Category: Family

Addicted to hula hooping

Hula Hooping is not only fun, but also beneficial on many different levels.

Hi! My name is Ginny and I’m addicted to hula hooping.

The best things about hula hooping is that it doesn’t feel like exercise… and yet it is really the most fabulous way to get a work out without even realising it.

It strengthens core muscles and tones flabby bits – belly, arms and thighs. You can do gentle hooping or notch it up a grade and get serious by adding in lunges and arm exercises. You can use weights too.

It’s beneficial for your heart and your mind.

Don’t be ridiculous, I hear you say. One can barely keep that ridiculous little plastic doo-dah up, let along lunge about or wave you arms around the place—unless it’s to help keep the hoop up.

I’m not talking about your general run-of-the-mill kid’s hoop… I’m talking about a large hoop.

Think big.

Then think bigger.

Even bigger than that!

I was first introduced to large hoops by my tiny daughter when she’d come to visit for a few weeks. It boggled my mind. I’d never seen anything so bizarre, let along considered using one for exercise.

Perhaps I should confess, I’m not a very exercisey person.  The only Jim I’ve ever had a relationship with was my darling, dearly-departed father, but at the age of fifty-something, I fell in love with the gentle art of hula hooping.

Wait… I hear you say… what in all hell is she blathering on about? How can something that tones and firms be gentle?

Easy!

Ten minutes a day and that weight will take a walk.

Once you’ve lost the weight that was bothering you (and you will) you won’t be able to stop hula hooping.  You’ll be addicted.

We are fortunate enough to currently have a large garden and so I walk around the place, gently hooping. Thinking. Planning my day. Writing my novel in my head. Plotting murder. Talking to myself. Or sometimes even just staring into space. It’s currently winter in South Africa so I also hula hoop to warm up.

You don’t need fancy clothes either – I usually hoop in whatever I’m wearing, but if you are going the sweaty exercise route, be comfortable and try not to wear baggy clothing that gets snagged on the hoop.

Buying a kid’s hoop is easy, but it’s not useful. You need a large hoop. The experts say it should come up to your middle when you stand it up in front of you… but mine comes up to my boobs.

The easiest (and cheapest) is to make it yourself.

You need:

  • 4.5 metres of 25 mm irrigation pipe (our local garden shops and hardware stores sell pipe in various sizes, coiled up lengths starting at 5 metres).
  • 1 x 25 mm hose connector
  • tape (insulation tape is the cheapest, but it only comes in standard colours) – get whatever takes your fancy.

Half the fun of having a hoop is decorating it so that every time you pick it up, you look at it with love. (Sounds sappy but it’s true.)

25 mm black irrigation pipe is easily cut with a sharp kitchen.
Cut a length of 4.5 metres.

DO NOT BE DAUNTED BY THE SIZE OF IT and decide to make it smaller. Just don’t.
Okay.
It is really easy to use a big hoop.

Boil the kettle and stick the ends of the pipe into boiling water – makes pushing the hose connector into either end a doddle.

Voila! You have a hoop.

Wipe it down with a wet cloth to get the dust off and let it dry before you tape it up.

Wind your tape as smoothly as you can, this makes the hoop move freely and prevents it from snagging on your clothing. The tape not only makes it look pretty but it also adds weight.  If you find that your hoop gets tatty after time from dropping it on rough surfaces or bashing into things, simply add another layer of tape. (My hoop is currently on its 5th layer of tape.)

There are many videos on YouTube that demonstrate how to hula hoop. This lady is fabulous and has many videos. Remember… you can also do awesome tricks with hoops (not so much the large hoops though.)

I was lucky (I think) and had my daughter to goad me into persevering. Here’s how I really started.

Have to brag – this is a video my daughter, Igz made for me when I organised a hula hoop making workshop as an ice-breaker to a science centre conference a few years ago. We then had a hoop-heats with a hoop-off and the winning three teams had to explain the science behind hula hooping to high school kids. The hoops that were made were then donated to a local school. Except for my friend, Kenneth from Kenya, who took his hoop home to his Science Centre in Kenya and has since taught many a kid to hula hoop.

P.S. I cannot do ANY of this fancy stuff in the video, but it does not stop me from loving the bits I can do.

Beady Plastic Waterfall

A fun way to use plastic bottles ~ by Ginny Stone

Ginny made a bead curtain out of old plastic bottles and other stuff.

Rubbish! I can hear you say.

Well… yes! Exactly that. She’s made it from rubbish.

Just so that you know I’m not talking complete bolly – check out this photo. 

