Hi all,
I hope
you are all feeling fit and healthy!
As I said
last time, we had started looking at house plans, and are going to put together
a creative brief & go to an architect. But we haven't done it yet! Maybe
during our holiday in Oz next week.
We had a
great night at Woollaston Estates listening to Viva, accompanied by a fantastic
Russian trumpet player; they were just fabulous. What a great night that was.
The wind up
to the silly season seems to come a little earlier each year - we had something
on every night last week and this week is the same. Thank goodness we are away
for a large chunk of the rest of the month!
Congrats
to Yi & Paula who have a brand spanking new wee girl called Zofia. I think
they are all coping with life!
Hui-Ping
was in Nelson a couple of weekends ago, and we took both her & Cornish out
to the land. Jan was all set to do some spraying, but got stymied by the
weather - it rained. So we abandoned all thought of work and slid off to the
Mot Valley Café, which is run by a German guy who grows lots of his own produce
and bakes his own bread. We had a great lunch there, the sun came out & we
drank pinot gris in the sun. Lovely.
And after
talking about all this hedonism, this is a real recycling and environmental
footprint awareness year for us. Truly! While we aren't getting really green,
we are consciously trying to lessen our impacts. Aside from the usual (hanging
the washing on the clothesline, vege garden and compost), we have been trying a
bit harder.
I have
been using the library very regularly, borrowing books from other people and
buying second-hand books where I really want to own something. Our local
library has also added in a DVD loan service which has been great, as they have
movies that you don't get at mainstream video shops (for only $2 hire, as
well).
Jan is
taking his motorbike to work when the weather is fine, to keep our car use
down, and I am trying very hard to make only one trip into town each day - if I
can't avoid using the car altogether, that is.
Despite
recycling cardboard and glass, we haven't managed to make a significant impact
on reducing our plastic rubbish. I use cloth bags & avoid plastic grocery
bags, but I can't see my way around all the plastic milk bottles and things. We
try to buy larger items so we use less plastic - or refills, although they are
often not very economical. The plastic pile, while not enormous, is still there
and is very annoying. However, we will keep working on it :-)
We are
trying to decide whether we should buy a soda stream to make sparkling mineral
water or soda water to help cut down on plastic. I would ideally like to get
one on the Fly Buys points. I email & ecard... wherever possible go
electronic; bills, payments, invoices, pdfs rather than hardcopy. I have bought
an online subscription to the newspaper so I am not consuming trees for my
daily media fix. We have a 'no circulars' sign on the letterbox. We start the
fire with ancient client files and our paper rubbish.
We have
gone through all our old videos and DVDs, our old electronics and computer
stuff, trying to get rid of things that we haven't used, or that we have left
over from old systems. I am amazed how much has been 'recycled' on TradeMe. We
still have lots of cabling to go through & get rid of, but I need Jan's
expertise on exactly what the specs are for each of those, so that can wait
until after we get back from Oz.
I have
also helped some friends from just down the street load all sorts of furniture
& household stuff like chests, lamps and glasses onto TradeMe for sale, and
they sold all but two items. They are about to move into a new house, so
getting some $ and clearing out was excellent for them.
Jan has
brought a little up from the garage and sold it, but hasn't really had the time
to go through and really decide what really is surplus to requirements (the
garage is so full you can hardly get in there as well!). Also something to
tackle after his exam & our trip to Oz.
TradeMe
doesn't work well for selling books, in our experience. However, we have
another outlet for recycling books & magazines in Nelson; Founders Park
houses a load of old Nelson buildings & heritage displays which they keep
in part maintained via an annual book fair. So while we wouldn't part with most
of our books, I do have a load of out-of-date business studies text books that
will become donations for the next book fair. The fair - staffed by volunteers
- runs for a week at Queen's Birthday weekend, and usually raises $100,000.
Another
thing that's happened recently is that the Tasman District Council has bought
into a website called terranova.org.nz, which is sort of a message board for
people with recyclable items to hook up with people who want things, NZ-wide. A
very good idea, and I am wondering if we could find a use for our plastics
there... !
If any of
you have any ideas or solutions about what else we can do to lessen our
environmental impacts, please let us know. I have started a list that you can
access (if you are interested) via the link underneath the photos on this page.
Well,
next week we are away to Sydney. Our Wellington trip is on December 14-16,
which will be a good family catch up for Tina's birthday, and everyone else we can
possibly fit in... maybe a lunch at Clarks on Saturday?
Take
care, everyone. Alles liebe :-)
Sam & Jan
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