HOT TIP: when boycotting, try dupe recipes at home to share with friends. Sometimes there isn't a local alternative brand available but there is always someone with a recipe blog on the internet. I can still have doublestuffed mint chocolate sandwich cookies without funding the capitalist machine crushing my American friends ☺️

This recipe I used 1 cup butter substitute (i used a canola spread) 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour ½ cup cocoa powder (i use trade aid or donovans) ½ cup golden syrup 1 teaspoon baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt 1 cup granulated sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix in a food processor then set in the fridge for 25 minutes

Filling: ½ cup vegetable shortening 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 cup powdered sugar 1/4 cup flour Mint extract to taste

Or just do a small spoonful of peanutbutter as a filling

Roll out the dough to about 5mm thickness. Stamp and cut.

My oven is a joke so not sure the temp but i turn it on and bake for about 8-10 minutes. It will be a low temp

Mōrena buzzy bees!

I've been off hunting beach treasures on some more remote beaches in the area. The amount of fishing and building waste is unreal!

Fellow dumpster divers and rubbish gremlins, what has been your favourite find?

Kia ora and happy new year 🎉

What are our hopes and dreams for 2025, and how are we going to work towards making them happen?

Kia ora! I'm just another solarpunk in Aotearoa looking for other like-minded friends, inspiration, and advice on other ways I can green up my life.

I live in an off-grid tiny home I built with my partner in 2016 out of wood and second-hand windows/doors/appliances. We run off solar power, rain water, a composting toilet, and try to repair, mend, make, borrow, and buy 2nd hand or local. Our meat is all hunted, which here in Aotearoa is a huge help for our environment as our only native mammals are seals and bats. Everything else is a pest. We also grow a lot of our own fruit and veggies, but the garden is still a work in progress.

I'm looking at irrigating the garden and automating the process. I saw something about https://www.home-assistant.io/ online but would love any advice you might have. I'd like to automate and chart my watering as well as integrate moisture monitors and a weather monitoring system.

I have an electric bike and an old 1996 honda crv. I'd like to switch to

Kia ora 😊 We are replacing the software for our community library of things are looking for options. We live in a village so it would be a max of 300 accounts and probably 2000-3000 items in the inventory. I'm having a hard time finding anything open source.

I know it's very niche so no worries if nobody knows of anything 😊

With recessions and political hardship around the globe, this holiday season is feeling a bit rough for a lot of us. I've been thinking of ways we can try and make minor improvements on a microscale. Here are some of my thoughts and please share yours in the comments:

More casual no or low-cost gatherings. As it's summer in Aotearoa, we are doing weekly meet-ups in the local park for shared kai. It's bring what you can and shame free for those who forgot or couldn't afford to bring anything. We are also continuing our workshop events with free reusable gift wrap making and summer holidays sewing and crafts club.

On a more personal mission, this holidays I am starting a new calendar/journal to keep track of birthdays and likes/dislikes of the people around me so I can start my newest project, "Max happiness", where I try to maximise the happiness stats of everyone around me through flowers, baking, and produce from my garden. I plan to focus on growing favourite flowers or produce nex

Kia ora koutou katoa 💚

Some of you may remember me. I took a hiatus due to poor health and technical difficulties, but I'm back and ready to talk about all things community! I still need to catch up on reading everything posted for the last year, so please forgive me (and perhaps link me!) if any of this has already been covered 😅

Over the last year and a bit, I've been an elected member of my local community council, office holder of our Toy library, started working in emergency response communications, and helped start a community workshop. It's been a process learning how to navigate egos and still make progress.

I've found I absolutely love consensus decision-making and co-chair structures! Here in Aotearoa, there has been a change to the incorporated societies act. we are all required to rewrite our constitutions, which means we can hardwire more community-minded processes into our organisations. This will be especially handy for limiting the amount of control hostile counci

I saw a lot of interest in personal growth and betterment so this is the place to tell us what you're proud of and hype up other community members 💚

One of the things I'd like to include in thr community garden I'm working on establishing is a food pantry. I'd love to have a place with recycled containers to take home garden goodies, residents to leave extra dry goods, and things like care products/toiletries. I've seen pictures of them online and read articles about them but the closest thing we have here is honesty boxes.

