I have started experimenting with the concept of no 'poo... Before you click away in fright, I'm not about to discuss my toileting habits but my shampooing techniques or no 'poo to those in the know. I'm not too keen on putting all those chemicals on my head and since I have quite long hair, I used quite a lot of 'poo to get it clean. I have been cruising around the net (as one does) and found these sites that might be useful if no 'poo-ing is something you are interested in looking at further. Instructables - how to go no 'poo   Uniquely Normal Mom - 2 years of no 'poo   Nature moms - No shampoo alternitive One of the things I found was that even though I used my own home-made hand-made pure olive oil soap, my hair was drying out. Christine over at Slow Living Essentials has a recipe for a Rosemary Hair rinse that I thought I would try - and the results are lovely! I'm really pleased! Here is the link direct to her recipe And here'

I have been following Christine at Slow Living Essentials for a while and in January she set a challenge to record on our blog, monthly, how we have "slowed down" under nine categories - I have been doing this for the last three months and really got a lot out of it. This is my April reflection on Slowing Down - the Slow Living Essentials way! Here's what I did... NOURISH: Make and bake as much as possible from scratch. Ditch over packaged, over processed convenience foods and opt for 'real' food instead. I have been doing OK with the baking this month. Still just banana loaves and chocolate cake. But they seem to be going down all right with the family! We generally cook from scratch each meal so the nourish segment is part of the daily life of this household already. This challenge has made me have a look at the bits that I could do but don't for some reason. The cakes are replacing muesli bars at the moment and I have been making bigger dinner mea

We have the worlds greatest neighbours! We have gates between us all in our fences with paths, arches and gardens around them. We often use our neighbours gates as shortcuts to another street to catch buses or to go to the park - the kids are especially happy with the arrangement as they can ride their bikes in the cul-de-sac that the neighbours live on rather than the main road that we actually live on. Because we have such wonderful neighbours, we often get together for birthdays, Christmas, Sunday morning breakfasts and for the sheer fun of hanging out together. This time I have organised a Movie Night in our backyard as we have a big yard... and the movie projector! I like to make a bit of a fuss and so I made some invitations for all our neighbours to put on the fridge to remind them... Here's what I did... First I went on the net and searched 'Google Images' until I found a free colour clip art picture of a movie ticket. Then I imported it to my 'pain