Homes

Overalls that have become too short for your child can be lengthened with knitted cuffs in one plain, one purl rib sewn to the bottom of the legs. They look cute and also give extra warmth.

Store wooden jigsaw puzzles in the cut-off legs of laddered pantyhose. The stocking holds the puzzle pieces in place and you can easily see which puzzle is which.

Scratch the name or initials of your child on passionfruit when they are green on the vine – a nail will do the trick. When the fruit turns purple, the name stands out and the kids have fun finding “their” fruit.

Try a chocolate-hazelnut spread for fairy bread instead of butter or margarine. The hundreds and thousands stick better and children love it.

Old soft toys can be given a new lease of life by turning them into bookends for children’s rooms. Open a seam, fill with pebbles or sand to add the weight, then re-stitch.

When toilet training a little boy, float a ping-pong ball with a bullseye painted on it in the bowl to help him aim straight! The ball won’t flush away and he’ll get used to aiming for the target.

To remove chewing gum from clothing, pick off as much as possible, smother gum with olive or canola oil and rub briskly with fingers. Spray with pre-wash stain remover and wash in the usual way.

Save some toys that your child hasn’t played with for a while, add whatever toys are passed down from cousins and so on, and bring them out when your child is sick in bed. It’s surprising how interesting they can become.

Some large stores sell children’s gift-wrapping papers with pictures on them, and the sheets have never been folded or creased. Framed, they make lovely pictures for a child’s room at a fraction of the cost of wall posters.

Getting a toddler to eat meals can be tricky, so next time yours refuses to eat, put a glove puppet on your hand and let the puppet feed the child.

Remove glue from school clothes by soaking garments overnight in brown vinegar. Follow with a light scrub, then machine-wash as usual.

To help young children recognise their schoolbags in a group, put a photograph of them inside of the clear plastic label.

Plastic trellis makes an effective cover for a sandpit. It discourages cats and other inquisitive animals, yet is light enough for children to remove by themselves.

Have the “birthday child” do colourful paintings on some small brown paper bags and use them as lolly bags at the child’s party. Fold the bags over at the top and stick down with bright stickers or stars.

Use a large bulldog clip to hold your child’s school paintings together and hang them behind the bedroom door. Put new paintings on top and, when the wad gets too thick, remove some of the paintings from the back.

Mulberry stains on children’s clothes or skin can be removed by rubbing the stained areas with unripe mulberries. This must be done before stained clothing is washed.

Personalise hand-me-down clothes by adding new buttons or appliques to the garment. It’s even better if children select their own new trimmings.

Young children can learn to knit more easily if you teach them using two crochet hooks instead of knitting needles. Use the hook end as the point and they won’t lose the stitches, or their patience, so often.

Try using jelly instead of fruit juice when making iceblocks at home. Make up a packet of jelly crystals as directed, pour into iceblock moulds and freeze. They’re delicious and not as “drippy” as regular ice blocks.

To avoid iron-on and sew-on labels coming off children’s clothing, buy some fabric paint and use it to write their names on everything instead. The paint is permanent after drying for 24 hours and doesn’t fade.

Faded felt pens can be rejuvenated by removing the ends and pouring a few drops of water into their stems. Replace the ends, stand them upside down for a short time, and you’ll double their life.

Make a photograph album especially for the children. Fill it with duplicates of your favourite shots of family, pets, outings and so on, and they’ll get hours of fun from it.

Quickly cool a bowl of soup for a toddler by breaking a slice of frozen bread into it. As the bread defrosts, it cools the soup and adds bulk to the meal.

A plastic bucket is an excellent way to carry around baby and toddler toys when out visiting, or just for moving them to a new play area around the house. It’s the right size, easy to carry and costs only a few dollars.

For children going on school camps or holidays, pack full sets of clothing in separate plastic shopping bags marked with the days of the week. This keeps clean clothes separated from dirty ones and gives them something to bring the dirty washing home in.

