My Nook.

The past two weeks have seen me on a semi rampage, a de-clutter / re-vamp the house rampage.

It started with me sick and tried of having to rummage through my bathroom draws to find anything.  Now, I'm not what I would describe as a hoarder, but I will admit that I do have some issues with throwing out some stuff, usually random stuff like my almost empty makeup that I haven't touch in years! So I got tough with myself and filled up two grocery bags full of general bathroom 'crap', empty bottles, lotions that have been sitting there since we moved in and have never been touched, you all know what I'm talking about!  Once that was done, I started on the Kitchen draws, I could not believe that amount of generally useless stuff that had been shoved into the draws, especially that bottomless pit known as the 3rd draw down.  I emptied all four draws out completely and only put back in what we need and use, it was such a successful process that I even got to allocated the 3rd draw down to being a a draw dedicated to all my baking utensils.

Next I moved onto my desk….A task I have been wanting to tackle for a long time.  I have a tiny little desk in our study that is home to my laptop and my sewing machine, and whatever else the kids and I put on it.  For a while now I have been wanting another small desk so I have two sitting side by side, one for my blogging and running the house, the other for my sewing, but in the mean time I will have to make do with the one, so some serious organisation was in order! Not only did i see this little revamp as my chance to get organised but to also do something that has been on mind for a bit, adding another colour into my very red accessorised house!

I just didn't know what colour to do, enter the pinterest search for colour boards.  It needed to be something that went with the grey and red already all through my kitchen, dining and lounge, but also something bold and bright to reflect our family.  One colour keep catching my eye, a bright contrasting Tourquoise.  Ok colour nervously picked, now how the hell do i add it in?  Wall art?? Back to pinterest for some wall art pinsteration, after what seemed like hours I settled on a canvas DIY project that I could do with masking tape and some acrylic paints.  The next morning I packed the girls in the car and headed off to the town over to hit up the local el'cheapo shop, here we found the canvas I need for $11 and the perfect Turquoise colour for $2.95, I got 2 other colours for $2.95 as well, and then headed home to create some art.  Have a look here to see how I created my wall art.  Now for the organisation side of things.  While having a browse through Target I found some great desk accessories in a plain black fabric for only $12 each, I grabbed two organising trays and one 'magazine holder', then while having a poke around Typo I found a cute little owl pen holder in complimenting colours to my wall art and funky clear skull, both only $7 each.   Today I got to put to all together, art hung on the wall, fabrics and sewing gear in the trays and general papers and mags in the magazine holder.  I am so happy with how it has all turned out, and love my little nook that I have created myself, i'm hoping it inspires me to sew more beautiful buntings and blog on.

Next on my list of de-cluttering the house is the Pantry….I feel an Ikea trip coming!

Foddy Finds of the Week…chapter two. Zucchini Frittata and Curry Rice Salad

This past week has been another great leap forward for this families low FODMAP lifestyle, with a few more meals added to the list, a list that I am very pleased to see growing!

This weeks low foddy tasty treats included a delish Zucchini Frittata and a Curry Rice Salad.

Lets start withe the Zucchini Frittata.  This is such an easy EASY dish to make, all you need is…

• 1 large Zucchini, grated
• Two large spring onions, sliced using only the green ends.
• 6 Eggs
• Bacon, diced and fried off
• 2 tablespoons Self raising flour
• 2 tablespoons lactose free milk
• 1 hand full of lactose free cheese
• half a tomato, diced into large pieces.

Now here is the really easy part, all you have to do is place all the ingredients into a bowl and whisk them together, pour into a pie dish that you have sprayed with some cooking spray, and bake in the oven on a moderate heat for roughly 30 mins, or until cooked through and golden.

We served this Frittata up with my next Foddy find of the week, Curry Rice Salad. What you need is...

• 1 Cup of uncooked rice
• Half a red capsicum, finely diced
• 1 spring onion, sliced only using the green ends
• Carrot, grated 

Dressing

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 1 teaspoon caster sugar

Cook your rice in your preferred method a few hours before you are planning on serving up this dish, I personally love to use my tupperware rice cooker that is used in the microwave.  Once the rice has been cooled in the fridge mix in the Capsicum, spring onion and carrot, and make your dressing. The Dressing is made up by placing all the ingredients in a bowl and whisking them together or you could just as easily pop them all in a jar and give is a good shake. Pour the dressing over the rice and give it a good mix, making sure it is all covered.  And hey presto, it done.  