You are all probably busting to know just how she used those coke bottles in this bead curtain, right? It’s not that hard – but if you are a small person, please get an adult to help you.

You need the following stuff:

  • plastic bottles (cooldrink, water, etc – try to get different coloured ones)
  • fishing line,
  • beads and other cool stuff to thread or tie on,
  • 2 pieces of 80gm paper,
  • iron,
  • sharp knife,
  • scissors,
  • glue,
  • sharp point (a nail works well).

First things first, wash your plastic bottles very well – you don’t want sticky or oily goo all over everything.

Using a sharp knife, make a slit in the middle of the bottle.  Then using scissors cut the plastic into strips.  It’s easier to work with strips than huge pieces.

Believe it or not – that plastic is sharp, so work carefully.  And be careful not to leave little bits of plastic lying around either for other people to tromp on and cut themselves.

Once you have the plastic cut into the shapes you want – squares, triangles, circles, oblongs – whatever! But don’t make them too small – Ginny used round shapes, a bit smaller than the bottom of a glass.  (Don’t bother to make them perfectly round either – when you get to the next step you’ll see why.)

Next step… again get an adult to help you and for goodness sake – ask your mom first if you can actually use her iron. Ginny has an old one that she uses for fabric painting. (Plus she’s actually the mom – so if she ruins her own iron – toughies hey!)  Although we should point out that it doesn’t ruin the iron – as long as you don’t iron directly on the plastic that is.

Heat up the iron. Not on steam setting though. 

Put one piece of paper on a flat surface. 
Lay your plastic bits on top of it – only one or two at a time. 
Put the other piece of paper on top of the plastic bits.

Iron them flat. 

In fact, you’ll have to experiment a bit and see which way works best for you.  Ginny found if she put them with the curved side on top, they shrivelled into very funny shapes. If she turned them over – they stayed flatter with just the sides curling in.  Either way – she found a use for most of the plastic bits she ironed.

Very important – like we already said, do not iron the plastic without a sheet of paper on either side.

Once you’ve got a whole pile of ironed odd-shaped plastic bits – you can start making your curtain strings.  Be sure to have a long enough piece of fishing line. Put something nice and heavy at the bottom – like a big glass or metal bead or tie on something else interesting – bells or bottle tops also work nicely. 

Make holes in the plastic bits using the nail and thread them onto the fishing line. You can also glue beads onto the plastic – or make lots of holes in larger plastic pieces and thread the beads through.

Go wild, use mirror bits, feathers, old nuts and bolds, pretty beads, old beads, piece of fabric, you can even thread bottle tops, cork and straws.  Just make sure you tie or stick them properly, otherwise, they’ll fall off at some stage. 

Of course, you don’t have to make a curtain either – you can just make a pretty mobile or dangly thing for your room, or for a friend. Or even Christmas decorations.

Main thing to do is have fun in the process.

Feel free to post pics on Sibo’s Facebook page so that the whole world can see how creative you’ve been. 

Christmas in July

Grow your own presents – succulents are easy and rewarding.

The adverts for functions and fairs talking about Christmas in July made me start thinking about presents.

Don’t know about you but I always run out of money at Christmas time. This year, I’ve decided I’m going to make my presents and for the ones I have in mind, now is the time to start.

Imagine gorgeous little succulent gardens.

Succulents are very rewarding and easy to grow. My friend Ginny moved into a house that has loads of succulents. Initially, she wasn’t a fan and silently vowed that she’d replace them all with “proper flowers”. Yet, two years of gardening has taught her to love all the various types. Pinks, reds, purples, greens and each type produces a fabulous flower.

They don’t ask for much water either.

She’s always breaking bits off and sticking them into the ground in a different spot, to see if they change colour. Succulents that are green in the shade suddenly go bright red in the sun. Most of them have a very shallow root system and grow easily from a little bit.

But you can also grow them from a single leaf. This is how you do it.

Gently twist the leaf off (take a bottom leaf so you don’t trash the mother plant). You’ll see that sap oozes from the place on the leaf where it was removed.

Put the leaf on a piece of paper towel on the window sill, or some sunny spot, for a few days until it forms a scab. Wait for that scab, otherwise, the leaf might rot.

Once the leaf has formed the scab place it on top of some soil. Keep the soil moist (not soaking—just moist). After a few weeks, you’ll see that it starts to grow roots. If you leave it, the roots will eventually go down into the soil, but that would also be a good time to plant your baby succulent in a different pot.

Another awesome thing about succulents is that they don’t need much soil. So you can grow a few different varieties in one pot. This looks super cool.