Use marshmallows as candle holders on birthday cakes – they prevent wax running onto the cake.

Don’t throw away leftover soft drinks that have gone flat – they make great ice blocks.

Here’s a quick and easy birthday “cake” for a child who doesn’t like cake. Turn a small tub of vanilla ice-cream out onto a plate. On the top of the “cake”, outline in chocolate buttons or Smarties the age of the birthday child. Add a paper frill around the sides of the ice-cream and stick […]

Wear an oven mitt to stroke air out of adhesive paper when covering school books. It makes a tricky job much easier.

A backpack filled with toys, books and snacks and hung from the front seat of your car is a great way to entertain children on long journeys. It’s easily accessible and will keep them amused for ages.

Buy a wooden mug tree for the nursery – you can use it hang up all the hair bows and hats you seem to acquire for your baby, making them instantly accessible.

Make the littlies their own “grocery shop”. Trim to size the labels from smaller-size canned foods and glue them onto empty film containers, making miniatures of the products. Small cereal packets and juice boxes can be added to the mini-supermarket.

Renew the features on old, faded dolls’ faces by using a cream foundation and blending in blusher (works best on matt surfaces). Nail polish is excellent for lipstick, and waterproof mascara can be used for eyelashes.

Encourage kids to eat their lunch sandwiches by using a teddy bear or gingerbread man biscuit cutter to cut them into shapes. Add currants or sultanas for eyes.

Tracksuits that become too short in the arms and legs as children grow can be lengthened by inserting bands of contrasting fabrics.

Putting names on kids’ school pencils is quicker and easier if you shave off a strip of wood with a potato peeler instead of a knife.

Use a laundry marker to make a matching symbol or number on each pair of white socks in the wash so that they’re easy to match at putting away time.

Help your baby to sit by putting a blow-up swim ring around her waist instead of propping her up with pillows. It will save a lot of toppling over and bruising.

When children are inclined to compete over portions and are reluctant to share, allow one to cut the “share” and the other to choose.

Make a photo album with snaps of close family or friends who live interstate or overseas and give it to your children. This way, they’ll know them by sight and, when visits are made, less “warm-up’ time should be needed.

Here’s a tip for the new mum. When you are bathing your very young baby, wear a cotton glove on the hand you use to support your baby. This enables you to keep a firm hold on the slippery little body.

Toys with many small parts can be kept in transparent hosiery wash bags, which cost a few dollars in supermarkets. Children can see what’s inside without having to tip all the parts out onto the floor.

To disguise ballpoint pen scribbles on wallpaper, use correction fluid. Lightly tint it with a colour from a child’s paint set that matches the wallpaper, and the marks will be practically invisible.

To entertain children indoors, put a tennis ball inside an old stocking, hang it from a hook in the ceiling and give them room to hit the ball with tennis racquets. They’ll have fun for hours. And for a night-light that won’t keep your toddler awake, try using a 25-watt blue globe in the overhead […]

Stick a bunch of lollypops into an orange to make an attractive centrepiece for a birthday party table. Attach a balloon with the child’s name written on it to the back of each chair so they can find their places.

When kids are playing at the end of the day, set a timer bell to remind them that teatime or bedtime is near. When the bell rings, they know they have 10 minutes to finish their activity and pack up. A 15-minute buzzer may better suit older children.

Take the sting out of sandfly bites by rubbing them with Vegemite. The vitamin B content stops the itch, so the child is less likely to scratch and infect the bite. It’s especially good for small children.

Occupy children on a rainy day by having them cut out large coloured letters from headings in magazines. When new schoolbooks need covering, glue the letters onto plain covers to form their name, grade and subject in an individual and easily recognised way.

Paint your children’s names on their school lunch boxes and drink containers with vividly coloured nail polish. It will stay on through countless washes and can be touched up easily when it chips or wears off.

