Green and Thrifty

This week has been actually HOT. Yes, in Tasmania, I know, who would have thought it?
Edited to add: Hot two days ago when I wrote this. Weather has since had a change of heart, and we are back to wearing jackets to watch the Australia Day fireworks.

So the girls have been in and out of the pool (which isn't green and thrifty in the least, but it is there, so we are using what we have..), and then holing themselves up in my study downstairs where it is cool. They and all their friends went 3D with the loom bands. Did you know you can make stuffed animals with loom bands? You Tube is a wonderful thing. Hoping the pesky loom bands will all be used up soon..

Then there were the days of card making. The girls have years of scrap booking supplies sent for birthdays from Grandma and lovely aunties, just waiting for some summer holiday inspiration. Now we have a couple of years' worth of home made cards all ready to go..

After that, a jewellery craze set in, as the girls, armed with a set of long-nosed pliers from the shed, undid their collection of necklaces and bracelets and remade them into charm bracelets, and went crazy with the their bead collections, also well stocked by Grandma. Then, when they ran out of ready made charms, they started making their own from modelling clay..

For one one whole day Posy whined continuously asked ever so politely for a swing. By the next day she and her friends had made their own:

Then they turned the entire family room downstairs into a blanket fort and had sleep overs in it. I think they have had a fun summer, and it has all been about Using What We Have. The more we do it, the more I realise just how much we do have, and how looking at our life with a view to appreciating the incredible abundance in it makes us happy and content. Whereas concentrating on the few things we don't have, and that other people do have, well, that just makes us miserable. It is the same life both ways, different attitude.

This week will be all about Back to School, sadly. We will need to make some purchases. School shoes. Some exercise books. Thankfully we only needed to buy one textbook/workbook this year, due to the availability of hand-me-downs from older siblings. The two girls still at school have enough uniform to start the year, but I will need to keep looking out for secondhand options during the months to come. The problem with committing to shopping secondhand is that it takes so much more perseverance and effort than buying new. It is so tempting just to pop into the uniform shop and spend all the money.. except that I don't really have that option anymore. The budget that was once fairly loose and flexible with plenty of  wiggle room for lazy shopping at the world's most expensive school uniform shop, is now subject to post-divorce stringency measures. Which is excellent really, because now fate is forcing me into doing what I believe is right, laziness having won out over conscience many times in the past.

We have started to fill future lunch boxes by making batches of fruit leather from the plum tree in the back yard. The girls are an excellent labour force, especially for the fiddly job of picking all the plum stones out of the pulp with tongs. This morning a friend gave me a giant bag of big purple plums, so in a minute they will be in the pot, cooking down to make purple fruit leather. How much more fun can school lunch be?

Eating from the garden this week - rhubarb, nectarines, cherry plums, peaches, rosemary, rocket, lemons, cherry tomatoes - the first of the crop. Our zucchini plants are still babies, but those friends who planted theirs in a timely manner are already getting tired of them, and we are getting quite a few gifted zucchinis as well, so there will be zucchini cake in the freezer for school lunches, as well as minestrone and mini zucchini muffins galore. Good times:)

Tell me about your green and thrifty week..