A delicious meal that even the kids loved, and low FODMAP, so good for my belly too! Happy days!

Playroom Artpop

Most weeks here the girls and I have a little craft project that we undertake, so this week I picked out something that we could do that could be hang in the playroom seeing as I'm trying to add some more colour into our living areas at the moment.  I think it was a huge success and we all had a heap of fun doing it this afternoon!

So here is what we created, some bright and colourful pieces with the rules of our playroom on them. Love, Share, Laugh and Play.  They were quite cheap to make as I picked up the small canvases at a local Bargain shop for $2.95 each and we had the rest of the stuff we needed lying around the house. They were nice and quick for the girls to do too, which is great, as it always seems that thy get over painting quite fast, I often find the setting up process longer than the activity, who am I kidding that's like most things when it involves kids.  The longest part of this was the mummy prep work that I need to do beforehand.  I was lucky today and my mum had Lala, 3 for a few hours so I got all the preparation done while she was there and Deedee, 1 was having her nap.  Once everyone was home and awake we got painting or at least the girls did.






So here is what we used : 4 cheap small canvases, some painters tape, a sharpie, a little scalpel, paint brushes and pink, aqua and yellow paints. We choose these colours as there are the colour in the bunting hanging in the playroom.

I started off with covering most of the canvas with the tape, then I wrote out the words I had picked in a sharpie, I had a play around with how I was going to write them on a piece of paper first to see what thickness and style appealed to me.  Now was the trickiest part, I used a small scalpel, that I found in my husbands arts supplies, to carefully cut out the words, a few times I pressed a little too hard and nicked the canvas, this turned out to be not a big deal as the amount of paint the girls put on most certainly plugged up any slits.  Once all four words where cut out they were ready to be painted, the girls went to town on them, I just was on stand by to make sure the letters didn't roll up and paint get anywhere it wasn't meant to be.  After letting them dry somewhat it was time to slowly pull the painters tape off.  At some points this was tricky as the paint was on really thick and I had let it dry too much so I need to the scalpel to help separated the paint and tape, but it wasn't too bad at all.

 We are really happy with our little creations and can't wait to get them hung over the weekend!

Foddy Finds of the Week….Chapter One

This week I have had a few wins when it comes to Low FODMAP cooking, and the timing could not have been better.  I was starting to feel really disheartened by the whole thing and felt that I may be destined to never have tasty foods again.  Then these two chicken dishes landed on lap, and I will definitely be adding them into my dinner time repertoire!

While away in Perth my darling big sister gave me a cooking with kids books,  flicking through it this week to find easy bake things I could make with the girls I stumbled across some chicken kebabs.  I usually cook my kebabs with loads of onion, which is a huge no no now, so they hadn't even entered my mind as a possible dinner, but these ones had no onion (I guess thats what makes then kid friend too) and instead was made with grilled zucchini and red capsicum.  What made them even better was there were sitting on a bed of mash potato, and well who doesn't love some mash! Even more exciting was that I had chicken out defrosting so I didn't have to wait to try out these beauties.

Low FODMAP Chicken Kebabs on Mash

I started off by boiling my potatoes and char grilling some zucchini slices and red capsicum, I diced up my chicken into large squares and dusted mine with Cayenne pepper (I left the kids plain), once the zucchini and capsicum was cool I whacked all three ingredients on to small skewers that I pre soaked in water for about 30 minutes.  I then Placed all my Kebabs into a hot pan with some olive oil, rotating them so ensure even cooking.  When the Kebabs were just about ready my potatoes were done and ready to mash.  I make a lactose free mash, and never measure anything out.  I start to mash up the potato and then put a nice big dollop of Nettelex in (dairy free butter) and continue to mash, then some Zymil Lactose free milk and mash it up till light and fluffy.  By now my Kebabs were cooked and ready to serve on top of the mash with some fresh spinach picked right out of our veggie patch!  I might add here that I discovered my new favourite way to eat mash too, wrapped up in a fresh spinach leave…oh my it was heaven.  In all the verdict from great, they were a hit with all three of us, next time I plan on putting some lactose free cheese on the zucchini while it is grilling, we do it like this on the bbq and it is so tasty, and I'm thinking of adding some eggplant next time too.

