Exciting things are happening! Laundry before and after

My husband lost his job! Ok, that is not the exciting part. (If you want more details on the job loss click here and to read about our action plan click here.) Anyway, the exciting part is he now has time to do stuff around the house. Today the gardens are getting cleaned up, greenery removed and the weed mat put down next to the drive way. Plus if things go well there are a few other things which will be done inside.

He did have 4 hours work at some cold storage place this morning. We had no idea how long he would be working, but had decided last night we need to get this house ready to sell asap. We’d rather sell it whilst we can than lose it to the bank if we can’t afford to keep it.

So whilst he was at work I removed the scummy shower curtain rail. It has not been used since we moved back and was one of those things we planned to do and just never did. I scrubbed pen marks off walls. My youngest has destroyed all our walls with her ‘creativity’.

I also decided to tackle the laundry. One of my issues with it was the lack of storage/shelves/anything. It felt too small to do much, but I wanted to put some shelves up. They had been sitting there a while, so I got out my husbands drill and did it.
I forgot to take a real before shot, but remembered when I was doing it so our sort of before is this one, with 1 shelf already up.

As you can see there is stuff on the hot water system, usually my washing powder and things are on there too, but I moved them, so I could place the drill there. The chair is my ladder.

Now the after with my shelving...

The other side of my laundry looked worse. I had stuff in boxes on my dryer and just nowhere for anything.

Ok, those two slim brown boxes are the shelves, and the chair is not normally there either, but still it was not a good laundry...

(The yellow bucket lives there for various reasons and the blue thing is the pipe to direct the lint stuff out of the dryer, it extends, but rests there for easy access, although it doesn't get used much.)

So our laundry is looking much bettter, we took 1 load of greenery and stuff from the yard to the tip and have started on another thing we are hoping to finish tomorrow, so I will show you before and afters of that too.

The plan is to get it finished in the next month. The job loss has certainly proven to be a big motivator.

Home Grown Carrots

Check these out. I was at my sister in law and brothers house last weekend and these were on the table. Home grown carrots. We got to wash and eat some. It was so nice to eat a real carrot. It was sweeter than the cheap shop ones and such a novelty to eat something they had grown.

They have a few beds and various things in them, so it will be interesting to see what they produce.

Gluten free rice paper rolls

I have wanted to make these since I was a kid. Not sure why it has taken me until now to make them but I am glad I finally did. They were much easier than I expected and even tastier than I thought they would be.

Ingredients
8 rice paper sheets
1 carrot grated
bean sprouts
8 small lettuce leaves (Or larger ones cut up)
cooked chicken

Place the rice paper sheets one at a time into a bowl of warm water to soften. Remove and place on a damp towel.
Place the lettuce leaf then other ingredients on the the paper sheet. Fold on part over to cover the ingredients, then fold in the sides and roll up.

That was it. It is so easy. The packet actually said to use prawns, but my husband is allergic.

I mixed a little gluten free soy sauce and some honey together to be my dipping sauce and ate a few. They were surprisingly filling!

You could experiment with different fillings and sauces. Use whatever you have and whatever you like. I plan on doing a sweet chilli sauce next time.

Gluten Free Pikelets

Yesterday I decided to experiment with gluten free pikelets. For some reason whenever I make anything gluten free from scratch it ends up tasting not so great. I can do main meals, but baked goods just taste, well, I can't really put my finger on it, but they don't taste like they should!

I have found my favourite brand of a few things, Macro. I love thier chocolate mudcake and their buttermilk pancake mix. They turn out right every time I make them and they are so easy. No, this is not a sponsored post from them, I just happen to really like them. I am pretty excited too as they keep expanding their range.

Tonight I decided instead of plain ones I would mix it up and we could have a few flavours.
- raspberry
- honey and cinnamon
- raspberry, honey and cinnamon (these were my favourites)

I did a few plain as well for my daughter how does not really like anything not plain. I could only get my husband to try the plain ones. He was screwing up his face before he even tasted them because they were gluten free, which in his mind equates to tasteless or yuck. (My attempts have not exactly helped to change this opinion).

My daughters kept trying to steal them off the plate as I was cooking.

It was so easy to make as the bottle is one of those just add water and shake mixes. To create my flavours here is what I did.

Raspberry
Pour batter onto puttered pan then crushed 1 frozen raspberry to each pikelet.

Honey and Cinnamon
Pour batter onto buttered pan. Swirl about 1/2 tsp of honey on to the batter then sprinkle a pinch of cinnamon over them.

Raspberry, Honey and Cinnamon
Pour batter onto buttered pan, crush 1 frozen raspberry over the pikelet, swirl 1/2 tsp honey over it then sprinkle with cinnamon.

I just cooked them for a few minutes either side and served. You could dust with sugar if you want, but we ate them just like that.

YUM!