Happy Birthday Eden Susannah!

 Yesterday marked my youngest daughter's second birthday. It was a quiet event, as we have decided that the girls will have parties in alternating years. Miya had her not-to-be-forgotten pink party this year, complete with a week-and-a-half detox from all the sugars and additives, so to celebrate Eden's birthday we had a family dinner with homemade pizza and a gorgeous cake from the Additive Free Kids' Parties cookbook.

Celebrating my beautiful daughters' birthdays always leaves me feeling reflective (and, yes, sometimes a little sad) about the passing of time, the speed at which they grow up and the phases of parenting each one of them that we will not get back. This year, though, these celebrations have had additional meaning for me. Miya's birthday and the resulting behaviours from the mountains of junk food we had on offer were the catalyst for our commitment to eat and live more naturally and healthily. Eden's birthday has been the first our family has celebrated since embarking on this more conscious way of life.

I was horrified this morning when we sorted out the recycling tubs to take to the town recycling bins. After a birthday (even one without a party!) our bins were overflowing with paper, cardboard packaging and cans and bottles from everyone's drinks at dinner. Truth be told, our recycling bin is fairly full at the best of times. It's something I have been thinking about since reading Little Eco Footprints' blog post on this subject. We have managed to reduce our landfill waste quite significantly (in fact, our little half size shire bin is usually only a third full come rubbish day every week - it used to be overflowing) but I hadn't given much thought to trying to reduce our recyclable waste. Recycling requires the use of processes that draw on the Earth's resources... maybe not as much as producing new products, but more than if we were able to reuse the product ourselves, or better yet, not buy them in the first place.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. It's time for me to consider how I can implement the first two steps of this great 'healthy earth' process into our household. It may be time for me to quit my addiction to Coke Zero for once and for all. (For this reason, and many others!)

Under The Christmas Tree

I went to a Learning Ladder party a couple of weeks back at a friend's house. Learning Ladder is a 'home demo' business that sells children's books and educational games. On the table there I saw something I have been thinking about buying for the girls for some time - a tub of cotton reels and string for threading them onto. As a teacher, I know that threading is fantastic for developing fine motor skills and those early pre-writing skills. However, I could not justify spending the $20 this tub of plastic reels cost.

It occurred to me that I might be able to make my own beads (See? The whole not-buying-anything-new thing is already starting to kick in!) Nath and I experimented with cooking some beads shaped out of pink playdough that my mum had made with the girls, but only a few turned out usable. I then remembered that I had a cupboard full of old jewellery that I no longer wear (having little babies with grabbing hands cured me of that obsession!) So I spent the girls' nap time today cutting up my motley collection of necklaces and bracelets and saving the beads for Miya.

I found an old basket that would be great to hold them in, but the gaps in the wicker were too big for some of the beads. At the local markets the other day, I picked up a bag of material scraps for $2, and in it was a lovely pink scrap just big enough for me to make a lining for the basket. Onto the sewing machine I hopped, and half an hour later I had a lovely ribbon-edged lining for Miya's bead basket. I'm pretty proud of myself!

She will love this little homemade/upcycled gift, and hopefully, with some beading wire and string from my old short lived beading hobby, it will provide her with hours of entertainment.

Some Beginnings Of Projects...

A while back, we joined freecycle. We have found our local group so helpful, and been able to source 'just the right thing' for a number of different projects we are working on. We have been gifted an old fridge that was converted to a worm farm and a battered old kitchen sink to be put into a stand for a garden sink, and have been able to offload a couple of things that would have otherwise been destined for landfill.

Weekends are great for freecycling. I love logging on to see what treasures have been listed for offer, or to see if I am able to convert some of my own junk into someone else's treasure.

