Eight Acres

I had been thinking about trying sprouting after I read about the benefits in Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats , but I hadn't got around to doing anything about it, until I saw a few posts on Craving Fresh , in which Emma raved about how easy and yummy they were. I bought a little kit from the Nanango Markets, you don't have to get a kit, I've seen some other posts with some great simple systems ( here and here ), but I liked the idea of this kit and it was only $15.  I also bought some seeds to sprout, I like to support local stalls. Anyway, the kit is a glass jar with a plastic lid that has drainage holes and a little stand so you can lean it facing downwards to encourage drainage.  For each of the seeds I soaked them first (overnight for the large ones and a few hours for the small ones) and rinsed them twice a day until they were big enough to eat, then put them in the fridge and started a new bat...

For the start of the story, see  A simple wedding in several parts ,  A simple wedding part 2  and  A simple wedding part 3 . THE RECEPTION DECORATIONS For the reception we hired chairs, chair covers and sashes, table cloths and runners and a small cake table from Bundaberg Party Hire . The colour options were fairly limited, so I chose white and gold to match the beach theme. Everything else we needed was in the hall already. The hired gear was delivered on the Friday afternoon when we had the keys for the hall. My husband, my cousin and I set up all the tables and put the covers on the chairs, but when it came to them helping me to tie the sashes, it became clear that we needed more females to help, so we left that for my mum and aunties to finish (boys can’t tie neat bows! but are very good at tying things onto the back of the ute). On the day of the wedding we spent the morning decorating the hall and as my family had nothing else to do, being on holiday at ...

See Part 1 for the start of the story, and then Part 2 ..... THE CEREMONY We had the ceremony on the beach at Woodgate. We hired plastic chairs for the beach and bought a pair of white peace flags and a beach style “isle runner” (both ordered from the net, the runner was supposed to be hemp, but turned out to be plastic). We probably could have done more to decorate the ceremony, but the beach was a beautiful backdrop, I just didn't want to have to buy or hire heaps of stuff and then have to deal with returning/owning it afterwards! My husband and I walked down to the beach and down the isle together, with Elvis Priestley’s “Love me Tender” playing in the background. When we made that decision to walk down the isle together, I was worried that my dad would be offended and I asked mum what she thought. She said that they had done the same thing (it was the 70s after all!), so we could proceed without any worries! I think some people may have thought it was a bit odd, but it f...

I had been resisting buying a tractor for a while, it just seemed like extra hassle and lots of money, but when we moved to our property at Nanango, it became clear that we were going to need one.  We didn't know much about tractors, so we decided to just look for a cheap one secondhand and have a go.  Luckily for us we found one advertised in the local paper for $6000 (that's very cheap compared to a new one).  Its was a little Kubota 1500L.  We went and had a look at it and couldn't see anything wrong with it, so we bought it before someone else could snap up our good deal.  We had it delivered to our property on the back of a tow truck. I wouldn't recommend a second-hand tractor to anyone who doesn't have at least a little knowledge of engines.  If you're someone who services your own car, you'll probably be ok with a tractor, otherwise, you may find yourself paying that much to get things fixed you should have just got a new one with a warranty....

See Part 1 for the start of the story..... THE DRESS About 6 months before the wedding I persuaded my husband to come into Toowoomba to look at some dresses. I said in my previous post that neither of us were very aware of what was “supposed” to be done at weddings, and this included the stupid rule about husbands-to-be not seeing the dress. For goodness sakes, we live in the same tiny house, how was I going to hide it from him!? We couldn’t work out why all the wedding shop attendants were getting so funny about him being there until I mentioned it to a lady at work and found out the reason! Anyway, I wasn’t terribly keen on wearing a white dress, nor anything overly sequined or lacy. As usual, I was going for simple, but that seemed difficult to explain. I tried on a few white ones and they felt totally wrong. Finally one of the attendants actually listened to me and suggested a nice simple bridesmaid dress. The dress was made to order, so I was able to chose the size and co...

I've had a few comments on my first post about our simple wedding with people telling me about their own simple weddings, so I thought it would be fun to have a linking post.  You can write a post on your own blog about your simple wedding (and don't be stingy with the photos!) and then link it to this post and link this post to your post and then everyone can have a look and it might give some other people some nice simple wedding ideas.  I'm not going to make up any rules here, if you thought your wedding was simple, then it was, that's fine with me, everyone has their own interpretation, that's what makes it such a lovely day.  So go ahead and leave your link in the comments. this is my favourite wedding photo A simple wedding in several parts  - location, guest list and invitations, accommodation A simple wedding part 2  - the dress and flowers A simple wedding part 3  - the ceremony A simple wedding part 4  - the reception

We set of from Rainbow Beach's Carlo Point Marina at dawn on a deep sea fishing charter.  I had decided not to take the seasick tablets that I bought because I had just noticed that they contained caffeine (and caffeine and me don't agree).  I was feeling fine until we got out to sea and stopped moving (well stopped moving forwards and started moving up and down instead!).  I don't know if it was the smell of the squid bait or the diesel fumes, but I soon started to feel queasier and queasier.  I decided that the seasick tablets might have been a good idea, so I took two, but it was too late, and I lost my breakfast and no doubt also the seasick tablets over the side of the boat.  I felt better after that though!  I didn't eat anything for the rest of the day and had no further trouble with seasickness, however I did wonder what happened to the tablets, did the fish eat them?  And what does caffeine do to fish? After that initial dra...

The 23rd of October is our first wedding anniversary. We had a simple wedding (as I’m sure you would expect of me by now), which we mostly planned and paid for ourselves. The months immediately before our wedding were incredibly busy and stressful, and afterwards I couldn’t imagine that I would forget all the details, but thinking back now, with so much having happened in the meantime, its getting a little fuzzy. I’d like to dedicate October to a series of posts about our wedding with some tips for others who want to keep things simple. It was probably lucky for us that we hadn’t been to many conventional weddings between us. This meant that we didn’t have a good idea of how things were “supposed” to be done and were very free to create a day that suited us perfectly. We were also lucky not to have meddling relatives that wanted to “help”, most of the planning was left to us. If you are a traditionalist, you may be horrified by all the rules we broke, but I do hope it will ...