Big Meals 4 Little Tum's

So the time has come. Time for me to say goodbye to almost half of my seedlings, I have raised them all from seeds. Through hot dry days and freezing cold nights. Days of no sunshine and attacks from my 2 toddlers. But the time has come to pass them on to their new forever home. My mum has a vegetabe garden, she set it up in the summer at the side of her house where there was sunshine almost all day long. Come winter and no sun hits this spot at all, so all of her vegetables have passed on to becone compost. She also usually buys her seedlings from our local hardware store, which means they are almost always deasised ridden and die within a few weeks. But this weekend she has moved her large raised garden beds to a position that recieves sun all seasons, so to help her out I am giving here a variety of my seedlings, all germinated and raised by me. Me being someone who had never had a greenthumb in her 22 years of life. So it is a proud moment for myself. I feel accomplish

So update time on my veranda/container garden here in Australia in winter. Most of the vegetables I am growing and germinating are ment for warmer months, spring mostly, but as people know Australia is hot as hell, if we get below 21 degrees celcius (69 F) we complain that its to bloody cold. But even with the cold there is still the humidity known throughout all of QLD. Never the less, I have given my seedlings a fighting chance and have been using a greenhouse to help them out. Some have absolutely thrived and are now in their big pots waiting to grow big enough to be harvested. We rent where we live so putting a raised bed in not an option as it will kill the grass. I even asked the owners about garden beds on legs so it is off the ground but sadly still a no, this is why I have decided on containers. It is also helpfull that our varenda recieves the most sun during the day during winter so it is working out well. So today I am going to share which veggies have been up

On my veranda garden, also knows as container garden I am growing several varieties of tomatos. 2 of which I have started from seeds and 3 which I bought as large seedlings from my local farmers market. Now why I decided to grow so many varieties of tomatos is actually not known to me. I love the way tomatos look but I absolutly hate the taste of them. Tomato sauce/soup etc is fine for me. But in salads or on sandwiches is a no-go. But as mentioned I love the way tomatos look, how there are so many varieties and the different looks of them all. So my plan is to make and jar up our own homemade tomato sauce using a mix if the varieties and share the jars with friends and family depending on how much we get. So the 3 tomato plants I bought from our local farmers market is: - Roque De Marmende - Black Krim (one of my favorite looking tomatos) -  Mortgage Lifter So far the roque de marmende and black krim are flowering with more bulbs getting ready to flower

Welcome Back! I have been blogging on and off again over the past year with little success. Most likely due to my irregular posting, but none the less I am back. This time is a new chapter, my newly found love for gardening. I am notorious for killing any plants I try to grow from seedlings bought in store. And only once have I gotten seeds to start, and that was sunflower seeds from a packet for kids! So my knowledge of gardening is more limited than I originally thought. I realised that there is a bit more to gardening then throwing seeds into dirt and watering every now and then. The main thing I have lernt this past month is germination, I honestly didnt know it excisted untill I found myself binge watching youtube on how to grow tomato plants (after hearing tomatos are one of the easiest vegetables to grow) so after wondering for so long why almost none of my seeds grew into anything once planted into pots, I decided to try my hand at germination idoors. And  to say im ho

Welcome back to my blog. I must admit that lately I have been very lazy when it comes to blogging. But im back! For the 3rd time. So today I will be sharing my newly discovered recipe that my 1 and 2 year old WILL eat. Which is not very common to find. My kids are not super fussy eaters, but always turn up their nose at what I make. Yet we visit a friend or family member and my kids will eat them out of house and home. Making it seem like they are starved and I never feed them. Which is not the case at all.  I must admit that I am fed up with all the food that goes to waste at my house because the kids will eat some then refuse to eat any more. So I have come up with a new plan that if they don't finish breakfast, it becomes lunch and they wont get any other snacks/new meals made untill its finished. Now im not being harsh and force feeding them food they dont like, just the food that they do like but dont want to finish. This recipe is realitively healthy and uses veggi

Following on from my previous blog where I shared my recipe 4 ingredient tropical coconut balls for my kids joint tropical themed birthday party. Im here to share another recipie for tropical Bacon Skewers which I also served at the party. This recipe is 5 ingredients for the basics but you can. like I did, add minced garlic or ginger for extra flavour. I also made these Skewers with and without pinapple for the pinapple haters aka me! INGREDIENTS: 12 steaky middle bacon rashes cut in half length ways (or diced ham) 1 can of pinapple pieces 200ml of pinapple juice (from canned pinapple is perfect) 2-3 tbsp soy sauce 2-3 tbsp brown sugar Optional: minced garlic or ginger (fresh or in jar) You will also need skewers/bamboo sticks METHOD: Preheat your oven to 180 celcius or heat up your BBQ Slice your streaky middle bacon length ways to make 24 long thin strips. Start by placing one side of the bacon onto skewer, alternating between bacon and pin