Put a wading pool under the rotary clothes hoist, then peg a bed sheet over the lines to protect children from the sun while they play.

Keep children’s paintings in a large, two-ring binder when you run out of space on the fridge. Name and on them as they get older.

Coloured popcorn sprinkled over or around plain icing on a child’s birthday cake looks pretty and doesn’t cost much.

Add a few drops of perfume to the water in the steam section of your iron whenever you are pressing clothes.

Australian horticulturist Phillip Johnson has claimed best in show at this year's Chelsea Flower Show with his ecologically sustainable Australian style billabong garden build in the heart of London.

Summer dining should be informal, friendly and relaxed – and where possible, done outdoors. While hosting a party is a fun experience, planning in advance means the night will be less stressful and an enjoyable evening for both you and your guests. The menu Keep it simple A great menu doesn’t need to be finicky. […]

Feeling overwhelmed by how fast Christmas is approaching? If you’re losing track of time and need help organising your thoughts, this Christmas Countdown timetable might just be the answer. Download this chart, print it out and place it on the fridge or in your handbag. It’s the ultimate Christmas checklist for every busy woman. Download […]

Crab apple trees are hardier than a cherry tree and the blossom lasts longer in our harsher climate, too.

Not long ago, a 'good' backyard vegie garden had neat rows of cabbages and lots of tomatoes. There'd be carrots and green leafed silver beet and cucumbers, and green beans. Vegie gardens are changing.

Daylilies are so named because each flower only lasts for such a short time — sometimes truly only a day, sometimes for a few days.

I think I had been writing gardening columns for about five years before a kindly subeditor pointed out that I couldn’t spell ‘fuchsia’. But grow them? Yes — any brown-fingered novice gardener can grow fuchsias. But exactly how? Fuchsia’s spelling comes from being named in honour of a German botanist called Herr Fuchs by a […]

The days are short, my toes are cold and all too many gardens are winter bare just now.

Type “high tea etiquette” into an internet search engine and you’ll find a million rules and regulations from the old-fashioned — “It is not only improper to slice a scone, it is considered common” — to the more modern — “always be sure turn off your mobile phone”. Good manners aside, however, high tea is […]

Autumn is the gentle time in Australia. Spring can suddenly present you with a frost that withers the new shoots and tomatoes, but autumn is mostly blue skies. Autumn rain is usually gentle, the great thunder heads of summer gone. As I write this the persimmons are ripe, big fat orange fruit, and the leaves […]

Once there was a nymph called Daphne… actually the rest of the story about why she was turned into a sweetly scented bush is far too lascivious a story for a family website. But while other ancient Greek nymphs have faded into history, Daphne still blooms in our winter gardens — and her perfume is […]

Our 12-step guide to securing your garden in case of a storm.

“It’s called a ‘winter rose’ or hellebore,” she said. I looked down at the ankle-high plant with dull green leaves and even duller green-white flowers, then at the bright red real rose glory blooming on the fence. Then I looked back at the hellebore. “They call this a rose?” I said. My elderly friend looked […]

Summer is the time for kids in the garden — school holidays, and hopefully fun and fresh air instead of square eyes from watching too much TV. Today’s gardens though often don’t tempt kids outside. They’re neat designer gardens, created to impress onlookers, rather than with spots for cubbies, and trees with handy branches to […]

Year after year I wonder what I’ll put in our front flower bed, and year after year, after tossing up between stocks and delphiniums, or California poppies, or a froth of nemesia or dianthus, I plant the same again — petunias. They’re not always the same petunia. These days I go for the ‘spreading petunias’, […]

Spring is magic. Blossoms, scents, vases crowded with roses, grass green, skies blue … the real challenge of spring is how to most enjoy it. So here are the six top spring essentials. 1. A new gardening hat This isn’t a ‘go to the races hat’ or a celebrity fashion statement, but a good garden […]

