My new Direction!

Well, thanks to the ever lovely Eilleen I think I have found my new creative outlet.... for now anyway!

I have just joined NaBloPoMo and from tomorrow I will start their July Challenge.... FOOD!

This is something I'm really looking forward to for a few reasons....

1. I love to write - I always have! In the past (ie pre internet) I used to have diaries full of ramblings from the more difficult times in my life - now I tend to vent in my beloved little NC forum :D Writing has always been very cleansing for me so I'm looking forward to making an effort to write every single day... and you guys (or whoever actually reads this LOL) can be my audience.

2. FOOD - what a great topic for me! Considering that since we started our BIP in February this year, I have been spending sooooo much time in the kitchen, and am very food orientated at the moment, I think this is superb timing :D

3. Eilleen suggested looking at my cooking as my creative outlet and this was like a little lightbulb moment in my brain! Until now I have been sticking to the recipes provided to us at the beginning of the program, but over the weekend I discussed a few ways to substitute our ingredients for regular recipe ingredients, so over the next few weeks I hope to start to expand on the recipes we were given by fiddling with some of my old favourite recipes. Of course, given the Confidentiality Agreement I can't divulge my recipes - although I can probably give you the originals before I play with them ;)

4. Food Photography! Every entry about food needs to have pictures! So this is something I haven't ever blogged about... In the weeks surrounding finding out I was pregnant with DD2, I was taking part in a 6 week basic photography course. I thoroughly enjoyed this, but unfortunately I was rather unwell for the first 16+ weeks of that pregnancy and I kind of lost the bug once the course had finished.... And of course I only have a regular SLR camera (and my point & shoot digital), so to practice involves using copious amounts of actual film and then the additional costs/resources of having it developed. I'd love to have a D-SLR, but for now, I think I will try and learn to use the Fully Programmable options on my little digital camera to start with.

So there you go.... for the next month you will have lots to read about if you wish (or if there's no one reading, I'll just be talking to myself LOL)...

And to keep you interested... here's a little something I can tell you about tomorrow :D

Long Overdue Update and a New Direction Needed

Well, I haven't blogged in AGES... and you can blame Winter and two very sick little girls for that :( Little Miss G has had a really rough trot this Winter so far and its meant a lot of extra cuddles and attention was needed.... BUT both girls are healthy today and I'm feeling inspired to write!

Here's the girls having a little ride on the Miniature Steam Trains - between bouts of illness.

So, what's been happening here.... not much!

Seriously though, we are still continuing with our Biomedical Intervention Program and seeing some wonderful results which make all the cooking and hyper-vigilance over chemical/smell exposures worthwhile.

As part of the BIP though, we have discovered just how sensitive we (well the girls and I) are to chemical exposures... not just your regular chemicals as in pesticides, herbicides etc, but pretty much any airborne/environmental chemical... so people's perfume/deodorant, cigarette smoke, brand new products (many brand new products are sprayed with flame retardants that emit formeldehyde amongst other things whilst *offgassing*), cleaning products... etc etc etc. As a result, we have pretty much become quite hermit-like in that we rarely go anywhere that could expose us to any of these things - shopping centres/children's concerts/friends who own brand new homes....

So, this has given us quite a few benefits - we are all healthier to start with!, I have only been to our shopping centre once in the past 2 months so our consumption has reduced (in that I'm surviving quite well without things that I would ordinarily have gone out for - the trip to the shops the other day was purely to stock up on printer ink, water filter cartridges and a few other little things I needed for a little girls 4th birthday that is not too far away!), and my car usage has reduced.

We may not leave our house much, but its worth it! At the moment we go to Dance Lessons for Miss E of a Monday afternoon, Kindy for Miss E on Wednesdays and Fridays and that is really it!

Miss E - on a recent outing to our Botanical Gardens - we were feeding the ducks and ibis...

I also stopped tracking our electricity usage as I was pretty happy with the improvements we had made, and it started to get cold and I didn't want to go under the house to read the meter LOL.

The other big thing going on in our life at the moment is that we are needing to move :( We bought our gorgeous little cottage last year specifically to renovate and restore it to its former glory (its aorund 120 years old and oozes character from every part of the house), but given our newfound chemical sensitivity, renovating is not going to be a very easy task.... Ordinarily we would do our own renovations whilst living here... but that is just not possible. Also, as the house is so old, it has significant mould growth in some areas, will no doubt be full of dust mites, and we have learned that the Air Quality inside our home is dismal - all some rather serious health considerations when living with a 2 year old with asthma and being a very sensitive family. So, we have decided that we bought the house for a specific purpose that it no longer fulfills and we need to move.

So, this week, we'll be in touch with some Real Estate Agents and list our house for sale. We have decided that we will probably rent somewhere for a while until we see if the girls sensitivity reduces or not - if it does, then our housing options are a lot more open, if it doesn't then we have to have a good look at our long term plan.

And as an added incentive to move, our yard gets NO sun in Winter at all so we simply couldn't grow any of our own vegies :( This was a horrible discovery for us...

In addition to this, we've also been researching schools that can cope with thir Chemical Sensitivity... Originally we were looking at Schools (Miss E starts prep in 2010), for their academic, extra curricula options, feel and so many other things... now we are looking for a school that can cope with the changes that may be necessary in order for the school environment to not be harmful to the girls. Simple things like ensuring painting is done outside in a well ventilated area, different cleaning practices for their classrooms, and ensuring their teacher doesn't wear smelly personal products, are things that may be needed to be implemented, but not every school is equipped, or prepared, to accomodate these things... So our focus has had to shift from a school being the best educational setting we could find, to simply a school that wont make the girls sick.

But, enough of that rambling!

I'm needing a new direction to head with my Consumption Challenge.... We are both really happy that we are now only consuming what we need, or at least putting due consideration into our purchases....

Some of the key changes we have made are:

• Only purchasing WAHM clothing for the children (and us where possible).
• Reviewing all purchases to ensure they fit our criteria
• Only buying Organic vegies - we now have a new delivery company that actually sources as much as possible from LOCAL organic suppliers!
• We already don't use any chemicals inside our house.
  
• Simply not going shopping!
• Reducing the car as much as possible with very limited public transport.
• Reducing our electricity consumption.
• Recycling as much as possible and feeding the worms and compost bin!

So, I'm needing a new direction and I'd love some input...

AND one last dilemma I'm facing!

I'm having an insane desire to craft but my sewing machines have been packed up to declutter our house a little in preparation for selling, both my wrists are suffereing from RSI so I physically can't knit, we can't use paints/glues etc and I'm not sure what to do....

I NEED to get my creative fix, but am struggling with an outlet right at the moment...

Here are a couple of sleep suits I did get to finish for the girls before I packed everything up!

Anyway, that's enough from me for today!