Gulp! What a bad blogger I am!

It has been a long time since I last posted on this blog - and I have no good reason for that, apart from my normal routines being disrupted by Christmas. But I am now back - better than ever after having spent a relaxing time at home over Christmas and New Year.

With such a long break from writing I am a bit lost as to what to blog about first. I know I still haven't blogged with the result of my No spend month (and that was in November). I don't have all the figures with me right now so that will need to wait for another time.

A few people have asked after my chooks - my de-brooding exercise was relatively successful. After two days of being blocked out of their nesting boxes three out of four chooks started laying again - yay! Sadly last week one chook decided that being broody was a good thing so now I have two chooks laying and two chooks being broody. I will let it slide for now as I am still getting two eggs a day but as soon as that changes I will be back to de-brooding mode again. The positive thing is that the eggs we are getting are bigger than they used to be.

The countdown is seriously on for my son and his girlfriend moving out of my home and into their house. We are all very excited about that. Once they have moved out I will be continuing with my decluttering exercise. I thought I would be able to do this over the Christmas break but decided it would be easier once I have the house to myself and less furniture, etc to work around.

I did spend some time over Christmas getting some chores done that I wouldn't normally have time for. I have a large garden window in my kitchen (with a very deep sill) which needed to be sanded back and repainted. I have put that off for ages as I couldn't be bothered dealing with the mess that would create. But I bit the bullet and got stuck into that on a rainy Wellington day (ah, Wellington in the summer!). I think it stills needs one more coat of paint to be honest so plan to do that this weekend. Even as it is, it looks much better than before. The old paint had started to degrade and was flaking off in places - plus it was more yellow than white!

I also spent some time working in my garden. My pea crop this year has been a bit of a disaster. I'm not entirely sure why but some of it can be put down to the cats digging up the peas!!! Sometimes I think I need to devote one of my raised beds to be the cat toilet but knowing my little monsters they would ignore it and continue to dig up my seeds and seedlings! Other things have been more successful. My corn is coming along really well and my zucchinis and scallopinis are flowering madly so they will be producing pretty soon. I have chillis and capsicums growing in my greenhouse - they are growing well but something is munching on their leaves. I'm not too sure what is doing that right now but have sprayed them with a garlic / soapy mixture so hopefully that will get rid of whatever is eating them. I also have lettuce in the greenhouse so that is coming in handy for dinners. My "orchard" is still in its infancy - I got one cherry off my cherry tree and one raspberry off the raspberry bush. To be fair the cherry tree was planted a year ago so is still very young and the raspberry bush is probably about six months old.

I'll be posting some ideas for frugal, yummy meals for one soon so keep an eye out for that. Hope you are all having a great start to 2010 - I know I am.