Getting my mojo back

Its been a while since I have posted something 'homesteady', but life has been crazy crazy for far too long. I studied my Masters part time for 3.5 years (hence all the crazy other posts), I went back to work part time, my babies all started big school, and  most recently I have started a new part time job working more hours. Sometimes you just have to let things slide until you can get your head above water again. For your own sanity you have to focus on what is going to get you through - sleep, eat and surviving. But now I am starting to feel the need to rediscover the 'old' me, and get back into my interests, find that homesteading mojo I have been putting to the side for far too long, plus look into some new ideas that were always on the '....when I finish this bloody study I'm going to.....' list.

So to get back into the swing of things, I have ditched the traditional housework-on-my-day-off routine and made these instead

 - Laundry detergent (makes about 10L)
 - Almond meal (sounds fancy if I said I 'made it' but I really just ground up almonds)
 - Toothpaste - I use this recipe
 - and cake...just cause it smells good and I wanted cake (I added poppy seeds to this recipe)

So to keep this post short and to the point as I soon have to go pick up kids, my new 'thing' is trying to decrease our waste, and in particular our plastics. I got interested when I somehow stumbled across Zero Waste Home and through a bit more research an Australian version at Gippsland Unwrapped. Although we are SO FAR from a zero waste household, I am trying to do things gradually (all at once doesn't work in our house). My first goal is to decrease the amount of non-recyclables. I know that it does take quite a bit of energy resources to recycle, but we have to start somewhere. I'll get to recyclables in the process, hopefully. So here is a pick of a few things we have been doing to decrease our plastics and waste

Here, I have fruit and veggie bags and also some homemade beeswax wraps which I use in the kids' lunchboxes. I roughly followed this recipe and used our own beeswax.

We already compost, make a lot of food from scratch and give food scraps to our new puppy (he's a bitsa rescue pup, he's destructive but cute), but I think we can do more. I have also been planning meals which answers the dreaded question 'whats for dinner mum?'..every..single..day, and I don't have to 'think' during the week. I have a planned list on the fridge and the kids now know just to refer to the list. ON the plus, I try to get those things that we need for our meals on our fortnightly shop.

I also hope to attend a UHC event next weekend - garden porn (aka seed catalogues). Between work, study, and football on weekends I have not been able to attend events as I would like.

But I feel like I'm coming back. Slowly.