SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER

You did it...

You made it to the end of term!
Now rip that Head Teachers Award off the school jumper and whack it on yourself! You actually did it!

The long pandemic has been so testing for us all. It’s made adulting extremely difficult, and being a child incredibly dull.

Despite the nitty gritty, I believe a lot has come out of the world coming to a stand still. And now it’s time for us to slow down, turn off all those alarms, to stop living the whacky races and start having fun.

Juggling between keeping children entertained and active, yet still having to tackle daily tasks- all while keeping within a reasonable budget can seem reeeaally daunting. However, fear not and behold! I stumbled across an amazing blog to help you on your way.

mumsmakelists.com

** SIGHT HOUND SUGGESTION **

Why not spend some quality time together and learn the art of screen printing and get an insight of what we do and LOVE here at Sight Hound!

Hunt the Moon do some nice-looking started kits here.

-And don’t forget there are colouring pages to download from Sight-Hound for FREE!

Now go and have some fun!

Bike-ography

In rural Bedfordshire where I grew up, there was so little to entertain us that me and my friend attempted to tame and ride on the backs of cows (failed) and volunteered at the church for bell-ringing (Much scarier than the cows.)

Bikes opened up

a world of adventures for us, though we never gave much thought to how they worked till something broke or we had a puncture.

Early twenties and and living in London I borrowed a friends bike for a few weeks. I was immediately after a bike of my own. The traffic was dicey but there was no more efficient means of getting from A to B. I had a few scrapes but nothing would persuade me to ditch the bike. I became an activist, joining the Friday night ‘critical mass’ rides and helping to organise cycle campaigning in North London.

I didn’t own a car till I was thirty, and the future might be car free for us too, but there will always be bikes. I have owned a handful over the years, the smartest was a Marin Bear Valley mountain bike, bartered for some illustration work for Cycling Today magazine… tragically, it was stolen from Brighton train station. Right now I have a Treck, it’s a hybrid model that’s good for town and country and sauntered a 67 km trip on it earlier this month. I do eye up an elegant high-tech road bike but I don’t have storage space at home for more.

The national Cycle Network is a great resource for bike routes for commuting and leisure.

https://www.sustrans.org.uk/national-cycle-network

I’ve been a volunteer teaching cycle safety to schoolchildren, I still badger my MP about cycle provision, and believe that bikes really do make the world a better place.

This is where bikes have led me so far. Luckily for my generation, technology has leapt ahead and electric-assist means I will have the opportunity to ride into old age on two wheels.

Spring organisation

2 ways

to

re-use before you recycle

One of the small, unexpected habits my family have learned through this last year involves a chalk pen and that survival spirit that kicked in around this time 2020.

Our store cupboards have been sustained with the incredible wares of local producers, and even more appreciated- their adapting to offer delivery to our door. We didn’t set foot in a supermarket till about a month ago. Till then, we ordered weekly veg, bread and dry goods deliveries, along with occasional cheese hampers, parcels of fresh fish, and various irresistibles.

The dry goods - from a local food co-op, all arrived in brown paper bags. This was delightfully satisfying to receive, and even more satisfying to decant and label in the glass jars we’d hung onto for airtight storage. Perhaps we invested a little more time into stocking-up with oats and pearl barley than the situation actually demanded, but with the world gone mad, and toilet-roll hoarding a big news-story, we could line up old pickle jars labelled ‘soup-mix’ and feel that some sort of order was being maintained.

Thus we embarked upon a year of experimentation with kale and sprouts and bulgur wheat. The deliveries kept coming, and we kept cooking, and soon our diets had changed. And the pickle and tahini jars got rinsed out and used to store an ever increasing range of pulses from Barley to Yellow lentils.

All images © Jane Spencer

Then these jars started to make themselves useful around the house too. Tidy up those draughts pieces? A Mayo jar does the job. Stow phone charging cables? A wide mouthed pickle jar is perfect. Small change loose in a drawer? A pesto jar will keep that for you- and you can see what’s inside.

I did finally chuck some jars in the recycling this week but it has been a long while since I did that.

TIP- buy a chalk pen for labelling directly onto glass jars.