Monday 27 May 2013

My Girls

I never ever wanted to have chickens. Mr Steps wanted them in the last house we lived in but I always thought they would bring rats and to be honest, they sort of freaked me out a bit. However when we bought this house on half an acre it wasn't even up for discussion. The chooks were coming to stay!

Now that we've had them for six months or so I couldn't imagine not having them. They are so friendly and when we go in their pen they squat down for you to pat them. I've even held them a few times and they're not so scary! Oh and not to mention the delicious eggies we get from them everyday. We use ALOT of eggs in this house and I haven't had to buy any for months and I get to give some away to family and friends when we have extras.

We started off with 6 Isa Browns and 2 Silkies (which were meant to be pets for the boys) but the poor silkies got overtaken and pecked constantly by the bossy Isa's so we rehomed them to a friend of mine who has a chook refuge :) Now the Isa's rule the roost lol!

Our girls are very spoilt and get lots of yummy scraps. I was giving them everything (except meat) until I found out that there a few things that they shouldn't have.

Raw green potato & peel - this contains Solanine which is toxic
Avocado skin and pit - these contain low levels of toxicity - OOPS! I only have just found this one out....
Raw eggs - obviously
Dried beans - these contain hemaglutin which is toxic to birds
Sugary foods

I've also read that citrus peel is bad for them due to the amount of acidity in it but there is alot of debate over this so I'm not too sure if it's true or not. I don't give it to mine anyway just to be safe.

They pretty much will eat anything though as any chook owner will tell you. I've read that giving them natural yoghurt is fantastic for them so I'm going to try them with a bowl of that.

Here are my lovely ladies




And here is the food and water shelter the talented Mr Steps made for them recently which of course they have pooped all over straight away!




Love my girls!

Saturday 25 May 2013

Early Mornings and Lost Keys

Why do small children (particularly mine) insist on waking up before dawn? I'm not a late riser by any means but these 4 and 4.30am starts to the day are getting ridiculous. I thought that as the sun started to rise later then so would my children but it's seemed to have the opposite affect on them. Very frustrating when they get so grumpy mid morning because they are tired. It makes going out for the morning very trying.

Yesterday was a 4am wake up for Master 1 and I generally bring him into my bed around this time to feed him (yes I'm still breastfeeding my 14 month old) and he'll doze back off. Not this time! Pair that with him still waking up on average 3 times a night and gosh I was tired!

We were meant to be somewhere at 9am that day so after entertaining the kids for 4 1/2 LONG hours, at 8.30 we went to hop in the car but lo and behold - no keys! Now I often misplace my keys but I always find them in about 5 minutes. Not yesterday. Half an hour later I still hadn't found them so I called my friend I was meeting to let her know we wouldn't be there on time. Another half hour and I called it quits before I blew my top. Master 2 assured me he hadn't played with my keys since coming home the previous day and I (stupidly) believed him.

There was a plan B to getting into town and that was use Mr Steps car. Now Mr Steps is very particular about his car and doesn't like me to drive it at all. However he is away at the moment and I was desperate so off we went in Daddy's car much to the delight of Master 2 who told me several times that I was holding the steering wheel wrong and that I didn't hold it like Daddy does.

After a much needed coffee, cake and play date with my friend and her sons at the local Community Gardens I felt much better and we headed home after lunch and we all had a quick nap.

Later on that day I was packing some toys away when I discovered this:





:)

Friday 24 May 2013

Friday

I feel like I haven't stopped all day long. Probably because Master 1 only slept for half an hour in the car today so I've had no Mummy time. We went to a play centre today with a friend and her son and stayed there all morning. I love those places and this one was not too big so we could sit and have a coffee and watch the kids until they needed us to climb through tunnels and up big foam mountains.
 
 

 




After we got home and Master 2 was asleep, Master 1 and I went out the front and I did some gardening while he played in the gorgeous sunshine. Winter are you ever coming? When we moved to this house we inherited about 50 odd rose bushes which we were originally going to pull out but I sort of fell in love with them and now they are staying. We have some really old varieties and some which smell gorgeous. This one looked and smelt beautiful today.




