Green, frugal and natural update

Remember the three issues we've been working on? I thought I'd update on what we've been doing lately to become more green, frugal and natural.

Soap nuts

I heard about soap nuts on a TV programme and immediately went and ordered some through eBay. I got 410g of soap nuts, instructions and information, and a muslin bag to use them for only £4.21 total (that's around $6.11). They will last me ages.

Basically they are nuts:





You throw a few into a little muslin bag:



And chuck it into your washing machine with your laundry. No soap powder or fabric softener needed! The soap nuts release saponin (natural soap) during the wash and your clothes come out clean and smelling fresh! Green, natural and frugal - I like it!

I also tried the following trick: bring 4 cups of water and one cup of soap nuts to the boil, then simmer for 20 minutes. Strain the liquid and pour into a spray bottle and voila - natural, green and frugal cleaner that works a treat!



Green Pan

I am totally in love with my new Green Pan that we bought last week. I've been wanting a PTFE free non-stick pan for a while so when I found this 12-inch beauty I snapped it up. It's ceramic non-stick which means to nasty fumes from PTFE when I'm cooking, no PFOA is produced in its production and it's made with recycled aluminium. And let me tell you, it is a beauty to cook with! I've never experienced such fabulous non-stick properties (although I should probably confess that I've only ever bought super-cheap non-stick pans before). At £40 (around $58) it wasn't exactly inexpensive, but considering that it will last us a good many years and has such great health and environmental benefits we were happy to spend that.





Forsaking plastic for glass

I've been slowly trying to replace plastic containers with glass. You know how sometimes you'll eat or drink something that's been stored in plastic for a while and it will taste a little, well, plasticky? I have to be concerned about what chemicals are leaching into the food or drink. And then when you hear about the health issues linked to BPA from plastic bottles it just make sense to use glass when possible.

Daniel's bottle for his packed lunch at school is steel. I've started reusing pickle and jam jars in the fridge to store things like tuna maoyonnaise or bits of leftovers:



And dug out some glass storage jars I had in the cellar to replace our plastic cereal containers:



In the garden

We bought and installed a water butt:



And I've been obsessively planning our garden for this year's growing season and starting some seeds off on my kitchen windowsill. Yesterday I planted out some pea seedlings - a little early but they were outgrowing their seed tray and I don't have pots to pot them on so I thought I'd take the chance. If they die I still have three more months to get some new pea plants started:





What have you done lately that's green, frugal and natural? I'd love to hear about the changes you have made and how they are working out for you.

Spring

My awakening blueberry bush:





The crocuses in my front yard:





One of the hyacinths:



One of the tulips that have started poking up through the soil:

My sweet boys

Up to date

I have finished loading all of my decorating inspiration pictures to my inspiration blog - that's over 1,370 pictures of eye candy for those seeking Inspiration for Decoration! I'll be adding new pictures as I find them.

Each entry is labeled so you can use the drop-down menu on the right of the blog to narrow down your search to just "kitchens", or just "green" or just "black furniture" or whatever.

I also plan to do a garden / outdoor spaces blog, I'll post here when I've done it.

Judy's question

Judy from Judy's Fabric Addiction asked, "What is the one thing that you would do just for you if you could do one special thing in your life right now?"

I really couldn't decide! I'm pretty content with my life. If we're talking purely me-on-my-own indulgence I'd probably choose a weekend scrapbooking retreat (although my friend Karen would have to be there too!)

Konul's question

Konul from The Light Within Photography asked, "How do you organize your digital and print photos? Also, how do you do backups, how often and how many personal photos do you print?"

I have an elaborate system of folders. I have a folder for each year, e.g. "2009".

Then within that folder I have 12 folders, one for each month, e.g. "01 2009".

Then within each month the pictures are each named with the date (year, month, day) and title, e.g.

2009 02 15 Boys playing outside 01
2009 02 15 Boys playing outside 02
2009 02 15 Boys playing outside 03
2009 02 15 Boys playing outside 04
2009 02 18 Baking brownies 01
2009 02 18 Baking brownies 02

Those are how I organise all of the family photos. I have a separate folder for nature and food shots and they are divided into Nature, Odds, Food, etc folders and each file is named accordingly, e.g.

Cupcake 01
Cupcake 02
Vegetables 01
Vegetables 02
Vegetables 03

My pictures live on my hard drive which is periodically backed up to an external hard drive. I also upload my family pictures to my online lab (Photobox) so they are stored there too. I used to back my files up on DVD as well but gave up on that after a couple of disks came up blank a while later. I just don't trust them.

