Wordless Wednesday

The beach looks so good, I can't wait for my swimsuit.

Join in Wordless Wednesday over at Faith Hope & a whole lotta love

http://faithhopeandawholelottalove.blogspot.com/

The Patch

There's something really rewarding about growing your own fruit and veg.
For me there are several reasons:
* It's all organic
* I put the time and effort into planting each little seed/ seedling
* It's fun to pick fresh fruit and veg from your own patch, with a little helper (in my case it's Miss 3)
* It's way cheaper then buying it from the shops.

This is what my dream patch would look like:

If it looks familiar it's Meryl Streeps garden from "It's Complicated". 

Ok.. so a lot of that is TV magic and not actually real. 

So I'd even settle for something like this:

I Wish!

My veggie patch is a far cry from both those pictures, but I'm slowing building it up and hoping for a little something... my "pièce de résistance" but more on that later (maybe next year for a special birthday present), you'll have to wait and see.


This is my veggie patch when we first made it (behind the fence) and it's brand new so nothing was growing just yet. So far It's 4 simple plots (but we plan to expand) 
I used stacked Kiwi Collars (http://www.kiwicollars.co.nz/AUSshop.html), stacked 2 high (8 in total). We put crushed rock down between the beds so in winter you don't get muddy shoes.

The only fertiliser we use is.... Chicken Poo, our chickens produce it for free and the veggie garden loves it.

The old icky chicken hay that we replace with fresh hay goes onto the veggie patch as mulch.

Currently in the patch I don't have a lot growing, it's actually very minimal:

- Desiree Potatoes

- Little Devil Chillies (very very hot!)

- Mint

- Spring Onions

- Garlic

- Pumpkin

- Lemons

- Oranges

The Lemon Tree is in our front yard. Miss 3 and Mr. It picking our 1st crop.

The Lemon Tree has been in for 3 years and is finally producing a crop this season. I've been making Lemon everything and hubby has been doing his part by drinking Corona... I'm sure that's been real hard for him. ;)

If you haven't tried Julie Goodwins recipe for Lemon Diva Cupcakes, I highly recommend it! 

The Potatoes, Chillies and Spring Onions have by far been my best little crops, the more I neglect them the more they produce. 

The Spring Onions I bought as seedlings about 2 years ago and the Chilli tree was a little bush when I bought it. They both get full sun all day and produce really well (even with a strawberry bush trying to take over the entire plot). 

The Potatoes I bought as a kit (from kmart or Bunnings), I grow Desiree potatoes. 

It's really simple to do, if you do it right you only need to buy 1 kit, so far 1 kit has given us at least 100 potatoes. You can grow new potatoes from the potatoes grown in your garden. For every 10 potatoes you pull out keep 1 aside and let it grow eyes (those white nobby things that grow out of it). I keep mine in the laundry, it's warm and gets sun now and again. The crop you want to eat keep in a cool, dark place. 

This is what i pulled out in 3 spare minutes on Thursday:

 All clean and ready to eat store:

Because I have such an over supply of Eggs and Potatoes I'd love some suggestions as that what you might cook with the ingredients I grow in my veggie patch.


I love to make Placki, you may know them as Plutski, Polish Potato Pancakes.
Meringues - for the kids (and the big kid)
Cakes/ Cupcakes 
Chocolate mousse
Pasta (we make it fresh, yum!)


I'll upload some more pics of the chickens and veggie patch soon.


Natalie

Wordless Wednesday

@ the park with Dad

Wordless Wednesday

- Young Love

From Old to New

If I ever want to restore a piece of furniture I don't need to look any further then my in laws garage. They have lots of old stuff sitting in there, which is great for me! It's ok, they're aware of their collection, what can I say - it's good stuff! I've taken lots. 

I was recently inspired to fix up our little parents retreat area outside our bedroom, it's this little area that Miss 3 and I use to read magazines and eat ice cream if it's a nice day.

It's suppose to be for fancy breakfasts with Mr. It in our own private retreat area... but who am I kidding, we have little kids, maybe in 10 years. We did try to eat dinner out there on a warm summer night once but were attacked by mozzies. 

Anyway there is this cute little setting in my in-laws yard, it's been sitting there unused for as long as I can remember (and I've been around for 11 years now), so I asked my mother in-law if I could have it and she made my father in-law pretty much load it into our car that night..... they were all too pleased to see it go to a good home. My father in-law even took the table legs off for easy transport and marked it with numbers for when I put it back together, he's super sweet like that.

Here are the little stools once we cleaned them up:

Mr. It helping again, we purchased an electrical sander which has been great.
Actually he does most of the work, I should give him credit. I come up with the idea, start to execute the idea and he does most of the work. Lucky he's a perfectionist.

A work in progress, we applied 2 coats, getting into all the little grooves took forever.

The final result (pic taken on a cold winters day):

 The view from our bedroom window:

We used Dulux Weathershield Exterior Low Sheen, the colour is "Lost in Space" which is a British Paints colour.

I'm really pleased with the result, it looks pretty from the window, that side of the house gets all the afternoon sun so it's usually quite pretty. I do use the area with Miss 3 when it's sunny and warm, but living in Melbourne, who knows when that could be. I really wish I had a pic of the table before, but I'm sure you get the idea.


Natalie

What's in a name?

Who knew that coming up with a name for this blog would be so hard. All the cute, quirky little names I came up with we're all taken. 


So I've taken a clever play on words and finally come up with the name Miss Move It Around. "It" being the victim of the day - could be a desk, could be a rug, could be entire pieces of furniture being moved from room to room, or at least once a week, an entire room moved around and shuffled into place until I think it looks right. I'm starting to think this might be borderline OCD. 
I blame my mother, she moved around things when I was a kid and it's rubbed off onto me. It's also rubbed off onto my 3yo who recently decided to rearrange the furniture in the kids play area of the doctors surgery. Hmm.


The other reason I have used "It" in my blog name is because I left a career in IT to become a stay at home mum. I'm Miss IT. I'm that person everyone asks about computers, even my class mates at University (all boys except 1 other girl, my darling friend Marie) were a little confused how a girl could know so much about computers. That one can be blamed on Dad. :) While kids my age played Sega and Commodore 64, I had a PC. A real computer. 
My husband is still Mr. IT and it's great because now he gets all those IT questions from friends and family. Not that we mind.


I'll be uploading a project mainly my husband I worked on recently, the outdoor setting restore - yes people I do more then move around furniture. It was my in-laws 1st outdoor setting, now 35years old with but lots of charm and character and now all mine! You'll see. 


Natalie