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Back in the Spring, I posted about our 5 Hints & Tips to reduce the Plastic-Footprint of your Party. Our eldest is a Summer baby, so it was time to get back to the (plastic free) drawing board for party bags. I'd love to share what we came up with and provide some inspiration for plastic free party bags for your own parties. Home-made Lavender Eye Pillows. Back towards the end of the Summer, 10YO said we should collect up our lavender heads and make something with them. I suggested lavender eye pillows and she was all over it. After...

(First published on The Contented Calf website on August  2012. BF1 had just turned three.) Yesterday was BF1's third birthday. We had a lovely day, we really did. (We'll forget about the massive tantrum she had just before bed because she didn't want her teeth brushed. I guess it was her party, so she could scream the house down cry if she wanted to.) It was a nursery day. So we woke her up with a round of Happy Birthday, along with a few presents and cards from Mummy, Daddy and her little sis BF2; she put on her bridesmaid's dress; and we...

Friday 20th September, around the world, people took part in the Global Climate Strikes. Were you there? Did you strike? Did your kids? Did your kids’ schools do anything?Weren’t the scenes of the strikes around the world so inspiring and energising? In particular the picture of the strike @gretathunberg posted happening in Afghanistan. This is, as she says, a globally emergency. And it seemed on Friday that we came together around the world to acknowledge this and lobby politicians and big businesses to do more.Sadly, I wasn’t there. My 7YO was off school ill with a cold. I was gutted. But I...

(First published on The Contented Calf website on Tuesday 19th June  2012. BF2 was nearly three months old and BF1 was nearly three years old.) To forget: to cease or fail to remember; be unable to recall: to forget someone’s name. I forget things all the time: what I went upstairs to get, what’s in the diary for the next week, that I’ve actually come to pick up BF from nursery in the car so we shouldn’t get on the bus, how to speak…. (I forget the most simple of words ALL the time. Often, I can hardly string a...

What do you know about the term Circular Economy? It’s actually linked intrinsically to the concept of Zero Waste. The Circular Economy definition The Ellen MacArthur foundation defines is as:  A framework for an economy that is restorative and regenerative by design. It continues... Looking beyond the current take-make-waste extractive industrial model, a circular economy aims to redefine growth, focusing on positive society-wide benefits. It entails gradually decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources, and designing waste out of the system. Underpinned by a transition to renewable energy sources, the circular model builds economic, natural, and social capital. It...