Has anyone made one or used one? Do you have any tips? I'd love to hear some recommendations on practical designs work best or what products you wish yours had more/less of.

Now is a good time to think about a small way you can help, even it it's just making an effort to pick up some rubbish on a walk. For me, it's winter and I start to feel a bit down from the lack of sunlight hours so i like to give myself a very small and achievable goal that can give me a little boost of serotonin. Between winter bugs, storms, and work things, I haven't been getting outside enough. I want to make an effort to go walk the local reserves at least once next month and pick up rubbish. It's small but it leaves me room to do even more if I'm feeling up to it without feeling guilty if I only have one good day of energy.

What small things are you wanting to do?

I kinda understand it has to do with frequencies and the speed they can send information but I don't know enough to have a productive conversation with those that think it's mind altering cancer rays. Thats also what i keep running into online when I'm trying to find a dummy version for how it all works. I know I'll probably never be able to have a truly productive conversation with those types but i would like to have a better understanding myself.

It would be helpful to explain and frame it with radio and public broadcasting as well. to me, these are all happy information rays that send me thing i like but i don't full understand the technology behind it.

Thanks everyone this has been super helpful! Might try and make an info graph for to hang in my post box since I've gotten some crazy anti 5g flyers recently

After giving my first presentation at our local community council meeting I've come to the conclusion that the show is a real documentary. While my presentation went great (who doesn't love a conveniently located garden and free food?!?), there was heckling of other presenters for having the audacity to get university educations on the topics they were presenting and an attempted coup on the council board by a frighteningly large group of anti 5g truthers. Ironically, making and consuming videos over their 4g. My favourite part was the community theatre group rehearsing in the next room, giving the meeting a dramatic soundtrack. My partner has had to do meetings through work and said he has had similar experiences. It was all a lot funnier when I was watching it on a screen and not real people in my community but at least I can try to make some changes i guess 😅

Communities can only thrive when a representative group of it's members are pushing for change, don't let it just be fringe

Is it a favourite park or walking track? The library? Do you have a really fun festival that your community is known for? Tells us about it!

Every city should have a toy library. With limited space and limited income our toy library has been essential to my daughters playtime happiness. It's sustainable, teaches responsible toy care, allows her to try out new things and access the flash toys we wouldn't be able to otherwise. It also creates a sense of community from a young age. She sees her friends playing with the same truck she borrowed the week before and gets excited about taking home the castle toy she's seen. The anticipation of waiting for the next toy she's been eyeing brings Christmas-morning like joy all year round without adding to over consumption of new products that end up neglected.

Our toy library has things like dressups, large outdoor toys, play sets, baby activity centres, boardgames, and pretty much everything in between. It's been an equaliser for lower income families as their kids can have access to

It's such a neat concept that can make certain expensive services like lawyers or therapists more accessible. I could trade a few hours gardening, sewing, cleaning, or baking, for someone else to give me a hand building a larger project. It's a beautiful way to connect a community through acts of service 🥰

So happy so many of you are also interested in finding, sharing, and discussing new ways to better our communities! I hope everyone finds inspiration here and we all get to brighten up our little corners of the world.

I would love to hear from people about what is working in your community.

What does your community have or do that you think is going well? (Maybe its a neat festival. Maybe it's a community centre like a workshop or garden. Share the ideas!)

What small things have you done that you would like to do more of? (Cleaned up rubbish on the beach? Planted some trees? Helped with a fundraiser or event? Good on you, we're all proud! Tell us so we can all get motivated to go out and do the same)

What are you wanting for your community? (Maybe its helping with food insecurity, maybe its cleaning up parks or planting trees, maybe it's better public transport)

No task is too big or too small to share, this is a place of positivity and celebration ✨️

[Here's an article](https:

She is both the cuddliest kitty and the sharpest kitty I have ever met

I've been wanting to get a proper microscope so I can do my own spore examinations to identify local fungi but it's been out of budget. This looks like a much more affordable option so now off to find some plexiglass and laser pointers at the dump.