friday

Yesterday morning I had the idea of making some headway with tallying up our household plastic audit we did over the last 2 weeks of March. The audit consisted of throwing every piece of plastic we used in a bag over a two week period. Now we need to sort and catergorise and analyse the data.
Yesterday was sunny and the girls had other ideas.
An imaginary tramp and building a tent was the perfect way for them to spend a warm, still morning. Ruby has done this for as long as I remember - either debriefed or prepared for real life events through imaginary play.  For us, Playcentre always took up the whole day - the morning session and then the afternoon rerun.
It seems that imaginary play has become so underrated.
I changed tack and headed to the kitchen to make up another batch of tomato ketchup with the rest of our garden harvest and some tomatoes I had bought in bulk. Each year I make chutney and pasta sauce but this is the first year I have found a ketchup recipe that works for all of us - not spicy, not vinegary and with a smooth consistency. Every year I also run out of jars and bottles. This year is no different.
Kasundi (a recipe similar to this one), a favourite spicy chutney for the adults around here still awaits me.
While the sauce bubbled on the stove I helped out with the finer details of pole and rope construction and found the perfect sized piece of tent fabric in my Nana's stash. The stripes remind me of sheets from my childhood and the light inside the tent was dreamy.

In the morning we head for Mt Sunday and Lake Clearwater with the local KCC group to check out some fossils and  go in search of spawning salmon near the head of the Rangitata River. It has to be said that I'm feeling stretched by the petrol cost of the trip but talking about tight finances has become incredibly boring around here. When I look past this (and remember that Gunter will finally pay off his student loan in just two weeks at the ripe age of 46), then I can look forward to a great weekend in a magnificent landscape with some new families to meet, some familiar ones to catch up with.

This morning as it rained outside we tallied up all the bits of plastic. An ugly face of reality. The girls made some decisions on where we can cutback further. I'll let you know some of that outcome on our return.