Sunday Snippets

 

The cat is away, but the mice will still play. 

Hope your Sunday has been fantastic

here it comes...

I love to play along with blogtoberfest each year.

For those who don't know what blogtoberfest is, it is a month long celebration of blogging and a commitment to blogging every day for the month of October.

I have played along for the last three years and am looking forward to writing and reading new blog posts each day and maybe discovering some new blogs that I like to read...

It all starts on Monday, so if you haven't yet, head over to Kat's blog I Saw You Dancing to sign up as she is hostess with the mostest this year!


P.S. How cool is this year's button?? All thanks to the wonderful Ms Curlypops.

food glorious food

For those who know me, you will know that I am currently addicted to healthy, mouth watering, delicious food. Food that looks and tastes delicious, but has no hidden nasties.

roasted vegetable salad

I have learned that cooking is essential as I have food allergies and I like to know what goes into my food so that I don't get sick.

this became mixed berry frozen yoghurt

I do really love cooking though, and serving up meals that make me drool from the smell and the way that it looks is really something that I enjoy. The eating is pretty good too though!!

mountain bread pizza

The other day I was craving spicy food. The kids were (and still are) away at Granny's farm for the week and I thought, well here is my chance to make something really awesome that I know they won't eat.

So when I was doing my grocery shop, I looked at a bunch of different marinades in the spicy section of the supermarket. There is one common ingredient in most spicy marinades... lemon. I am allergic to lemon. So rather than resigning myself to not having my spicy food that I so craved I had a look at the other ingredients on the packets and made my own. 

 

YUM!!

 So this is how I made my super delicious, droolworthy chicken that night.

I put about 500g of chicken thighs in a ziplock bag with a chilli, a can of coconut milk, some coriander, a good amount of tumeric and some other spices I found in the cupboard (I made mine pretty spicy, but you could tone down the spiciness if you really wanted to). I wanted to put in some garlic, but there's not much Australian garlic selling in my local supermarket at the moment, I must get to the fruit shop!

I sat that bag in the fridge all day. Probably about 6 hours. 

After letting it sit in the fridge, I put everything that was in the bag in my brazier pan to sear the chicken. And then chopped up a red capsicum and put it in there too. 

Once the chicken started to get a bit of colour, I put the pan in a moderate oven, uncovered, for about 20 minutes.

While that was cooking, I drank some wine, chopped up some veggies to steam and cooked some rice.

The end result...

SMELLED AMAZING! 

LOOKED AMAZING! 

TASTED AMAZING!

Oh it was so so good. And was well received by the MR. I think the kids would probably eat it too. You should definitely try it!

Do you like to cook?

What is your favorite food to eat?

on graduating...

We are super excited at our place at the moment because Mr-O is now dry overnight. This is an amazing achievement for him and we are congratulating him with lots of kisses and cuddles. This means that our little man is now graduating from nappies!

 For those who know me, I am a cloth nappy addict to the core and we have now used cloth nappies for just short of 4 years on our little man. It feels like an amazing achievement.

We have used them at daycare.

We have used them in hospital.

Used them at night and during the day.

I have been called amazing and crazy for using them all of this time.

But I'll let you in on a little secret... it wasn't that hard...

Cloth nappies are not like they used to be, there was no folding or pinning or soaking or even buying of those awful PVC pants that went over the top. To care for them I just had to do a load of washing and hang them out on the line (or when I was lazy just put them in the dryer).

They didn't smell. Well unless there was a number 2 in it, and generally you change the nappy then anyway. I'd say disposable nappies smell more.

My cloth nappies went on just like a disposable. And yes, you need to put the number 2's in the toilet, but if you read the back of a disposable nappy packet you are meant to do that with them too. Human waste does not belong in landfill. 

I did have to touch poos... yes... but unfortunately that is just part of being a mum of a baby I hate to say. I used disposables part time with Miss-R and I touched plenty of it then too. 

My nappies rarely leaked. In fact I think I got less poo-splosions with cloth than I did disposables. 

