We joined the library!

This may sound completely obvious, but I highly recommend joining your local library!

When I was a kid we all belonged to the local library and borrowed books regularly.  When my now 6.5 year old was a baby, we used to go to Newtown library for Reading Time, but since we moved 5 years ago, we haven't actually visited the library at all.  Considering we're trying to reduce the purchases we make, it's crazy that we haven't been borrowing books from the library!

Day three of Winter school holidays, and one of my daughter's school friends had just been to the library and was showing her the books he borrowed this morning.  We had no firm plans today, so headed up to the library and joined.  We found five books she was excited to read, joined up and headed home.

Turns out there's also a whole online Library that comes with the membership too, where you can read online, or order books to be collected from your local library.  If you're in the 'Inner West Council', which used to be Marrickville Council, here's the link.

Now we have all the books we can possibly want to read, and don't have to waste money buying them all, or waste space storing them all in our house.

An update on the potatoes

Happy potato plants transferred into the larger tub.

So, we've had success with our potatoes!  They have actually grown into plants, much to my delight.

After just a couple of weeks, little green plants sprouted up out of the potatoes in the soil.

Since then I've had to transfer them to a larger pot with much much more soil as they filled the tiny pots.  As I was transferring them I discovered they had already produced some tiny brand new potatoes.

I have no idea how to tell if the potatoes are ready to eat or not, and I'm sure we learnt this all at school, but can't remember any of it now - I blame 'baby brain'.

Now I had better do some research about when to harvest them etc... If anyone knows, let me know :)

The random tomato plant that has popped up under the fence is thriving.

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.

More DIY Rainbow Crossings in Tempe

The DIY Rainbow Crossing movement continues on the streets of Tempe.  And in my opinion, the latest in the series of chalk rainbows is by far the best!  So I thought it deserved another post.  After seeing photos on the Tempe Facebook page of this fantastic rainbow crossing, I had to get down there and see it for myself.  So when my 19 week old needed to go for a walk in the pram yesterday, I used the opportunity to check it out and take my own photos.

DIY Rainbow Crossing, Samuel Street Tempe.

Kim's Daughter, Hayden on her DIY Rainbow Crossing.

Kim Skildum-Reid created this fantastic DIY Rainbow Crossing across Samuel Street in Tempe.  Samuel Street is probably the widest of the residential streets in Tempe, and is a lovely quiet street, the perfect canvas for a Rainbow Crossing.

As Kim created her crossing out of chalk to achieve this vibrant rainbow, I asked her to share the recipe / technique with us.



"For each stripe, it required:

* 4 cups (600g) Cornflour

* 800-900 ml water

* 1/4 cup flour

* LOTS of food colouring (most batches required a whole bottle)

I mixed each colour in advance in six x 75 cent Kmart buckets. You need to stir gently, as it goes all hard and clumpy when you stir hard. If that happens, just stir gently and it will once again play nice.
We applied it with a paint roller, but it could certainly be done with a paintbrush.
It's a bit subdued at first, but gets really bright when it dries."

IKEA Tempe Rainbow

We also spotted a rainbow on the floor at IKEA Tempe this week.

I'm not sure if they installed it as part of the movement or if it was just a coincidence, but either way I like it.

Chalking the Streets of Tempe

The path across the road from us.

After the removal of Taylor Square's Rainbow Crossing caused so much dismay in the community, the resulting "DIY Rainbow Crossing" movement has created such a wonderful atmosphere around Sydney.

While it hasn't brought the original Rainbow Crossing back (yet), it has already brought about small positive outcomes on a grass roots level.

Adults, children, young adults and families of all descriptions, have come together as a community and hit the streets.  Weeks on we're still seeing colour around the neighborhood, on the Internet and in the newspapers.

Chalking DIY Rainbow Crossings has brought people outside, and working together.

Those who haven't created their own rainbows have been delighted when coming across them, having their photos taken with this chalk art and adding to the community “rainbow” spirit.

The big kids started the drawing, while Ava watched

The timing has been perfect too, with the NSW school holidays coinciding with the movement taking off.  Another positive outcome I've seen is that it has re-invigorated the simple activity of drawing with chalk on the pavement.  "Back in the day", kids didn't have game consoles, iPhones, iPads or laptops.  They played on the footpath with their friends, skipping, playing hopscotch and drawing with chalk.  I hadn't seen any if these activities since I was a kid. But now with all the chalk we have left after drawing our DIY Rainbows, the kids are spending their afternoons together drawing.

