I like this kind of weekend

Yesterday I had my winter Out Day. Father Bear was unimpressed that I should wake about 6 and he informed me there was nowhere I could go in the rain before the sun was up! So I snuggled in bed for a bit longer. I even managed not to remind him of the time he told me it was half past six when it was only half past five. It was on the tip of my tongue. But then I remembered that a) *that* day turned out wonderfully b) it seemed to go on and on and on (that's what happens when you leave the house at 5.45am) c) it wasn't raining on that occasion and d) the sun was virtually up despite the early hour. It must have been summer. All in all I concluded I would not win if I were to pursue this unnecessary argument and decided to take some Biblical advice - "even a fool is thought wise if he keeps his mouth shut"
But in the end I just couldn't lie still any longer and I got up.
I scrambled around in the dark (not too difficult as I had laid everything out the night before - pays to be prepared for the big day out) and tiptoed out of the house, embracing the possibilities of the day. I had packed the car with a couple of knitting projects, an art book, some trip stuff, my current read and most of my scrapbooking paraphernalia, as well as my pile of scrapbooking magazines for inspiration. I wasn't sure what I'd end up doing, and I sure didn't want to limit myself!

I didn't have far to drive and then spent a couple of hours sitting in a carpark waiting for The Warehouse to open (as a matter of principle I am trying to avoid this place - I think this was the fourth or fifth visit for this year and I put aside all principles as I went in and purchased plastic scrapbooky stuff which came inside more plastic wrapping and had pieces of unnecessary cardboard aswell.......I encouraged myself to learn the art of calligraphy, but, knowing my previous attempts at this art, which clearly requires some discipline to acquire, I bought stickers for this particular project - and precoloured papers as well seeing as I am not yet an accomplished watercolour master either) Wow that was a long sidetrack, wasn't it? (Maybe I should have just left out this whole paragraph and you wouldn't need to know about my lack of resolve.....but this is meant to be REAL!) Back to the story.

That done, I was ready to Make The Scrapbook.
So I went home!
Well, not quite. I ended up spending the rest of the day Next Door To My House at Father-in-law's place. He kindly let me spread all over both his dining room tables (two tables, that is, one dining room).
Occasionally a child appeared at the door - I tried hard not to shoo them away too quickly.
Once or twice I needed to return to My House for the one or two scrapbooking bits-n-bobs I had thought I wouldn't need. The kids actually looked pleased to see me - that was nice!
I built up their excitement by leaving immediately.
And not coming home for dinner.

Best of all, I got finished. One complete album in one day. Well, let me qualify that. I got all the backgrounds done, all the page headings and even a few other extra bits. I just haven't done the photos. In fact, some of the photos haven't even been taken yet. But at least now I have a list of what I need to do.
So one more morning to *take* photos, another hour to send pics for developing, the rest of another afternoon to stick photos in and one evening to embellish and it'll be totally done. One album, two days.
"a Kiwi Life", a nice little record of our life in NZ to take with us wherever we end up going. We had been going to buy a book to take, but none of the many we flicked through in Borders reflected *our* life. So we've ended up making our own.

That was all done by the time the last kids headed off to bed.
I realised I was hungry and heard the local Turkish kebab man calling, so I left the guys watching rugby (yawn) and enjoyed the solitude of being the only person in Mr Turk's restaurant for half an hour. There happened to be a real estate paper sitting on one of the large slabs of treetrunk that double as tables and I happened to pick it up.

Armed with that piece of information you don't need to know about the knitting I completed Saturday night......fast forward to just before noon Sunday. There we were wandering around ten acres looking at a three bedroom house and a two beddy cottage. I told you it was a nice weekend!

We raced home to have lunch with friends. We just hung out together all afternoon, enjoying each other's company. The children played, the adults chatted.
We'd done similarly on Friday night - different food, different friends, same enjoyment. Plus we saw *Amazing Grace* together too. Not often you get a movie with good theology, great costumes and sets, accurate history and a jolly good yarn to boot.

It really was my kind of weekend.

he'll wish he didn't tell

Father Bear came home yesterday saying, "They need someone to deliver the programme in China in February"
My Excitement Metre raced off the scale!!!! It has a habit of doing that.
Within one second I had worked out that would mean two summers in a row - and right now, in the throes of week after week of drizzle and downpour, the concept was instantly appealing. The next second was devoted to wondering whether this summer's clothes would be suitable for China. Affirmative. Second three and I was on to organising passports, vaccinations and visas.
Then I remembered my TO DO list. "The Trip Planning" hasn't even made it on there yet!!!! That's still at-the-back-of-my-mind. There's no way we could be ready for The Big Trip in six months' time.