They seem to grow well in old tins—we’ll talk about ways to jazz up tins next week.

Scout around your neighbourhood for different succulents and start a little nursery people. Feel free to send us pictures.

Happy growing!

Sibo

A serious Hottie

A good way to stay warm is to do some exercise. Don’t be a couch potato—go for a cycle, jog, brisk walk, hula hoop or do something else that you enjoy.

Sjoe! It’s become rather cold lately. Of course, I suppose that’s to be expected, seeing as it is now winter, but honestly, I am not a fan of the cold.

A good way to stay warm is to do some exercise. Don’t be a couch potato—go for a cycle, jog, brisk walk, hula hoop or do something else that you enjoy. It takes the sting out of winter.

There is, however, nothing worse than climbing into an ice-cold bed.

My Dad is afraid of electric blankets, he knows somebody whose house burnt down. Seriously, the entire place was raised to the ground. In fact, they were lucky to get out with their lives. So electric blankets are banned in our house.

We’ve had various forms of hot water bottles too. Those electric ones that you plug into a socket and make weird gurgly noises… but they don’t seem to last very long. We’ve had bean-filled ones that you heat up in the microwave. Erk! Those only work if the microwave is super clean. Mum had a proper rubber bottle but somehow she managed to lose the top. She searched and searched but it was gone. I think she threw it away in the bin without thinking, but I’m not brave enough to voice that thought.

We’ve now resorted to the hotties that my Grandmother used to make.

Take a bottle – any kind of bottle will do, but generally, whisky or brandy bottles work a treat because they are quite thick.

Boil the kettle. Very carefully fill the bottle with boiling water—use a funnel if you have shaky hands. If you are little, get a parental agent to do it for you. Boiling water gives one of the nastiest burns, so I’m not kidding when I say be careful! It works well if you put the bottle in the sink and fill it up.

Screw the top on tightly and… here comes the best bit… put the bottle in a long sock. My Gran used to knot the sock at the top so that the bottle could not fall out, but we don’t bother with that.

You’ll find this hot water bottle works like a bomb. If you put it into your bed an hour or so before you go to sleep the bed will be nice and warm. Easy peasy. 

Stay warm peeps!

Sibo

Libraries are Lovely

Borrow a book from your local library today!

When last did you set foot in a library?

In the last few years, libraries have become somewhat obsolete, what with e-Books and the internet. Tasks and assignments that would have automatically driven one to the local library can now be looked up online with very little effort.

The whole culture of being in a space where one could trawl through volumes to:

  • find the necessary information
  • read it
  • be considerate of other users in the process
  • look after the borrowed book and return it in the same condition, to avoid the cross clucking of an irate librarian

has almost disappeared.

In reality, libraries are still fabulous places where all sorts of things happen. They don’t only have a wide selection of books to choose from, but also have motivating speakers, holiday activities, story hours and other interesting events.

They’re safe havens of quiet and solitude. Some libraries have areas where kids can do their homework. Photocopies can be made or one can just sit quietly and read.

The City of Joburg recently tweeted that they have extended selected library’s hours to be open on Sundays between 9am and 3pm.  This is awesome news.

Joining the library is easy. All you need is your identity document or driver’s license and a Municipality account. There’s a short form with basic details to complete. Parents can list their dependents on the form and they get their own library cards.  Books are normally issued for a two week period. Be warned though, if you bring them back late, you’ll have to pay a fine of R2 per book per week—even if they are only one day late.

If you borrow a book, it stands to reason that it needs to be looked after. Why… obviously, because many other people will want to read the same book!

Whilst the World Wide Web is incredibly useful, sometimes nothing beats a decent reference book that can be still found on a library shelf.

My friend Ginny’s local library even hosted a pop-up book fair, where a group of authors gathered and showcased their work. The books were for sale too, with a percentage of the sales being donated to the library. A win-win situation!

Join your local library—you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Many of our South African children have problems reading, this is a great way to help.

Sibo

Rubble Rousing

Use your imagination… things do not have to be as they are.

Gardening can be an expensive hobby, but does not have to be.

My friend, Ginny, has become an avid gardener.

When they first moved into their house the front yard was bare. Obviously, the people who had lived there previously had tried planting grass, but then a water shortage hit and it died. There were a nice variety of succulents along one wall, with various bits of droopy vegetation decorating the fence.

Ginny and her lovely husband jumped in and decided a raised bed would be the way to go. They made a round one and filled it with teensy spinach plants. The spinach flourished… but the birds devoured most of it before they could. Summer arrived and it shrivelled up and died despite being watered. They decided to wait a while before planting anything else.

