Green Living: Make Your Own {Green} Dishwasher Powder

I'm usually skeptical of "green" dishwashing powders or tablets sold in the supermarket, as they seem very expensive, less effective and only marginally better than their commercial counterparts when it comes to their ingredients list. And my only other foray into making dishwashing liquid was very, very stinky. And messy.

Recently I came across a recipe on Re-Nest (and cannot for the life of me find it, but I will!) that called for just two (and an optional third and/or fourth) ingredients. Brilliant!

You need: 

1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda (or bicarb soda, but I used washing soda)
a few drops of essential oil* (teatree oil is perfect as it's naturally antibacterial)
white vinegar*


(*optional)

Just mix the borax and washing soda together in a jar or container. Take 1-2 tablespoons and put in your detergent dispenser in the dishwasher.

Put some vinegar in the rinse dispenser, as well as a couple of drops of your essential oil.

I've tried this a couple of times and have been generally really pleased with the results. It costs next to nothing to make, leaves the dishes nice and clean, plus it smells so so so much better than those faux citrusy dishwasher tablets.

Confession: I didn't have any vinegar so I haven't tried the rinse thing yet. So I just put a couple of drops of oil in with the dry ingredients. It all seemed to work fine, but the oil did cause some of the powder to set hard like concrete and I had to dig it out with a fork (!!)

Green Living : Make Your Own Baby Food

We're in the throes of introducing little Toby to all sorts of new fruits and veges at the moment (he is such a guts too - would literally eat anything and everything we offer him!) so making baby food is at the forefront of my brain these days.

Making your own baby food is really simple, and I find that if I do it all on a Sunday (my cooking/baking day) then it's hardly stressful at all. Like most things, if you do it in bulk, the benefits are outweighed by the slightest bit of extra work. Plus it's a lot cheaper than buying baby food all the time, and I know exactly what's in it. (Better still when I can get local and/or organic fruit and veges to use, but that doesn't happen all the time. Or most the time.)

Some good combos, as approved by Toby are:

- pear and apple
- pumpkin, sweet potato and corn
- carrot and corn
- pumpkin, potato, zucchini 
- (rice or pasts can be added to any of these as bub develops)

1. Peel and chop your chosen fruit/veges. The pieces should be around 2cm each.

2. Put in a saucepan with a little water - around 1-2cm.

3. Bring to boil then reduce heat, cover and simmer until the fruit or veges are tender.

4. Use a blender or a stick mixer to blend up the food for young babies, and a fork to mash it up once your little one can handle slightly chunkier food.

5. I freeze Toby's food in plastic containers and pull it out as needed. 

When you're travelling or get caught short, there's now a few good, organic baby food options at the supermarket.

Raffertys garden is a good one, but I'd go for their organic products, as last time I looked I realized there's no mention of their regular products being GMO free. So best avoided I'd say!

Beauty Tips: Homemade Body Mist

Orange Tower by Leo Druker

OK, I have something ridiculous to admit. We're barely past the first week of autumn and already my mind is turning to winter. And not in a good way. I really, really, hate winter. I get depressed and crotchety and generally miserable in the cold, grey weather with its silly short days.


I'm already dreading it. And it's basically still summer. Ridic.

One of the fine things about the cold weather though is the amazing oranges. I do love oranges. The smell, the taste, the zing. Even the bits that get caught in my teeth. In fact, when I was pregnant with Isla and couldn't stand any synthetic fragrances at all, the only thing I wanted to smell and to smell like was oranges. Strange, yes.

I do wish I had come across this easy-peasy recipe for a homemade body mist back then:

Add approximately 10 drops of orange essential oil (any essential oil of your choosing is fine though - lavender would be beautiful too) to a sterilised spray bottle.

(To sterilise, simply immerse in boiling water for a few minutes)

Top up the bottle with distilled water.

Shake, and use it as a subtle fragrance or invigorating body spray whenever needed.

Nice one. This should lift my sunshine levels come July.  But in the meantime, time to enjoy the heat.

Awesome Uses for Bicarb Soda

I know I've mentioned the lemon + bicarb miracle combination before, but there are about a bajillion other uses for bicarb in your house, kitchen, laundry and bathroom. Some of these are pretty cool:

• Make your own self-raising flour if you're ever caught without, by adding one teaspoon of cream of tartar and half a teaspoon bicarb soda to one cup of plain flour
• Effective as a fire extinguisher (particularly grease and electrical fires)
• Make a paste of bicarb and water and apply to ant and mosquito bites, as well as beestings - it should take the itch out. (Duly noted here because I am super allergic to ants and bees).
• Have a cool bath with a cup of bicarb to take the burn out of sunburn
• Brush your teeth with a paste of bicarb and water - it's antibacterial and makes your teeth shiny
• Wash your fruit and veges in a sink filled with water and 1/4 cup bicarb - this removes traces of insecticides that remain on the skin
• Sprinkle bicarb on your pets between washes if they're getting a little stinky. Just sprinkle, massage and brush it out
• Leave a little container of bicarb in the fridge to get rid of that mysterious fridge stink we sometimes get (hello, old watermelon!)

