Big Meals 4 Little Tum's

Do you ever just get into a mood where your like. I feel like baking. Well that happened to me the other day, so I pulled out baking supply's and got to work.  When I get in these moods I don't plan out what i'm doing and I just make it up as I go, sometimes it turns out great, and other times I regret my relaxed style and wish I had planned what I was doing.  This time though, I was baking for hubby not the kids, so I didn't worry about sugar or colouring control.  Hubby picked the flavour, having the choice between orange, strawberry, coconut, lemon and bubblegum. With the way I coloured these cupcakes you would think he choose the bubblegum but actually he chose strawberry. I'm glad I wast going to be eating them because artificial strawberry doesn't taste very good to me. So with my food colouring on hand I got to creating, and decided on pink, light green, blue and plain white marble/rainbow cupcakes. Now the frosting didn't work ou

So following on from my previous blog, "I Save Plants" where I mention about using my DIY painted pots to make fake a cactus using rocks. I did this for some home decor and since I had never previously had a green thumb, I figured, well I wouldn't be able to kill rocks. So what I did was search my backyard for stones/rocks that looked like they would be a good cactus shape. I was a woman on a mission and put my prehistoric hunter gatherer instincts  into action. Our backyard isn't really a yard. Its a load of plants and no grass for the kids to play on. As well as a concrete slab that leads to the clothesline. Lucky for me, there are plenty of rocks and stones for "decoration" purposes in this "yard", although they are about as pretty and decorative as looking at a brick wall. So with my rocks gathered and neatly piled on my table covered with newspaper, I pulled out my acrylic paint's and got to work. I mixed several shades of gre

So following on from my last blog, where I stole most of the mini banana cupcakes I had made for miss 16 month old. I made some veggie packed chicken meatballs to make up for my actions, and truthfully these meatballs went down better with her than the mini cupcakes did. These are very simple to make and you can change the ingredients to suit preference or just what you have laying around.  So what I used for these mini veggie chicken meatballs was; 2 small grated carrots 1 medium grated potato 1/2 a small sweet potato grated a handful of broccoli florets chopped finely 500g lean chicken mince 1 egg 1 teaspoon of garlic powder Now its pretty much mix roll and bake with these meatballs, you could cook them in a fry pan, cook them on a tray in the oven like I did or another method I use for family sized meal of meatballs is cook them in a casserole dish with 2 cans of tomato soup for about 45 mins at 200 Celsius, and serve over pasta of choice. Because thes

I feel like a horrible mum now. Have you ever made or bought something for your child and ended up eating/using it yourself? Well I have, and I feel so guilty for it. I'm not talking about when you want something and try to convince your partner to allow you to buy it "for the kids" when really its for you. I do this with blankets, like oh we need more! when its really just to fuel my obsession with them. No i'm talking when you actually buy or make something for your children to actually eat/use and it doesn't work out. I decided to make miss 16 month old some mini banana cupcakes so she could have an on the go snack ready or for when an impeding breakdown and tantrum is brewing. And it went well, I got my mini cupcake liners, pre heated the oven, made my batter 'cough' box mix. And added 1 fresh ripe banana. I baked them all and they turned out so tiny and cute. Ready for my kid. Well so I thought. Out of 27 mini cupcakes, she only got two. I

I'm feeling yet again like super mum of the year, the rescuer of plants and herbs. I don't know where this new need in me to have and grow plants came from but I like it. Having never had a green thumb in my life before and killing more plants than I'd care to admit, I always had a thought that there was no use in me trying to grow anything.  That was until a couple months ago, I woke up one morning thinking, I really want to go and buy a plant, see if I can make it live longer than a couple weeks, not thinking to much more on the idea, we did our weekly grocery shop, and at the reduced produce shelf there was some potted coriander plants, looking a bit sad and sorry for themselves, so I thought at $1.50 why not. I'll see if I can make them happy again. So out came my DIY painted pots that I had done a year earlier. They have just been sitting in storage waiting for some use. I did use one of my pots to make some fake cactus out of stones which I will write about in