Then my friend had a run-in with cancer and to keep herself occupied and turn her brain off, she attacked the front garden.  She sculpted, laid and dug, all by the seat of her pants. So sometimes things worked out and sometimes they didn’t. The garden shop lady nearly died laughing when she discovered that she’d laid garden paths with gravel but had no weed cloth underneath. She bought the cloth but discovered it was nasty to work with and did not, in fact, actually do the job. The weeds still appeared.

Fast forward eight months. Ginny had been ogling out some building rubble up the road from their house.

“I want some of that,” she declared.

Her not-so-lovely husband rolled his eyes. “No! You’ll have to find somebody else to help you steal rubble from the side of the road.”

So she enlisted her daughter’s help and they raided the pile. But there was a dude at the house who gave them the thumbs up, so it wasn’t actually stealing after all.

She laid out that rubble in the same raised circle bed that they’d originally planted the spinach in. Piled blocks on top of each other until it looked appealing. Then she mixed a sloppy bowl of dark brown Tile Magic grout and tile bond liquid and gave the whole structure a quick wash of colour. Luckily they also had lots of compost from all the leaves and garden refuse to fill it up with earth.

The end result… a fabulous swirl in the garden full of herbs and flowers.

Get creative folk!

Sibo

Breathe Deep People

“I’m going home to watch some TV and de-stress!” How often have you heard this? But lying like a couch potato in front of the television doesn’t lower blood pressure at all.

The easiest way to de-stress is to do some deep breathing exercises.

They recommend around half an hour a day, but actually, even a few minutes help.

What a bargain! It doesn’t cost anything and we all do it anyway.  Even better, we don’t need a special place or fancy equipment. In fact, if you catch a taxi, bus or train home, you can do it on the way and be all nice and relaxed and de-stressed by the time you get there.

There are several different methods of breathing to relax but the American Institute of Stress recommends a technique called the “Quieting Response”. It only takes 6 seconds to do and apparently it works like a bomb.

First, you smile inwardly, with your mouth and your eyes. We all know the benefits of smiling outwardly, but this is something different, it somehow makes you relax. (Go on; try it quickly while you are reading this.) Then they tell you to imagine holes in the soles of your feet. As you breathe in (a nice deep breath) you visualize hot air flowing up through your body to your lungs. You relax each part of your body as the hot air hits. Then you breathe it all out again, imagining it flowing down, down, down—back out through the holes in your soles!

Pretty darn easy, right? I’m going to try it next time I’m stressed. Kids get stressed too you know!

True story, often when we are stressed we tense up and it takes a concerted physical act to release that tension.

Did you know?

  • If you opened up your lungs flat, they would cover an entire tennis court?
  • In people, the left lung is smaller than the right lung. Why? So that there‘s space for your heart.
  • The average person breathes around 27 litres of air a minute.
  • Children laugh about 300 times a day whereas adults only laugh around 15 times. We’ve talked about laughing before – it releases all those good hormones.
  • Last bit of useless information… when you sneeze, the air comes out of your body at around 16 km per hour!

Take time out to sniff the daisies people!

Sibo

So cheesy…

A cheesecake without any cheese!

The other day Mum got all excited about a recipe that she saw on foodiesofsa on Instagram. (This is the Facebook link – go check them out.)

A really easy cheesecake that only had 3 ingredients—and not one of them was cheese!

  • 1 kg of double cream yoghurt
  • 1 packet of lemon creams
  • 1 tin of condensed milk (well shaken before opening)

She included the stuff on her shopping list the following day, which happened to be a Saturday and Dad was home. She’d barely packed away the rest of the groceries when she was hauling out bowls to make the tart.

Dad suggested that she find the recipe on her cell phone before she started but she just waved her hand around airily and said, “Don’t be silly—it’s super easy. I remember exactly how to do it.”

Mum crushed up the biscuits in a plastic bag using the rolling pin.  Of course, she didn’t use a Ziploc bag as they suggested—the bag broke and spewed contents all over the kitchen counter. It didn’t matter because the counter was clean, so she just scooped them into the bowl that she’d already greased.

“How long do you microwave them for?” asked Dad.

“Three minutes.”

I think it was the first time that mum has ever actually managed to burn anything in the micro. She spent some time picking out a few black crispy bits and muttering under her breath. Then fetched her phone and double checked the recipe.  In fact, the biscuit crumbs were only supposed to spend 35-40 seconds in the micro!

Dad smirked.