These are all in addition to the usual suspects, such as making a paste with water and cleaning pretty much any surface in the house, or sprinkling it in the nappy bucket, or adding it to your washing to freshen and soften your clothes.

Maybe I'm a dorky dork, but I found that kind of interesting!

Project Compost: Restart

Our sad compost bins.

 So the garden has been roundly neglected of late (more on this and what I'm doing to rectify the situation in a later post) and the poor old compost heap has seen many better days too. It was really flourishing pre-renovation, as I'd been working on it for about six months and had two big bins worth of garden gold almost ready to go. The little fairy wrens in the yard loved all the bugs that scattered every time I opened the lid and the willy wagtails were well pleased when I'd share some of the insects with them.

Then the builders came in and knocked both bins down, spreading my compost all over the backyard, on day one of the reno.

I get a really awful, wasteful feeling in the pit of my tummy every time I throw away food scraps (similar to the feeling I get using disposable nappies, truth be told) and I think about restarting the ol' compost bins - stat. Then life gets in the way, as usual, and the next time I think about it is when I'm tossing tonight's salad scraps in the bin.

But no more. This week fortnight-ish I will buy some manures, chop some garden waste and start the bins again.

I thought I could offer a very very basic rundown of how I build our compost bins, in case this is something you're interested in. Once it's set up, it really is a super simple way to cut down on your rubbish dramatically, and as a bonus you get the most beautiful plant food imaginable - for free!

*NB There is a huge amount of information out there on composting. There are books and blogs and websites all dedicated to the science of it. I'm not offering any scientific advice here, just a basic overview of what I do at home. This is likely not best practice. Probably not even close.

You need to get yourself two or three bins. Bunnings sell simple compost bins for around $30 each. These have a flip-top lid and an open bottom (the bottom needs to be open to allow worms and insects in, as well as allowing you to turn your heap easily). Place the bins somewhere they will stay pretty dry, and somewhere that makes depositing your scraps easy.

To start, I buy a couple of bags of manure from a farm nearby. Any type will do really, but chook poo is good. I add a layer of this to the bottom of the bin, followed by some grass clippings, some garden cuttings (if these are in large pieces, try breaking them up or running the mower over them first), some hay and a bucket of kitchen scraps. I generally keep these layers to around 10cm deep each, with the exception of the dense grass clippings, 3-5cm will do there. I also make sure not to compact the layers down as composting requires lots of air.

The compost bin has officially begun! I now add our kitchen scraps over the week, occasionally covering them with a handful of hay or leaves. Once the layer of scraps reaches around 10cm I start the layering all over again.

After around a month or so I lift the whole bin off the pile and move it to one side, leaving the entire pile exposed. I then use my shovel and garden fork to work through the pile, separating any big chunks and aerating the whole lot. Then I shovel it all back into the bin. I keep adding, layering, moving and aerating until the bin is pretty much full, then I leave it alone for a while. Depending on the weather it may be three months, it may be more. Occasionally, if I remember, I may turn the pile to help speed things along and get an idea of how the compost is cooking.

Once bin #1 is cooking, I start bin #2 using the same method. The theory being that once the compost in bin #1 is ready to use in the garden, bin #2 will be ready to cook. Then bin #3 is used for depositing scraps etc, while bin #1 stores the usable compost and bin #2 cooks away. In reality, the length of each stage varies and there will be times where you have two bins cooking and no usable compost.

At this early stage in my gardening career I can't worry about that so much, only take pleasure in the knowledge that my scraps will be fertilising my garden sometime in the near future. Hopefully yours will too!!

To stop this post from becoming any lengthier, I'll put together another post for later in the week that outlines the things you should and shouldn't compost in this type of pile.

Play Time! Playdough Recipe

I mentioned last week that we'd been getting crafty and creative here at Lavender HQ, and one of our current faves is playdough. It's super easy to whip up a batch yourself and keep it in the fridge, so I thought I'd post the recipe. There are variations, but this is the method I use with no drama:

You need:

   3 cups plain flour
   1 cup salt
   2 tbsp oil
   approx 1.5 cups water
   a few drops of food colouring

Method:

   1. Mix dry ingredients together
   2. Combine water and food colouring
   3. Add sufficient water until dough is pliable but not sticky

Super duper easy, it makes more than enough for four kidlets to play with and you can store it in a plastic bag in the fridge for at least a couple of weeks.

Also, for something fun, you can cut shapes out of the dough using cookie cutters and bake them slowly in a mild-moderate oven. Fun times ahoy!!