When they started out the front of our house.

An impromptu 'chalking' session happened in our street last week.  It started with the Teenagers and Tweens across the road, then my Pre-Schooler wanted to join in as well as the 18 month old and 7 year old from up the street.  After they'd filled the path across the road, they came across our side of the street and covered our path and driveway.

It was wonderful to see such a broad range of ages all playing together outside on a sunny afternoon.  I'm looking forward to seeing the colour on the ground every time I look out the front of my house (until it rains).

I hope this 'chalking' trend continues amongst the Tempe kids, because it's a fun, timeless activity that brings them all together.

DIY Rainbow Crossing

Our backyard DIY Rainbow

Unless you've given up your phone and computer this past week, then you would have seen your Facebook feed and Twitter feed full of chalk rainbow images.

As a peaceful response to the Taylor Square rainbow crossing being removed, multitudes of people have hit the pavement drawing their own colourful rainbows with chalk.

Started over at the DIY Rainbow Crossings Facebook page. the trend has gone global as you can see by the images posted on their Facebook page and as reported by The Australian.


On Monday, I took the kids out into the backyard with a packet of chalk and we created a mini rainbow on the path.

Work in progress on Union Street
Photo: Helen Pentecost

Littlies chalking in Union Street
Photo: Helen Pentecost

As we started our little backyard rainbow crossing, I received a message from a neighbour across the road who had just bought a load of giant chalk to embark on a full size rainbow crossing on our street.  She invited us over to be part of it.

Union Street DIY Rainbow Crossing

The rainbow crossing on the street was a lot trickier as we had cars occasionally coming through, so we had the youngest kids colouring at the side of the road out of harms way and the adults / teenagers doing the middle.  Luckily we're on a small one way street so there wasn't too much traffic.

Union Street DIY Rainbow Crossing Complete!
Photo: Helen Pentecost

Station Street DIY Rainbow Crossing
Photo: Ellie McNamara

With such a warm and welcoming community in Tempe, there were a lot of us who wanted to get involved and spread the message of 'love is love'.  So about four or five streets in Tempe got on board and created there own DIY rainbow crossings. 

Toyer Street DIY Rainbow Crossing
Photo: Bettina Kaiser

Toyer Street DIY Rainbow Crossing
Photo: Bettina Kaiser

Brooklyn Street DIY Rainbow Crossing
Photo: Selina Martin

Another lovely example of the young families of the area working together for something they believe in and having fun with the kids at the same time.

Renovation / Life Balance

Sometimes it takes a moment of reflection to see the path you've been heading down recently.  And while breastfeeding, I'm forced to sit and reflect on things a lot!

This week I realised that while we succeed at maintaining a healthy work / life balance (most of the time!), it's trying to establish a more sustainable renovation / life balance that we need to work on.

And last weekend is the perfect example.  For a while we had wanted to replace the guttering at the front of the house to match the new roofing on the porch.  During the week I had a spare moment to ring around for quotes, and when we discovered how affordable it was, we decided to do it.  Mark measured up, I ordered it and Mark picked it up before work on Friday morning.  We had our neighbour booked in to help and we were all ready to go.

Then our TV antenna stopped working.  Another trip to Bunnings, and Mark's time spent researching.  I spent most child-free moments on Saturday painting the front door jam, and filling any gaps between the jam and the architrave.

Mark then spent Sunday morning up the ladder taking down the old antenna and replacing it with a shiny new one. I love shiny new things!

Then we all went to Ava's swimming lesson together as a family, before Mark spent the rest of the afternoon replacing the front guttering.


That was the weekend gone. And while the kids spent patches of time with their Daddy on Saturday and Sunday, had a nice time with me, saw their grandparents and had an afternoon in the park with friends, they didn't get big chunks of quality time with their Daddy and we didn't get much family time.





We all felt the effects of not spending time relaxing together, and have promised ourselves to try not to let the house take over again.

It's so easy to focus on the end result we want to achieve with the house, and loose focus of the time we need to spend together as a family along the way!

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.