Posted in The Homestead

Today I had to homeschool the children with the electrician in the same room. It was kinda fun - he was having fun with the vacuum cleaner anyway. We have an internal system and he'd never used one before, so he enjoyed trying it out when he was cleaning up his mess and accidentally sucked up some school counters and his own handkerchief! Theodore (3) kept following him around and asking him questions and calling him 'man'.

After school was finished I had already planned to try out two new things seeing as today is one of my home days when I don't have to go out anywhere (the best kind of day). The first thing is making homemade Apple cider. When our American friends visited recently Ginny was telling us how she loved hot apple cider, and it's not something that I've seen a whole lot of here in NZ - I don't think it's readily available - I've never seen it in the supermarkets anyway. The very next week my favourite gardening magazine, NZ Gardener came out and to my delight I saw they were doing a special feature on apple cider and how to make your own at home! So I froze my apples (1.5kg) a couple of days ago, and today I blended them - peel, core and seeds and all, put them in my brand new 10kg bucket and then poured the 5.7 kg cold water over it. The instructions then said to put a clean tea towel over the top and set it in room for a week, stirring once in the morning and then again at night. So that is what I've done and in 7 days time, I'll do the next step. I took a picture of it, but trust me - you don't want to see it - it looks revolting!

The other thing I tried today was making soap using plain unscented soap and grating it, then melting it in a double boiler with the other ingredients. When it liquified I added Essential Oil of Vanilla and poured it into my moulds which were just what I had on hand at the time - some wax paper cup cake pattys.

They're in the freezer now and I'll get them out soon and let them harden for a couple of weeks before I use them. It's kind of addictive. I think I might get into this - I found a place online that sells soapmaking supplies wholesale in NZ. Here is a picture of my soap after I'd poured it into the mould. I don't think I had a truly pure soap, but I will next time after I get the proper supplies.