I slept on it.

And woke to tell Father Bear there's Definitely No Way We Could Do It.
I think I heard an audible sigh of relief!

BUT......

New day. New thought. New research.

What if we went up for the February - April stint and then returned for three months....and then continued with The Trip as per the original plan? My Live In Fear Of Global Warming Friends would certainly be scared by such a proposition.
*All*Those*Air*Miles*
But as I've said before, I am yet to be convinced that it is anything more than political hype.
So my conscience is clear.

We could do our planning while we're up there. No interruptions.

But if we went up there now, could we afford to do The Trip? Gut instinct (aka Father Bear) gloomily predicted it would cost (before you read how much he said, I need to insert a footnote and I'll do it right here to save you the trouble of scrolling to the bottom of the page: Father Bear has been known to err on the side of caution in the past, very much so, in fact. Which is why I have become an Expert in the Field of Creative Accounting. It's probably his caution that got the mortgage paid off - that, and his Amazing Miracle Number Crunching Computer Programme he wrote. Anyway, as I was saying, he thought that to go up to China now-ish would cost....) $50,000 - or did he say $60,000? I forget. Either way it was way higher than my guesstimate-based-on-careful-research - insert cheeky grin here -;-) Unless my figurings are wrong (and they might be, but check my track record, it's never happened before), I work it out at $3993. That seems pretty cheap for ten people for three months of *Cultural Exchange*. It would also give us the opportunity to "try before we buy" the Big Concept of traipsing right round the world potentially forever.

Can you feel my excitement?
I've even sent the kids to play outside so I can write because the rain has stopped and I'm feeling sorry for them all cooped up inside for days on end.
Isn't it funny how you can sit down at the keyboard with just a vague idea of saying "I got excited that Father Bear might take us to China sooner rather than later, but it's not going to happen after all".....but what comes out is a full story about global warming, our mortgage, How My Brain Works, what kind of people we are and justifications for today's parenting methodology. Intricate Simplicity!

dreams are free

While I'm going all foodie on ya, let me tell you about my dream kitchen.
I've always said I'd like a cellar and everyone thinks I'm joking.
But I'm not - I'm dead serious. A real cellar would be so useful.
It would give me somewhere to store all those preserves and chutneys that I do actually make.
It would provide space for a potato box and an onion box (instead of the basket I trip over every time I walk into the laundry).
It would give me somewhere to hang my strands of plaited garlic and dried mushrooms
It would hold my fresh milk and cream and homemade butter - can someone tell me, does the butter churn live in the cellar?
It would certainly have room for bags of wheat berries and oat groats and other whole grains.
Ah yes, I'd love a cellar.

I'd like a nice big table with a long bench too. I like to be able to sit down when I'm peeling potatoes for a dozen people. None of this standing up at the bench business. And my kids like to gather round and help aswell...again, much more *communal* around a table than standing in a line at a bench. Maybe my table romance is coloured by our dining room table. It's not the fanciest table around, but it's wooden and it has a history. I'd say we've done as much cooking at that table as we have at the bench, and as I turn into a more-n-more natural girl, the fact that it is made from a tree and not formica really appeals. It smells nicer, it feels nicer, it's warmer and when you drop a knife on it the dent adds to its magic instead of making it look tired and tatty.

Now because most of my stores would be in the cellar, I wouldn't need such a big pantry. Just enough room for the bread box and other *basics*. My ceramic mixing bowls, wooden spoons and cast iron cookware would probably fit in there. And I'd like a wooden sideboard for the crockery and cutlery. I don't just want to go into Early Settler and buy the oldest-looking piece I can find. I'd be really happy to wait and have it made by Dadda and the kids who want to help.

And something to cook on. Yes, we'll need to cook.
I used to think I'd like an outdoor oven, but then I thought "why waste all that good heat when it could be attached to the house and warm us all up? and why build a special shelter over it for when it rains when it could just be part of the kitchen itself which would already have a roof"
So I think a wood-burning oven INSIDE would be essential. I love the fact that you fire it up, cook a few pizzas (enough for our whole family and friends all at one time), throw in a leg of something to roast with veges and a pot of stew and then when all that's done it's the right temperature to bake a few loaves of bread and some bikkies or a cake. All that without using electricity all day long. When The Great Power Crisis happens, I'd be all set! Imagine that - cooking half a week's food from two hours of burning wood.