Proper vegie gardens are long neat beds, with rows of cabbages or lettuce and obediently staked tomatoes. They can look both ludicrous and productive. There’s a long tradition, in fact, of “potager” gardens, vegies planted with an eye to beauty as well as usefulness, spirals set in stone or pebbles, circles like small vegie fountains […]

Fences keep out next door’s dog and give us privacy, but they can be beautiful too. Gardening expert Jackie French tells you how to make your fence a feature of your backyard. The flower-covered fence: My dream fence is covered in mandevilla, with is shiny green leaves and white flowers with what is possibly the […]

Flowerbeds generally fall into two categories: weed-filled or wonderful. Weeds are always waiting to pounce on flowerbeds. They grow faster than flowers and cope with heat, cold and drought better. So how do you keep your flowerbeds stunning but weed-free? Follow these steps and you’ll have a spectacular garden in no time. 1. Don’t be […]

In summer, red-hot pokers are, well, just too red, and sometimes yellow too — great lumbering things with blooms often more than a metre high, that look gaudy in all the summer glare. Yes, they’re hardy — so indestructible they really need a semi-trailer to back over them to daunt them. But despite their magnificence, […]

Autumn’s leaves have fallen, the garden is looking bare, and those pots of bright blooms in the supermarket look terribly tempting. Should you … or shouldn’t you? The case for buying potted bloomers Potted flowers will usually stay bright and blooming for longer than a bunch of flowers. With luck your potted bloomers will give […]

For years I thought poppies were one of the glories of spring and summer — stunning sprawls of California poppies in vivid orange, yellows, reds and even cream and white, flagrantly elegant oriental poppies. They’re the sort of flower you stop and stare at because you can’t believe that one thin-stemmed bloom could look quite […]

March is the perfect time to get trim and terrific – not you (though gardening is a great tummy trimmer and stress buster), but your trees and shrubs.

Most vegetables come from a family where they share similar characteristics. One family you may not have heard of before is the lily family, which includes onions, garlic, leeks, turnips — and asparagus. Like the other members of its family, asparagus is grown mostly below the ground. You are probably familiar with the green variety […]

This is the season for jam makers. Even better, it’s the season when gardeners with laden trees give baskets full of fruit to jam enthusiasts — and the jam makers say “thank you” by giving the gardeners a jar or two of their best conserves. Homemade jam is rich in fruit and fragrant because it’s […]

Kale chips anyone? What veggies to eat boiled, raw or roasted.

Flowers are not an ingredient we typically include in our cooking, but many herbs and plants produce blossoms that are edible and make a stylish and delicious addition to common recipes. Flowers you can use Arugula or rocket is commonly used in salads but the plant also produces small pale lavender or white flowers, which […]

Pears are possibly the easiest fruit tree to grow (although, arguably, plums could compete for that spot!). It’s hard to kill a pear tree. As long as your climate gets some frosts each winter — in other words, as far north as Brisbane — you can grow a pear tree. In subtropics and tropics, though, […]

If chillies weren’t so delicious (in small amounts, unless you love dragon’s breath) we’d grow them for their beauty. A chilli bush in full fruit is a stunning plant: bright green leaves and even brighter red fruit that hangs there for months. As I write this I’m looking out at our beds of perennial chillies […]

Spending a half an hour working in the garden can be magic. It will relax you, tone your muscles, help make you happy, provide vitamin D from the sunlight — and you may even create something wonderful, just in half an hour. (This doesn’t count the time spent in the garden centre. Garden centres can […]

In spring salvias bloom red, blue, purple and yellow. They have enormous bushes, taller than I am, with spires of flowers and dozens of eastern spinebills and other birds sipping at the nectar. By midsummer there are great banks of rich purple flowers that keep giving a stunning show all summer long. At Christmas the […]

There’s a global financial crisis going on, and lots of us are staying home instead of heading out to pricey restaurants. But staying home doesn’t have to mean no socialising or sensational entertaining! We’ve got a couple of simple, easy, delicious and best of all – cheap! – recipes that will feed your friends for […]

