Butternut soup

There is nothing better than a nice bowl of soup with a slice or two of crusty warm, fresh bread with butter melting into it.

One of our favourites is Butternut soup, one reason being we grew butternuts this last season. Things always seem to taste better vwhen they're home grown. :)

I mix up my own curry powder, I am allergic to chillies and tomatoes so my blend works well for us, not too spicey but flavourful all the same.


INGREDIENTS: 

About half a butternut (size dependant) approximately 500g or so. Chopped up.
1-2 potatoes diced
1 onion diced (not pictured)
1tsp curry powder
1.5 litres of water/ or stock (I tend to make my own chicken stock and use that)
1 can of chickpeas/butterbeans/canellini beans
some cream for stirring in when it's served 

our beautiful butternut we grew! :)

 Fry the onion in butter in a large pot, add the water/stock, the veggies and curry powder. Bring the water to  a gentle boil and cook until the veggies are soft.

Remove from the heat and use a stick blender (or any blender that will blend the soup nicely) Blend until smooth and serve. Add cream on top. I love to make swirly patterns :)

Yummy oozy, buttery gluten free bread

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Progress update on some tasks

Another week gone by and we're still going strong on the diy  and the decluttering, in fact its all almost habitual now, I'm actually really enjoying it all. Yes even the decluttering :) . Our week went like this :

Our garden helper was here again today, he managed to get the HUGE stump out of the garden bed that's going to become a stoned walkway (as in pebbles and pavers) The stump took up that entire patch of soil!

Well the fan  update went terribly, 'M' has said "never again!" Every possible thing that could go wrong did go wrong, the final thing was the switch. While trying to drill holes to attach the switch panel the drill knocked the dial and broke it off! Meaning we can't switch it on or off. 'M' has to do a hack now and preset it on a setting and put in a regular light switch instead of a dial. I'll keep you posted on that one.


The garage  carport roof trim is being painted the primer layer is done, the undercoat is almost done and finally the topcoat will go on, even with the undercoat it's looking great.

We are also getting brand new garage doors! We have had really old metal ones that lift up and are upgrading to roll up doors. They are being installed tomorrow :)


All the pot plants are painted and laid out in a configuration I like, it took a few attempts to get it to what I think is right . The before pictures can be seen in this  post

Declutter challenge update: I have completed all 15 days successfully and weirdly I'm excited for the next 11 and a half months of this, its so refreshing to get rid of clutter, its like I can finally breathe.

Today was my birthday, so I got a special birthday lunch

I think the best thing about today was when 'A' said "happy birthday" when 'M' told him to say it me, it was a bit garbled but you could hear what he was saying, a truly heart melting moment.

Week 3 is fast approaching and I'm ready for it, bring it on!
L

Succulent garden

So yesterday late afternoon I managed to finish our Succulent garden! I'm loving it. These succulents have a real history. Before my husband and I were engaged I knew I wanted succulents and proteas  featured at our wedding. I got our first plant in December 2011. Succulents are really easy to propogate, you basically break off a leaf and stick it in soil, it will in time produce a new plant. So anyway back to our succulents. We bought 3 plants and propagated enough succulents for our wedding in February 2013. After the wedding those succulents were put outside just on top of our water pump house roof and left to do their thing.

Over the weekend I replanted them in a garden bed that's going to be in the middle of 2 walkways leading up to our house. Its so nice to have a part of our wedding in our home even now nearly 4 years later.

Today was our first swimming lesson after the holidays, my little fish did amazingly well considering we didn't really practice. He started swimming lessons at 10 weeks old and now at 20 months old he can paddle around a pool on a pool noodle, and kick and paddle with his arms while we have our hands under his belly. He's amazing to watch, but I'm his mom so of course I think that ;)

We got the fan up, with so many hitches and delays and tried to switch it on and it wouldn't work :( so we're back to square one and have to check out the switch on it tomorrow.

L

Number one fan

Today was more about running around and getting things we need for future tasks, a very busy Saturday I must say.

Last Summer our ceiling fan in our bedroom broke, we did nothing about it at the time, so today we bought a new ceiling fan and started the process of installing it, stalling being the operative word ;) 'M' got the old one down (with 'A's' help of course)

but the instructions for wiring it up are limited. So we're stalled for tonight. Tomorrow we'll get help from our electrician brother in law. Luckily its an independant fan unit so its not connected to any light fittings, and its not like we had a working fan anyway.

We also bought some lavendar plants and some stones for the succulent garden which is a work in progress, I primed the pots and just need to paint them tomorrow morning quickly, we have a helper in the garden tomorrow so that's one of his tasks for the day- to replant the lavender :)

One small organising task I did today was to get plastic envelopes for 'A's' puzzles, they fit in perfectly and its incredibly pleasing to my ocd nature.

The declutter task for today is to declutter pot holders and kitchen towels, since I have so few to start with there is nothing to declutter. I will however be adding more. We are goung the unpaper towel route. What is unpaper towels you ask? It's cloth that is used in place of paper towels in the kitchen, you wipe up spills and counters with them, you can use them as napkins and then you wash and reuse them. Mine are flannel on one side and toweling on the other side.

I upcycled some of 'A's' burp clothes and they are now in the kitchen, he was quite an unburpy (is that a word?) baby so most of them are brand new.

I'll get more into other 'green living' things we do in another post, we cloth diaper and use cloth wipes too, and I use cloth sanitary pads and a menstrual cup.

Onto tomorrow, another busy day.

L