Living Like the Past

Our Grand dogs Rosie and Riley are ready for Halloween. For them it is not mean or cruel to dress them up because they like it :) They think they are children anyway so they want to take part in anything that is fun. I thought this would brighten your day.When I posted about our outdoor bath and laundry area little did I know that we were on our way to a drought. We have been trying to reduce and reuse our grey water even before we started going into a drought. When we garden we become more aware of the needs of the small plot of earth that we reside. We understand the importance of water, too little or too much and how we can deplete or enrich the soil.&nb ......

We have been growing ginger in a pot in the backyard. I love fresh ginger. This is our 4th year of growing ginger and it started from a piece of grocery store ginger. I had to keep waiting to get a good piece for planting from the store, I think you might be able to purchase some for planting online. I had to find a piece that had nubs that were trying to sprout and I finally did one day and planted it.So I took what I needed which was not a big piece. If I had dug around more I probably would have found some more plump.I cleaned it up at the compost pile so I could put all the stalks and things I was cleaning off into the compost.I chopped up the stalks so ......

It will soon be the end of October and we are in a severe drought. Most everything is dry and brittle and we need rain. We are using our laundry water and dish rinse water to water our plants.We are concentrating on keeping water to our citrus by using any leftover water from most anything. We have water restrictions as well.There is a burn ban in our state and the our city officials are telling us there will be no fires of any kind at this time.This was our first year to grow lemongrass and I have learned much this season. First is we should not plant so much into one pot. This does not allow the lemongrass to grow nice and plump at the base.This is what happened to our le ......

Long ago people traveled by wagon and they had to carry their goods with them. Most important was water and food and some type of shelter. Our Pioneers had to plan and think things through before they left. How would they cook and wash? How would they make their supplies last? What would they do if they got sick or injured? How would they feed and water their animals? How would they have enough water for themselves?We would be in a world of hurt if we tried this today because they hunted for food, washed in streams and had skills that are mostly lost today.That was a long time ago and there are still people interested in this form of travel, they have form ......

I wish that I had asked more questions because when our generations before us leave they take knowledge and skills with them.I am hanging onto the skills I know from when I was younger and the experience I have gained from living life. If we simply live a life of consumerism giving no thought where our food comes from and endless spending then the only knowledge we gain is how quickly debt can accumulate and ignorance of things that can affect our health.Due to growing older and lack of garden space we have been slowly moving to the direction of permaculture. Growing food is important so if we cannot physically maintain a garden there is permaculture. This past weekend my hu ......

Just a reminder, occasionally I cannot send an email reply due to an error in typing the email address into the contact form.Other times I just do not know why it will kick back to me.Bessie, you sent me an email that I would love to respond to but my responding email is coming back to me. Please check to see if all the dots . and @ are correct or too many letters or too little. Something is wrong with the email address in the contact form. Please send another email with your correct email typed in the email. To all others, if you have not received a response email within a reasonable time please jog my memory or send me another on but do check your email address.I am ......

First of all I want to say that I am praying for all of you that are in the path of Hurricane Matthew. For all my blog peeps that are in the area of the hurricane please send me an email when you can to let me know you are ok.We are ok here and far enough away to only have a breeze and right at the edge of the cloud cover, nothing expected here at least at this time. We are hoping that Matthew will go out to sea.Now about the laundry soap.Some of you have asked me how I make my laundry soap.Since I first started making it I purchased a scale and it really does make a better laundry mix.I put a lightweight container on the scale and zero it out.Grate the soap you are going t ......

I have been busy hand washing laundry and sewing.I moved the large barrels indoors to the bathtub. These are queen size sheets that I have been washing with the new laundry plunger.The other laundry plunger works loose from the pole and gets annoying, this new plunger I got on Amazon and I like it very much. It is very solid.This is what the bottom looks like.My husband bought us an electric clothes spinner. This is a Panda Stainless steel spinner. It does a very good job and spins more water out of the clothes than a washing machine does and it does not take the clothes long to dry after they are put in this spinner. I like the hand crank wringer for outsi ......

This bread is ready to put in the oven. It has risen for the second time.This is wheat bread made with fresh ground wheat berries that we keep air sealed in the pantry. I use the same bread recipe that I use to make white bread, rolls, cinnamon rolls etc. My recipe for a single loaf of white bread calls for two cups of flour and this wheat bread I use 1 and 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour and 3/4 cup of white flour . When we put 3/4 cup of wheat berries into our grinder we get one and a quarter cups of wheat flour. So I simply top off the 2 cup measuring cup with white flour. I could make 100 percent whole wheat but for sandwiches this makes a lovely soft loaf. ......

Today is the First Day of Fall and I am ready for cooler weather. It has been a long hot summer. There is one problem, we are still in the 90's. I am determined to wear my favorite vest very soon so yesterday I freshened it up and it is ready to wear as I am anticipating cool weather will be here soon.I like first day's of things. The first of year, the first day of the month, the first day of Spring and so on. I like the first part of the day or the first part of the evening when it is finally time to sit down for knitting.The first time to learn to embroidery or crochet. When we are born we are an open slate ready to learn. Some have a rocky start i ......