I might not need electricity in my kitchen, but I'm yet to be convinced that running water from a tap isn't a good idea! However, I would make sure the greywater was funnelled out to the garden when it was finished with.

And in a corner, on a rag rug made by J12, would be a rocking chair. Beside it would be my knitting bag and sewing basket. I've recently moved a comfy-to-work-in-chair to the place-where-the-kids-play-most and it's been great to sit and work while they mill around.

One day...some of this dream just might happen.
I'm filing it away for After The Trip.
But I won't forget.

Definite Dreams

Well the dreams are everything from this to this to this (if you have a look at the last one, you'll need to go to "Barge Brokerage" on the left...and then scroll down a wee bit to "Lanikai" - it's so worth doing - a very exciting prospect.....but one we will totally NOT be doing given that we don't have a spare NZ$400,000 in our back pocket.....that's the same reason we won't be doing the first one either!)

We've been considering getting some more land to do the semi-self-sufficient thing. If it were left up to me, I'd wait until after The Trip, but if we found the perfect piece now, Father Bear would be keen to go for it. My wee head doesn't have enough space to do trip planning and website designing and clothes making and ongoing home educating all at the same time as trying to buy land and learn how to use it - so most everything else has been put on hold while I run with Father Bear's Crazy Ideas and look at land......but I'm about to drop that baby and pick up some of the others again.

Partly because the trip is a Definite Dream. That's one that IS happening (well, God-willing, of course - one of our latest Sripures we've learnt has been "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day will bring forth" - so true)
The mostly-definite at this stage is: next August visit family in Malaysia, September to December Father Bear will work in China, then four months of *something* (hopefully Mongolia), May-June will be the Great Britain Pilgrimage towing a caravan behind a van with Grand-Father-Bear.....that much is planned.

Dreams beyond that.....well at the weekend we talked about everything from Father Bear getting a European University stint onto his CV...through to buying an acre of land with a house and well on it in Russia (would cost less than $5,000 - what a cheap year or two that would be, learning traditional farming methods from old babcias!)....through to us making a Kiwi contribution to the Simpler Times Village linked above.....through to having an organic poly-culture permaculture set-up with guest accommodation that people could come and stay in for a few days and milk a goat and make cheese and knead bread and read books and and and....

Without vision, the people perish - I don't think we're in danger of fading away through lack of hope or inspiration!

catching up

My email inbox is overflowing - quite nice really!
But I know I should get some answers out......so here we go.

COCONUT OIL
I get mine from East West Organics - they order it in from Ceres, so you out-of-towners might be able to contact Ceres directly if your local shop doesn't stock it. If any of you are purists, I'd better mention it IS refined. You can get unrefined, but it costs three times as much and so we have stuck with the cheaper-but-still-beneficial option. And even that is not cheap. 10l cost $109 last week.

The other issue with it is SATURATED FAT.
If you have got the heebie-jeebies over it, please go here and read at least three of the articles.

ISN'T THE WEATHER COLD!
Why, yes it is! In fact it's been so chilly in the evenings that I ended up feeling sorry for M4 who wears a knitted soaker over his night nappy (and no PJ pants coz they wick moisture through). I started knitting him a pair of longies a couple of days ago. They will be done in time for tonight.

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN READING?
I've been lent a copy of "The Continuum Concept" by Jean Liedloff, which I really need to FINISH by this weekend. I'm bound to discuss it some time next week!

I've got a great stack of self-sufficiency books by the bed and even Father Bear who is renowned for saying "I'm not a farmer" whenever I'm having a rural-dream picked one up and conceded it was "pretty interesting".

At the bottom of that pile are a couple of books about rural New Zealand architecture in the past 150 years. Why? Well, you never know when knowing that might come in handy! I researched traditional villas a couple of months back. Very interesting.

Two of my *own* books are being flicked through too - the old encyclopedia has been too overwhelming in terms of the amount of information that I don't know....but now in comparison to my newest acquisition, Mollison's tome on the right, it makes positively light reading!