It will be time for their annual mega prune in a couple of months but I'm not game enough to do it myself yet so we are going to get someone in to do it for us. A lot of love and time has gone into these roses over the 25 odd years this house has been here so I don't want to be the one who mucks them up!

There was more playing out the back later on when Master 2 woke up. I'd opened Daddy's shed to get some chook food out and it was game on! Sheds are like Aladdin's Cave for my little boys. There's so much to get into - and onto in this case.




Please excuse the terrible photo I'm desperate for a better camera but money doesn't allow just yet. Maybe after tax time.....

I made a curry for dinner and I thought I'd share the recipe. It's a Curtis Stone recipe from a Coles catalogue but I made a couple of changes as I'm not a huge fan of spicy food so I didn't want it too hot. Master 2 did tell me that 'it doesn't have a very nice taste Mummy' but I enjoyed it so I'll share. I think this would be great with chicken in it which I'll try next time.

Pumpkin Curry

1T coconut oil
500g pumpkin, peeled and diced into 2 cm cubes
1 onion, medium dice
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1T curry powder
2T apple cider vinegar
400ml can coconut milk
400g can chickpeas, drained
1 cup vegetable stock
thickly shredded silverbeet

Heat a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the oil and heat for 1 minute. Add the pumpkin and onion and cook for 5-10 mins until pumpkin starts to caramelise and onion becomes translucent. Add garlic and cook for a further minute.

Stir in the curry powder and cook for a couple of mins. Add vinegar and stir and scrape the bottom of the pan. Add chickpeas, coconut milk and stock and stir until simmering. Reduce heat and let simmer gently for around 30 mins until mixture has thickened. Add silverbeet and cook until wilted. Enjoy!

I served ours with brown rice and natural yoghurt. I cheat and use a rice cooker. I have never, ever been able to cook rice on the stove. I also haven't been able to get brown rice to work in the cooker until tonight. I just added way more water than I usually would and it magically worked. Here is the finished product featured in another bad photo!





So that was my day for whoever is interested. I like the idea of this blog being a sort of diary I can look back at when the kiddos are older since I still haven't filled out their baby books or kept any sort of record of their milestones except for posting them on Facebook........

:)

Monday 20 May 2013

Sick Day

Today I had a sick day. Not from work but from our kiddie activities. I had dragged myself out yesterday to Playgroup and felt worse for it so we stayed home today from our Rhyme Time and coffee/park date with friends. I actually felt a bit apprehensive about staying home as my boys are ACTIVE and we go out every morning until nap time and then we hang out at home in the afternoons. I thought they'd go a bit stir crazy at home but it hasn't been too bad. Luckily it's a beautiful day here after lots and lots of rain and cold weather so they were able to play outside. We played with some playdoh I made the other day. Sparkly black = awesome!




I got three loads of washing done while they played outside but then the inevitable happened - they wanted me and suddenly I had two new besties who wouldn't leave my side. I decided we'd bake this chocolate cake that I wanted to try which has raw caocao in it which I had just bought last week. Here is the original link.

Chia Seed Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

4 tablespoons Chia seeds soaked in 1 cup of water for 15 minutes
½ cup raw Caocao Powder
125 grams softened Butter
5 medium to large Eggs
1 cup Almond Meal
1 cup Rapadura (or sugar of choice)
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon Bicarb

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Line a spring form cake tin with non stick baking paper
3. Soak chia seeds in 1 cup of water for 15 minutes, stirring regularly
4. In meantime place cocoa, eggs, almond meal, sugar, salt, bicarb and butter in a bowl. Whisk to combine well and break up any lumps (at least 1 minute)
5. Add chia seed jelly and whisk until well combined. Pour into lined cake tin
6. Bake in oven for 35-40 minutes or until it bounces back when pressed in middle
7. Let the cake cool for 5-10 minutes in the tin. Finish cooling on a wire cooling rack
 
 
And here's the finished product:
 
 


Be warned it is not a very sweet cake. I think it could be made sweeter if you like by using raw sugar instead of rapadura as I did. The cake tastes way better than the mix did. I actually thought it was going to turn out gross after I tasted that but I was pleasantly surprised and the boys wolfed it down.

