Garden Update

You can menu plan all you like, but sometimes the garden will dictate what is for dinner.

Radio National Interview

If you have found A Vision Splendid after listening to the interview today on the ABC Radio National's Life Matters show, I would like to say a huge warm welcome to you !

If you are a reader who missed the interview, there will be a link available to the podcast later on today. I will put up a link on this site in the next few days.

If you are new here, please have a look around. We are a family of four who are attempting a simpler lifestyle, based on the wisdom of my (almost) 102 year old grandmother.

We are everyday, normal people. I was a school teacher who became and lawyer and hubbie was a police officer for 15 years.

These days our efforts are on growing our own, cooking our own, raising our sons with intent, try to manage financially and laughing through our miserable failures!! This is is the place we record our adventures.

Please drop us a line and introduce yourselves. You can get on our mailing list, or you can purchase our 'e-book' from the link on the left hand side.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Learning Piano The 'Unschooling' Way

For years I have wanted my eldest to start playing piano.

 Notice "I" wanted him to play.

When he started first class I discussed the idea of having lessons with him. but he wasn't interested. He would say ' maybe one day'. Little by little he started mucking around on the keyboard and from time to time I would ask him if he wanted to do lessons - but still not interest! ..... didn't he realise that it would be much easier if he learnt when he was young and that it would be 'good for him'.

But...... I let my feelings of frustration aside knowing that if I forced him into lessons it would be something of a chore. He would 'have' to practice each week and I wanted him to LOVE IT, not necessarily be good at it.

I grew up playing the piano. I had formal lesson from about the age of ten and did up to my 5th grade AMEB exam. But for me, it wasn't about exams, techniques etc it was about being able to hear something and play it, to write pieces of music, to write songs.

Last year, the spark in my son was switched on. He started to tinker and I showed him a book with very basic 'teach yourself' notes. He absorbed it so quickly. I didn't 'teach' him, I just yelled out "that's meant to be an A" from the kitchen from time to time when I could hear him miss a note.

Every week or two I would show him a little snippet more. Lately he has been putting a one finger chord in his left hand while playing a tune with his right.

Last week I thought I would step things up for him. I grabbed a piece of paper and penned down the notes to a Red Hot Chilli Peppers song that he knows and loves. Then I left him with it to figure it out. He self corrects, which makes me so happy because he hears his mistakes!

Then I started him a book, with nice bright colours. You can see above that the 'music' has no rhythm associated with it ( that will eventually come). The note above the line is his left hand chord and the notes below are the melody. The different colours are used because that is how I think ( and I hope he does too) that is, the colour is used to 'section' the music.

The results are phenomenal. He plays with real passion. He has mastery over the keyboard. I will do him up some more songs like this, then we will move to the sheet music and start looking at the shape of the notes ( pitch) and the rhythm. He knows his 'every good boy deserves fruit', but this just gives him some quick success to embed his passion for music.

It gives us joy when we hear him pump it out - sometimes over and over again, ten or so times a day. This is very different to having to beg a child to do their piano practice before their lesson.

He played the song for his grandparents who were visiting this week. They liked it .......... I did not dare tell them that the title of the song is 'californication' LOL

Home On The "FARM"

Well....... 'farm' may be a bit of an exaggeration, but with my garden beds now fenced off from the chooks with a stretch of makeshift netting and a wooden gateway it has affectionately become known as 'the farm' and I am fully embracing it!

I have a vision for the 'farm'. It is a vision splendid. I have been looking back through the archives of Path To Freedom and have seen that they started with something not that much different to what we currently have. I think we even have a little more space.

Reading their journal is so inspiring. They didn't wait until they had their acreage in the country to start leading a more self sufficient lifestyle, they jumped in where they were, in the city in Pasadena and just made the most of the space they had.

So, whilst my 'farm' is not a huge area, it does have it's advantages. It is only 20 steps away from my back door, yet I am still within walking distance from the little shop, post office and the boys' school. It is small but extremely manageable. There is room for expansion ( a whole two square metres! ) and I can run and get anything from the area when I am cooking.

