Selfsufficientish.com

It's Franglais and Germlish here!

These things are such a tedious waste of time and so totally avoidable. I can understand why you want to make a fuss - no, I mean bring it to the school's attention to avoid further wasted time and money and, potentially, a nasty in jury - that is not "making a fuss". If 'twere me, what I did next w...

I'm staggered that this debate continues in the 21st century - SURELY it's reasonable to feed your baby its ideal food in public? I hope my daughter, now seven, doesn't have to deal with any of this nonsense when she's a mum. I fed DS in public fairly happily, but he mucked about at the boob sometim...

Hello. When M was really wee (not that he was ever *that* wee, being 10lbs 4oz at birth) we put the baby bath in the shower, put a couple of inches of water in that and supported his shoulders with one arm. Pretty soon we started plonking him in the big bath, which he loves. He's now almost 11 month...

Hello. I have an almost-11-month-old and we've had a tricky time with sleep lately. Apparently it's all to do with the awesom brain development that's going on making them a bit restless. We've also had some illness and teething so sleep really has gone t*ts up! Often when Max wakes he realises he's...

I've thought about this post a fair bit, and have now begun throwing wet nappies in with tea towels, rags etc. So far no-one's got the dreaded lurgy and it helps to reduce the loads of washing while keeping up the supply of clean nappies. Dirty nappies though, different matter!

We need to do this as our stairs are very wide and there's no way we can afford a super duper gate with endless attachments. We have a fair bit of wood lying around that we accumulated for the henhouse so have the raw materials. DH can throw something together quite convincingly but I'd be intereste...

DD was having school lunches for a couple of terms which I was okay with but not wild about as they always had a heavy duty sugary pud. We had to economize and cooked lunches were an early casualty and now she wouldn't go back to cooked! She usually has egg mayo sandwiches with our own eggs (must ha...

Hello, I wash separately, unless I just have a wet (rather than dirty) load and happen to have some rags or bath towels that need washing. I probably wouldn't wash naps with things like hand towels, napkins, wiping/washing up cloths, tea towels, that sort of thing. Probably unnecessary but it's just...

Excellent, really pleased to hear he enjoyed it and you survived the day. Now school will test your mental faculties to the limit by changing which day is fruit day, then adding wellies day, and once in a while asking for contributions of home-made cakes at short notice, not to mention the Angel Gab...

Thanks for the responses. Following the advice of the farm we kept them in for another 36 hours, by which time there were 10 eggs, and we're going to let them out a bit later in the morning so that they will have laid in the house. We did that this morning and there were six eggs, so it seems to be ...

Thinking of you today CT! DD heads in Year 3 in a fortnight and Max is only eight months so we're quietly in the midst of things, but DD is talking about school again so I know she's starting to get nervous. She enjoys school and is happy there, but even so she likes being at home. She had big probl...

I ordered another nappy last night as I want to get Max into cloth at night. I've bought a slightly damaged Minki Huggle that I can mend, and a large fleece liner to use with our Sandys, in the hopes that those two will see us through nights. I have two disps left and hope I won't have to buy any mo...

We've had hens for about 10 days. All seemed to be going well, but we've discovered one hen has been staying out at night. DH thought he had them all in (six) but one had snuck off. We've found its hidey-hole and blocked it - after collecting the eggs - and have since found two more egg sites, as we...

Great stuff. We had an egg in the crate by the time we got home with our hens!