Good Reads This Week

After a mega week of moving and unpacking and 6 month old parenting, I've barely had time to think about the blog. I have no idea where my camera is [thank goodness for phone cameras hey] and I now know just how slow the internet becomes when you hang a pair of pants from the yagi antenna which has yet to make it onto the roof. 

Anyway, it's all good because we've got a ton of beautiful orange and purple flowers in the garden, and I've read some great blogs this week which I'd love to share with you. The theme here is that as individuals, we can make a difference to global problems. I like to think this is the case. Believe me though, sometimes I turn on the news [only sometimes] and feel woefully depressed about the state of our world. So, some weekend reading for you, my lovely readers.

This piece on what we as individuals can do to reduce our contribution to climate change [if we all do a little bit, it adds up to a lot].

And this piece, on how your choice of chocolate impacts on forced child labour. I don't think we'll be eating too much Cadburys in this house anymore.

And finally, can I just say thank you to all who read and comment on this blog. Honestly this little space on the internet really starts to feel like a community of like-minded folk. I'm incredibly grateful and humbled that you take the time to stop by and have a read or leave a comment. Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.

Community Garage Sale Day

This weekend just gone, our little town hosted a Community Garage Sale. Basically, a few kind people organised it and advertised far and wide, so that lots of garage sale lovers/bargain hunters would flock to town. The idea was that if you wanted to participate, you paid $5 to the organisers for their efforts and then put all your stuff out for sale, and lots of people turn up and buy it! 

There were about 20 houses participating in the end, which is pretty cool - if you like your garage sales it would make the trip out to our town pretty worthwhile. And there was a morning tea/sausage sizzle thing happening as well [I dream of the day when it isn't a 'sausage sizzle' but is instead a selection of good vegetarian foods on offer..] Anyway, we participated, we had a ton of people turn up to our place and we sold a lot of 'stuff' from the house that we no longer wanted or needed. Win.

My Maxwell & Williams 'Cat and Mouse' mugs didn't sell! Back to the cupboard for you guys.

We ended up making $133 in sales. We're happy with that, since we had no idea what to expect from the whole day. We sold a remote control helicopter [we can live with only having one in the house], a bunch of books [that was a little bit hard for me, but I'm going with it] and our microwave. Yep, we decided that we're going to live microwave free. Since we don't really like what it actually does to food in the heating process. And we gave away a few things too - a stack of folders, kitchen goodies, battery rechargers.

The really interesting thing for me, was meeting all these random people. I like people, I like people watching, and all these different people with different stories were turning up and browsing our wares. A few locals came for a look, one of whom was born in our house, back in the day. Others who remembered our house from a different era, before it went to 'rack and ruin' [apparently, but it's been tidied up again now]. A lady who chatted to us about meditation for ages [trigger = prayer flags] and a young couple who had also been looking at buying our place when we did [slightly awkward!].  

All up it was a great day. There are definitely benefits to living in a small community like this, and days such as this are one of those. We didn't sell everything we wanted to, but now we have a pile of things to advertise in other places to get rid of. The timing was pretty cool too, we're totally in the 'nesting before baby arrives' stage and having a big house clean out was just what we needed. It was even worth the 8.30am start on a Sunday. I suppose we should be getting ready for more early starts pretty soon...