Laundry liquid makes the best handwash soap!

I stumbled upon the best hand soap ever by accident! I had a bottle of laundry liquid I didn't like the smell of. The perfume smell was far too strong but I didn't want to throw it away. Instead, I refilled the liquid soap bottle in the laundry with it. To my surprise, I have found it is the best hand wash ever! In fact, once I finished the laundry liquid, I bought some more, to fill the hand soap bottle with!

Eat your way to lovely, strong nails with blancmange!

If biting your nails is a problem, start growing them from the inside out, with this easy coffee blancmange recipe! All you need is:

One x 400g can coconut milk or cream. 2 tbsp gelatin 2 tsp coffee 1/4 cup hot water Sweetener of your choice, e.g. sugar, stevia or artificial sweetener

Stir the gelatin into the hot water and mix well.
In a separate bowl, put in the coffee and sweetener of your choice and stir, then tip in the can of coconut milk or cream. Pour in the hot gelatin mixture and stir all together well. Refrigerate for one hour.

The result? Delicious, smooth coffee blancmange, with the health benefits of coconut, and gelatin for nail growth!

Weekly supermarket gift card saves for Christmas groceries

I add a supermarket gift card to my weekly grocery list and use them all up to shop for Christmas! After doing some calculations I realised that the ready-made Christmas hampers that you pay for weekly cost three times their actual value, not to mention the fact that they can include many products you won't ever use. My new system for buying Christmas groceries lets me buy my own hamper full of items at the current price or on special.

Compost for small gardens

This idea is for those who live in a home with a garden that is too small to have a compost bin. I use an empty garden pot, cut a square of one of those net bags oranges come in to cover the hole of the pot. Put in a layer of old potting soil (from a pot where the plants have had their day). Each day save your fruit and vegetable scraps in a container. Place in a layer of scraps, then cover with another layer of old soil. Repeat layer by layer until the pot is nearly full, ending with a layer of soil (water as you go).

Then, while the compost is breaking down and baking, plant some seasonal seedlings on top and in no time you will have potted colour and compost underneath, not only feeding your seedlings but ready for the garden when the flowers are spent at the end of the season. I sometimes benefit from crops of vegetables germinated from the seeds in the compost such as tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicum and butternut pumpkin.

This is a multi recycling exercise using unwanted orange bags, unused pots, old soil and fruit and vegetable scraps and, of course, it is a great medium for the latest seedlings. Instead of flowers on top you could plant your favourite herbs while the compost is baking.