Off to Market (Piccadilly Market)

Things are a bit quiet in here of late (and will continue to be) since I am having a market stall at the Piccadilly market in Geelong on the 29th of this month:


I am concentrating all of my efforts on my market stall presentation this time around as I feel it is lacking a little. Since I need to display as much product as I can on a table 1.8 metres long, I want to make sure that I am utilising the space as best I can.

Today we screen printed the letters for a bunting which will hang across the front of the table and I am hoping that we will be able to sew it together tomorrow:


I am fortunate enough to be able to do these kind of business activities around the kids. I simply set Corben up at the table with me (since he is the one most interested in what I am doing) and give him an activity to do. At the moment, he is totally into making pictures with the pieces from the board game Blokus:


Since sequencing is such an important thing to teach your kids, I spend a bit of time talking about what I am doing and why I am doing it. Once he can tell me the order things happen in I let him help with some of the steps, like taping off the screen:


Sometimes I try and trick him by doing things out of order but he ALWAYS picks me up on it!

Illustration - What I would wear if I were an Ewok

Today (as part of my goal to enhance my illustration ability) I thought I would share with you a drawing of what I would wear if I was an Ewok.


Since I find the standard Ewok attire a little drab (and perhaps a little too revealing for my prudish nature), I am instead opting to wear the following:

• A decorated head scarf I picked up on some recent travels;
• The Christmas sweater my American grandmother knitted me;
• A pair of stripey mittens I bartered for some nuts and berries;
• Some patterned pants I picked up on eBay; and
• My sturdy hiking boots
  

And since I don't really plan on doing much hunting for the clan, I figured I would carry a crochet hook instead of a spear... because you never know when you might have to bust out a crocheted dish cloth.


Please excuse the colour of my face. I had it waxed last week and well, the skin underneath was a little paler than I had anticipated. Nothing a bit of fake tan won't fix though, I guess...*awkward*

Anyway, while I was drawing this picture I got to thinking about the Ewoks and I came to the conclusion that they can't have been the most clever of beings. I mean, they apparently had a Caravan of Courage yet they opted to live in tree houses? What is with that?

The Ewok me would definitely have lived in the caravan. I get pretty cold, especially at night, so I wouldn't have wanted to be living in some drafty tree dwelling! Anyway, my caravan would have looked something like this:


and (of course) it would have been decked out with all of my favourite items, like a mega huge canister of coffee, my juicer and a whole heap of organic vegetables.


I have to say.. I think the life of an Ewok would be pretty damn sweet!

By now you may be thinking I am a little crazy (and you'd be right), but I think the above illustrates perfectly what I really wanted this post to be about...Imagination.

Imagination is such a big part of our family life and I believe it is one of the most important things you can encourage in your children. Without imaginative play, children do not develop the thought processes they need to be able to solve problems creatively. Essentially, they fail to be able to "think outside the box".

How do you encourage imagination in your children?

For us, a lot of our imaginative play is in the form of role playing. On any given day we may be a dinosaurs, the pilot of a rocket ship bound for outer space or prospectors looking for gold nuggets. So if you happen to visit us while we're searching for the bog of eternal stench... well you better be ready to join us... or you may not be allowed in!

Growing an Organic Vegetable Garden (Part 4 - Planting the Seeds)

Late last week we had a couple of days of sunshine, so we took the opportunity to finish off the vegetable garden.

Luckily we had some "helpers". One in human form:


The other in our resident chicken, who we've named "Shaz-Licken":


We have no idea where he came from, but he's been hanging around our front door at random intervals over the last week and a bit.

Once we had topped up our garden beds with compost mix, we planted our seedlings, using the *not so secret* formula below:


1. Make a hole and drop in some clean egg shells
2. Add a couple of spoon fulls of fertiliser
3. Pop in your seedling pot, including the newspaper and the twine
4. Cover the pot with dirt and give a good water.

Unfortunately not all of our seedlings survived, but instead of raising more I just threw a couple of handfuls of various seeds into the two remaining garden beds.

Guess we'll see what happens.

Illustration - What I Wore Today

According to Malcolm Gladwell (who wrote the book The Outliers), it takes a person approximately 10,000 hours of doing something to become an expert at that task.

By that standard I am probably an expert eater, sleeper and TV watcher. What I'd really like to be, though, is an expert drawer. Sure I can draw good enough, but the illustrations I draw in my head look ten times more amazing than when I put them on paper. So I thought I might incorporate some illustrations into my blog posts.

Since I have been wanting to do a "What I Wore Today" post for a while, I thought it might be fun to illustrate that for you instead of taking a photo. So, here's what I wore today:


Black turtle neck sweater from Portmans
Grey slouchy woolen jumper by Jump
Khaki linen skirt by Emerson
Purple tights found on eBay
Black Mary Jane's by Sketchers

I hope the start to your week has been great!