And as these photos show, I am desperately in need of reading Father Bear's new book:

Actually, when we travel next year I am hoping to take the time to learn to a) use the camera well and b) sketch and use watercolours. I wonder if I'll be able to sneak this book into someone's pack;-)

DID YOUR KIDS MISS YOU AT THE WEEKEND?
ER (13 mo) had two very snuggly days when we got back, and M4 struggled having his first weekend away On His Very Own With No Other Siblings (in fact he ended up sleeping one night at Grandpa's with two sisters!) and T3 got a wee bit teary at church when she could see all her family in the distance....but apart from that....they had a ball. One watched lots of tv * another enjoyed playing Mother to ER * another didn't even have to do any chores, only clear the table * one was surprised to discover it's not just our family that goes to open homes at the weekend! *

Thanks all you families for taking one or two, even at last minute notice, and giving us a wonderful weekend.

WHAT DID YOU DO?
Dropping off kids took an hour and a half! Not bad we thought!
Friday night we ate at a Mongolian restuarant and dreamed. "Let's dream this weekend and no judgements" Father Bear had said. That will be a post of its own!
Friday night we Did Not Sleep. I was awake from 2-4am, at which point I decided I didn't NEED to go back to sleep right now coz I didn't have to get up in the morning, so I read until 5:30.
I then slept in till after 9! Just before 9:30 we discovered we could go to look at a house half an hour away at 10am. We raced out the door and turned up only to discover the gate closed. Hmmm.
Time for some shopping Father Bear needed to do for work....and while he was doing that the house guy rang him. We could go back - but not until after an auction of a villa on two acres that we were en route to. Bidding started above our final price so we were not in the running - actually noone was. There were no bids and we raced off to the other house. Father Bear loved loved loved it. We looked round for an hour, chatted with the owner and agreed to let him know what we think it's worth (it's not on the market).
Then we had a spontaneous-due-to-circumstances shopping afternoon, picking up some great bargains to get packed away for The Trip.
A weekend away for us almost always involves at least a few hours at Borders....this was no exception, but we were exhausted by 7:30 so headed to the hotel for the night. We both had a new book to read, but only managed to glance through the newspaper!
Sunday morning we wandered around the Viaduct Basin, stopped for breakfast in a cafe....Father Bear let me take my knitting and he watched the rugby replay on a big screen. Win-win! We thought we could get used to having no children and no church every weekend!
We wandered along the waterfront and stopped for ENORMOUS icecreams before heading back to pick up kids. It would be nice to say everyone lived ahappily ever after, but the reality is the older ones were tired and scratchy and snitching with each other and generally quite unpleasant.
It was still a wonderful weekend though.

WHICH FORUMS HAVE YOU BEEN LURKING AROUND?
http://www.ruralvillage.org/
http://www.lifestyleblock.co.nz/
http://www.bootsnall.com/
and one with a few friends.

ARE THE OLDER KIDS READY FOR THEIR SCIENCE COMPETITION? ISN'T IT SOON?
Yes! And yes. They're tossing up whether to blog about it now (coz they're all done) or wait until after The Day - Monday.

bursting with excitement

The kids are all going on holiday to six different homes around town tonight.
Father Bear and I will be HOME ALONE!
Then tomorrow we're going in to town to a hotel for the night.
We're planning on going to a house auction, doing some "trip research", eating out at a Mongolian restaurant, visiting Borders, indulging in Moevenpick icecreams at Mission Bay, chatting about life dreams....and we'll probably even watch the All Blacks test (if we do, I'm allowed to knit so that's a win-win scenario!!!!)

A friend, who is very family-friendly, recently told me her reaction to those martyr-mothers who "never spend a day away from their children".
OH HOW BORING.
WHERE'S YOUR SENSE OF ADVENTURE?

I'm with her all the way!
Only a few hours to wait now!!!!!

it's quiet round here

I've got no energy to climb up on any soapboxes today!
And even if I were able to do so, I've got no voice!

I've noticed all the children are talking quieter! I didn't think I was that loud!!!

Racing round my head are ideas for our travelling website......thoughts about a house auction Father Bear is threatening to bid at on Saturday.......musings about another house we were shown but was withdrawn from the market and seemed pretty ideal.....travel plans.....a couple of conversations I'm taking part in on a discussion board......what's for dinner....wild dreams of moving to Simpler Times Village and doing something like this (and we're not even farmers....at all....not even a little bit)......wondering why J11 has taken himself off to bed three afternoons out of the last four......more travel ideas....all topped off with an itching to scrapbook and crochet and knit and sew all at once!!!!

role reversal

Usually it's Mama Bear who comes up with wild ideas in this household. But last night it was Father Bear's turn. A colleague at work had just told him about a 2 acre farmlet with old villa for sale right next to his 10 acres. And that reminded us of some more sections on the market at the end of that road (we have a feeling that villa just might be out of our price bracket!). We ended up talking about selling this place, buying a section and building a garage (with composting toilet) on it to live in until we go away, and then coming back to build ourselves a nice small house and have the chooks and milk goat and big vege plot etc etc.