When I was doing the posts windows around the world, Ali from Essex England sent this photo and some outdoor photos. Her kitchen window is charming.I look out her window and wonder what her climate is like. I know my Australia blog visitors are going into spring when we are going into fall. They are wondering if it is ever going to get warm and I am wondering if it will ever cool down.Ali's frog seems to be happy what ever the weather is this day.I do like yard art and this is a vintage art with a sign that was very familiar during ww2 on the home front. People were encouraged to grow all the food they could no matter how little space they had and victory gardens started po ......

I do like to get change back and I am sure you do too. But I like to change things as well.My husband recently made a wider shelf above the sink for the small items that I keep up there for convenience. The small creamer to the left holds garlic bulbs. The creamer to the right is use for pouring water into the vintage steamer for one of the irons.Another change is going back to hand washing our laundry. I can physically make it more clean. There is no artificial fragrance, just the clean smell of hand washed and sun dried laundry.I just grate 1/2 cup real soap, add 1/2 cup washing soda, 1/2 cup borax and put it into a bowl and put a small scoop that holds a tabl ......

Recently we did a study about hand washing clothes verses machine washing and I posted the results in the post called, machine wash verses hand washing.Since we did the washing study I have tried to hand wash more of the clothes because it saves water and electricity. My husband and I discussed how much money we actually can save by reducing our water and electricity by washing clothes by hand. Not figuring in the electricity, just the water and sewer alone. At a per year figure, dividing, subtracting and figuring based on our utility bills and our water study that we did we found that we could save enough to pay for 4 and 1/2 months of internet or 5 months of our hous ......

We have another post for Windows around the world. Part 4These photos were sent in by Mirjam from Bloemendaal , The Netherlands.This is a part of the living room. Like Ina already mentioned (part two): normally during daytime we have the curtains open in Holland. But in the summer we have the afternoon sun and then we close the curtains (a bit). And also in the evenings.These two windows (above and below) are from the rooms on the first floor from my son and daughter. They have roller blinds to keep the sun and the warmth out in the afternoons during summer times. In winter and nighttime we close the curtains and don't use the roller blinds.This is the window in my kitchen. It's facing north ......

Last post I posted a email from Kelly in Guam. She has sent in pictures of the windows that she described in the last post. See windows around the world part two for more information how to cover glass blocks with fabric or paper. Kelly says, the above is the aforementioned glass block window with spray-starched sheet squares.Photo above is our living room bay window. It's difficult to achieve good lighting for photos because the sun is so bright in this window. These blinds came from Home Depot and I lined them with sheets.The same is true of our dining room bay window, above. I made the decorator curtains that stay out from sheets also.Here's another image.Thank you ......

We are back with page two of windows around the world. These photos were sent in by Ina from Holland. Ina says that the Dutch like open windows. I can see why looking out this window :) She describes this the sleeping room with lace and purple curtains with roll up shade. Beautiful views from her windows.The kitchen window with self made curtains and a roll up blind. Ah someone else that hangs laundry and gardens. I would never want to pull my shades down. Thank you Ina for sending photos.These photos are sent from Sue and she has a family of 9 :)This is her living room window and it faces east. She made these drapes. Sue says that the material is heavy and when close ......

Do you have a window without plastic blinds? A vintage window? An interesting window? A homey window? I have started a series about windows around the world. We want to see your windows :)There are magazine ready photos of decorated homes everywhere but we rarely get to see what real or the average home looks like.We are just getting started and only three people have sent photos and they, like me would like to see how others cover their windows especially if you do not have plastic blinds but still send in photos because looking at how others live is quite interesting.I hope others will join us, just send me an email with attached photos. If you have not contacted me befor ......

Recently my daughter had to get very serious with thinking about toxins and allergens in her house. My Grandson has severe food allergies and environmental allergies and her allergies have been very bad lately. Fergie laying on the pillow is the least of their worries.Every window in their house had blinds and very expensive blinds. They were extremely difficult to clean and when the sun hit them they made a smell which to me means they are putting out something into the air. My daughter became conscious that something was wrong. All of us that have blinds know what a dust problem they can be and what about that smell, that plastic smell?So she went through the ......

Just thought I would do an around the house update. We have been busy doing projects. We added a water pipe to our bath house since I last posted about the new bath house. We set the bucket under the faucet here for our bucket bath. We found we needed a sink to put the wash cloth in to rinse it out. So this is the new sink. To see the full outdoor bath house see article under living like the past, Outdoor Bath.In the sewing room we made a room divider for the office cubicle.My husband built the frames. He added a wheel on the bottom of the middle frame so the door will open and close.I cut off the length needed for the screens and put in a hem...I ran elastic thr ......

My husband and I did a water study so we will know how much water it takes to machine wash clothes as well as hand wash clothes. We have an HE top loading washer and have had it for about a year and half. Our old one, could not be repaired. So we purchased a new washing machine. We have never sent an appliance back until we picked out our first HE (High Efficiency) washer, our first one we sent back the next day. It was terrible would hardly swish and very little water. So then the man from the washing machine department explained how these new machines work. But the first one would barely swish so I would not take it back to the house.I want to save ......