Who are we? We’re a family of five who’ve decided to change our lifestyle for the better. We’ve moved to North Canterbury, New Zealand from Brisbane, Australia 2 years ago to start a positive change towards sustainability.

Who’s in our family? There’s me Margot, my hubby Pete, Miss 5 and Miss 3 and our latest addition, a bouncing baby girl.

I’m Margot, a designer, artist and most of what you read here will be written by me. I love gardening, music and almost anything creative. Pete’s a carpenter, computer wiz and is always keen to build something new, try and find a solution for a problem or just lend a hand where needed. He especially loves the techno side of sustainability, if it has an engine of some kind he’s keen! Our two self professed ‘big girls’ love doing crafty activities as well as helping out in the garden or kitchen, they also love to check out dad’s latest building project and are constantly heard asking ‘what are we doing tomorrow?’.

Since starting our family, I’ve chosen to focus some of my energy into our local community.  The kids and I are part of Playcentre, I’ve joined the local Food for Thought Group and we all enjoy getting in and helping others whenever possible.

On the home front, we live on a 2000m2 rural block and are working towards becoming as sustainable as possible. We have a huge vegetable patch, a rabbit, lots of fruit trees and we live in an area with abundant wildlife, fishing and wild food opportunities. We’re also constantly trying our hand at small scale sustainable projects, like building a clay pizza oven, drying seasonal fruit and building a sauna – see the blog.