Growing an Organic Vegetable Garden (Part 3 - Preparing the Garden Bed)

The seeds for our vegetable garden are starting to sprout, so I figured it was time we started working on getting the garden beds ready. Matty built us a set of three raised garden beds a couple of weeks ago when he was on holidays:


They are nothing too fancy, just made using a couple of sleepers, but they'll do the job perfectly!

Below is the method we used to fill them up.

You will need:

Lucerne Hay
Straw
Newspapers
A jar of Molasses
Animal Poop
A wheelbarrow
A hose or water supply.
Compost Mix (though that will not be needed for a week or two)

Here is how to do it:

Fill your wheelbarrow up with water (I used warm water so my hands wouldn't get cold), before adding in a couple of tablespoons of molasses. Add a couple of pages of newspaper in to soak:



The idea of the newspaper is to kill of the weeds and grass growing underneath your vegetable patch, so you want it to be a fairly thick layer:


Next is the fun part. For our three vegetable beds, I got 2 bales of lucerne hay and 3 bales of compressed straw. If you are like me and had no idea what the difference between the two is, well hay is for the animals to eat and straw is for their bedding:

First you will use the lucerne hay. When you cut open the bale, you will see that the hay is layered in 'pads', like so:


This makes it much easier to work with. I separated each of the pads in half and then laid it in the vegetable bed, on top of the newspaper:


Next, pour a little bit of molasses along the length of the garden bed. The molasses acts as a fertiliser and will make your vegetables grow nice and big:


Next comes the poop. We used alpaca poop, which we picked up for $3 a bag on the side of the road. Spread a nice even layer over the top:


Then you will want to open up your straw bales and spread that over the top. The straw is in 'pads' too, so it's easy to throw around:


Put a little more poop on the top:


Then water it well. We watered ours a little, but since we're expecting rain overnight we thought we would let nature take care of that task.

Over the next week or two we will go out every couple of nights and turn it over with a pitchfork, just to help break it up a little. Once our seedlings are ready for planting, we will top the garden beds up with some organic compost mix.

I will be sure to show you what we do when we plant the seedlings in a couple of weeks!

Growing an Organic Vegetable Garden (Part 3 - Preparing the Garden Bed)

The seeds for our vegetable garden are starting to sprout, so I figured it was time we started working on getting the garden beds ready. Matty built us a set of three raised garden beds a couple of weeks ago when he was on holidays:


They are nothing too fancy, just made using a couple of sleepers, but they'll do the job perfectly!

Below is the method we used to fill them up.

You will need:

Lucerne Hay
Straw
Newspapers
A jar of Molasses
Animal Poop
A wheelbarrow
A hose or water supply.
Compost Mix (though that will not be needed for a week or two)

Here is how to do it:

Fill your wheelbarrow up with water (I used warm water so my hands wouldn't get cold), before adding in a couple of tablespoons of molasses. Add a couple of pages of newspaper in to soak, before laying it in the bottom of your raised garden bed:



The idea of the newspaper is to kill of the weeds and grass growing underneath your vegetable patch, so you want it to be a fairly thick layer:


Next is the fun part. For our three vegetable beds, I got 2 bales of lucerne hay and 3 bales of compressed straw. If you are like me and had no idea what the difference between the two is, well hay is for the animals to eat and straw is for their bedding:

First you will use the lucerne hay. When you cut open the bale, you will see that the hay is layered in 'pads', like so:


This makes it much easier to work with. I separated each of the pads in half and then laid it in the vegetable bed, on top of the newspaper:


Next, pour a little bit of molasses along the length of the garden bed. The molasses acts as a fertiliser and will make your vegetables grow nice and big:


Next comes the poop. We used alpaca poop, which we picked up for $3 a bag on the side of the road. Spread a nice even layer over the top:


Then you will want to open up your straw bales and spread that over the top. The straw is in 'pads' too, so it's easy to throw around:


Put a little more poop on the top:


Then water it well. We watered ours a little, but since we're expecting rain overnight we thought we would let nature take care of that task.

Over the next week or two we will go out every couple of nights and turn it over with a pitchfork, just to help break it up a little. Once our seedlings are ready for planting, we will top the garden beds up with some organic compost mix.

I will be sure to show you what we do when we plant the seedlings in a couple of weeks!

Operation Alphabet

A few weeks ago I was looking for some iPad applications and stumbled across The Ministry of Letters' Singing Alphabet:

The application is great, featuring all the letters of the alphabet singing and dancing together to make some pretty cool tunes. What is even better, is that the Ministry of Letters' also has a book out titled "Operation Alphabet". I ordered a copy straight away and it arrived earlier this week:


The book is of really high quality and is printed on the most beautiful paper I have ever felt in a kids book. It also has the most fantastic illustrations I have seen in a long time:




In fact, I think I am going to use them for inspiration in some upcoming projects I have.

Who is your favourite children's illustrator?

Growing An Organic Vegetable Garden (Part 2 : Planting the seeds)

Today we were a little more productive than yesterday and managed to plant, mark and water the seeds - huzzah!

