Wild Movement includes stuff us crazy humans have been doing for generations… climbing, balancing, running, crawling and wrestling… to name a few 🙂
Reuben is four years old and he freaking loved it!
We just got home from our time with Steve on an organic farm with his obstacle course!
Greens for foraging and Steve vaulting a log
I’d been looking for something sort of outdoors and for strength, fitness and motor skill development. The other month he absolutely loved climbing the Treetops Climb in Dwellinup … but I didn’t fancy doing a two hour drive every week ;P And of course, there was no work involved that got his lungs and heart working!
Enter Wild Movement… jumping from log to log, team work and chases 🙂 Best sport ever.
Seems like we’ll be back for more every Saturday lol. I’ll let you know how we go! Sasha didn’t join in as much as I would have liked, sometimes wandering off but for anyone who has a 2.5 year old to see them swinging on a rope and having a great time balancing and climbing… its a win for all ages.
Kids in trees… magic
Transferable skills to parkour, also known as ‘free running’… which is often set in a city leaping from roof to roof and across bollards… but honestly, who doesn’t need a bit less screen time and a bit more nature in their lives.
The Art of Frugal Hedonism was recommended by David Holmgren just last week when I went down to Murdoch to listen to him lecture. It was good to hear him talk and to refresh some of my ideas. As he was briefly reflecting on this book, he mentioned that he reckons that early adopters of thrift store shopping, such as himself and these hedonist friends of his, will reap more of the benefits than everyone else…
The Art of Frugal Hedonism with some fancy pants magnesium cream I’ve just made
I spent my $25 on this small paperback and off I went on my merry way. Truth be told, I hung around chatting and stashed a few pastries in my bad for the other (gluttonous) half. Then I rushed home feeling guilty!
The irony struck me as my new acquisition sat looking at me for several days, despite my excitement! Not to worry, I have begun to read it and I feel like I’ve found some members of my tribe… they’re the wise ones and I’m the one still fumbling around trying to figure out how to relax and enjoy the sunshine.
Frugal hedonism has its roots deep in pleasure. Materialistic enjoyment. Ssensual pleasures… gluts of fruit, a good conversation, stroking your pet’s ears, letting yourself lay on the grass or touch some dried beans at the local shops… all gloriously free. This applies to really truly enjoying purchases. Using a great product and really getting your value from it.
It does strike me that many of us… feel too busy to really actually enjoy anything. In my case, that is totally absurd. With two little kids I actually have all the time in the world… kinda! Smelling the roses, cuddling bunnies with Sally. Eating soursop flowers. Playing. We went to the beach for the first time this season and I just loved it 🙂 Until I had to drag the kids home! Thankfully Rodney had agreed to do dinner and it all went pretty smoothly.
Certainly, our health and wellbeing can be improved by supplements, but the first step can be to just reconnect with living in the present. What would your diet look like if before you ate, you luxuriously thought to yourself… ‘what would taste most delicious to me right now?’… Each moment we can actually ask questions like this to really get back into the moment and out of our crazy approach to life. When you wake up in the morning, take a while to stretch, smile at those around you. Go in the sunshine. Give yourself a chance to live in the moment. Tickle someone 🙂
I’ve done a batch of healing moisturising magnesium cream with shea butter, cacao butter, apricot kernel oil, magnesium chloride, with just a touch of the essential oils Frankincense, Myrrh and Geranium. A big jar is $30. I must say, I really enjoy hearing back if people are loving using it… thanks so much for the encouragement 🙂 Let me know if you’d like some. I’m thinking about doing a market stall fairly soon, it’s all very exciting. Let me know by message if you have a few tips on which markets to go to.
For some talks by David Holmgren, check out Youtube. Retrofitting the suburbs is one of his ideas… he sees a lot of potential in our sprawl 🙂 And of course, that means we should get started right where we are NOW.