It would appear that the more joy I am finding around my home, the less I search for outside 'entertainment'. I like the planing, digging, seed raising, harvesting and preserving that comes from having a garden. They are 'feel good' activities. I could never find that sense of joy in shopping mall!

I like falling into bed at night knowing that I have worked hard all day. It seems I fall into bed exhausted yet wake refreshed ready to start a new adventure, or try something new.

Our boys finished school on Thursday and don't go back until the 28th april. I am really happy about having them home because there is so much 'home learning' to do. Sometimes their school days interrupt real learning ( and my boys have great teachers this year!) - I know that sounds strange, but to me ( and I spent eight years as a primary school teacher) parents are the first educators of their children. Kids learn the most amazing things by osmosis up until the age of five. They learn at least one language, how to crawl, walk, count, the names and attributes of animals and things in nature. They even learn to read! Then, once they start school, we seem to think that they can't learn independently anymore. They need a 'teacher' to tell them what to learn. For boys that classify birds, write 'how to manuals', cook, build, design lego robots, paint artworks and solve puzzles, it can be pretty boring to go to school and colour in sheets that say " F is for firetruck" LOL

So, school holidays is the chance to rev up some passion for learning. We will even take them to Sydney to some museums to spark some curiosity.

But for now....... can't stop to talk..... got to get back to the farm... - crops to plant, corn to harvest! LOL

My Creative Space

I like to have a creative space. It is a place where I can sit and.....create. The space is almost like a canvas itself. It is a collection of little things that bring me joy, photos, flowers, tidbits of memories.

Overall, I think it is the combination of the colours that make me happy. Considering that the rest of our home is neutral coloured with timber furnishings, this room is quite a contrast. The desk is just a fold up table and the shelving was put up by Hubby.

This is the space where I sit, or the boys sit to make things. I use it to make cards or do some scrapbooking. I always joke about how therapeutic it is to sit and cut up bits of coloured paper.

I got these paper racks second hand when a local scrapbooking shop was closing down. It's not as if I do so much craft that I have to have these out all the time, it's more that I love the rainbow of colours. ( They are Easter hats on the top shelf, waiting for some pieces to dry)

The whole area needs a bit of a clean up. The space is just inside the office door so it tends to be the hot spot where things like paperwork and school notes are put when the rest of the house is being cleaned.

This is the style of albums I make. I am not very decorative, I am just producing photo journals to have a hard copy of our yearly adventures. These photos are from last year's Junior Spirit, a triathlon style event held at Forster each year.

Do you have a designated area where you create. knit, sew ? Do you have an area that you purposefully decorate to make yourself feel a particular way or to express your individuality. I think expressing yourself in a creative way is good for your soul!

Sustainable Health Choices.

I wrote last month about feeling as though most 'simple living tasks' were going quite well and that I wanted to start focusing on my health as well. We take such good care of our garden, testing our soil, correcting PH, using only organic materials..... why then is there a separate set of rules when it comes to taking care of my own body ? If I am not healthy and fit I won't have the energy or ability to do all the things that make my house function, like cooking and gardening.

I really want to get fit and have increased energy. As a by product I want to lost about 10 kgs.

Today is day sixteen of my continuous 'better choices' and I have lost 2 kilos. Nothing too exciting, but I am aiming for a sustainable lifestyle change, not a quick fix. I am not on a diet, I am just on an awareness campaign.

I found the above book while I was browsing around waiting for some photos to get developed in a department store the other day.

I liked the no nonsense approach and I like the pictures - sound strange, but it's very motivating.

I wouldn't say that I have really learnt anything knew, more of a bit of a 'aha' moment, or that moment when you suddenly 'get it'.

So far I have taken on board that it really is about calories in and calories out. My body ( using calculations from the book) uses about 1560 calories per day to function normally. So whatever I put into my body either creates a deficit and means a weight loss, or creates a credit and means a weight gain. Add a little exercise to that and I use up more calories each day resulting in a larger deficit .