After we dropped Matty off at work, I set Corben up with a spray bottle and got him to make the seed raising mix a little damp. I thought he'd find it fun, but he kept muttering "Hard work....hard work"! Since he didn't find it enjoyable, I guess it could be seen as child labour to some?!? lol

While he did that, I cut up some straws to use as markers so that we could tell which vegetables would be growing in each tube. I then made a kind of legend, because I just know that I will forget which colour represents each vegetable!!

We got our seeds from here because we've bought through them before and found their service to be delightful. Today we planted the seeds for Red Brunswick Onions, All Year Cauliflower, Little Finger Carrots, Matador Spinach and Epicure Climbing Beans, as instructed by a friend of ours who does a lot of vegetable growing.

We used the end of a pencil to make a hole in each tube of potting mix, before we popped the seeds in. We then covered up the seeds, stuck a straw at the side of each tube and gave them a little watering.

Just a word of warning, if you're doing this with a toddler you may need to supervise closely. After being distracted temporarily, I turned around to find that he had placed more markers into most of the tubes:

Awesome....NOT!

We will hopefully be getting our raised vegetable beds in order over the next week or two so we can plant the seedlings that we grow. I will show you how we prepare those as we go.

Enjoy your day!

Growing An Organic Vegetable Garden (Part 1 : Preparing to plant the seeds)

Today I was a bit grumpy. We woke up late, so I didn't get my morning coffee, and I had a killer of a headache.

Unfortunately this meant that I got a bit cross about the lack of things being ticked off my 'to do' list, the main reason being that everything takes SO much longer when you have kids....especially if they want to "help" all the time.

Take for instance the task of planting of some seeds for our vegetable garden. We collected empty toilet rolls to house the seeds in last week. I wanted to put the seed raising mix in them on Friday. Corben wanted to line them up, knock them down, then line them up again....

Today I decided that we really should plant the seeds. Guess what? Half of the toilet rolls were missing *sigh*. While I caught up on my morning coffee's, Corben found the missing toilet rolls and began putting them into our tupperware container. Forty minutes later...it was done:


Next began the task of filling each toilet roll up with a potting mix formulated especially for seeds. Lexi sat and supervised from her highchair, while Corben scooped the potting mix out of a bucket with a spoon. I tried to help, but my application to assist was declined:


Then the baby kept dropping the toys she was playing with, so her brother would hop down off his chair and get them for her. This cycle occurred every 3 to 4 minutes and took roughly 45 seconds to complete (mind you, it was SUPER cute). Despite these interruptions, the task of filling up the toilet rolls was complete almost an hour and a half later:


Since we had to go to an appointment and pick up Matty from work, nothing further got done. So tomorrow we will pick up where we left off and plant and label the seeds (I hope).

Pre-kids I would have busted the whole task out in under 20 minutes, but I try to be thankful for the times where he is interested in helping me do things. One day, in the not too distant future, it won't be cool for him to hang out with his mum learning how to bake, sew or garden and I don't want to wish that I had slowed down and enjoyed these things.

Sure, not much gets done on the 'to-do' list, but the quality time we spend together is so much more important than a list!

Sticking it to the Man - No Supermarket Shopping for a Month!

Lately I feel as though I am always at the supermarket. While I only duck in for a couple of items, I always end up with a shopping basket filled to the brim of other things we "need". Damn you product placement people making me want to buy everything I see, damn you!

Since I like to set myself 'mini challenges' to spice up my life a little, I have decided that I will not be setting foot into a supermarket for the month of June. Unfortunately I failed to check how much toilet paper we had before I made this claim. My bad.

(image source)

I will still be buying grocery items just from other sources, so it really isn't going to be much of a challenge at all. Or maybe it will be, who knows!

I think we could all be supporting our local community a little more, so I will be purchasing the items we need from farmer's markets and small family owned grocers stores. Alternatively, I may consider bartering my skills for required items, if I should find any interested parties.

(image source)

Righteo.... best get onto doing a google search to find out what others use in loo of real toilet paper. See what I did there? A play on words... Funny, right?

Oh, and if you're planning on coming to visit me any time soon, make sure you bring sugar for your coffee. We're just about out!

A Trip to the Melbourne Aquarium

Yesterday my sister and I took the kids to the Aquarium in Melbourne:


Wow! Just wow!


It wasn't as big as we were expecting, but we had an absolute blast. So did the kids:


Both of them:


The only thing we would do different if we were to go down again, is to make sure we knew of a couple of places with reasonably priced parking. We had thought we would park at Crown Casino and walk across, but when we got there it was full. We ended up parking at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, which was a little more expensive, but it did the trick.

On a side note, the cafe at the Aquarium is really quite good. I was initially shocked by the price of the kids meal ($10 for chips and nuggets) but it was HUGE. Corben ate the nuggets and Jay and I shared the chips and we all walked away full, so it was well worth the money.

Most importantly, we survived the trip without any tantrums or sooking. Ummm... I am TOTALLY rocking this take-the-kids-out thing.