Next win of the week came about because I had accidentally taken out chicken mince to defrost instead of a chicken breast.  I have never cooked with chicken mince before and only bought to try out some chicken sausage roll things I saw a  few weeks back.  Anyway I had a light bulb moment and thought Chicken Meatballs.  Thank-god for google, within minutes I had a number of recipes to choose from, all of course not quite low FODMAP friendly, but I did find one that didn't need too much work to make it so. With a little tweaking it was a huge success and I can't wait to make them again for my Hubby when we gets home.

Low FODMAP Chicken Meatballs

Meatball Ingredients- 500grams chicken mince, 1/4 cup GF breadcrumbs, 1 tablespoon parsley, 1
teaspoon dijon mustard, 1 egg.
To make them is pretty simple, you put all the ingredient in a bowl and mix it together, I used a wooden spoon to do this as chicken mince is pretty sticky and its hard to do it with your hands.  When you do have to use your hands to divide then into the balls, make sure you wet your hands first! Once you have made the meat balls set them aside in the fridge while you make the tomato sauce and start boiling the water for that pasta.
Tomato Sauce Ingredients- 1 tablespoon garlic infused oil, the green part of two large spring onion, some diced red capsicum, 2 large sprigs of thyme, 800 gram can of tomatoes.
Heat the garlic oil and then fry off the spring onion and capsicum after a few minutes add the can of tomatoes and the thyme and season with some salt and pepper to taste.
Now, fry off the meatballs in some garlic oil, making sure all sides are nice and golden, then pour the simmering tomato sauce over the top.  Let it simmer and cook through while your choice of pasta cooks, I used San Remo GF Fettuccine.  This was by far the best low FODMAP meal I have made, it really gave my hope for some more tasty dinners!

Happy low foddy cooking!

Motivation or lack there of….

Arrgghh the holiday hangover still continues……

Since returning home after having a full week off my full on low FODMAP diet (or low foddy as I've nicknamed it) and yoga regime, I have found it quite hard to get back on the bandwagon.  The diet side of things hasn't really been the issue, as I did try to stick to low foddy foods while away and have since stumbled across some great new recipe ideas for dinner.  It's been more about getting motivated to get the ol' yoga mats out once again.  Yesterday I managed to do the easy yoga dvd I have, as I thought I would have to ease myself back into it but I actually found it really really easy, which is fantastic news.  After this achievement I thought that I would feel much more motivated today, but no.  I had plan to have breakfast and get straight into it, but I started cleaning the house instead and then that turned into me completely de-clattering my bathroom.  Yes it really did need to be done and I do feel better about getting started on de-clattering the house as thats this months mission, but I also feel it was used as an excuse not to yogi it up!  Then on the way home from Lala's ballet class and dinner at my parents I thought, 'it's not that late, get the mat out once you get the girls to bed'….well instead I ended up eating popcorn and watching Peter Pan with my girl, yes beautiful special time with my precise babies, but once again an excuse not to yogi it up!!!

Alas tomorrow is a new day, and new days bring new thing, hopefully it brings my motivation back!

My guide to traveling with toddlers

Our family has just returned from a quick trip over to perth, well most of our family.  Perth is the gateway to my main man S's work, so instead of flying home with me and the girls he flew straight to site to start his swing.  Perth has become a perfect little get away destination for us, I must admit that I wasn't overly keen on going back to there for a holiday after our trip 18 months ago when I was 20 weeks pregnant.  Long story short, I felt like I just didn't click with Perth, I was left feeling underwhelmed.  I am happy to report that this break was much better, I think mainly because this time S hadn't just come straight off night shift, so was firing on all cylinders, and I wasn't a big ball of hormones!