I think I am going to miss using nappies. I am going to miss that fluffy little bottom to pat. I am going to miss asking Mr-O "what colour this time??" and I am going to miss seeing them hanging on the line. But this is all part of growing up, and I am so excited for my little boy to be moving past the baby and toddler stage and into that wonderful age of childhood when he will learn a number of fantastic and exciting new things.

Now on to storing them away for the "just in case" third baby that I wish I might have one day although probably wont get to. 

What kind of nappies did you use?

Do you get excited when your kids are getting bigger?

Has anyone got any storage tips for cloth nappies?

adventuring

Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day here in Melbourne. So after calisthenics photo morning finished up for Miss-R we packed a picnic and headed out to Werribee Open Range Zoo for an afternoon in the sunshine and fresh air.

I love that the zoos here in Melbourne are all about promoting animal conservation and fighting extinction rather than just putting animals in cages for people to stare at. This teaches our kids to value the animals that we have and look after them for the future. They even have a project where you can recycle your old mobile phones to help save the gorillas. A good idea for all of you who have just upgraded to the iphone5!! I have a few envelopes around here that I intend to fill. It gets rid of all those old mobile phones laying around too!!

We enjoyed eating our picnic lunch out on the grass and the kids loved the fact that there were lots of other kids willing to play with them. Apparently everyone else had the same idea as us and the carpark was actually full when we got there. The zoo staff are wonderful though and were parking cars in a field close by. Even though there were lots of people at the zoo, it didn't seem crowded which meant I wasn't stressed out all afternoon about losing the kids.

We went on a safari after lunch. For those who haven't been to Werribee Zoo, they have all of the animals in BIG enclosures sorted by their country, so there's an arabic enclosure, an african enclosure etc. This is included in your ticket price and they book you in at the gate making it very family friendly, no massive pushy lines and no extra money to fork out for safari bus tickets.

Miss-R noticed as we were going through past the giraffes that one of them was licking his nostril. She tells me that this is because he has no fingers to get out the boogers. (SO CUTE!!)

There are a lot of endangered animals at the zoo and the zoo does have lots of breeding programs to try to build up their numbers which is great.

The zoo also has an area set up called the village dance party. There's a big screen, music, dancing and pots and pans to play. This was lots of fun for the kids after our safari. 

We also got to look for dinosaur bones.

All in all, it was a great afternoon out and with the zoo not being far from our house it wasn't a long drive and I am considering becoming a member of the zoo so that I can take them more often not only to Werribee zoo, but also the others around Victoria.

Do you like to go to the zoo?
What is your favourite animal to visit?

Sunday Snippets

 

playing along for sunday snippets with tinniegirl

a sunny saturday

Well at least that is the forecast... so today I plan on taking my kidlettes on an outing to the zoo.

 source

On weekends and school holidays the kids get in for free, so it's really quite an affordable adventure (and its just down the road too!). 

I'm sure I will have many photos to show off tomorrow too.

What are you up to today?

Do you have any awesome school holiday activities?

overnight oats

A food that I am currently in love with is overnight oats.

I'm not a porridge girl. The warm, soft oatey grains tend to remind me of old soggy rice bubbles/vomit. Instead of comfort and cuddles. But oats are just so damn good for you!! So when I stumbled upon a few recipes, I decided to give overnight oats a try. 

my first attempt, banana, mixed berries and almonds

And... I really love them!

The basic method:

Using a ratio of around 1 : 2 for oats : liquid.

I put my oats, almond milk and yoghurt in a container with some fruit and chia seeds (also really good for you!!).

I then give it a good stir and put it in the fridge overnight.

In the morning, I just pull out my container, and then add some more fruit and some nuts. 

Sooooo good, and nothing like soggy rice bubbles/vomit at all!! The combinations are really up to your taste and imagination. 