He hadn't even seen my blog yesterday!!!!! Funny really.

a teeny tiny house

Last week I got a pile of books out of the library....mostly New Zealand architecture and a couple of small house books. One really caught my imagination and I leafed through it a number of times, even pausing to actually read it!
Incidentally, I have enjoyed looking at Tumbleweed Houses occasionally in recent weeks. Less recently, I had pored through The Not so Big House and its companion Creating The Not So Big House at Borders one Day Out On My Own.
It's an idea I've been fascinated with and certainly feel drawn to.

We're not about to sell up and start building again (well we might if we weren't about to head overseas, but building and travelling don't go well together...although I did suggest to Father Bear that we renovate a castle in Poland - scroll down and look at those photos!!!!!! Grandpa pointed out the "own water supply" is through the roof!).....as I say, we're not about to build, but all the same, I did something crazy (something else, that is).

On Sundays I try to do something different to the rest of the week to be rejuvenated. So yesterday I sat down with a piece of paper and pencil and tried to design a small house for the ten of us. To cut a two hour story short....I came up with a design that would house 14 people (no, we're not having triplets!!!!) in less than 140 square metres with a 12.5m x 6.5m footprint. There was even a laundry chute, a 3.5 metre long table and an office for Father Bear to work from home. The only problem was that half of our books would not fit....but it would be easy-peasy to add a *library* in the attic.

I think I'd like to build it...and get Ross Chapin Architects to design a character-filled exterior like this one.

ONE DAY

really round the world

I haven't had a moment today to do a blog entry.....and this evening I'm beavering away making our website....I'm getting the hang of it almost enough to enjoy the process......so for now I'll leave you with an interview I have just done for Rolf Pott's travel website, Vagabonding. While I'm at it, I could recommend his book by the same name - I read it a couple of weeks ago committed the almost-unforgiveable sin ~ underlining lots of it! You can purchase it from GoodBooks for only two thirds of the cost that it is at other stores....and their profits go to Oxfam. WIN-WIN-WIN


Now before you go and read the interivew (if you want to!), I can update the plans...we have a more definite time frame than when I did the interview....we won't be leaving here till August. January will see us no further away than camping at the beach up north. And, SADLY, it looks like Africa is off the itinerary for the moment too. We have done some pricing and it's looking too much.
That's all part of the process.....dream some dreams and see what you can do!

so let's just call this a craft blog

never mind provocative statements or musings about life or records of adventures....this blog is turning into a *what's-on-my-needles* piece!!

so here we go again......

hat for K9 to put away in her backpack for when we go travelling....maybe I'll blog about that later.....

...or how about now?

it's hardly a secret any more......Leighton Smith read out my email on NewstalkZB this morning......hey I could post it here...then you'd know I do things other than knit;-)

This was prompted by a series of sob stories in the media at large about how noone can afford houses today...Leighton happened to be discussing it so I had my say:

Dear Leighton,

Do NOT let anyone tell you it is impossible to buy a first home.
My husband and I returned from 2 1/2 years in Eastern Europe 14 years ago and had $30 to our name. We worked our butts off, lived in a tiny flat, ate simply, saved every penny and managed to finish our degrees and get postgrad diplomas within two years with NO debt. We continued saving and when we had a deposit, worked out we could afford a $100,000 house so we went to the real estate agent and asked what they had. They just laughed at us! So we bought a section and built a house. Cost us $96,000.
We sold that house and built another, swapped that one and then built one more. In less than a decade we were mortgage-free in a house worth at least three times as much as our first one is *now*. And don't think it's because we were double-income-no-kids. My husband is in education (ie hardly high paying) and I have been home with the children - over the past twelve years we have had eight of them. Yes that's right. Eight kids, single income, no mortgage.
And my hubby got his masters while working aswell - you do what is important to you.

What are we up to now? Looking at taking the kids to see the *real* needs in the world - China, Mongolia, Tanzania, Great Britian (OK that bit's a holiday!) and then settling to work again in Poland or volunteer at an orphanage in Romania - these are our current dreams we are working towards.

And *that* is why we need woolly hats!!

