Gumboot pots and Paper chains

Want to make your house pretty without consuming more, find creative activities for children that don't involve buying more, and/or re-use some of the stuff around your house that is no longer wanted? Here are two ideas that do all three.

Gumboots! There are so many cool kids' ones around but, no matter how funky, they still wear out or (if you're lucky) kids grow out of them. What to do with all that rubber-plastic prettiness?

A few spring flower punnets and an hour of working together and we have had these decorating our entrance for the last two months.

Although we did buy potting mix, more than half the soil was made up of our own compost. (We have three compost tumblers and our guinea pigs contribute substantially to this enterprise!)

Five of these six gumboots drained sufficiently without any help; the sixth needed a couple of holes added. Summer has nearly killed them off now and direct sun has faded the gumboots significantly, but we may get second season out of them and meanwhile, it has been a lot more fun than just binning them.

Your children might not rip through gumboots at quite the rate we do, but if you have anyone small in your house you are certain to have a pile of kids' artwork mounting up. And old posters. Calendars. Wrapping paper. (Most people I suppose have junk mail or magazines, but we don't receive them here)

Eva got inspired to make paper chains for Christmas and it was a great use for the build-up of paper.

Because they were using their own old artworks and posters they were willing to 'repurpose' things that I had not been allowed to throw away (sneaky, huh?!).

Note the hole-punching above. If you have someone who loves hole-punching, its not a bad way to add interest to strips from old calendars while keeping those hole-punching-hands from less productive outcomes.

They both loved making the chains and I am happy to have our living room decorated by their creativity and enthusiasm.

Initial Time: Both of these activities took about an hour. That was part of the point. We have no TV and its school holidays again. Creative, engaging, sustainable activities are what we need plenty of here. (I last wrote specifically about this when Eva was quite small but if you search the labels below for 'free kids activities' there are also other places it has come up as she has got bigger)

Initial Cost: Gumboot pots: about $30 for seedlings and a bag of potting mix; Paper chains: a couple of dollars for a big box of staples.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: We will eventually have to take both these things down and they will ultimately end up in the recycling (chains) or the general rubbish (boots).

Impact: It is impossible to really calculate an impact for these activities and, to be honest, it would probably be quite small anyway. But both are little bits of a bigger picture: finding ways to reuse everything until it really is beyond use, rather than chucking it out after its first purpose; avoiding buying stuff to meet a need (and considering whether it is in fact a need at all); helping children to be creative; celebrating colour and beauty and natural things; finding the quality in our own creative effort rather than needing a professional or 'perfect' outcome (often with associated waste) in order to be happy; sharing activities together and working collaboratively on a combined project.

Special birthdays

When Tyson turned forty in June we wanted to celebrate him well, without massively increasing our footprint. 

The main agenda was to gather people together and enjoy each other, with good food. But here are a few things that also had an eye to our sustainability commitments:

We asked for gifts of sustainability actions in lieu of presents, and were touched by how many friends offered Tyson some idea of what they are doing to live within our earth's means. Some made new commitments; others reiterated choices already made. I was particularly moved by one (slightly) older friend who gifted to Tyson her decision to make more use of public transport, along with an invitation to ask her how it was going and an admission that the idea of using public transport scared her a bit. The traditional photo board included space for people to add notes about their sustainable choices.

Cooking one big roast dinner for sixty people used less energy than all those households cooking their own roast dinners at home (and was more fun!). We used about 15kWh of energy for cooking; a household roast dinner takes around 2kWh. The meat was free-range pork.

We borrowed cutlery and crockery from Tyson's parents to reduce our use of disposable items. We still have a pile of disposable plates, cups and cutlery in the cupboard from before we really got moving on this sustainability journey, some of which have been reused and returned to the cupboard several times, and these bumped up the numbers, along with some compostable plates. (I have my doubts about how they compost, though - I tore them into quarters and soaked them in water for a week and they were showing no signs of breaking down or being suitable for our compost any time soon!) Despite me encouraging guests to leave the dishes for us to run through the dishwasher in big loads the next day, a happy team got going in the kitchen and cleaned them all for us. They really did seem to be having a great time in there. Perhaps for some this was their sustainability 'gift', but most I think just enjoyed talking and laughing while working together.

We minimised our use of gladwrap and alfoil. So often at parties or events these are used to cover food for quite short periods of time. Instead, we used baking trays to cover salads.

We labelled our bins and encouraged people to separate out compost, recycling and genuine rubbish.

 

Eva made her own decorations. We also re-used the cloth bunting made for us by a friend last year, and ran one string of LED fairy lights.

Cards were home-made. The two gifts we did purchase were wrapped in cloth, one from each of the children. (We are not scrooges; its important our kids experience both giving and receiving. We encouraged them to be involved in choosing gifts that suited Tyson, to help them learn to think of someone other than themselves) The cordless drill set in particular will be put to use to facilitate many future projects along our sustainability journey.

Two weeks later my dad turned eighty, on the opposite side of the country. We celebrated by all my siblings (five of us) gathering, along with spouses and children, to share a holiday in the Grampians with my parents. The emphasis, again, was good time together. Bushwalking. Eating. Talking. Cuppas. A visit to the farm where Dad grew up. Grandkids' shenanigans. Reading books. Spotting wildlife. My gift was to arrange for my sisters and I to sing a couple of songs for Dad.

However, as we don't live near each other (not even all in the same country) a very great amount of fuel was used to bring us together. Would we have had less environmental impact if we had all sent my dad expensive presents instead? Maybe. But we would not have celebrated him well, and we would not have modeled for our children that people are always, always more important than stuff. 

