A little update

I haven't posted in a while. I didn't really know what to write. I'm struggling a little here with bills. Our rates notice arrived and got lost in the mountain on the bench and I only rediscovered it yesterday. The first quarter is due at the end of this month. I've organized weekly direct debits to cover it. 

Guess it pays to put your bills where you can see them. Our rates and car registration are the only bills not automatically taken care of through direct debits. I love the way I can pay all of our bills weekly or fortnightly and not have to stress. 

How do you look after your bills? 

Let me know in the comments

Saving grocery money

An interesting week for dinners in our house last week. In preparation for our little bundle, I'm trying to keep our spending down. 

I decided not to buy groceries, but to try and 'shop' from our own pantry, fridge and freezer instead. This means being a little more creative and thinking outside the box. 

We managed to create six meals from things we had in the freezer (which included a prepared version of my pasta sauce) and being inventive with our pantry items. 

Here is one of DH's creations. We had no bread crumbs, but DH used crushed corn chips as an alternative. 

Chickens and how we keep them

I thought that I would write today about our chickens and how we go about keeping them on our property.

We have 3 chickens which our DS named "Nugget" "Chips" and "Toy".

I'm not sure who is who, but he always seems to know. One is kind of hidden in the photo, but they love scratching in our garden and seeing what they can find. We got them a few months ago, but the cold weather meant they weren't laying. I was a bit worried, but DH assured me that they would start when the weather warmed up and he was right. Now we are getting 3 eggs a day and no idea how to use so many of them!

My sister is training for a body building competition, so she was going to take them, but now her diet plan has changed and eggs are not allowed. I now have about 3 dozen eggs to find a way to cook with them.

Our coop setup is quite simple and lives in the corner of our yard.

It uses the fence as part of the walls and a frame of timber, wrapped in wire. We used our dog's kennel (she prefers to sleep on a dog bed outside wrapped in a blanket) and modified it. Here's a photo:

The kennel was washed out and cleaned then we cut a hole into the top and added a hinge. The nesting boxes on top are old dresser drawers attached to the fence. Our chickens seem to prefer the nesting box on the top left for some reason. The boxes are the same size and have pretty much the same amount of straw in each.

Every morning, it is my job before work to refill their water and feed and to collect any eggs. DH lets them out for a run once he gets home.

Most mornings, DS has asked for eggs on toast for breakfast which helps to eat through them - looks like I might have a big baking day coming up this week. They do produce good eggs though. This is one of the ones we used this morning:

A double yolker for breakfast - delicious!!

I'm off to find some recipes using eggs - I'll let you know what I find!!

Not my usual day

Usually on my day off, we spend our day baking and cooking together. Today DS went with my father in law to walk the dogs. His choice. I offered him the options of cooking with me or walking the dogs and he chose the dogs. I would have liked him to stay with me, but ultimately, I like for him to make his own choices and decisions.

Today instead, I used it as a spring cleaning day. I swept, vacuumed and mopped the floors. I caught up on washing and actually folded it and put it away. I also cleaned out our chicken coop. We have 3 chickens which have recently started laying eggs. We are now getting 3 eggs a day and this is more than we can eat, so I give them to my sister who is training for a bodybuilding competition and is eating 4 egg whites a day for breakfast. I have two dozen eggs for her tonight and that will still leave us with half a dozen for us to have to cook with.

I feel quite proud of myself for achieving this as my house looks nice and I will still be able to squeeze in some baking which will help with lunches and various snacks for our week and weekend times, especially if we go anywhere - we can take our own snacks and save money.

Usually we like to spend one day of our weekend at home working on our house and the other day is for out and about. Sometimes it's to the park or for a stroll to the river to take our dog for a walk. Sometimes we go to the zoo (Melbourne or Werribee) and take our own snacks and drinks.

This weekend we might be able to do both as our housework is pretty much up to date. We might have one day as a cooking day and freeze up those meals ready for another night. I currently have a list of about 40 different meal options (including simple ones like eggs & bacon on toast and more involved options like roast) that we can have across our weeks.

Where to begin?

As I sat at the obstetrician today (they were running an hour late!) I thought about the information that I could share through here. I thought that it would be interesting to share things I have found that have worked for us in the past and how they saved us some money and time along the way.


I have found that cooking from scratch tends to save money and we get extra family time as we cook together. I work late and don't arrive home until 7:30pm, so it's important to us that dinner is prepared and ready to eat when I arrive home. I work 4 days a week and often use my day off as a cooking day with our son. I like to make meals that I can pop into seal able bags and label before freezing them.

My partner DH (Darling Hubby) works from the early mornings and collects our son after work. Often he will cook or reheat a meal I have prepared. I like to meal plan as often as I can. I use an inventory of our pantry, fridge and freezer to see what we have on hand and then I refer to a fantastic website called Supercook. (www.supercook.com) You can check the boxes to put your ingredients in and it will offer numerous meal ideas based on what you have on hand. Last time we tried this, we had 10,000 meal options.

I will add some of our tried and tested recipes to Facebook for you to review. I'd love your feedback to see how your family may have enjoyed them.

Remember: Saving can be fun and a time for family.

I'd forgotten about this

I was thinking recently about starting a blog about our life and hopes and dreams and then I rediscovered this.

At present, we have been together just over 11 years. We have a 3 year old son Jaxon and another little one on the way, which we have just found out that we are expecting a little girl. We are nervous about this because we were expecting a boy and had to ask the sonographer to double check what she saw!

I will be popping up every so often with posts on how we are going and things that interest me.


Thank you for following and I look forward to sharing with you all

Ebony