Repurposing a schoolbag

My daughter loves schoolbags that come from a surf shop in Wodonga. It takes 1 1/2 hours to drive there. Last week my eldest daughter went with her Dad to take her beloved mandolin to be fixed. It had a manufacturing fault in the batch and needed a new thingo (haha) that keeps the strings up? Anyway it meant a drive. While there they got my middle daughter the one that likes schoolbags from the surf shop some other school supplies. However she knew funds had to stretch to agreed a sewing project we cooked up, she loves it really.

She has two of these school bags. The old one and the new one. We hadn't thrown the old one out since last spring, ie somewhere in 3rd or 4th term last year. The new one? had a broken zip. So the other ones zip went into the new bag. The remainder was made into a pencil case and my husband took some photos.











The money was put towards a drink bottle, and lunchbox for my eldest daughter to start uni and other things she needed like umbrella. We also had to keep some money for driving her to her new place where she is staying already, getting ready for the new uni life on the 13th. My two youngest daughters, the only kids still at home start school on Thursday, my husband starts tomorrow, though he is there now.

How to live a money-less life by Mark Boyle

SBS Podcasts : Podcasts: Gourmet-farmer

I was visiting Renata at Sunnyside Farm Fun today. She has a post there about Gourmet Farmer, which you can visit here. I thought I would dig around to find the show she recommended and have a look. I found it is about Sydney food critic named Matthew Evans, now based in country Tasmania.

SBS Podcasts : Podcasts: Gourmet-farmer

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Furthering Independence Skills

I was interested in this video because it reminded me of an episode of Gillian McKeith's You Are What You Eat where the lady had to get a friend to write the names on the vegetables for her.  I have the video on this blog somewhere.

Sometimes you need a sense of humor...

to help some younger people in your family.

Frocktober

Today I thought I would talk about my sixteen year old daughter. She is currently overseas in SE Asia on a language study tour. Today will be her second day at school there and she returns before school starts next week at her school in Australia.

Yesterday by the magic of Facebook her sister called out to me that her sister had bought her three bottles of nail polish. She couldn't get the blue they had seen in a shop last shopping day when we went to the regional centre. Then she mentioned to me she had a photo of her. She was sitting with her host family who look lovely in a restaurant looking just like herself lol. The last picture I saw of her was a picture my husband took on the weekend at the airport with the group of kids that went with her. Apparently apart from a girl she has been emailing who lives in the same area as us, but an hour down the road (an hour is nothing here) a boy came up and started talking non stop about Pokemon, which my daughter is fluent in lol. She also looked like she had bought herself a new t-shirt!

I thought I would show you the dress she made recently at school. It is the first needlework classes she has had I think. Very ambitious, my Mum top stitched the zip and did the hem that was already pinned up. She was to finish it at lunchtimes but was unsure about something. She was only allowed to sew for half a year and had to wait until Year 10 to do it.

I went with her to our shop to choose the material, pattern, etc. I am not sure they sell patterns here anymore. Here is the pattern.

Do you think this is it for the year?

You can see what my husband and son were busy doing last weekend. Hopefully it will be enough, it is still very much like winter here, except it is not very cold like it was. It is still like the weather conditions of our hometown which is still in North East Victoria. I am still wearing the same clothes, but maybe less of my jacket.

Our heater fan broke while my husband was away last week. He was away on Monday and Tuesday and also the previous Friday night to Sunday night. He struggled with the hot heater and got the fan fixed. It was a little chilly while it was switched off, but not overly so, just cold as usual.

As you can see, he also cleaned up the drive, a pile of woodchips there that was annoying.

The stack is bigger than we usually have. It was his first try of his new chainsaw. The old one that we bought from a family member who were selling their hobby farm was stolen. Prior to this my husband used his antique chainsaw. He originally bought that at a clearing sale many years ago, I think in pieces, I think he got another in pieces as well which is probably still like that or maybe he finally got rid of them, not sure.

When we first moved to a rented farmhouse in 2003, he got his antique chainsaw out of the shed and started using it. The first year here in 2004 we bought wood, then have been cutting it every winter since. When the chainsaw went missing, I think we brought back the wood we had cut ready for us at our new house. We were to move in at Easter. We brought it back in the back of the 4x4 each week. When that ran out, he went back to the antique chainsaw and found it hurt his back. It wasn't maintained before he put it in the shed, so he came back with only small pieces of wood. He got it fixed, borrowed a trailer I think after a bit of running around. Ours needs new tyres, $300 worth. We have done our tax, so maybe that will be rectified soon. We are expecting money back from an education thingo that repays half of your internet costs.

So this weekend he borrowed a workmates private trailer which was very generous of him, took the new chainsaw (he was so shocked to get a cheque all except $100 in the mail) and he said he kept cutting, not knowing he had cut too much. Still the trailer was a large one. Even so it requires towing it up a very steep hill. Very steep.

There you go, we are thankful we are still able to keep ourselves in wood. The time freed up when spring comes will be greatly appreciated as well.