Welcome to my website ! My name is Ellie and I am passionate about homemaking, as well as vintage design, electronics, and appliances, and the intersection of these two passions. I'll be posting updates related to those topics if you were interested in following along. :)

To-Do

I thought I would have a to-do list here, I was going to call it The Daily To-Do but I can't promise I'll update it daily ;)

Today's To-Do list date is June 22nd 2025.

This Week's Meal Plan

I enjoyed last week's challenge of not buying groceries and cooking what I already had, it was pretty successful ! I'm back to buying groceries this week but will definitely do it again and also have 'low-buy' grocery weeks to beat the backlog of pantry staples. I've switched to starting my meal plan on a Saturday as that's when the farmer's markets is on, and I realised even though I do some grocery shopping on Friday, its not til halfway through the day so I can't plan new meals that day very well. This week I'm cooking out of Readers Digest Quick Thrifty Cooking. Here's this week's plan:

Journal Updates

June 24th 2025

I'm doing a general tidy of the house today for a bit of a special thing. The local news is coming to my place to interview me about the state budget. Sounds a little odd ! To explain, I'm a regular listener and texter-in to the local radio station, and they got in touch with me to ask if I was interested in sharing my thoughts on camera, as they're looking to get ordinary locals' perspectives on how the budget will effect them and their communities. I'll be talking about it from a disability perspective as that's my main frame of reference. It's pretty exciting and I'm also a little nervous so am doing a tidy up of the place to help settle things.

June 22nd 2025

I got this beautiful plate at the markets for $1 ! I wanted to properly display it so I got a little plate stand for it too, and now its in pride of place on the new dining room cabinet (picture of that to come...). It had had a sticker stuck to the front of it but it easily came off with a bit of hot water and scrubbing, and now is good as new. There's also a much older sticker on the back with someone's name in lovely handwriting, which I decided to leave as a tribute to them. One thing I love about vintage items is the history behind them, and I wanted to keep that bit of history with my plate.

June 18th 2025

I finally got around to doing something I've been wanting to do for ages ! I replaced all my mismatched plastic coathangers with a nice set of matching wooden ones. Re-hanging everything was a good opportunity to cull things I don't like/wear or don't fit, and I now look forward to opening my wardrobe to pick the day's outfit rather than getting annoyed at the cluttered plastic hangers. I still need to do a declutter of the top and bottom sections but the hanging sections are much better now.

June 14th 2025

The dining table has been Ellie Clutter Simulator 2025 for too long, so I decided to finally declutter and dust it off so it can be used for its intended purpose, i.e., dining ! I'm planning to eat more meals there to make use of it and eat in front of the TV or computer less, and also have the occasional communal household meal. I cleared off all the clutter and set it with some favourite placemats. It had actually still had the Christmas placemats and table runner from 2024, so I switched the placemats out and flipped the table runner for a more neutral pattern. I still want to declutter the corner behind it which has become a kind of repository for spare placemats, table things, brooms, etc.

June 11th 2025

More rearranging ! Turns out the record player was a bit in the way of the typewriter which needs room on either side for the bar to go back and forth. No problems ! I brought the long coffee table back in and swapped the TV onto it from where it had been in the same spot but on a smaller table. Now there's room for both the record player and the TV on the long coffee table, and I have plenty of room to type. The lamp that had been on top of the TV is now on the desk, which actually makes the light softer as its a bit lower down. The TV is also a bit closer to me as I moved it forward and can now see things a little better. I might actually start wearing my glasses to watch the news of an evening !

June 10th 2025

A couple of days ago I decided to rearrange my room a bit. I do this every so often as it helps keep things feeling fresh, and I get a bit restless if it's been the same way for too long. What I did this time was rearrange the corner under the window. There used to be a coffee table there which originally had my record player on it, but which had come to hold not only my record player and records but also a bunch of other random clutter which didn't need to be there and was making the space look crowded. So I decluttered everything off the coffee table and switched it out with my writing desk which had been in the living room. I'd been wanting to move my writing desk into the bedroom for a while so I would use my typewriter more. I hadn't been using it as much when it was out in the living room, partly because it wasn't close at hand, and also because I didn't want to be making loud typing sounds in the main space all the time. Since moving it in here I have indeed been using it more, and it's really nice to have a view out the window while typing. I'm also looking forward to putting a record on while I type, which I think will be pretty atmospheric, if the banging of the typing doesn't make the record skip. ;)