I don't count calories every day, but I did do some homework to find out the calorie count of different foods to gain an understanding of what I was eating. ( i use calorie king.com) Once I had that information I made some adjustments to what I was eating. Did you know one fancy drink at a particular fast food cafe has the same calories as almost a whole days worth of food? So if you were to consume this AND your food you would be eating for two adults ? No wonder Australia has such an obesity problem. Who would of thought that a drink could be that calorie dense ??

I now ALWAYS eat breakfast. Before I started I would think that I am not hungry enough to eat breakfast and would go without. By lunch time though I could eat the handles of the kitchen cupboards.

I opt for foods that are filling and make me feel full for a lot longer ( i.e. low GI ) so that I can get more bang for my calorie buck. What I mean here is that for the same calorie intake I could either eat four squares of chocolate or opt for a huge sandwich. I know that if I eat the chocolate I will still be hungry afterwards.

Exercise is the number one feel good drug on the planet. This has taken me a long time to 'get'. I am often too tired to go for a walk or a bike ride, whereas Hubbie would say "I am SO tired I NEED go for a ride or a walk". He understands that energy comes from exertion and the more you do the better you feel. This is in contrast to me 'waiting' for a magical burst of energy, missing the point that the energy comes from the very thing I was avoiding.

Exercise doesn't have to be a 5km run. Exercise can be dancing around your house with the stereo on, playing with the kids, walking while pushing the pram. The thing is that if you make a small start, even walking around the backyard five times, it gets easier each time and you feel the need to naturally build it up.

Never say you don't have time to exercise. I heard Michael Pollan say once that we say we don't have time to cook, yet we have time to watch cooking shows. It's the same with exercise... we don't have time to exercise, but we watch television shows about people exercising and losing the most weight.

Exercise helps you sleep better, breath deeper, stand taller, think clearer and gives your skin a lovely glow. It's up to you whether you want a spoonfull of this free, magic medicine.

So... I will keep posting about how things are going. It's a shame I don't own a video camera. I think you would get a great laugh out of footage of me jogging with Hubbie while he looks fabulous and is encouraging me and I am panting out " i'm gonna die, I'm gonna die" LOL

A Busy Beetroot Sunday

The day started off with a request for pancakes. Seeing that I had an extra hour this morning ( daylight savings finished and the clock was wound back) I kindly obliged.

Then it was time for a quick trip to town for Easter Hat Parade supplies and some seedlings. I managed to get in some more broccoli, beetroot and a heap of onions. While I was pottering I also got a lot more corn plants. I have also decided to grow sunflowers so that I have lots of seeds to feed the chooks. They go totally mad over them, to the point where they always pick them out first in the seed mix.

Then it was time to get the creative juices flowing. The boys had excellent designs for their Easter hats and I had to beg to have a go at painting the foam eggs. The parade is on Wednesday.

While the paint and glue was drying I managed to process some beetroot that I picked yesterday, using my mother-in-law's recipe.

When you pull the beetroot from the ground, twist the leaves off and leave the messy stumpy bit on the top and the root ball. at the bottom. Wash all the dirt off and boil them in a little salted water until a cooking fork will go right through them.

Remove them from the pot and let them cool completely. Then peel them by rubbing the skins off. They come off really easily.

Then slice them up ( cutting off the yucky top and bottom) and put them into a container. I had my trusty Tupperware on hand. I like the way it lifts the beetroot up and it has a lifetime guarantee.

 
Then mix 500 mL of vinegar and 250 mL of boiling water and dissolve two dessertspoons of sugar into it. Pout the mixture over the beetroot and discard the remaining mix.

After retrieving the washing from the line and managing to get some ironing time in it was time to start preparing dinner ( by my body clock - but the clock said it was only 3.45 pm lol)

Dinner was very easy tonight, just some 'special' fried rice because we had a big meal last night. . I just cook the rice first, stir fry some bacon and then scramble some eggs into it ( i used three) a clove of garlic and a few splashes of soy sauce and then pour in the rice ( I use basmati ). Then I pour in a chicken stock cube dissolved in a cup of water and then add some peas or shallots or corn or whatever I have on hand.

I hope you had a lovely Sunday. I certainly did.