There was a beautiful little Plastic Free July workshop that I sort of planned on attending today about getting rid of single use plastics in your home (think cling wrap) but didn’t in favour of spending some one on one time with my littlest at the markets this morning and then, going to vote with the family at lunch time and having a little play after 🙂
After a challenging evening with this same little girl teething and not being able to sleep until 9pm (eek!) I found my mind returning to this and really wondering if I could do a bit better than I have been. Well, it couldn’t be easier really… start with a really low benchmark and the improvement can be really impressive!
I totally put bread ingredients into the bread machine tonight, plus a snack … then my mind wandered back to Plastic Free July. Persistent thoughts. I credit my mate Michele (the one with the pet homing pigeon Wally) for two years of updates on her progress going totally plastic free… I recall that she was really disappointed that postage stamps come with a freaking plastic backing!Some things do require structural change.
I’ve decided I’m going to have a bash at making these.
I already have bees wax and lovely little pieces of fabric for jam covers. I’ll bum some resin off a local with access to acacias and conifers… or even marri would be great. Perhaps marri would be the best because it is antibacterial and anti viral! Probably it might rival manuka honey from New Zealand.
We can avoid buying plastic to make these 😉 Sweet! I might even sew a button and barter one or two away. Can’t wait to rock up to playgroup with the kids snacks wrapped in these lol… awesome!
If you’d like to make a public commitment… The website is http://www.plasticfreejuly.org and happily they have options for either all plastic (eek!) or only the top 4. You could possibly do all plastic but we typically buy meat wrapped in cling film, so I decided it would be a bit hard to really try to avoid that.
The top four are straws, plastic bottles, plastic bags & coffee cup lids. This is an easy one 🙂
We just recently spent a delightful rainy Sunday afternoon in the garden, drinking wine and roasting potatoes in ‘Ned Kelly’… the old school fire pit at Barb’s. There may also have been chocolate <ahem…>
In the video below Barb takes us through the old way of making your own twine or cordage. This technique can be applied to almost any fiber that you have available…. and it really is very easy.
You could totally make one of these
Couple in hammock
Or even, for the hardcore babywearer…
Baby in handmade woven carrier, suspended from mother’s forehead!
(As a side note, there are heaps of babywearing groups in your local area, check on Facebook and attend a meeting to get trained in safety and borrow wraps and buckles to see which style you prefer)
In the case of agave, it is an excellent choice for finger rolling cordage because it grows well in this climate with zero inputs and can be easily harvested by slicing off a rather tall leaf and boiling for an hour or more.
Barb with tall agave leafBarb with cooked agave leaf showing fibers
After this, it just needs pounding to remove the juices and leave the fiber… then finger rolling.
This is using two sets of fibers, twisting both independently, then twisting the two together. The knack would seem to be in remembering to twist the sets of fibers one way but then the two together must be in the opposite direction. …good thing that there is a video lol…
I made some whipped moisturiser to help my little girl with some troubled skin… she loves learning how to wash the dishes but the detergent is not great for her skin. Of course, it’s great for mine as I’m not the one washing the dishes! (just kidding, I totally try to help her)
Moisturising cream with healing essential oils
The recipe
1/2 cup shea butter
1/2 cup cocoa butter
1/2 Cup apricot oil
30 drops of your choice of essential oil
Measure (glass or metal instruments help as you can melt the oils off later), melt in a double burner (as you do for chocolate), chill briefly, whip with hand held or electric beaters.
To easily dispense, put in sandwich bag, seal, push down to one corner and cut that corner off… pipe in.
I had some nice small glass containers to hand and knew that I was making more than I needed… so the desire to barter was born.
Of course, I’d been lurking around the wonderful world of Facebook to see how bartering worked for a while. I took as nice a photo as I could manage, saving myself the trouble of writing the essential oils down so I wouldn’t forget their names… by including them in the photo below.
The fancy black background is our stove 😉
To date, just for two of my spares, I’ve received a nice pink frangipani cutting, a lot of citrus fruit and a killer sense of getting a bargain. Like that special sense that superheroes use when they are needed… like that… except for a bargain!
I’m still waiting on my homemade slice and the pasta sauce… for another two jars… one lady had a sick little baby so delayed somewhat and another lady wanted to catch up soon. So I’m assuming that will go ahead.
