Unstuffed: Purchases

Showing posts with label Purchases. Show all posts

Monday, March 9, 2009

What a Crock!

(Update: A reader kindly left a comment reminding me of the dangers of lead and other metals that were frequently- and sometimes still are- used in the glazes of many ceramic, stone and earthenware items. These are not food safe! I completely forgot about this potential danger. Darn. I'm going to do some more research and see if I can get a lead test kit, but until then, there will be no sauerkraut in the crock for me...)

Two girlfriends and I made a day trip to Perth on Saturday, stopping at flea markets, antique shops and thrift stores along the way. I was really pleased to find some good items.

I'm baking more, and have been short on bowls, but not anymore! I fell in love with these two pyrex bowls that I got a charity thrift shop, along with an embroidered table cloth (not pictured).

I'll be using this enamel pot in my sun oven.

I'm so thrilled to have found this stone crock.

The first thing I'm going to make is sauerkraut.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Show and Tell Tuesday

Remember Show and Tell Day in grade school? Today I have a grown up version for you!

I'm ready to enter the wonderful world of home preserves and putting up food, so I'm quite thrilled to have found this canning pot with a rack and 12 mason jars on UsedOttawa.com. The previous owner wanted them out of her place so badly, she dropped everything off at my house!

Also from UsedOttawa, I'm looking forward to filling these glass jugs with homemade sumac lemonade this summer.

This was a super simple, quick and easy craft project I completed this weekend. It took no more than an hour to take a mesh onion bag and crochet edging and handles on to it, to turn it into a reusable produce bag.
(If anyone is interested in step by step instructions, let me know and I'd be happy to post a tutorial!)

After reading Greeen Sheeep's glowing review of the safety razor, I decided that I too wanted to ditch the disposable plastic kind. The ADGMD read my mind (or at least the email I sent him with the link to Greeen Sheeep's post, followed by, "I want this!"), 'cause he got me one for my birthday.

After a few extremely slow, careful and tentative passes on my leg, in which I half expected to open a vein and bleed out on the bathroom floor, I realised, "Hey, it's just like the normal, everyday shaving I've been doing all my life. Awesome." No nicks, no cuts, just a lovely smooth shave.

And finally, my last show and tell you can't see, but without it, I wouldn't have been able to take and post these pictures. My old digital camera died on me a few weeks ago. It was a hand me down from my godmother, and it had a good life, but I needed another digital camera.

The ADGMD and I began sourcing a few on UsedOttawa. While mentioning to his sister that he was on the lookout for a second hand cam, the ADGMD discovered that his sis had just bought a new one. She was planning on giving her old, still working camera to her neighbour, but then the neighbour went out and bought a new one, so now the camera has come to me and I couldn't be happier! As for my old camera, I will make sure to dispose of it responsibly.

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali