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Miscellaneous

I’m loving time at home. I’ve been cooking, decluttering and organising, and playing around with the camera. I’ve given myself a challenge to use just my 50mm lens for a whole week. I love the clarity of the pictures it takes, but have to get used to moving more when I’m taking photos, rather than just relying on my zoom. I’m also lusting after a full frame body (A Canon 5D mark III), but I think that might be a little while off yet!

While we are on the subject of photography, I have made it my mission these holidays to upskill myself a little. During read and relax hour after lunch I have been watching you tube clips, and reading articles to extend my skill base. So much fun. So much to learn! I’ve also pinned a heap of articles to my pinterest boards photography, and lightroom 101 if you’re interested!

Back in July, Hannah began making a garden diary to enter in a competition for Country Style magazine. She had her eye on the ipad that was the prize. She didn’t win, but she was a finalist, and so she got a mention together with a picture of her work in the December issue. Proud parenting moment!

I’ve made a big quantity of my plum paste this week. We picked the plums on Tuesday morning, and I boiled them up and then sifted out all the pips that afternoon. Wild plums are a lot smaller than the commercially grown varieties, so of course the pips were tiny and there were thousands of them. It took about an hour and a half to remove them all, and it looked like there had been a plum massacre everywhere. I finished the paste on Wednesday, and hopefully we have enough for the year!

As part of my general decluttering effort, I’ve gone through our bookcases, and had a good look at all our books. Anything that we will honestly never read again has gone. Even Country Boy managed to part with probably 20 of his gardening type books (don’t worry he still has at least another 50). The one thing on the shelves that didn’t get culled is our old photo albums. Tell me people, what do you do with your albums? For the last 6 years we have been doing photo books, but before that we had printed pictures (from negatives from our first camera) and put them into whopping great albums that take up heaps of space and collect dust. Our year in Europe has six (!) albums, while four weeks in Malaysia and China have two albums. I don’t want to get rid of them, but they are getting damaged sitting on the shelves accumulating dust. Ideas ploise!!??

I’ve been watching Dawsons’ Creek over the holidays. Long time readers might remember that I have lots of memories associated with watching it. So any hoo, I’ve been watching, and I have to say it is a bit painful. Bad fashion (did we ever dress like that???), ridiculous, unnecessary angst (well I guess it is a teen show so I shouldn’t be surprised). I’m only in the second season. Jack has kissed Joey, confusing her (no surprises there). Besides than she starts going out with Pacey at sometime, I really don’t remember much. Is it worth persevering? Was it really always this bad, or does it get better?

Been decluttering? Know what to do with photo albums? Opinion on Dawson’s Creek? Help a girl out.

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Previous Post: « Keeping It Simple | How To Stay Sane During School Holidays
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Claire says

    January 9, 2015 at 9:41 pm

    I agree with the scanning idea. I scanned my old photo albums and made photo books and was able to throw away the original bulky albums. Apparently Officeworks has a fast scanning machine that will do photos.

    Reply
  2. Erin aussiebookthreads says

    January 9, 2015 at 11:23 am

    Yippee, thank you Jo!! Will indeed stay tuned:)

    Reply
  3. Erin aussiebookthreads says

    January 9, 2015 at 2:57 am

    LOVE to know more about your photo books, who do you get them done with? How do you go about doing them etc?
    re your photo albums, is it possible to go back and turn them into photo books?

    Reply
  4. Sue Nicholls says

    January 9, 2015 at 2:44 am

    I'm in a photo decluttering season too. My solution is to scan all the photos that are worth keeping (culling as I go) and will then make photo books. Current problem is to find the best place to scan them as I wasn't happy with the quality of the first lot (and scanning a batch of 400 photos was not a five minute task).

    Reply
  5. Michelle says

    January 9, 2015 at 2:39 am

    I've resisted buying TV series on DVD no matter how much I love them, because I find that they have appealed to me at a point in life (and then life and I move on). Going back diminishes how much I love them … so I just enjoy the memory 🙂 Your decluttering philosophy inspires me greatly – I have big hopes for 2015 (we'll see how I go).

    Reply
  6. Anne says

    January 9, 2015 at 1:44 am

    It sounds like you are spending your holidays well. Oh I think I'll have one of them too, the cameras that is and I'll take the plum paste as well. I should up skill my photography ability. You could do lots of scanning and scan the images from your albums to
    keep digitally or to make photo books and put the albums away somewhere
    dust proof.

    Reply

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Hi, I’m Jo

I'm a city girl turned farmer's wife, school teacher, ideas woman, and mum to three country kids. Country Life Experiment is all about simple country living, growing and making our own food, and life on our family farm in rural Australia. Join me as I give country living a try. Read more...
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Team work makes the dream work. We were asked rec Team work makes the dream work. 
We were asked recently whether we “make” our kids work on the farm. The answer is “of course not”. Having said that, all three love to help out whenever they can. They all work hard because they want to; because they take pride in working hard and contributing in a meaningful way to our family life; because they love living on our farm and don’t remember life before we moved here. Whether it be planting trees or doing sheep work or feeding animals, they all want to be involved. As a parent, nothing is better than watching them grow in skill and confidence as they work along side you. We’re so glad that we get to spend time with our three, working together.
We’ve had an unexpected addition to the family ☘️🐑. She is a lot easier to look after than the other family members but she does try to escape her yard and head butt people. Poddy lambs are super cute but they tend to think they are a human. Clover the lamb is sure that Meg is her mum. Can’t think why… 🤔🤣
The perfect way to end a long winter weekend: toge The perfect way to end a long winter weekend: together, cooking damper around the remains of the bonfire.
It’s been a tough few weeks on the farm. We got It’s been a tough few weeks on the farm. We got through shearing without a hitch (thankfully 🙏) but we’ve had a run of the flu followed by Covid run through the family since then. The kids and I have tested positive (this is my second time getting it 🦠) though so far C has managed to avoid it. There has been a lot of lying on the couch feeling pretty ordinary. Han had to reschedule her driving test for a 4th time due to Covid, which is disappointing for her because she wants her freedom and for us because it would be so much more convenient if she could drive herself places. Just to add in to the mix, our hot water system has chosen now as a good time to die so we’re on cold showers until we’re all out of iso. This is not meant to be a whinging post but sometimes life just sucks a bit and it’s good to be real. Fortunately, the sight of the fire going with a stack of wood next to it cheers us up. Things will improve soon. Onwards we go…
A picture perfect Autumn afternoon to end the scho A picture perfect Autumn afternoon to end the school holidays. We’ve been busy spending time with friends and family, harvesting the last of the summer produce, as well as a short escape to explore the big smoke. After the craziness of last term it was the break we all needed. It’s back to school for me tomorrow, and the kids are back on Wednesday. Shearing starts soon and so it’s all systems go over the next few weeks.
Covid has made some late changes to our weekend pl Covid has made some late changes to our weekend plans so we are embracing the unexpected and doing not much at home. Plenty of time for hanging out on the dam and enjoy the perfect weather.

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Hi, I’m Jo

City girl turned farmer's wife, school teacher, ideas woman, and mum to three country kids. Country Life Experiment is all about simple country living, growing and making our own food, and life on our family farm in rural Australia. Join me as I give country living a try. Read more...
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