Ready to Risk

I've been mulling over these two quotes this past week:

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.” ~ Robert Heinlein (1907-1988)

“Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever.” ~ Philip Adams

Then I went to church this morning and the pastor spoke about how our culture is so conditioned against taking risks, how we value and esteem "sensible" decisions and security.
(he talked about other things too, but this bit stood out for me!)
I was challenged at the thought that we might be persuaded to take risks for ourselves, but certainly not for others, especially if we stand to gain *nothing*. Isn't this true?


This sermon came on the heels of a couple of exciting risky emails.....one from Poland, one from Mongolia.
Don't expect too many *sensible* posts from now on!!!!!!

This is not about charity, it's about justice

Here's part of Bono's award-acceptance speech (which award? I'm not sure! But it's a great sermon!)

True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom. Love thy neighbour is not a piece of advice - it’s a command. And that means….that in the global village we’re gonna have to start loving a whole lot more people…..Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die.

So that bit wasn't the sermon, that was just Bono getting warmed up. Then he (in his own words) "climbs into the pulpit for just one moment":

God has a special place for the poor. The poor are where God lives. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is where the opportunity is lost and lives are shattered. God is with the mother who has infected her child with a virus that will take both their lives. God is under the rubble in the cries we hear during war time. God, my friends, is with the poor. And God is with us if we are with them. This is not a burden, this is an adventure and don’t let anyone tell you it cannot be done. We can be the generation that ends extreme poverty.

I keep wondering about this, wondering what the answers are. It's constantly mulling around in the back of my mind. But my actions betray a stronger interest in what to feed myself today or what to clothe my children with this winter.

it's rained every day since then.....

Last Friday afternoon we went down to the waterfront to see a boat that's used for eye and dental surgery in various poor nations that was moored there.......dreaming about going aboard the Mercy Ship in Africa (we've since been turned down - too many kiddos!!!!)

It was such a different world. The waterfront I mean, not Africa. I am not for a moment saying that the people we saw didn't love their babies, but it all looked quite FAKE. The babies looked like fashion accessories. Highly-made-up mothers in label clothing teetering on label stillettos next to partners in more label clothing pushing buggies (that cost more than our van) containing babies covered in yet more labels.....

My baby was attached to me with a long piece of muslin from Spotlight.

I had blue croc-wannabees on my feet ($10 from the Warehouse).

We were accompanied by too many kids to be able to stop at one of the teeny tiny cafe tables for a coffee (not that I drink it anyway!!!).

vicarious travel with Picasso

I have this little bug in me that grows stronger every so often, calms down and diminishes slightly for a time before returning with renewed avengence! It's a yearning for adventure.

It's been slightly appeased recently with reading a few travel blogs,websites and fora (doesn't that sound pugnacious!! shall I just say "forums"?)
Or maybe "appeased" isn't the right word....perhaps "fed" or "cultivated" or "tortured" would be more accurate. Either way, I'm adding a sampling of my favourites to my sidebar....

On one of the sites, I came across something attributed to Pablo Picasso:
“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
That is so true of me....and making this blog gave me the confidence to design a complete website....I'm hoping to win a sponsorship deal to get it up and running.....in the meantime, I'll just stick with the discipline of blogging most days and taking walks around the block.

no post today

I'm too busy finishing a quilt

and dreaming BIG dreams

simply beautiful

After sewing my skirt

I have decided once again

that I actually quite like sewing!

I don't like hemming - but my skirt didn't have a hem

I'm thinking of making something a little bit like this.....not for my little girls.....not even for my big girls......but for me. I don't see why not! Maybe you will tell me that it's really too fussy for an adult and a Mama who has had eight kids should steer clear of two layers of fabrics over her hips and I've got enough clothes now and I'm not *that* kind of person....I might listen;-)

do it anyway

After posting about big dreams, I spent the evening trying to work out where they all fit in to my life. Even if they *should*. I hardly slept a wink....thinking thinking thinking.

This morning I felt inclined to sadly throw them all away.....then tonight I went to "visit" MamaMonk....and she had posted these lyrics:

Do it Anyway: Martina McBride
You can spend your whole life building something from nothing
One storm can come and blow it all away

Build it anyway

You can chase a dream that seems so out of reach
and you know it might not ever come your way

Dream it anyway

God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good
And when I pray it doesn’t always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway, I do it anyway

This world’s gone crazy and it’s hard to believe
that tomorrow will be better than today

Believe it anyway

You can love someone with all your heart,
for all the right reasons,
and in a moment they can choose to walk away

Love ‘em anyway

God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good
And when I pray it doesn’t always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway, I do it anyway

You can pour your soul out singing a song you believe in
that tomorrow they’ll forget you ever sang
Sing it anyway, sing it anyway

I sing, I dream, I love, anyway

Thanks MM

on the move

I've just read Slice of Heaven in the past 24 hours.