Oh and I didn't need to worry about them not being tired out at home either:




 
:)

Friday 17 May 2013

Slack....

I've been very slack with blogging the past couple of weeks. Truth be told I used all our download (no idea how!) and even though we don't get charged for excess use our internet is slowed and it's just painful to use. My bad!

I've also not done a meal plan for this week and we've wasted quite a bit of food :( I started writing it down then kept forgetting. Time to recharge! Daddy has flown back out so I have 2 weeks to get sorted before he gets back. I'm also trying to get the house organised which is a very slow process. I have ALOT of stuff.....

Our littlest boy has been seeing a speech therapist for a little while now and one of the things she has told me to do is to go back to basics when I'm talking to him. So things like saying 'up' when he wants me to pick him up and 'down' when he gets down so he can copy the sounds. I'm finding this quite hard to do as my 2 1/2 year old is a brilliant talker and I basically have whole conversations with him all day so to then stop and go back to basics is proving difficult. The new plan after seeing our speechie today is to make bathtime the time where I do that and then hopefully it will filter into my everyday vocab. Here's hoping anyway!

So some things I am wanting to do is make up some baby wipes, start a 'Meatless Monday' in our home, make a housekeeping schedule and plan a night away for when Daddy gets home and blog more regularly!

:)

Monday 6 May 2013

Mission Two - Reduce Food Waste

Every year Australians (homes and businesses) waste around 7.5 billion tonnes of food. How insane is that? When you think about all the people in our own country and around the world that don't have enough to eat then this figure is shameful.

I'll put my hand up to say that I am a food waster. Many times at the markets I'll buy fruit and vegies that we don't end up eating because I either buy too much or I don't have a meal to use them in or things are on special so I buy them for the sake of it. Now that I'm meal planning again I'm going to really try and only buy what I need for the week and bulk out all our meals with extra vegies and fruit. Tonight I'm sauteeing some kale that came in my organic produce last week otherwise I know I'll waste it.

Leftovers are another way that food is wasted and generally we do try and use these up but with my partner working FIFO sometimes things don't get eaten between the three of us. I'm going to start to freeze leftovers and that way they won't be thrown out and my partner will be able to grab stuff out for his lunches while he's home.

If you have canned,jarred or packet food that you know you aren't going to use then perhaps you could donate it to your local Foodbank or Women's Refuge or the like as my sister just did today. Great idea that I wouldn't have thought of.

So this week I will document everything that I throw away (or give to my chooks). Hopefully it won't be that much although I did throw away some baby zucchinis I found deteriorating in the crisper drawer this morning oh yes and some leftover cottage pie. Oh dear I haven't started well......

:)

Sunday 5 May 2013

Meal Plan 6th May - 12th May

Well it's not quite finished but I've done most of my meal plan for this week. I still need to add in one more dinner. The reason most of the lunch spaces are left blank is because I tend to give my boys a tasting plate for lunch. It generally has cheese, fruit, vegies maybe some ham if I have any and bread followed by a muffin or whatever I've baked. I find they eat more this way as they can pick and choose what they want.

We eat porridge ALOT as you can see. My boys love it and I know they'll be full afterwards. I stir raw hony and blueberries through it or some homemade jam or sultanas whatever we feel like on the day. I also cook it with a ton of cinnamon as we love it and it's so good for you. I've just bought some Mesquite powder last week which I've started adding to it too. It gives a lovely richness to the porridge.

Anyway here's the (un)finished product. A step up from no meal plan last week anyway :)


Wednesday 1 May 2013

Things That Make Me Happy

I'm doing a random post today as I'm reorganising my house and coming across things that make me smile. Things that my other half calls junk...

Vintage glass makes me very very happy. Especially if it's coloured (this is an early Mother's Day present I just bought).








Vintage canisters make me happy too.





These things make me smile on a daily basis and that's really what's important isn't it? Having things in your home that you love and that make you happy.

:)