And another good thing... NO DISHES!! I make my oats in the container I'm going to eat them out of, so there's no pots or pans to wash afterwards.

this morning's combo of pear, walnuts, blueberries and banana

What's your favourite thing to have for breakfast?

Are you a porridge lover?

my creative space

This week, I have been doing some hat sewing.

I signed up at the beginning of the month to a hat sew along over at Solomon's Sewing and started quite quickly on sewing up my first Sunkissed Hat for Miss-R.

She chose some Dr Seuss fabric for one side and some flower pot fabric (I'm sorry I forget the name of it) for the other.  I am certain that the Dr Seuss side will get much more wear than the flowerpots as she is in love with The Lorax at the moment. She alternates between reading the book on my phone and watching the movie many times a day, I am certain she knows the entire thing off by heart!

The pattern was quite easy to sew as it had easy to understand instructions (as with all MIP patterns). So for a novice hat sewer like myself (this is my first hat), it was quite an easy and enjoyable project. 

turning the hat 

 top stitching

 

 of course, I ran out of bobbin just before finishing the top stitching...

 sewing on the velcro.

I will definitely be trying to make a few more of these hats. Mr-O has spied this one and said he would like one (most likely with pirates on it) and Miss-R wants another in purple. Who knows, maybe I will get time to make them before the month is out.

Check out some more creative spaces over here...

Maybe you can join in yourself. What are you creating today?

midweek musings

When I step outside my house at the moment, I smell Spring and it is beautiful.

Spring time makes me think of New life. Promises. Warmth. 

We go for our morning walk and we smell flowers growing and freshly cut grass. We hear birds chirping and frogs singing to each other. We see our noses all red from the crisp air as it is still quite cool here when the sun is behind clouds.

We go for a drive and a few streets away we can see the baby lambs in the fields.

I go out in our back yard and I see that the trees are growing new shoots.

New flowers are growing on the branches too.

Our beetroot is also getting bigger and should be ready to move into the garden bed in the next few days.

Springtime makes me think about how grateful I am for the four seasons that we have. After the cold, fruitless winter, comes the spring, the promise of new things to come. The promise of growth. The promise that it wont stay cold forever.

We're still wearing our jumpers and track pants, but Spring brings the promise that soon we will swap our boots for thongs and our jumpers for singlets. For now I am enjoying the smells and sounds and sights of the beautiful season that is upon us. I am enjoying the promise of the growth and fruitfulness that is to come.

What is your favorite thing about Springtime?

on the colour of my thumbs

 
I have never in my life been much of a green thumb. Despite this, Tuesday morning is quickly becoming gardening time at our place. Mr-O and I like to get out in the sunshine with the dirt and worms and pull up the weeds, plant seeds and tend to our garden. I'm actually enjoying it too!

I am making plans to make our garden beautiful. Ways that I can use the small amount of suburban backyard we have effectively and beautifully and yet still leave room for playing. To give a mental image, our backyard is not big enough for a trampoline or a swing set, but it makes a marvelous cricket pitch!

During winter we planted a veggie patch. Growing and eating our own home grown veggies, as few as there were, was really good for the kids as they knew that they had grown them themselves, they made it! But this was our first instance of trying to grow veggies, and we have a lot to learn and a lot of improvements to make. For instance about the quality of our soil, the soil on our block is very hard and generally quite awful. The front yard somewhat resembles concrete, even though I know there's none in there!

I now can see lots of worms in our garden bed as I dig in it which makes me excited about our soil improving.This has inspired me to keep it up and last week we had a bit of a seed planting day at our place.

This morning we went out and had a look at our seedling pots and some of the seedlings are starting to sprout and in a few weeks they will be ready to go into the garden which will be really exciting.

Mr-O and I are really excited about making a really awesome veggie patch this season. We are all really looking forward to eating our own veggies again.

Do you have a veggie patch?
What colour are your thumbs?

Sunday Snippets

Linking up with tinniegirl for Sunday Snippets. 

Wordless Wednesday.

Finding plenty of odd socks around here. Hope your Wednesday was wonderful.