Welcome back to my blog, its been a while since my last post due to joint birthday party planning. For my kids I have decided that because their birthdays are 3 days apart, I would organise a joint tropical themed birthday for them. I will be sharing some recipies from my party foods I have made as well as a runthrough of what I put together to make this tropical party a success. Tropical Coconut Balls INGREDIENTS : 250gm packet of any plain sweet biscuit crushed fine ( I used arrowroot ) 397gm can of sweetend condensed milk 450gm can of crushed pinapple. ( squeeze out all the juice using muslin clothes, paper towel etc ) 1 1/2 cups of desiccated coconut METHOD: In a bowel conbine crumbed biscuits, condensed milk, crushed pinapple and 3/4 cups coconut. Chill in the fridge for 20 minutes to firm up for rolling. Roll using level tablespoons or by eye, roll balls into left over coconut and store in an airtight container in the fridge. Chill for 1 hour before ser

I feel compelled to write this blog to share some tips for getting the kids "artworks" off your walls. Miss 2 year old had decided that her drawing book was to boring and instead do a lovely master piece the whole length if our hallway, lucky it was only crayon so it is easy enough to get off with the right tools, but there have been some occasions of texta/markers being used. And before I learnt the following trick I was stumped and panicked on how to rid it off the walls quickly. For crayon, colouring in pencils. I use a magic eraser block, there are many different brands depending where you live. But this product is a miracle in a small foam block, great for getting any marks off walls. So for this reason I always keep a stash on hand for evens like this, or if there is any dirty spots, scuff marks on my walls. What you do it wet the foam block, and squeeze out the excess water, and lightly wipe the area you need to clean. Now I cant stress this enough that for a small

Welcome back if your here following my journey to a happier, healthier and fitter me. And if this is the first blog of mine you are reading don't forget to read my previous post where I share my starting measurements. So its been three days since I first measured myself, and four days since I decided it was time for me to change my lifestyle to better myself and be a better example for my two young children. In these past three days I have made a conscious effort to dramatically improve the food I eat. I can say honestly that it has not been perfect in any way, but I'm not beating myself up. I'm trying to do better and not going to let little slip ups discourage me and make me give up. At the same time I'm trying to retrain my brain so these slip ups don't recur regularly. So filling salads have been my main meal for the past three days, usually eaten mid afternoon when the kids are having their naps and I have a chance to both prepare my meal and not

Here is a guide to cleaning dirty work uniforms. Not working in a office uniforms, but dirty jobs where stains and grease never seem to vanish. Hubby works as a powder coater. What is that you ask? Well look to your screen doors or windows. See the metal frame around it? Hubby paints them, now its not just normal paint. Its a powder that is sprayed on, then baked in a huge oven to melt and stick to the metal. He works in a factory shed next to said oven in temperatures averaging around 50 celcius (122 F) So to say he comes home dirty is an understatement. He is covered head to toe in hard to remove, shiny, mixed coloured powder. His high-vis shirts come home grey and black. So just doing a single wash in the washing machine does almost nothing, except get rid of the BO. So there is 3 parts to his uniforms that I wash separately and do separate routines with. His shirts, pants and overalls. The overalls are a thin material that is anti static and just a regular wash does nothing bu

This is an old blog post series I never published. I have several blogs following my weight loss journey and some healthy recipes along the way. If you are interested in this little series of events make sure to follow me and follow my journey. So I am either crazy or just sick of the way I am currently. Right now I am between 78-80kg (slight guessing from the last time I used scales, I don't actually own scales either) 155cms tall and absolutely disgusted in the way I look. So my current measurements (12/12/17) are as followed Hips: 44.5 inch Waist: 35 inch Legs (upper thigh): 27 inch Arms: 13.5 inch Boobs: 39 inch So a bit of my background, my whole family is big, I wouldn't say obese but we are all short and solid built, big boned or just stocky. So I think genetics is a little bit to blame for my size. I have never, even at my fittest been a lean shape. Another reason for my current body shape is my wonderful children. Born 1 year and 3 days apart. I know t

I designed my own shoes! This started out as a "I'm to cheap to buy expensive but stylish and unique shoes" idea. Having seen a couple youtube videos where people drew on their plain white shoes with sharpie to make them unique. So I did just that, went to the store and bought myself 2 pairs of $3.50 plain white shoes and a pair for miss almost 2 year old. (they sadly didn't have a small enough size for mr almost 1 year old). With these new white shoes in hand, some sharpies I already owned, and after a initial fail with my first pair, some waterproofing spray. "long story short, I wore my first pair out while it was raining and the colours have bled and made the shoes look like crap. But lesson learnt." My first pair of shoes I designed were the Boho shoe's. I am currently going through a tropical theme phase, so added in the leaves along with my go to boho mix match style. All in all this pair of shoes took around 3 hours to co

Anddddd I'm back! 8 months since my last blog post is pretty bad, and its not due to one reason or excuse. The truthful and simple answer to why I have been absent from my poorly written, extremely sarcastic blogging is.... Real life. Yep that's it, real life got busy, then hard, then busy again. Rinse and repeat. "Brother and Sister love" So a few real life things that kept me away were, hubby lost his job, the kids got more demanding, I battled through depression, we moved house and shared it with another family (worse mistake ever), hubby got a new job with crappy work hours and a 2 hour commute each way through peak hour traffic, and a miscarriage a week ago. So yeah, life has been busy and shitty for a while. But I'm back with a new determination to continue blogging, I enjoyed it. Having a laugh, being sarcastic, sharing things with random strangers. So an update on the kids... Miss 18 month old is now miss 2 years old in 2 day