would hold about 10 litres (2.6 gallons). It will be just perfect for making lemon cordial and ginger beer. I mix the drinks up in the crock , then fill bottles from the little tap.

Tricia also found this vintage linen tea towel she thought would fit nicely into my new colour scheme. Isn't it pretty!

I've been honoured with two awards. The first was one given a while back by Linda at Somewhere in Time. Linda has presented me with a You Make Me Smile Award. Thank you Linda, you make me smile too. : )

Tami at Joyful Noise has honoured me with a Thinking Blogger Award. Thank you Tami. When I first started blogging it was my hope that I would help a few people think about their lives in a different way. I also wanted to be influenced and challenged by the lives of other bloggers, so I really appreciate this award.

Hanno and I went to the scratch and dent sale yesterday and the prices were still so high we walked out without even talking to anyone. Such a pity. The sale prices on these appliances were $2000 and above. So today we have our last lead - we're going to a shop here on the Sunshine Coast where we hope to find a bargain. If not, all the old appliances will be going back in when the new benchtop is installed.

I hope you are all having a lovely weekend. Thank you for stopping by today.