As for how many I print, I used to print and scrapbook each and every photo (or near enough). I just can't keep up with that anymore so am now in the process of creating a Blurb book (like this) for each year.

Malibou's question

Malibou asked, "What is the best non fiction book you've read?"

Gosh, I really don't know. I don't think you're after a religious answer so I won't write about the Book of Mormon. Hmm ... I don't have a top favourite but here are some that I've enjoyed:

Current non-fiction books are gardening books including Grow Your Own Veg and The Gardening Book.

Understanding Exposure is a fantastic guide which started me out on photography - I'd recommend it to anyone starting out with a new camera.

When I was in business I found The E Myth Revisited really helpful and inspiring.

The Natural Way to Beat Depression literally changed my life.

When the boys were babies I found as Why They Cry really helpful.

When they were toddlers I was encouraged by Toddler Taming.

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (or as Grant calls it, Men are from Mars, Women are Insane) is a great classic with fabulous insight.

The Five Love Languages of Children has some great insight too, although it can be a bit black-and-white.

The Complete Tightwad Gazette is interesting, easy to read and very inspiring.

Gee, I've surprised myself by coming up with way more books than I'd anticipated, once I'd started thinking about it! I'm a very "must-understand-it" kind of person so I'll often turn to books for insight. I hope some of these help you.

Katie's question

Katie from Bower Power asked, "What is your favorite lens? And what do you use it for?"

I have only three lenses but the two which stay on my cameras are my Sigma 18-125mm which I use for interior shots and for studio sessions, and my Sigma 24-70mm which I use for all of my food shots and other macros and arty-farty stuff.

I love the 18-125 because it has a nice wide angle (but not too wide) and a great range - it's the lens I take on holiday with me too. Down side: it's not very fast, only achieving f/5.6 unless fully zoomed out in which case it will stretch to f/3.5 (but I seldom use it fully zoomed out).

I love the 24-70 because it stays at f/2.8 throughout its range and I get great sharpness from it too. Down side: very heavy and bulky. You can see the lenses here - the bigger one is the 24-70. Add a flash unit and the whole lot is around 6lb!

I think Sigma is a good brand and great lenses for the price. Unfortunately Canon glass is out of my budget!

Carmen's question

Carmen from Queentomas asked, "What is your favorite cupcake?"

I'd have to say that right now I am totally loving these ginger cupcakes (click here for recipe) - they are so delicate and refreshing ... totally delicious!

Dusty's question

Dusty from All Things G&D (our giveaway winner) asked, "I would like to ask you when you plan on coming to Wisconsin to visit me?? Actually, scratch that. I'd really like to know if you, Grant, and the boys ever plan on MOVING to Wisconsin?" (She even bribed me with free babysitting!)

To answer the first question: just as soon as you pay for my flight, I'll be over there (and I'm not even kidding)!

To answer the second, do you have any idea how long it's taken us to decide on emigrating to New Zealand (and we're bound to change our minds yet again after having already decided on Canada and then Australia)?! Don't mess with our plans now, girl! Actually, I've always wanted to live in the US and would move over in a heartbeat if Grant wasn't a cop. Something about him being a cop in the US scares me to death.

Savannah's question

Savannah from The Second Coat asked, "I too love photography and wanted to know where you got the idea of your photography business name (which I know you don't have anymore)."

I've always liked the name Willow and we toyed with it as a girl's name when I was pregnant with Noah (we didn't find out gender before he was born). In the end we had decided to use it as a middle name if he was a girl - he would have been Kirsten Willow. Well, as we all know, he turned out to be a boy so the name went unused.

I had kind of accidentally found myself with the business name of JM Photography somehow. When I really got serious about my business I wanted a new name and so decided on Willow Photography.

Giveaway winner

I used www.random.org to generate a random number for my Colour Catcher giveaway and the winner is ...

Dusty from All Things G&D! Congratulations!

I totally love her blog (go check it out for style overload) and Dusty herself is just fab.

I'll be answering all of the questions soon and cooking up another giveaway or two over the next few months. Also coming: a decorating post!

Giveaway time!

Remember this post where I mentioned Colour Catchers? You chuck them into your washing machine with a mixed loads of whites, colours and darks and it catches all of the excess dye so nothing runs on each other. No need to sort your laundry before washing!