In terms of cost, it wasn’t that cheap an exercise… the little containers were $1.10 each, with perhaps 12 drops of essential oils in each. (see this table for costs if you’re setting yourself up to do the same)
However 2/3rds of the oils were a result of a barter which I consider a total bargain (my usual sweet potatoes with a half dozen eggs). And I’ve got heaps left… plus wax as well.
So I think I’ll do this one again… when the creative urge rises 🙂
By the way, for those that are interested in those blasted sweet potatoes (just kidding, I love them a little too much), I managed to sell a few. It’s late in the season as I’ve given away a number of full bags of them, plus armfuls to any local neighbourhood kid who is interested enough to have a dig when I’m doing the same. In time, some of these kids might do all the work for me… wouldn’t that be awesome? I tell them we’re hunting for treasure. What’s your retirement plan? 😉
We’ve been lucky enough to get gifted some Who Gives a Crap toilet paper.
Who Gives a Crap?
I’m happy to report that it seems very lovely to me… although I have to admit to being something of a hard arse. So to speak…
Give it a go!
They do bamboo as well as chemical free conventional stuff… a significant proportion goes towards helping build toilets in the developing world and they even do gift vouchers, for the people who hate giving useless crap. Sorry about the language 😉
A lovely shout out to Kath and Barb (and Barb’s mate who helped her obtain some)… leaders in our community.
Barbara is one of the lucky ones, those who can get lost in the moment as they produce something amazing. We see each other all the time, but it was a special pleasure to be able to play with dangerous adult toys… breaking glass and melting metal 😉 No kids today! woot!
Red/dichroic glass and seedy glass feather
She has been working with glass and mixed media for several years now and has more recently turned it into her livelihood. Since glass is infinitely recyclable and a home studio allows her to keep fairly close to her family and garden… in my book this is a ‘right livelihood’ 🙂
We often find that our lives move in strange parallels with our growing boys (who love playing together most of all). And of course, we both have an interest in the environmental and permaculture… one of us has a smaller footprint than the other <cough!>. I console myself that only a very few manage to tread as lightly as Barb.
On a whim, we got stuck into filming an introduction to stained glass, which I’ll post up on my Youtube Channel soon. We started with coffee and chocolate with almonds… then migrated out to the well lit and very pleasant shed… filled with the scent of salvaged marri and other natives, caving ropes, a globe of planet Earth and small pieces of art.
She begins with finding the best section of glass, drawing an outline, tracing then cutting the glass…
…grinding to make a nicely matching shape to the other pieces of glass.
Barbara Susac in her studio
Copper adhesive is applied, beginning on the inner edges and joined with dabs of molten solder (tucked).
To finish, the edges are all given a silver finish.
I come away with the impression that anyone could do this work. This is her quiet encouragement working away to bolster my confidence to try it next time. Of course, it might help to beg a one on one course off Barb 😉
The joy of giving away some produce fresh from the garden last night was just awesome. Cate came around for a quick visit and left with sweet potato (who doesn’t?!), about eight lemonade lemons and one of the few Buddha’s Hand citrons. These are like most citrus fruits but don’t have any flesh, instead, they are all pith and zest.
Buddhas Hand Citron
Buddha’s Hands are native to both China (called Fo Shou) and parts of India, both styles of traditional medicine highly regard it for its medicinal properties.
They are amazing, seriously amazing, candied with sugar syrup… giving a freshly fragant sweet high in pectin and with some residual Vitamin C. Or perhaps stewed with sugar into marmalade or a sweet syrup. You can have them raw, finely sliced into a salad or with a smoothie for a hit of good quality Vitamin C with cofactors. You can even knock up a non-alcoholic cocktail (to treat your persistent cough! lol… if you need that excuse…)
As an anti-inflammatory, decongestant it helps relieve pain and reduce cholesterol… and the perfume is just perfect 😉
It is very tolerant of hot and dry conditions, although yields will decrease with the harsher conditions. Some seasons have given some scale, easily controlled organically. Kept pruned, it will happily stay under two metres and produce several fruit in the first season. Get one!