Over the past three years we have been fortunate enough to collect some fantastic W.A friends, not only through S working FIFO, but also through two amazing online bub groups that i am part of.  My beautiful sister and bro inlaw moved to Kalgoorlie two years ago, which also adds to the fabulous W.A peeps in our life, but these two are so so fabulous that they drove 8 hours to hang out with us in Perth, well he was attending a high voltage course, but I'll still pretend it was all for us.  So this trip was full of catch ups, kid's playing together, drinks and laughs!

The biggest obstacle we had this trip was the time difference, three hours doesn't sound like much, but it can really knock around little people.  What got us through was being quite relaxed about things like, what time they napped, what time they wanted to eat, and what time they wanted to play.  By being relaxed about this stuff it kept the whole family happy!

So with further ado here is a quick look at my survival guide of traveling with toddlers!

•  Make sure you have the right entertainment for your kids! We have flown a few times with the girls now and the one thing that I think we did wrong was not having headphones that fit there little heads properly!  This time we got some kids headphones, it made watching some airline TV much easier for all involved! Team this with some brand new books and colouring books and we were on a winner to keep them entertained!

• If they fall asleep on the way out for dinner, see if the the restaurant has couches you can be seated at.  We were so lucky that the place we went to eat out at with some friends was extremely funky and had lots of different seating, we got a couch and Miss Deedee got to nap on while we chatted and ordered drinks and food. 

• Let them play in the sand in their good party dresses.  I'm not the biggest clean freak out there, but I am very anal when it comes to the girls clothes, I freak at the slightest mark, but I took a deep breath and let them play in the sand after dinner one night, it saved tears and and we ended up having some great photos with the sunsetting, and really sand isn't that dirty at all!

• Take a walk after dinner and paddle in the water together.  This was heaven for us, not living anywhere near the beach and S and I loving the beach it was great to be able to stole down and breath in some sea air.  Lala was in her element and utilised any opportunity to get in the water! 

• Ice-cream ANYTIME.  We never have ice-cream in this household unless I have made it myself with lactose free cream (I'm intolerant) and hardly any sugar. So Ice-cream on this trip was definitely a big treat.  The girls only got some a couple of times but loved every minute of it when they did, and never could finish what we did let them have anyway.  I love that something so simple is so special to them.

• Let them nap on their Aunty.  This was special for both the girls and my sister, living miles away from each other, I think it is so nice that they still all have a strong bond and love each other so deeply. Thank god for Skype I say!!! 

• Introduce the baby that is scared of the beach to a small kiddies beach first!!  We totally did this the wrong way away, Deedee heard the crashing waves and freaked right out! I mean really freaked out, she cried and screamed for a the whole 30 mins we managed to stay at the beach.  She was even getting upset when I went near the water without her.  On day 3 we found a beautiful kids beach at Hilary's about 15 minutes up the road from where we were staying.  Once we got there and set up, S sat with Deedee at the waters edge and dug a little hole that filled with water for her play in, this was the best move we made, within 15 minutes she was comfortable enough to venture into the water, and there she stayed for most of the day, loving every second!

• Don't be afraid to use technology when your out!  On our last night we had dinner just our family, this was one of the only times the whole trip we were just the four of us.  S and I had really spent no time  just us so we did something we have never done before, we took the iPad out to dinner with us and set the girls up with a movie so we could enjoy our seafood dinner and a nice convo without hearing "I'm done, we go home now?" or "we go beach now?".  Not something I will do again in hurry as I like the girls to learn to sit and chat with us while we eat out, but nothing wrong with at all when you need so quiet time!

Holiday Hangover!

Why is it that my house looks like a bomb has exploded in it and we have only been back from our holiday for 19 hours???

Oh that right because unpacking is the WORST!!!  As my best girlfriend just said it's the 'holiday hangover', and that pretty much sums up how I feel….HUNGOVER! Shame I didn't get to drink and dance the night away though.

The house seem to have every bodies clothes, shoes, and stuff everywhere and I can't even blame the kids, they have actually been fantastic through it all, maybe that has to do with the jet lag they have from the 3 hour time difference.  Yep only 3 hours different but that can make a huge impact on little bodies.  

Ok I better get back to it…

Looking forward to letting you all know about our mini holiday and about flying solo with 2 toddlers!