Pantries and Preparedness. Swaps!

I have always loved bartering!  There have been times when I have done lots of it and it's been wonderful.  I do think bartering is a way to build up your pantry, save money and build up other areas as well.

Recently I have been looking at how to do more of this and suddenly I have had several opportunities.  I am following a local group on Facebook that meets up and exchanges produce.  Then I had a blog reader write to me and ask if I would like to do a swap by mail!  This was interesting as I didn't really think of that due to the cost of postage but it led me to consider small things that can be mailed to make a very nice exchange.
Then my Aunt had a garden day at her home as she is a member of a garden club.  They get together and have a trading table.  And this was yesterday so off I went!

It was a beautiful, perfect Spring day.  An afternoon in a gorgeous sunny garden did me good. It was glorious.  My aunt is over eighty now and she does all this by herself after she established it from plain lawn...

She also has no car and rides her bike to the shops to get her stuff.

This is her front garden. The back and side gardens are full of plum, citrus and Quince trees.  The citrus were covered in blossoms and the scent filled the whole yard.  Honestly heavenly.

There was afternoon tea and endless cups of tea...

My aunts huge dining table was covered in china and homemade goodies.

I took Bay Leaves, homemade soap, magazines and four little potted herbs for the trading table.   This was covered in lots of lovely things.  I loved a tray of baby succulents...

And I chose Borage as this is a herb I don't have yet...

A day of sunshine and gardening was very nice.  I met some lovely ladies and one named Sarah who loves.... op shopping, knitting, gardening, making things...  so you could say we had a lot in common!

Last week I put together items for my postal swap.  Going on the things I knew Tanya liked and might need and what I had I put together a little parcel that wasn't very much to post....

And later in the week I received TWO parcels from Tanya.  One was the swap parcel and the other was gifts!  

There were beautiful handmade things all gorgeous.

And useful and practical things for crafts and cooking...

It was all really beautiful and fun!  Thank you so much Tanya. 

It often turns out that we have a lot of one thing and this gives us something good to barter with!  

There are endless possibilities.  You can swap a service for goods.  Jane mentioned how they look after the neighbours yard while they are away and get produce in exchange.  

You can have a clothing swap party,  a garden day like my aunt.  Bartering any kind of goods, produce or service is possible!   Turning your excess into something else can give you so many new ways to build up your pantry for free! 

Next week we are going to start a Bluebirds swap.  This will be a mail swap so we need to take into account the cost of postage and keep to small things but I just discovered this is much easier than I thought!   Also we will need to remember we come from different countries and take that into account. 

Another thing will be plant goods can not be posted into Australia. 

But still I think there are a lot of possibilities! 

So this week consider what do you have excess of that you would like to barter with? Smaller items could include fabric, yarn, sewing items,  seeds, cards, ribbon, paper crafts, lace, small books, recipe cards, baby clothes, buttons, labels, stickers, teabags, herbs, spices,  .... the list goes on and on!

We will get going next week but if you have items and a photo would be helpful (which is the case with colours and designs etc) then send pictures!  You can email me at brinkzi21@hotmail.com before next Monday.

I hope it will be fun, useful and maybe even will lead to some friendships and pen friends.  We will only exchange details like addresses between the two agreed "swappers" behind the scenes via my email so no personal details will be online.

I hope you have a great week.

Thank you everyone.... Chloe arrived to her destination some hours late (which was stressful!) and was pretty worn out after a seven and a half hour trip in the middle of the night so it was over thirty hours all up. All she cared about at that point was a shower!  But she is safe! xxx