Well I've bought a box to give away here on my blog. All you have to do is ask me a question and you'll be entered into the draw. I'll answer the questions over the next few weeks. I'll close comments and do the random draw next weekend. If there are a lot of entrants I may pick up a couple more boxes.

So, because I know you are coveting a box of Colour Catchers, what do you want to ask me? (Here's a reference to questions that have already been asked.)

Cute food

Just for fun, some inspiring food pictures from the internet. If I see something that inspires me, I save the picture, be it food, crafting, decorating, whatever. I have literally thousands of images on my computer, much to Grant's dismay. And yes, I do look through them and sometimes even implement the ideas.

More gardening

We don't really do Valentine's day (neither Grant nor I can be bothered), but Happy Valentine's Day to you!

Had another great day today. Slept a bit late, got up and made pancakes for everyone then I headed out into the garden for four hours. I finished removing the blue bark chippings out the back, dug it over, dug over the side bed, laid some stepping stones through the gravel, potted my blueberry bushes and raspberry canes (the latter were £1.45 each at B&M!) and we started painting the back wall. No pics yet, sorry! We need to buy more cement and patch up some of the biggest crevices in the wall before finishing painting, then I'll post pics.

How was your Valentine's day?

A wild hair

Today I woke up, showered, dressed and hacked off half my hair with a pair of scissors. Okay, maybe not half, but a fair amount.

I make it sound all spur-of-the-moment but I'd been meaning to cut a fringe (bangs) for a while. I figured it was time for a change and if I hated it, well,
1) my hair grows so fast it won't be long before it's gone,
2) it's hat season,
3) I was planning on going short later this year anyway and
4) I always clip the front part of my hair back anyway so growing it out would be pretty painless.

I wanted a super-short fringe just for fun. I have an acre of forehead so I figured it would divide it better and I hate hair falling in my eyes. Okay, it turned out a *leeeetle* shorter than I'd planned but see 1) above. You know what they say: the difference between a bad haircut and a good haircut is two weeks. With my super bionic hair-growing powers (I can go from chin length to waist length in 18 months) it will be half that.

Luckily Grant really likes it.

Perfect day

You know those days when nothing particularly special or exciting happens but it's just a *nice* day? Today was one of those.

Grant got up with the boys and I slept in until 9:20 or so, which was a lovely treat. I showered and dressed and came downstairs for breakfast which I ate while I tidied up the kitchen a bit and started some bread in the breadmaker and some beef stew (for pot pies) in the slow cooker.

The weather was mild (about 5°C) so I put on a hat, fleece, wellies and my gardening gloves and went out to work in the garden with my little helper, Noah. We spent about 45 minutes out there. He helped me lift some of the blue bark mulch off the back section of the garden while I got on with settling in some beautiful old bricks to create a new garden bed next to our new fence (this is a "before" shot):



We then had to break for lunch and Grant left for work and I dropped Noah off at preschool. I came home for some lunch and did my online grocery shop (will be delivered tomorrow morning) then it was back out into the garden for about an hour and a half. I dug over the entire front bed and removed a couple of scruffy plants that were in the corner. They weren't particularly attractive and every inch of planting space counts in our small garden and I'd rather have something edible or at least pretty growing there.

I must say, the bed is a lot easier to dig over the second year running! I planted some carrot seeds in the right hand side (up to where you can see the stick poking out) - they are Nantes Frubund variety and can be sown from February to September so here's hoping for a great carrot season starting as soon as possible! I ran out of seeds and must buy some more.



I also worked on the back a little more, finishing the side bed - I plan to sow grass where the blue bark mulch is which is why I've started lifting it:





Did you see the little primrose lurking in the bed on the left next to the post? It came up next to the fence! The first spring flower in our garden and I didn't even plant it:



I also put in some bricks underneath our gate:



The red-bordered ones were the only ones in place before I came along:



In other news, here are my two blueberry bushes waiting to be potted up - they are Darrow and Northland varieties:



They have started showing signs of waking up for spring:







Our strawberry plant is also waking up - and note the little baby strawberry plant in the corner, from a runner, which I'll pot out separately (yay for free plants):



On Saturday evening I started some peas and celery on the kitchen windowsill:



I am so excited for our garden this year! I need to get some more seeds started soon.

After picking Noah up from preschool we came home and we baked a cake together and just chilled in the afternoon - I pottered in the kichen, sliced the bread and took the photos above. I still need to clean this up: