Slow Living – March

This year I have joined with Slow Living Essentials so here we are again with a review of March.  This will be interesting as we spent 16 days on holidays.  We took a road trip to NSW, Victoria and Canberra and enjoyed a relaxing time.  If you want to know where we went and what we did you can see more here.  Meanwhile, I will try to fill in the categories below.

Here are the Slow Living categories:

{Nourish}  While it was not spectacularly interesting, we did manage to feed ourselves each and every day.

{Prepare}  The first half of the month was spent preparing to go on holidays.

{Reduce}  The contents of the refrigerator and freezer were reduced to almost zero before we headed off on our holiday.

{Green}  We took our picnic set and our own food for lunches when we were travelling so no takeaways and no disposable containers.

{Grow}  The seedlings which we planted towards the end of February continued to grow while we were away and we are now picking and eating the bok choy.  We are also reaping the fruits of self-sown cucumbers.  These came up from cucumbers that fell and rotted from the summer crop.  This is the second year that we have had a follow-on crop of cucumbers.  The great thing about growing them in autumn is that the cucumbers are not as prolific nor do they ripen as quickly so we are generally able to keep up with them.

We also harvested a pineapple and mangoes.

{Create}  The holiday theme is evident again in this suit bag that I made to transport the suit that The Duke wore to a wedding while we were away.

{Discover}  New places and new adventures.

{Enhance}  Sadly, death was the catalyst to renew some friendships that had languished.  We were reminded of the fragility of life and the importance of nurturing relationships.  However, there was happiness as well.

{Enjoy}  We did enjoy our travels and recharged our batteries so now it is time to get back to the things we do every day and I hope my slow-living round up for the end of April is a bit more interesting.

Til next month………..

Taking A Break

We are off on holidays so there will be a bit of a hiatus here at Organised Castle.

However, you can come along for the ride here at my travel blog.  It will be a mixture of travel diary, weather report, scenery and of course some tips and tricks for simple and sustainable holiday travel.

I look forward to your comments.

Oops, I thought I posted this yesterday!

A Year in Review

Here we are, almost at the end of another year and as usual I try to take time to think about what I have done and my plans for the new year.

I was looking back at some of my posts from around 12 moths ago and although I have achieved a lot this year, some of my lofty ideals did not come to fruition.  You can check out my goals here.  The photo project was an epic failure but everything else (and much besides was done).

The organising for Christmas also fell by the wayside but it was all achieved before 25th December.  My goal is to do better in 2013.

The important thing when you find that the achievement did not measure up to the goal you set is to simply pick yourself up, dust off and try again.  That is what I love about a new year – it is a clean slate.

I have my 2013 diary and have resolved to use it properly this year instead of cluttering my brain with 1001 things I have to remember.  An Excel spreadsheet is set up to record our spending so that we can see where the money goes.  The emails are sorted/deleted/archived/actioned/unsubscribed as required and I will keep this up-to-date each week.

Our holiday in March is planned and booked.

How was your 2012?  What do you plan to achieve or do differently next year?

The Week That Was

I have been making good progress on several fronts here.

Yesterday I spent the day sewing so have something to show for it.  I started by drafting a pattern using an existing purchased skirt.  I had some fabric that had been given to me and this is what I created.  I have yet to do the hem and the handstitching inside the waistband but you get the general idea.  I am not entirely happy with the fit over the hips and also the side pockets are not sitting perfectly but that will improved on in the next attempt.

I will still be happy to wear this as the shirt I am going to make will cover the less than perfect area.  This is going to be the top (also gifted fabric).  The colour match of the yellow flowers with the top is much better than the photograph would lead you to believe.

The other project has been slowly but surely working through the various piles of ‘pending’ paperwork.

This is some that I had been carrying around in my bag for a couple of weeks.  Today I actioned most of it – emails sent, phone calls made and most of it now shredded.  There is still a little to go back in the filing cabinet.

This pile is on the small table in the guest room.  It is mostly from our USA trip from over 2 months ago so my goal is to get it sorted out this weekend.  I have finally culled and sorted they photographs from our trip which has been quite a big job.

Tomorrow we are having lunch with friends and are looking forward to sharing the photos from our trip with them.

Have a relaxing weekend wherever you are.

Information Request

I hope some of my US readers will be able to help with tips and information for our upcoming trip.

We will be spending 4 weeks in the north-east  of the United States later this year.  It will be be late August and into mid  September.

We are flying into Washington DC and spending 4 nights there .  Our accommodation is booked for those nights.  The rest of the trip is still flexible so would love your ideas.  I am thinking of 2 nights in Philadelphia, 4 nights New York City, 2-3 nights in Boston.  From there we hope to hire an RV and have about 15 nights touring.  We hope to travel as far as Bangor, ME as well as travelling through New Hampshire, Vermont and New York State.  Other things I have heard/read about which interest me include lighthouses along the Maine coastline, Mt Washington and fall scenery, Woodstock and Watertown,NY.

We have never been to the United States before and would like to make sure we maximise our time there.

Thanks again for your help.

Bye-Bye

It is not really goodbye.  It is Good Friday afternoon here is Australia and we are enroute to Byron Bay for a couple of days.  We are going to Bluesfest which has been held at Byron Bay for the last 22 years.  This is the first time we have been so I am quite excited and really looking forward to it.

I hope you have a safe and peaceful Easter holiday, whatever you do.

Holiday Planning

We have started looking at possible holiday destinations.  The first question was Australia or overseas.

