Challenge Check #5

First- yesterday our Rector began his sermon by reading out this...you've just gotta read it!!

Dottie Angel Challenge- two items:
A Barter/Swap Scheme- for the idea see here, and for the follow up see here.
You people are so encouraging that I’m going to run with it on Wednesday this week and see what happens! Keep me posted please?!

For the Fertilizer Factory now set up in my back kitchen see here!

Creative Every Day Challenge

After some thought about February’s topic ‘Home’ this is where I’m beginning:

For me the idea of home doesn’t revolve around a house but the places where I feel at home. Until I was five we lived in the States, in Virginia, then California, returning to Ireland in 1969. Then in 1977 when I was 13 years old, my family left Ireland due to Dad’s work, and I didn’t live here again until July of the year 2000. I lived in London, Malvern, Bath, Nairobi, the Rift Valley and Thika, worked or spent time in Paris, the Pyrenees, Donegal, and other places I’ve since forgotten. I was privileged to come into contact with people of many nationalities and faiths, to become relatively fluent in French and Kiswahili, to mix with cultures I hadn’t previously encountered, and to travel all over East Africa.

But, and to me as the years progressed it became an increasingly huge ‘but’, in all those years I felt displaced, disconnected, a free radical ?! I gave the problem a lot of thought and it seemed to me that perhaps at heart I was actually Irish, and I needed to try living there to see.

As you can imagine, uprooting an African husband and three bush babies was no joke, but we did it and not one of us regrets the change. The Hub is still an African, but since the Irish in general are utter eccentrics he fits right in, and two of the bush babies turned out to be more Irish than African. The eldest bush baby revels in her dual personality and knows she can return to East Africa whenever she likes.

So to me, ‘home’ is an ordinary seaport town in the west of Ireland with river, mountains, lakes and ocean all around me:

Hazelwood.
Benbulben.
On Keelogyboy looking towards Lough Gill and the Ox Mountains.
Streedagh beach, this morning.
Streedagh beach looking towards Gleniff.

A lonely beech tree in Grange Village, this morning.

Rosses Point Village.

Hyde Bridge, Sligo town facing down stream to the sea.
Yes, here, I’m home.

Challenges Report #3

Well for Dottie Angel's Challenge I have three items:
Wrist warmers from a ripped out knitting project of Sos'- her knitting had gathered dust for two years, but she really likes the wrist warmers.
Re-purposed item; we needed a coffee table so when its not snowing, we have one!

I found this paper bag in the rubbish, aren't the colours lovely? Just right for a quilt! So I kept it.

And now the Creative Every Day Challenge:

Sound:

Do you know Whitney Houston's song 'One Moment in Time'? The words are amazing (as is her voice, I think) but the ones i often hold before me are these:

Give me one moment in time

When I'm more than I thought I could be

When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away....

...When I'm racing with destiny...

Then in that one moment of time

I will feel

I will feel eternity.

Don't those words make you all tingly?!

Sight:

Watching goldfish is one of life's pleasures, well that and teasing the dogs. If you have ever spent time with fish you'll know what I mean- if you haven't you won't! My family all think the goldfish are a waste of space but I know better.

Do goldfish answer back?

Do they moan and grizzle?

Do you trip over them when they want something?

Do they whine in the night or bark at the moon?

See? Goldfish are good!

Scent:

Lavender and Orange oil in the burner...aaah!

Touch:

Making cushion covers from velvet scraps, gorgeous!

Taste:

(no photo, for obvious reasons) Burnt, purple, bean Casserole...my children said I should give the recipe to our local builder as being an Eco alternative to commercial cement...For that I made them eat it!

It was gross...

Items of interest?

Have you visited Dottie Angel and her 'challenge of the utmost kind?'For one year I have challenged myself to buy only handcrafted or second-hand goods for my house and my own closet. I plan to get creative with whatever our home or my wardrobe may require over the coming 365 days.'

Tif encourages anyone who thinks they could do this to join her and sign up. I've been considering it and I think it's a great way to work on saving the planet, not wasting resources, think twice before you buy, recycling, reusing, and all those other good things we are encouraged to do.

Our household recycles all the waste we can, we compost, we try not to spend money on things we don't need although with three children that's more of an economy thing than environmental! We tithe to the Church and Charities as the Bible tells us, since God too, is plenty interested in us minding His world and its resources. I try to grow some of our vegetables, and intend to plant fruit trees, we've insulated the house to within an inch of its life and heat almost entirely with wood fires. We combine car journeys in and out of town and do no unnecessary driving, although some days it feels like all I've done is drive the roads of Leitrim and Sligo!

But I still think there must be more I could do and this sounds like a fun way of figuring it out! Saving resources should came so naturally I don't have to think about it, and for it to be sustainable it should also not detract from the quality of living.

So along the same theme I have also signed up to 'A Year of Living Creatively'.

Lots to think about anyhow!

Quilters' Cookbook- see the button on the sidebar? I got the e-Cookery Book Friday and have been wondering what to try first! The ultimate eye candy because there are quilts AND recipes!

Yesterday I used a Crock-Pot Chicken recipe from it and it was rather tasty and economical on time too.

So there you go!