A New Year

Happy New Year and I hope everyone had a  lovely Christmas 🙂 xx I, for one, am glad to see the back of 2015 lol, realllyyy hoping for a more stable year this year!

My great intentions of keeping up here has completely gone by the wayside….again! A few of you have been inquiring of me so I thought an update was well overdue, thanks so much ladies for your thoughts 🙂

Family first! My wee granddaughter due mid Feb has been doing VERY well and developing far better than was first expected. From being advised to terminate they are now expecting her to have only quite minor issues really in comparison – though she will still be delivered at the national children’s hospital they are expecting few complications and possibly only a minor surgery to her heart after birth, cognitive problems are not expected to be as major as first thought but they don’t really know the extent at this stage. All in all, looking far better and we are all feeling much more relaxed and waiting, waiting…… 🙂

Work: I got a new job through a friend, just a smallish one caring for a woman with a degenerative illness, I quite like it and it was a relief to have found it. Roger is still working for himself and has plenty of work now the holidays are over. We are feeling pretty positive about this new year, things have certainly started well enough 🙂 Tumbleweeds Soaps had a busy Christmas period and I am getting better known locally which is neat. I am going to focus this year on building on that as much as possible and will build up a good supply to have a small informal shop here downstairs, not quite as we planned but do-able.

The Garden: Forever changing to become more manageable 🙂 The vege garden became so vast it was really hard to keep up with and Roger has decided to cut it back to 3 raised gardens, the rest will all be in fruit trees, berries etc. We have found out we can grow two varieties of Avocados in this area so are about to buy two trees, these grow huge so some other no-edible trees will have to be removed including our big old gum tree which will give us a heap of firewood instead. Our raspberries have gone beserk this year and for a month we have been picking 3 containers full every day or two. We are guessing we have picked around 50 kg so far. The vege garden has been productive again this year but I have done no preserving as yet, other than freezing berries. The herb garden has grown again with new plantings of the better used ones.

We still have berries and fruit from last season to use up but nearly there. Not sure why Roger took this, but anyway!

House: This was our Christmas present to ourselves, a run down dresser that had been used as a workshop bench and we weren’t quite sure if retrievable but bought it anyway, $52 from an online auction.This thing weighs a ton and how Roger manages to get this sort of stuff on and off trucks and into our house I don’t know, he is only a little guy! It was sanded down with an electric sander as it was in a really bad way but finally ready to come inside and we are pretty pleased with it.Ran out of wax so I had to make more – I am not so keen on varnishes and stains but a homemade furniture polish is bringing it up lovely.

One little door needs a repair so that still needs to go on and one more coat of polish should bring it up nicely. Two drawer handles will be replaced at some stage. Strangely it has a mixture of different timbers which was hard to see under all the grease and paint.

Freeconomy: The local group I set up has remained constant at around 1500 members and is well used. It takes a bit of time but now members have figured out what it’s all about it is pretty hassle free. I am so glad I started it now, my first year had it’s complications but it’s great now.

I hope the New Year is a favourable one for all 🙂