Become NEARLY self sufficient

I chose this as my theme for the year for so many reasons. Its not all about making my own things, growing and creating, but also about me becoming more self sufficient. My mum and dad babied me a lot when I was little. The world was made out to be this super scary place. Even when I went on my honeymoon as a real life responsible adult my mum freaked out. When I announced that we were going to Japan (my first time overseas ever), instead of saying wow how exciting – you? on a plane…blah blah blah she said “why?”. So the theme of self sufficiency is also about me growing strong enough in myself to feel that I don’t need anyone else.

I think this will also help my self esteem issues too. My husband said to me that I shouldn’t rely on anyone else for my self esteem and it is so true. I should feel good for my own reasons. I like my hair but no one comments – who cares – I like it. Think I look cute in my red dress but not one head turns, oh well, I know I look cute…that sort of thing. And it really helps. I can’t second guess what anyone is thinking and it takes pressure off of those I love to always have to be saying the right thing.

I have always had this too eager to pls thing going on…so over this year, I’m going to work on all of this; going to grow stronger, be more sure in my own decisions, likes and dislikes and hopefully this year will just get better and better as it rolls on.

My fruit on my passionfruit vine in the backyard has FINALLY started to ripen. I have been watching the fruit like a hawk, I love passionfruit and to grow my own is just amazing. I just went outside then and was met with two little purple fruits lying on the ground – eating time!!! They were so delicious!

So now I know this can be done, next year the haul will be massive. I’m going to regularly water and fertilise more often. The lemons are coming along ok too. although the vegie garden is next to useless. I think it needs mulch.

I really like growing things – such hard consistent work but the pay off is brilliant. I would have posted a pic of the passion fruits but I had to eat them straight away – all warm inside from the sun!

I love bath stuff and I spend a fortune (oh ok my husband spends a fortune) on stuff from Lush in particular for me. I have found some great stuff online and thought that bath stuff was as good a place as any to start my quest towards self sufficiency. And besides, this works really nicely with my other goal of finding myself and working on my self esteem, because the real me LOVES making stuff. I remember being about 16 and reading Dolly magazine and they had some natural beauty recipies – you know lip balm, super shine shampoo kind of things, and I ripped out those pages and carried them with me for YEARS…never made anything though!

But today I actually ruley truley made something. I adapted a recipe from teachsoap.com for a body scrub. I used to work at the body shop and they had a really similar product and that was so expensive. So introducing: ginger and coconut body scrub:

take 1 cup sea salt (you know the rocks)
1 cup oil like olive or almond
mix. Then add a teaspoon or so of ground ginger and I popped in a couple of drops of coconut perfume oil from the body shop. I just popped it into an airtight container and it will sit near the shower. You basically rub it over your wet skin. You can crush the salt more but I like a good scrub. It smells freaking delicious..I cannot wait to use it! next the bath bombs….