The week in review

Well, I am at the end of my first week doing Retro Age full-time in a loooonnngggg time. To say I thoroughly enjoyed myself would be an understatement - I loved the week! I have to say I was totally happy and won't regret leaving freelancing to dedicate my time to my husband, my boys and our lifestyle change. I am full of optimism...

Life...

Justin has almost finished our chicken coop and we are just about to order a three or four chooks. We're only buying them for fresh eggs and manure - we're not going to eat them! We also want the boys to learn more about lifestyle and life choices - they will be the chief chook looker-after-ers. We've also nearly completed two big vegie patches and will be ordering our seeds from Eden Seeds this week. The chook pen is around $100 and the seeds will be around $150 - not a big investment thus far on a new way of living.

We have also finally bought our paint to redo the trims around our roof and windows and our Shadowclad carport - the red and deep brown colourway won! The brown will be the trim and the red will be a rare feature - it's a lovely deep, deep red - a colour I've always loved. Now all we need to do to finish the front of the house is to finish the front garden, pave (we'll be doing that) and I am going to sew the boys' curtains. They're very mod, as you can imagine!

Frugal ways this week included:

1. Washing 95% of our dishes by hand - we worked out our dishwasher uses 26 litres of water a wash whereas our sink only holds eight. Makes sense to do three hand-washing loads a day (or less) and save on the energy...
2. We hung all of our clothes washing out on the line - we are learning to utilise sunny days when they're here! No more rushing around using a clothes dryer...
3. I baked four loaves of bread from scratch and they lasted all week - yum! I bake two loaves at a time to save on electricity and freeze the second loaf.
4. I made all of our main meals - porcupine meatballs and pasta, beef ragu, potato and leek soup, beef and guinness casserole, zucchini slice - and all of the leftovers were either frozen for another meal or used for the lunches the next day. I am making double quantities of each meal to cut down on my time cooking and also the electricity!
5. My aim to provide most of our food was met - now we're working on providing a large percentage of what we put into our food!

Retro Age...

Retro Age was boosted this week by 50 new arrivals to the website and I worked at removing the sold stock from the site. I have five more shelves of stock to still update - I aim to get at least two of these done this week. I am also working on our new plans for growth and have enjoyed keeping you updated with the new stock via this blog this week. The return to ebay has been very fun - I hadn't forgotten as much as I thought I did - and with five sales, I was grinning from ear to ear. There will be more and more ebay coming!

Time is life and life is time. I wish I could do more - but I have to remember to slow down and enjoy our boys and our quiet life. I want to smell the roses and watch them grow, too...

Mothers Day tomorrow - can't wait for a nice sleep in and brekkie in bed. Happy Mothers Day to all!

xNess