A family from New Zealand with four kids under five (just like us....well, like we used to be) travel and live. This book introduces the parents and focusses on the family's time renovating and living in a schoolhouse in Italy and then establishing a semi-self-sufficient paradise in Nicaragua before returning to NZ for the birth of their fifth child. Next stop, next book, France.

I thought it would make my feet itch....and yes, it did.
The author's hope "that our story has served as some inspiration for you to pursue your dreams, no matter how 'wild' or 'wonderful'" was fulfilled!

So what am I dreaming?
*of visiting family in Malaysia again...and getting Chinese names for our last three children
*of spending a year living in a yurt with a community in outer Mongolia
*of travelling around England and Scotland with father-in-law too, seeing "where we came from"
*of taking a cycle tour through Holland (well a cycle tour anywhere would be good, but Holland is flat!)
*of visiting friends in Romania
*of settling in Poland again for some time
*of living for a year on every continent (you gotta dream big!)
*of setting up a website to record our journeys, document our philosophy, share photos and ideas and experiences and recipes and travelling with big families tips!
*of somehow making this all of benefit to *the poor and disadvantaged* SOMEHOW
*of making use of our quasi-famous status (they noticed it with four kids in the book - with twice as many children, we notice it EVERY time we go somewhere new)

And what are the children dreaming?
*well they want to come to Mongolia.....and horse trek down to the Great Wall of China (they are more adventurous than me!)
*they are keen for us to renovate a totally dilapidated 200 year old castle we've seen in Poland (as J12 said, "Well we've done up the houses and that was fun, this would just be bigger" - yeah about twenty times bigger!!!!)
*they want to live on a houseboat
*they want to live where it snows

And Father Bear?
*The England Trip was his idea
*he occasionally talks about "a trip across America"
*there is definitely a close connection between Malaysia and his stomach!


At one time we owned only what could fit in a backpack. We were so unencumbered.
Now we are loaded with stuff - in spite of consciously trying to live simply.
We might live off one income and eat beans three or four times a week - but we are rich. Just because we know people who have two incomes and eat meat every day, does not mean we are poor! We have an income - that's more than a lot of people. We have beans AND meat - that's more than lots more people. We have food EVERY DAY - three times a day. We have shelter. We have clothing. We have a motorised vehicle and pedalpower too. We have running water, hot and cold. We have a washing machine, a refrigerator, a kitchen mixer with all sorts of attachments, a lawnmower, a television. We have toys and books and tools and games. We have two toilets, two computers.

I am not ungrateful for these things. I don't feel guilty about them - though I do wonder *why me?* Why are we so blessed?

I just don't want to spend my life sitting here *enjoying* them. I want to use them. (Of course we lend out our books and people borrow our trailer and we give away excess produce from our garden and kitchen, we are able to have people stay with us....but I mean something more than that.)

I am keen to take the children to *experience* a different life - hence the Mongolian yurt.
I'd love to be self-sufficient....Eastern Europe is a cheap place to get the land to try that out! (crikey you can buy a castle on a few acres for next-to-nothing!)
I long to be unencumbered again!

Our wedding invitation talked about us being "gypsies for Jesus", and for the first dozen years of our married life we were continually on the go. For the past five we've been in one place, living in the same house. Not so much gypsy, but still for Jesus.
I wonder if we'll pack up again and be on the move.
We won't hitch-hike across Europe. We won't carry a tent to pitch wherever we can.
But we could adventure. We could journey.

BUT

I am not just me, an island in the ocean, disconnected from other people.
I have others to think about.
The things that I do with the children could be done anywhere in the world.
But it's not just about me and the kids either!
There's Father Bear.
Father Bear has a job.
He enjoys his job.....it's satisfying, it's the job he dreamed of doing, it pays the bills (and he wisely points out we would still need to eat wherever we were travelling), it's a job that wouldn't necesarilly wait for him if he traipsed around the globe.
He works with people who appreciate the input he has into their lives - he serves people who don't have others to turn to. So it's not just about Father Bear either. It's about the people he works with, the people he helps, people who have sometimes come from very traumatic situations and are trying to settle in NZ.
So while Father Bear would enjoy having more time with his own family and would certainly enjoy taking a break, he would miss out on an important part of his own life. He would also miss his friends, his church community, his extended family, his sports games.
And the reality is that right now we are so busy doing stuff here that we don't even have time to dream about doing anything different!


