Phasing out plastics...

As we gradually work towards a more sustainable living for our family, I'm also attempting to phase out plastic where possible, especially when it comes to food.

Today I started tackling the pantry cupboard.  I went to IKEA and bought some lovely (and affordable) glass jars to replace the plastic containers I'm currently storing dry ingredients in.

The first pile I need to sort.

I won't be throwing away the old plastic containers though, as that won't help our carbon footprint either!  I'll find another purpose for these away from food.  And I will choose to use glass instead of plastic going forward.

While Mr 8 Months sat in his highchair next to me chewing a rusk, surprisingly I managed to achieve a bit.  I wrangled this pile of chaos out of the pantry to sort through, washed the new jars ready to be filled and started reorganising the section of the pantry this all came from.

I quickly realised I don't have enough jars and that I will need more of certain sizes to transfer everything across.  But hey, this is a work in progress, and the jars always look like a different size in the store than what they do when we get them home.

Most of you know what it's like when you attempt to tackle a job like this when you have kids.  You have the idea, but it's days before you get the chance to do anything about it.

Then the opportunity popped up when my oldest was at daycare and my baby was happily occupied and NOT IN MY ARMS!  That's the moment I got motivated and started.  I got into the swing of it, and had a massive pile out on the table which was partly sorted.  Then Mr 8 Months started to get bored, threw his rusk down on the floor started 'hinting' he wanted Mummy cuddles.

So the pile was left on the kitchen table until the kids were in bed and dinner had been made.  By then, I was over it so packed it all back into the pantry in whatever stage it was in, and retreated to the lounge room for the evening.  I WILL get back to it again soon though, maybe on the weekend...

Celebrate 2044, Sunday 19th May

The community spirit was high yesterday at our first ever community festival, Celebrate 2044. I love the name of this family oriented festival, as it truly represents the vibe of the day.

Whether the festival goers were locals from the 2044 postcode, or other areas of Sydney, we were all there to celebrate everything that is great about Tempe, St Peters and Sydenham.

The area is fast becoming known for the community spirit and involvement, and this festival is a way of enhancing that and sharing it. Tempe Public School had a sausage sizzle stall to raise money for the new playground, and the sausages supplied by Louise Mitchell from Agency by Glen Regan were delicious.

Speaking of Agency by Glen Regan, their team was there in fantastic black polo shirts with the 2044 postcode on the back. They are one of the biggest supporters of our community, and I believe they made a generous donation to the Tempe Public School playground fund, in addition to their support at the event yesterday.

The kids were kept busy with a plethora of free activities including an animal petting zoo, bouncy castle, face painting, SES demonstrations, Self Defence demonstrations, giant Lego, giant Jenga, Serendipity ice cream truck and of course the Tillman Park play equipment.

The newly refurbished General Gordon Hotel in Sydenham had a stall with some tasty food options including the beef burger and chips which looked phenomenal and apparently tasted brilliant.

The music on the stage set the mood, with The Ukes of Today being my personal highlight.

Everyone we spoke to seemed to be having a relaxing enjoyable day, and hope to see the event happening again every year. From what I saw and heard, yesterday was a success so I can imagine Marrickville Council will look at Celebrate 2044 becoming a regular event.

Welcome to Life in Tempe

I've been working on the new layout of this blog in secret for a while now, and gave myself the end of March deadline to make sure I didn't keep it secret indefinitely!

I had our web developer put a message on the Innocent Catering website saying that the new blog would be up at the end of March with a slightly different concept.  So here it is.

Originally, we had the Innocent Catering blog and I had my personal blog as two separate entities.  But I found it much easier to update and write posts for my personal blog, while the Innocent Catering blog ended up being a little boring to be honest.

So far, we've re-designed the Innocent Catering page and kept all the previous posts, and I'll gradually re-write the posts from my personal blog over here.

So why "Life in Tempe"?
I've spent the last 2 years being immersed in the building our Tempe based business, adding to our family, renovating our new house and becoming part of the Tempe community.  All activities seemed to be centred around this little close-knit suburb of the Inner West, so "Life in Tempe" seemed a natural fit.

Have a look around, I hope you like what you see so far, and please come back again to read more about what we've been up to.