Slow Living - July

I'll be joining up with Slow Living Essentials with this month's slow living post.  It's a very interesting series if anyone wants to come along for the ride.

 Nourish:  Make and bake as much as possible from scratch. Ditch overpackaged, overprocessed convenience foods and opt for 'real' food instead. Share favourite links/recipes/tips from the month here.


My favourite this month has been chocolate zucchini bread.  Sorry, no pictures - we ate it up too fast.


  Prepare:Stockpile and preserve. Freeze extra meals or excess garden/market produce. Bottle/can, dehydrate or pickle foods to enjoy when they are not in season.

Stockpile you say?  That we certainly did...

We picked 18 pounds of blueberries at a blueberry farm about an hour and a bit from our place.  Most went into the freezer for winter baking.

Just look at those bushes!

They have these rubber ducky races set up for the "kids" to try.  The boys loved it...not the least because the "accidentally" kept splashing themselves ---it was darn hot out.


 Reduce:  Cut down on household waste by re-using, re-purposing and repairing. A ladder into a strawberry planter? A sheet into a dress? Share ideas and project links here, allowing others to be inspired.

This rag rug so far is made from 22 t-shirts.  I need to "wrassle" up a few more to make it the size that I want for my youngest son's room before the fall.  The instructions for cutting the t-shirts into strips are over here 


Green: Start (or continue!) using homemade cleaners, body products and basic herbal remedies. The options are endless, the savings huge and the health benefits enormous.


Still riding my bike to work when I can...about half the days this month.  I refused to ride it the days it got up into the 45 degree area (with humidex of course) cuz that just can't be good for me.


Also, I have joined a group called Mommy Market...a kind of on-line garage sale in our county that basically goes on all the time.  I have sold some of the boys outgrown clothes and some "stuff" we just weren't using.  I have also bought a couple of board games from the same site.  So basically, we are all reusing each other's things.


 Grow: plant/harvest. What's growing this month? What's being eaten from the garden? Herbs in a pot, sprouts on a windowsill or and entire fruit/vegetable garden -opt for what fits space and time constraints.  

Yep, I'm meeting this category all right.

 Create:  To fill a need or feed the soul. Create for ourselves or for others. Create something as simple as a handmade gift tag or something as extravagant as a fine knit shawl. Share project details and any new skills learnt here.


I had to go back and check the camera pictures for this one, but I for sure have made a trail mix bag for hubby, and lemon-ey herb sachets for S and I am working on the rug for N.  


Discover:   Feed the mind by reading texts relevant to current interests. Trawl libraries, second hand shops or local book shops to find titles that fill the need. Share titles/authors of what is being read this month.


Many many library books and I bought a vegetarian cookbook during my visit to Toronto.  I meant to take not of the library books because I really wanted to share, but I didn't write them down.  Lesson learned for next month - I can't in fact remember details for that long.


 Enhance:  Community: Possibilities include supporting local growers & producers, help out at a local school/kindergarten, barter or foodswap, joining a playgroup or forming a walking or craft group.


This month, the only thing I have going is the "Street Kids Scarf", details for that over here if you want to participate.

I'm a little farther along than this, thank goodness, because it is due for September, but I really need to get moving on it if I am going to have it done in time.


Enjoy:   Life! Embrace moments with friends and family. Marking the seasons, celebrations and new arrivals are all cause for enjoyment. Share a moment to be remembered from the month here.


Enjoy!  Not a problem at all.

 A trip to the beach...

...until quite late.

Rubber duck races.

Campfire cookouts.

And a visit to "the city" to see my sister for the weekend.  That's a whole lot of enjoyment packed into one month.  Plus, the pure enjoyment of eating tomatoes still hot from the sun, berries straight off the vine, and the thrill of the "firsts" of the season...first cucumber, first zucchini, first beans, first tomato.

Enjoy your month my friends!