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!)

Turning Up The Cool...

Today in our town it is 38 degrees, and will be for the next three days. I have resisted turning on the air conditioner up until today, but this morning the beast went on, and will probably stay on (during the day) until Saturday. If it was just one high temp day, I probably wouldn't have bothered, but three hot days in a row means that the house doesn't cool down again in between, and as we are in a thin-walled, uninsulated fibro house, the rooms heat up so quickly and cool down so slowly. I set our air conditioner to 25 degrees, close all unnecessary doors, keep the windows and curtains shut, and turn it on early so it uses less energy to get down to its set temp.

As if to alleviate my guilt, our power bill arrived today. It's our first one since we started making changes to our energy usage, and I was keen to see the results. While we are far from 'low' electricity users, we have definitely made progress. Last year in the same billing period, we used a staggering 1800 units. That averages to 30 units a day. This year, we have halved that for this billing period, to 15 units a day. This will increase again soon if we make no other changes, due to warmer weather and the use of the air conditioner. But I am still fairly pleased with that. I just need to now train the rest of the family to turn off lights when they leave the room (Nath), decide what they want from the fridge BEFORE opening the door (Miya) and remember to take the next night's dinner out of the freezer to defrost rather than using the microwave (ahem, me). Does anyone else have some electricity saving tips they have found to have made a difference that they can share with a beginner like me?

Chickens, Shower Paddles and Moonshine.

My husband and I enjoy a fine beverage or two and recently discovered that our favourite tipple *ahem - Bundy* rated poorly in the Ethical Shopping Guide. This was one of those situations where a little bit of information proved to be just the tip of the iceberg, and the more research we did, the more questions we ended up with.
A friend's husband stills his own spirits, and they kindly allowed us to 'sample' a (1.5litre) bottle of 30% alcohol (no names here, given the questionable ethics/legalities of this arrangement. I believe the long arm of the law may refer to this as 'bootlegging', and apparently this is frowned upon.) It looks like vodka, and the idea is that you add an essence of your choice to flavour it. It had such a clean, crisp taste, and was lovely with a bit of coconut essence mixed through it (like Malibu). We sampled that small amount over the weekend, and, having not quite decided whether to pursue stilling our own alcohol, came away from their place today with an 8 litre bucket full. I can now say I am quite convinced that buying a still will prove worthwhile. Dear Santa.......

Last night we were faced with the unpleasant task of killing one of our chickens. It had been looking unwell for a couple of days, and yesterday began hobbling unsteadily, and its rear end was caked in poo. We stunned it and killed it quickly, buried it and sprayed the yard and coop with vinegar. Today, one of the other chooks has been a bit wobbly and subdued, and didn't lay today, so I think this will be a task revisited sooner than we had hoped. This brings us from three layers down to one, and I am praying that whatever it is doesn't infect the Silky Bantams and ducks. I am now on the hunt for some more layers, as it has been so handy having our own supply of fresh eggs.

Yesterday we received our shower paddle in the mail, and Nath installed it easily last night. The idea is that once you have reached the right temperature, while you are 'soaping up', you hit the paddle and it cuts the water off to the faucet, and when you hit it again, it flows again at the same temperature as you had set it. This will save money and water, especially when the girls are showering, as it can require a gymnast with eight arms to get them both washed and shampooed. Not that they don't take water conservation seriously... Eden particularly can be obsessive about making sure EVERY drop of water makes it into the bucket....

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.