I wanted to go to Central Australia  (Uluru and Alice Springs), Darwin and Kakadu National Park.  Due to the wet season, timing is crucial and accommodation is outrageously expensive and limited availability.

Due to the strength of the Australian dollar an overseas trip looked feasible.  Apart from New Zealand, our only other overseas trip was to British Columbia in 2007.  The East Coast of USA has always appealed so we are now looking at possibly going to Washington, Philadelphia, New York and Boston in September/October.

I have downloaded a couple of different Lonely Planet guides to my Kindle and am quickly learning some US geography.  We have friends who know this area quite well as tourists so caught up with them today and have come away with loads of ideas.  Now I need to distill the information and find what we want to see and do.

How do you decide where to take a holiday?  How much do you plan and book in advance or do you leave it to chance?

Any ideas or suggestions gratefully received.

Digital De-cluttering

While we have been away I have been working on making some order of my digital photographs.  It is all too easy to simply download them from the camera and go no further.

My earlier feeble attempts had resulted in me putting the photos from each major holiday since December 2005 into their own folder.  I had not made any further progress.

During this holiday I have sorted through each folder and selected those that have some merit and deleted many which simply do not make the grade.

The joy of digital photography is that you can take lots of shots and then choose the best ones.  However, after taking heaps of photos, you do need to actually follow through and complete the process by deleting those that are not worth keeping.  You know the ones – sloping horizons, blurry, too far away, can’t remember why you took it etc.

After culling the excess, the next step was to number them so that they would stay in the order I wanted them.  The system I use is a 3 digit numeral eg:  001, 002 and so on which is followed by a description.  Without the numerals at the beginning the photos will be sorted alphabetically by the title which is not helpful when you want them to follow a sequence.

I have completed the descriptions on the photos for 6 of the trips plus about half of our last trip in May.  I also made sure that I have done the ones for the current trip and kept up to date each day.  This is how I intend to do it in the future

Once I have done all of the holiday photos I will then need to work on all other the others – children, grandchildren, house, garden etc.  It will be a long process but hopefully worth it in the end.

Inspired by Sandra, I will then scan all of the existing print photos that are in albums and sort them in a similar way.  Hopefully, my children will never have to sort through shoeboxes full of un-named photographs when I am gone.

I have included some of the photos that I regard as the best of what I have sorted through recently.  I hope you enjoy them.

Holiday Eating

One of the biggest holiday budget killers can be food, especially if you find yourself eating out.  It does not have to be high-quality restaurant dinners either.  Coffee and cake for afternoon tea or a sandwich and juice for lunch – it soon adds up.  $5 or $10 here and there can quickly add up over a couple of weeks.

After our road trip in the middle of the year to NSW and South Australia we decided that it is definitely worth it to pay a little extra for self-contained accommodation where you can cook your own evening meal as well prepare food for travel/sightseeing the following day.  A couple of nights we stayed in basic motel rooms and found that we ended up spending more by the time we had even a basic pub meal.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it has been a little trickier this time as we were travelling internationally.  However, we brought a set of the bare minimum of our picnic set.

It all packed into a small cloth bag.  The bag was the ‘packaging’ from the last set of sheets that I bought.

We brought a few bags, including these ziplock bags which have proved to be very useful.

Avoiding packaging has been a bit of a challenge but I feel that I have done the best I could under the circumstances.  The supermarkets here have bulk bins of various items so we managed to utilise the ziplock bags to buy cereal as well as nuts and dried fruit for snacks.  Bread has been my downfall but I have kept any bread bags to pack our sandwiches in for our lunches as well as finally using them for rubbish bags.  I have also bought meat on styrofoam trays covered in cling wrap from the supermarket.  It has reminded me of how much packaging I actually avoid at home by making our own bread and taking our own containers when buying meat from the butcher.

These are some of the groceries we have bought along the way.  The scrambled eggs, baked beans, chicken and pasta meals have meant that we could budget for some special meals as well.

We have eaten out a few times and really enjoyed the meals.  The Thai meal we ate in Christchurch was excellent and the food highlight of our trip so far was our meal at the Harbour Light Bistro in Nelson.

Holidays are not all about the food, although The Duke may beg to differ.  We have enjoyed being able to take a couple of tours which, although not cheap have been really interesting and good value.  I have already told you about the one to Farewell Spit and yesterday we went on the Mailboat Cruise on Queen Charlotte Sound.

Holiday Habits

We are now on holidays in New Zealand for 2 weeks so the posts will be a bit erratic.  As with our holiday in May I am trying to maintain our sustainable habits as much as possible.

It is a bit more difficult this time as we were flying internationally so customs precluded taking any of our own food.  Nevertheless, we took our own food in reuseable packaging on the flight.

I packed a calico shopping bag as well as some of the mesh bags I use when buying fruit and vegetables.  Our food for the trip was in ziplock bags so those have been washed, dried and reused as well.

Although we could not carry fluids on the flight we did pack our stainless steel flasks and have been using them since we arrived.  I also packed plastic plates and some cutlery in a cloth bag so that we can use them for lunches when we are travelling.

Yesterday I bought an insulated cooler bag with a zip top to carry some refrigerated items in the car as we travel from one self-contained accommodation venue to the next.  The cooler bag is soft-sided and can be folded flat so that I will be able to take it home to use on future trips.

The supermarkets here have a range of goods in bulk bins so I bought muesli, dried fruit and cashews.  I used my own ziplock bags so did not need to add any extra packaging.

Till next time.