We host international students that come to Brisbane to learn English at a local English school. We host students from all over the world, learn all sorts of new things and make lots of new friends. Its a lot of fun and I highly recommend it! Along with the different nationalities and personalities, we get a wide range of domestic abilities as well... It seems that not all people in their 20's have done dishes before... Often I am at work when the students are having breakfast or lunch and getting them to wash their dishes properly can sometimes be a challenge. We have ants in the house, especially in the summer, and they will come in their millions, no, their hundreds of millions to get the smallest crumb or smear of food left on a plate on the bench or in the sink (and in the bedroom). Asking the students to wash dishes wasn't enough, some of them didn't come with this skill. For some of them, washing dishes needed to be quicker than running a sink of hot water and

Our chickens are creatures of habit! They like you to come and take the lids off their food hoppers before 7am (or they let you and the neighbours know you have forgotten), they like to be let out at 3pm when I get home from work and they like to have a treat every time they see you! After all, why else would I be in the yard except to bring treats to my favourite girls? Hanging out the washing? Nah! Not in a chickens world! I have found that when it comes to changing things, chooks aren't fans of the latest and greatest - no matter how much the husband thinks they will "just love it!" Some of the chooks were having trouble flying up to the perches we had in the coop and the ones who decided it was too much trouble and roosted on the floor, got pooped on each night. So we lowered the perches. It didn't make a scrap of difference to the ground roosting chookies. So we changed things around... Here's what we did...   First - we cut a new entrance hole l

I'm a messy painter at the best of times! It doesn't matter what I'm painting; houses, murals, signs, canvases, I always get covered in paint. I get paint all over me, all over the ground and all over the table... I'm a messy painter! I have heard about putting a rubber band over the paint pot to stop the can from getting covered in paint but have never tried it. Then, a couple of days ago, I found myself painting a sign for a friend and I wanted to do it under our pergola instead of the back yard, as we have had on and off spots of rain a fair bit lately. I knew that if I got paint on the seating or the brick in the pergola area - I wasn't going to be popular with the husband who build it all! So I decided that trying the rubber band over the can might be a good idea for me to have a go at under these circumstances! Here's what I did...   Find a rubber band large enough to go over the top and under the bottom of the can. The rubber band goes over t

I looked in my vege box the other day and found that my wonderful fresh locally grown, organic ginger had sprouted a few eyes (are they called eyes? They had sprouted a bit like a potato does, at any rate) and since it seemed to want to grow - I decided to give it a go and see if I could get it to grow. After a quick google search, I decided it was possible and set out try growing ginger as an edible plant rather than a ornamental plant as is usual here in the subtropics. Here's what I did...   The first step seem to be a bit like potato chitting - you cut the tuber up into bits with a decent eye (the grow-y bit) on it. I used my garden secateurs and it worked just fine.   I chose a tub in my vege garden that is one of the most shaded ones and gave it a good water and added a fair bit of compost   I popped the ginger pieces in the soil with the "eye" sticking up.     Then gave them a decent water and popped the wire cage back over the to

I have been following  Christine at Slow Living Essentials  for a couple of years now! And in 2012 she started a monthly round up to record on our blog, how we have "slowed down" under nine categories - I have been doing this since she started it at the  beginning and really get a lot out of it.  Here is what I have been up to! Click on the link to go to the link up and visit other linked up blogs! NOURISH:  Make and bake as much as possible from scratch. Ditch over packaged, over processed convenience foods and opt for 'real' food instead.      We have made Sunday night, "Pizza Night" this year (How's that for an awesome New Years resolution?!) We cook them in the BBQ and sit around with a glass of wine waiting for them to appear and then gobble them up. Each week I choose a topping and then make the same pizza over until I have perfected it and we are too full to move! Highly recommended activity for a Sunday evening - especially wi

Years ago I bought a couple of asparagus crowns from a guy at the markets. I'm sure he gave me detailed instructions at the time, but all I could remember was to plant them where you intend to keep them and then not to cut them for a few years to give them time to establish. Its been a few years and I have found the asparagus to be pretty happy in its spot in the vege garden. It gets watered regularly and gets a dollop of compost each time the pile matures and seems to be growing its famous ferny leaves very well.... But I was hoping to grow the eat-y bit! A bit of a google search later and the secateurs and I went into the vege garden... Here's what I did... January 2014   The asparagus is the big ferny thing in the black barrel in the centre of the picture. Its gotta be a metre and a half high. Last winter I got up the guts to cut it back when it died off and it did grow back in the Spring. I thought for a few months that I might have killed it.