Now back to the book......I found it to be inspiring and interesting and totally fascinating. I was aware my kids would probably love "the island life", but I have no desire to do it myself. It painted such a picture of Italy that I have a never-before-felt desire to go and live there (but we'd live in a trullo!!!!!)
I loved the book - well, no, not the book really - it's the people - for their determination to bring up their children so intentionally. It was great to read of someone passionately living their beliefs.....daring to be different.
But at the same time, I came away with a feeling that *something* was a bit futile. I can't put my finger on it. It certainly wasn't their aspirations for their kids, it wasn't the great delight they take in good food, it wasn't the fact that they didn't *do* the work themselves....what was it? I really don't know.

A Satsifying Discovery

Many ideas and questions mulling around my mind come together in this post.

If we were ever without electricity for a prolonged period of time, how would we cope?

Is there a way to have rice when camping? (I’m a bit dependent on my rice cooker at home!)

If we go travelling is there a way we could cook without lugging a full kitchen with us? (or at least a crock pot which I use almost every day)

Could we reduce our energy consumption? (if I wannabe self-sufficient one day, relying on wind or solar power, I’d really need to address this one)

How could we travel if we couldn’t cook beans? We a) need to eat beans now to save money for travelling and b) would need to eat beans whilst travelling so that we could afford to go into Buckingham Palace BUT I don’t want to miss out on visiting the Statue of Liberty, because I’m watching our pot of beans simmering for seven hours.


So I’ve been pondering “low-cook” meals. A friend suggested hamburgers, but, to be honest, they don’t rate as an easy meal the way we do them….you see, just like the little red hen, we grind the wheat to make the flour to make the buns…..we grow the lettuce and carrots and radishes and tomatoes….we sprout our own seeds…..we pickle the cabbage and beetroot we’ve already grown…we make the relish and the mayonnaise and sometimes the cheese…..it is time-consuming to do these things, and how would we travel with our garden? ;-)

I was thinking more along the lines of salads and raw vege platters and stirfries….until Nikki (hi Nikki!!) suggested cooking baskets.

I’m not usually one to sit around for too long simply wondering (one of my weaknesses is definitely jumping in to things with both feet before engaging brain)….so I *made* one. Not as fancy as the ones in Kenya. Not even out of a basket. I used what I had (a large bag I knit and felted a couple of months ago)...

….and it worked! (BTW, do you like my authentic Nepali cooking pot above? Now, just look at that fluffy brown rice below...mmmmmm)



Once I’ve *started* acting, I tend to do a bit of thinking, refining, improving…and so here’s what HaveCookingPotWill Travel2 is going to be like (thanks K9 for even suggesting that I could knit one – you’re a legend!)
There will be one big huge gigantic enormous outer bag.
There will be an inner bag, which fits the pot snugly, and comes up higher than the pot so that the lid is less likely to be accidentally knocked off. This might even have a drawstring cord at the top!
Once you’ve put the pot into the smaller bag, you’d place it in the big one and then stuff all the clothes you’re not wearing at the time (if you’re travelling) in between the two layers. If you were at home you would be more likely to have a dedicated stuffing! This time I used three baby blankets, a beach towel and some leftover woollen quilt batting.

The cool thing about these bags (I think) is that you can use them to carry your beans and rice and veges home from market before you cook. They would be relatively small (well, smaller than taking a pressure cooker to Peru or Korea) and making them would be a much more creative process than going in to any superstore and buying one of seven hundred and sixty four identical items off the shelf!

I can hardly wait to finish my current projects and start on this one…I’ve got a great stash of cream wool just waiting to be dyed and turned into something funky!
I’ll have to start collecting recipes too. Here’s the first one:

1 ½ C brown rice
1 ½ C water
Put in pot and bring to the boil. Boil for five minutes. Put the lid on and tuck up tightly in cooking bag for half an hour.

That’s it!
Definitely more *simplicity* than intricate!
(I guess the intricate bit comes in even wanting to try something different and not just sticking with crockpots and rice cookers)

One final thought - the blog address given above is big on global warming.....as yet I remain unconvinced that this is anything other than a political agenda. Maybe I'll discuss that another time! For now, I'm loving the cooking basket concept.