Happy birthday to two of the finest men in my life.  

Some of the sustainability actions Tyson was gifted:

And finally from our small man, a gift not of sustainable actions but of hope:

Celebrating our four-year-old

I was surprised how interested you were in my post about our one-year-old's birthday so have decided maybe it is relevant to share a bit about how we celebrated Eva turning four this month.

This was a much anticipated birthday for our girl - but not because she wanted presents or even a party. No, the most important thing was that she moved up the pre-schooler hierarchy from 'Three And A Half' to 'Four'. It has been made clear to me by the one who knows best that such a transition is a very important matter. 

Rather than a 'party', with all the associated expectations and activities, we invited Eva's three best friends to join us for half a day playing at Landsdale Farm. Eva had been there not so long ago and wanted to share this favourite place with her friends. We are fortunate that we avoided socially awkward choices about excluding others, as none of these closest friends are from the big kindy friendship group. 

We talked it up as 'a play to celebrate Eva's birthday' rather than a 'birthday party' and insisted gifts were unnecessary, but all three guests still brought gifts. 

However, these friends know us well and no-one went silly with gifts. At least two of the three guests had been allowed to (and wanted to) choose their gifts themselves, which resulted in gifts that were exactly what a four-year-old wanted - as chosen by a four-year-old and a three-and-a-half-year-old - even if not quite exactly what their parents had in mind. I loved that the kids were encouraged to be involved in choosing.

Gifts are tricky. There was not one gift Eva was given, from friends or family, that was not very appreciated, thoughtfully chosen and lovingly given; not one that I would want to return or am not thankful for. And yet the net outcome is that a whole lot more stuff has come to dwell at our place. For next time I am considering ways to do a 'give away' in preparation for any time of receiving. Still working on that.

Rather than 'party food' we took what we would ordinarily take for a picnic outing, and ate it out of the packets or off our laps rather than from fancy single-use disposable 'party wear'.

All the children had a blast, even (especially?!) in the rain. 

 

You would have been forgiven for thinking the main event was not the farm, though, but the half-hour drive in our car with all the children in the back. 

Yes, this is why we bought a seven-seater. We could nearly have driven them the length of the freeway and back and considered the birthday well celebrated without even getting out of the vehicle!

On her actual birthday we had hidden the gifts we bought for her around our room, wrapped in pretty fabric as described at Christmas. Eva loved hunting them out - hide and seek is one of her most favourite games at present.

Our six gifts were: two picture books, a set of wooden alphabet magnets, a train tunnel (her particular request), heart-shaped post-it notes, and a small plastic car & horse trailer & horse. I think I bought too many gifts (although a $4 train tunnel and a $2 pad of post-it notes, though received and used with much glee, are not exactly exorbitant). I am not a great success at living smaller, just one person having a go, and the lovely things on offer for children easily get me in. This time around I didn't check how sustainably the timber for the toys was produced, and the horse trailer etc I confess was a complete impulse buy of unnecessary plastic on a day Eva had enjoyed driving behind a horse in traffic. However, it was at least bought from our lovely local independent toy store rather than some bulk-rubbish warehouse store.

Breakfast was her choice: dippy eggs on this occasion, although she has many breakfast favourites and Tyson could have been up for a trickier cook than that!

We gathered with Tyson's family for an afternoon tea picnic at Eva's favourite local play area, Tomato Lake, which involved much bolting around with cousins and eating food brought by all to share. Cake by Grandma again - she's very good at that. Eva had asked for a red snail cake.

 

Of course if you're going to dress in a frilly pink outfit, you need to do a bit of gardening too...

The next day we went to the zoo with her my-side cousin. We often go to the zoo, as we have season passes, so that wasn't a particular treat in itself, but we only go on the carousel for special occasions. Because it was Eva's birthday we let the girls have two rides. That's very near to paradise.

Her kindy, church and Wiggly Woo all sang happy birthday and gave her a small something (sticker, chocolate, pencil). Her Children's Church leader cut watermelon into a cake shape, stuck in candles, and made it a birthday morning tea - especially thoughtful, as Eva doesn't really eat cake. We bought a bag of chocolate frogs and gave them out at kindy. Tyson made sure his rostered day for parent help at kindy was in the birthday week. One evening in the week after her birthday we went out to dinner as a family at a local restaurant we often frequent, where Eva likes to order and devour an enormous chicken parmigiana, and made note to her that it was another part of remembering her birthday. 

And perhaps most importantly I tried very hard to make her birthday and days around it days of 'yes'. So often when at home with two small children I find myself saying 'no' all day. Now and then I set myself a day of 'yes' - where unless it is dangerous, expensive or impossible I do my level best to say 'yes' to what Eva suggests, even if it is not the most convenient choice or not the one that I personally would enjoy most. I never tell her it is a 'yes' day, I just do it, and usually the result is a happy day all around. Why don't I do it every day? (Because I am too often tired and grumpy and sometimes things do need to get done... before next Christmas...)

Happy birthday to our precious girl. We love you lots and can't believe you are four already.

The usual 'time/ cost/ impact' section that would go here doesn't make a lot of sense for this one. The impact is as per what I wrote about birthdays in July but it is intangible and impossible to quantify. The whole birthday cost us about $100 I think, including $6 farm entries for four kids and $4.50 bag of chocolates for kindy kids, but I didn't keep track closely so that may not be entirely accurate. Dinner at the restaurant is not in that amount - can't remember how much that was.

Thanks parents for allowing me to include photos of your lovely children on my blog.