She saved the day by melting a few spoons of butter and mixing it into the by now, rather dry, biscuit crumbs. Then smooshed them down with the back of a spoon to make the crust.

Next, she shook up the tin of condensed milk and mixed it together with the yoghurt in another bowl. That went into the micro for 2 minutes (actually the recipe said 2-3, but she was erring on the safe side). She took it out, stirred it quickly again and then popped it back in for another 3 minutes.

Then poured the mixture over the biscuit base, let it cool a bit and put it in the fridge. Can you believe that cheeky mum licked out the condensed milk tin without sharing? How rude!

We had cheesecake for pudding that night topped with Auntie Rudi’s fig jam.

It was delicious!

Sibo

When the chips are down

Potatoes are gluten free! True story.

We were shopping the other day and had stopped at the frozen food isle to get some veggies and chips. Whilst mum was busy agonising over beans or peas, I noticed a dude taking packets of chips out of his trolley and putting them back in the freezer. He had about ten packets. He then rummaged around in the piles in the freezer, picked out random bags of the same brand of chips and placed them in his trolley.

I watched for a while, entranced.

Then I couldn’t help myself, I asked him what was wrong with the chips he had put back (they looked exactly the same to me.)

Mum gave me one of her dirty looks that says “Sibo! Why are you bothering strangers? Oh wait… WHY are you talking to strangers in the first place?”

The man shrugged his shoulders and told me he did not want “gluten free” chips. He pointed to a speech bubble on the top of the packet.

Mum clutched her head, completely forgetting he was a stranger and spoke to him herself. “Oh my word! Whatever next?” Then she checked our chips to see that they weren’t of the ‘gluten free’ variety.

A few weeks later we popped into a different store and mum grabbed a bag of oven-bake chips without thinking. When we got home, she noticed they were gluten free. She moaned to Dad about how they were taking all the goodness out of everything and soon we might just as well eat twigs.

Dad just smiled and gave mum a hug. Then he told her that chips are made of potatoes and there is no gluten in them to begin with.  It was just packaging. Some people have gluten allergies and don’t know which foods contain what. So having the information on the package made it easier.

Think mum felt a bit foolish, because she huffed and puffed and said they might as well label them ‘boneless’ too then!

I did some research and according to Medical News Today “Gluten is a family of proteins found in grains like wheat, spelt, rye and barley. Gliadin and glutenin are the two main gluten proteins.”

Apparently most people tolerate gluten quite finely, but some folk suffer from a condition called Celiac disease and gluten is really bad for them.

The bottom line is—potatoes do not contain gluten.

You can have your chips and eat them people!

Sibo

PESKOM

Power outages are a pain in the butt!

My friend Ginny wrote a modern day, uniquely South African fairy storybook, The Imaginaeries of Faerie Glen, based in a nature reserve in Pretoria. Amongst other things, she rips off ESKOM—calls them PESCOM in the book, which stands for the Pesky Fire-Fly Company and they provide light in the Glen. They are just as unreliable and irritating as our own electricity company in South Africa.

Until the app “Eskom se push” came out, it was nightmare trying to figure out which stage you were on and what number your house was on the grid. There was a horrible, unwieldy table that my Dad printed out and stuck together to make a chart. He laboriously highlighted each teensy numbered block that represented our area. And still we got it wrong. The stages would change or load-shedding would miraculously stop.

Nothing drives my mother crazier than having meticulously prepared for a power outage at a certain time—like at seven o’clock in the evening. Charged solar-power jars, dinner prepared long in advance, lanterns ready, cell phones 100% charged. Plus she’d reluctantly come to terms with missing her favourite programme that evening.

We finished dinner just before seven that evening and sat around the table, waiting for that ‘click’ when everything shuts down.

Nothing.

Mum went to the kitchen to double check the time on the oven clock. That’s a pain in the butt too – you know how many times I have reset those digi clocks in the last few weeks? It was only five minutes past the hour—there was still time for the municipality to hit the ‘off’ switch.

Still nothing.

At ten past seven my Dad declared that that power was going to stay on and Mum could watch her programme after all. I shuffled off to my room and read by light bulb, instead of the solar power jar I had all charged and ready.

The next night, we were on the same schedule—the power was due to go off at seven. Mum was more relaxed this time. She’d also stashed all the lamps back in the kitchen cupboard (my mum’s a neat freak you know). 

Pow! At exactly one minute past seven, the power went out. Mum howled with rage and Dad said naughty words because he’d forgotten to charge his cell phone and only had 5% battery power left.

You just never know, do you?

Sending light and love people.

Sibo