I should be banned from the kitchen, i'm always trying to experiment and come up with new and wonderful creations, sometimes they work out well and I tell people about it. Other times I  just try to forget and keep my mouth shut because well it was more than just a epic fail, it was disastrous.  This time though it worked in my favour (the second attempt did anyway) I don't like giving miss 15 month old store bought juice, it has way to much sugar and preservatives for my liking, but I feel like she gets bored of having plain water all the time, so I decided to switch it up for her.  I took the idea of fruit infused water, like when you add lemon slices to water, but made it kid friendly. I made two different flavour for water and a special treat for her to have with milk. The water flavours I made was blueberry and apple. The other one was pear and mandarin. With the pear and mandarin water flavours I peeled and chopped up 2 small pears and one mandarin, added it to m

Everyone gives their kids nicknames. Now my nicknaming skills are pretty normal, darling for my daughter and buddy for my son, in this blog we are not going to talk about how weird I am, but for once how weird and "creative" hubby is with nicknames. So a quick run down, our children's nicknames have evolved over time. Almost every week they get a new one. Hubby has the usual names that he uses but then expand s on them to make up new and weird creations. For example, when our daughter was born and for the first couple weeks she was mini darling, we both called her this as she was born 7 weeks premmie and was very tiny so the name suited. Mini has stuck through the year, and several variations have been made, the most recent being mini von sprinkle bottom. I don't know how he came up with this, but I was out running errands and came home to our daughter having a new name. Our son on the other hand, before we knew his gender the nickname I chose was jelly, b

And I have done it again. I have made miss 15 month old her own mini sized version of our meal. This time it was a mix between pizza and garlic bread. I made the biggest batch of stew in our slow cooker last night to use up the last of our veggies, and hubby for once didn't eat most of it, so now we have enough for 2 more nights. So to spice it up I have made my pizza dough recipe and made it into a pizza garlic bread, following on with our family adventure of eating tonnes of garlic coming into winter to reduce the chance of getting sick, and why do I say this? Well because doctor google told me. So it must be true. So i'm here to give you my dough recipe, and to also show off my mini creation that I am yet again proud of. So for this pizza dough you will need: 1.5 cups of flour of your choice 1/2 a cup of warm water 1/4 teaspoon of dry active yeast 1 tablespoon of sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon oil  Optional- 1 tablespoon garlic powder/ or seasoning

Why on earth cant kids just bloody sleep when they need to. I'm currently dealing with miss 15 month old, who believes since turning 1 that she doesn't need her second nap any more. Well sorry to burst your bubble kid, but you do need it, More than anything right now! This crying at the drop of a hat, throwing tantrums about small things like you had to take an extra step to reach your toy and by god, you are showing me just how displeased you are. Like seriously, what has been programmed into kids that makes them believe they don't need to sleep when so obviously tired. They are deifying the law of effect where if sleepy you sleep, so that you are no longer sleepy. Its not bloody rocket science. But here I am sitting, with my child screaming in my ear as she is so overtired its a joke. I'm contemplating booking into a sleep school to sort this shit out. Like what am I meant to do, she is sat here, having a hissy fit but if I try to put her to bed the whole world i

Following on from my last blog "Kid's Crafts, Fail or Win?", where I discussed the lead of events that happen when trying to do craft projects with miss 15 month old. Well I finally got to the point where i'm sick of her trying to eat the damn crayons when letting her draw. so I decided to make her own special crayon in hopes the its works out better for her and attempted consumption is avoided.  So I busted out all the crayons, majority of them in pieces after using them for a mumma DIY project making coloured candles. broke them all up into tiny pieces. was a very good stress relief being able to feel them shatter, and placed all the broken pieces into a muffin tin. You don't need anything else in the tin, when the crayons cool down you can just pop them out. It only took a couple minutes till it all melted down and formed one big crayon, I left the tray in the oven to cool completely and when it was ready just put a little pressure on the bot

So everyone knows about making coloured rice as a craft activity with kids, the thing is, what the hell are you meant to do with it?  I have coloured it all, made myself proud and when I poured it onto miss 15 month olds highchair tray for her to play with, she tried to eat it! She is at the age where anything we try to do instantly goes into the mouth. Got her an activity set where she could colour in her own little tote bag, she scribbled for 2 seconds then stuck the tip of the pen in her mouth, good thing it was  a non toxic pen, but now my child has a purple tongue. I ended up making a shaker with the rice using an old paper towel tube and taped up the ends, she played with it for a little bit but now it just sits there, reminding me of my failed attempt of being a clever Mumma.  For hubby's birthday we painted a rock with miss 15 month olds hand print and wrote you rock daddy! It turned out well until she decided to try and lick the paint off her hand. I don't g