This week was no different, and Nath has had a hankering to try his hand at building a solar oven/food dryer. This is mostly because the electric food dehydrator we have on loan drives him to distraction with the constant whir of its fan, and the thought of all those kW being drained over long periods of time. (Drying fruit takes anywhere between six and fourteen hours)

After some research, he decided an old oven and some mirrors were exactly what he needed to create a fabulous solar oven. We have some old mirrors lying around waiting for a new purpose in life, so it was onto freecycle to try our luck at finding an old oven.

Success! Within an hour, not one, but two locals had offered us old ovens. They sounded quite different, so we decided to grab both, and spent most of Sunday with the trailer hitched up lugging heavy old ovens around and sweeping away fat redback spiders, disgruntled at the sudden disruption to their home.

Here is a picture of Nath hard at work stripping back an oven ready to build a solar oven. It will take some time to make it look (and perform) as we need it to, and I have quite firmly reminded Nath a couple of times that there is a fine line between 'rustic' and 'junkyard'.

One of the girls who responded is a dear friend who lives on a farm, so we drove out there to have a look and raided her 'junk' pile while we were there. It makes me wonder how many farms around the country have similar junk piles that are hiding some real gems. We picked up an old wooden crate that is definitely 'rustic' as opposed to 'junk' - this will form the outside of our solar oven once Nath finishes dismantling the oven.

Also hidden on my friend's farm, and the reason we went out there with the trailer, is replacing my preserving pan as my 'secondhand score of the century'. This will be stored until we are in our own home, where it will be lovingly restored and take pride of place in our kitchen.

An old Settlers wood stove, in beautiful condition with only some surface rust, and all pieces intact. This is such a generous freecycle gift from my dear friend, and it will become a much valued addition to our future new home, as in winter it will heat the house, heat our water (you can plumb water through it to act as a water heater) and provide heat for cooking. I have visions of a lovely warm kitchen, sitting around the table eating fresh bread and jam that have been cooked on the gorgeous old woodfired oven.

Joining freecycle, as well as our local buy and sell facebook page, has given us so much more of a sense of community, being able to offer other people what they need, and gaining resources for our own projects in return.

Big Changes, Little Steps

Some big changes have happened in our household over the last few weeks. Big changes that become the little steps our family is taking to reduce the impact we are having on the Earth. While they are undoubtedly the smallest of steps a family could take, they are exciting to us, because they are evidence of a shift in our thinking, and a commitment to the journey.

So, here they are:

• Making the switch to cloth nappies. Our oldest child, Miya, is toilet training and only wears nappies at night. Our youngest child, Eden, is two next month and only has about a year of full time nappy-wearing to go. We wondered if it was worth us switching to cloth at this late stage, but our hesitation was only financial, and Modern Cloth Nappies seem to only 'devalue' a few dollars when they are secondhand, so we have decided to go for it. We are buying mostly secondhand, and a few new ones from a local supplier (WAHM), and Eden loves picking which pretty nappy she will be wearing.
• Reducing our additive intake: This has involved learning to make a lot of the things we buy, at home. We now buy local, and where possible, organic fruit and veg, and have learned to make our own yoghurt, bread, tortillas, bacon, dried fruit, snacks, pasta sauces, pasta, self raising flour... next on the list are cheeses, beer and rum!!
• Collecting water from the sink, shower and laundry basin to use on the garden: we clearly have a long way to go in reducing our water usage. We fill a large watering can twice a day with 'wasted' water, which goes to show how much we use! I have invested in an 'Every Drop Shower Saver' which will significantly reduce our water wastage in the shower, but we need to work on the rest of the house!
• Reducing our landfill garbage: by buying bulk items, choosing products carefully based on the amount and type of packaging they use, purchasing sandwich wraps so we don't need to buy gladwrap, using cloth wipes on the girls' bums, making things at home, learning to sew (this is a work in progress!)

There are other little things we have done along the way also, but I guess these are the main ones. Every step we take, it does feel like our 'destination' is further away, but I keep telling myself that if I live each day more responsibly than the last, I'm heading in the right direction.