You have just mortgaged your life and bought a house — with garden. Or you are paying rent on a house, and a garden comes with it … Or you have had a garden for years but “garden” is a bit of an exaggeration, as it’s mostly weeds, lawn that has to be mowed and […]

Midwinter is the time for feasts — not just around the table, with friends on long cold winter nights, but in the garden, too.. Summer’s harvests often have to be picked fast, before the fruit fly get into the apricots or the lettuces go to seed. Winter harvests are more gentle, and more generous too. […]

Question: How can I tell if my eggs are fresh? Are they ok to use if the shells have small cracks? Place an unbroken raw egg in a tall glass of water. If it’s fresh it will sink, if not, it will float. Refrigerating eggs in their cardboard cartons will help keep them fresh. You […]

Question: What’s the best way to cool a cake? Stand the cake for up to 15 minutes before turning it only a wire rack to cool further. Turn the cake, upside-down, onto a wire rack, and then turn the cake top-side up immediately using a second rack (unless directed otherwise), Some wire racks can mark […]

Lemon is one of the most magic scents in the garden. Much as I love roses — especially a cloud of rose perfume on a hot day — lemon scents are often stronger, as they come from the leaves, not the flowers. There are more leaves than blooms, so much more scent. This doesn’t mean […]

The first grapes I fell in love with grew next to a tiny cafe on the shore of Crete: a concrete floor, a goat standing on a chair on a table to reach the grapes over the fence, a small cup of too-sweet coffee and above us the glory of grapes, green leaves and bees […]

Once upon a time lavender was supposed to be the sexiest of scents. Sheets and underclothes were stored with lavender to keep the moths away, and we all know what happens among the sheets. And then Queen Victoria fell in love with lavender oil. She ordered that every room be polished with lavender and beeswax, […]

1. The world is happier with trees: Seriously, areas with trees have a lower crime rate and illness rates. This isn’t just because wealthy areas have brighter gardens and street trees: when trees and greenery are planted in disaffected areas the graffiti and other more serious crimes decrease as the trees grow bigger. It seems […]

Question: What is the best way to store raw meat? Raw meat should be kept separate from cooked food, and stored on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator to avoid juices dripping down and contaminating other food. Always store raw meat in the coldest part of the refrigerator (usually the bottom shelf). Wrapped raw meat […]

Question: Some of my fruit and vegetables seem to wilt rapidly when I put them in the fridge. How do I stop this? Not all vegetables and fruit need to be kept in the fridge; some are cold sensitive, others can lose much of their moisture. If fruit and vegetables are to be refrigerated, cool […]

Pineapple’s background: Prickly on the outside but sweet and juicy on the inside, the pineapple is a member of the Bromeliaceae family and is known as the “king of fruit” — no doubt a name inspired by the pineapple’s crown shaped top. The pineapple is native to South America but most of the pineapple we […]

One of the worst benevolences ever perpetrated on a generation of children was free milk at school — especially in Queensland where I grew up. Every child had to drink their small bottle of milk every morning. All morning we looked out of our classroom and watched the milk getting hotter and hotter under what […]

It’s berry time — time to eat mulberries or strawberries or loganberries or blueberries on sponge cakes for a Christmas treat. A strawberry-rich sponge cake is much lighter than a hunk of Christmas cake (though a rich fruitcake can’t be beaten in winter). Soon it will be planting time — and now is the best […]

"Convenience" can save us precious time and money, but is it really worth it?

Question: When calculating 8 glasses of water a day, can you include tea, coffee and other fluids? Answer: Yes, your daily fluid intake doesn’t all have to come in the form of water. While water is best, milk, juice, tea, coffee, cordial, soft drinks, sports drinks, even ice-blocks, can also provide additional fluids. Alcohol, on […]