{Snapped}

I took some time for myself yesterday and charged up my camera battery and spent some time getting reacquainted with the idea of recreation time as a concept.  I went to town and sat in on a workshop for portrait photography which was good fun.  Today I took the recreation time concept one step further and we all went for a walk and 'adventure' along the creek; honestly, I don't know why we don't do this more often as it is such a great place.

Possum let me take a couple of pictures; however, Blue did not.  

Win some, lose some!

It felt good to have my camera out.  We have been busy and since I got an iPad I have not used my camera as much as I would like.  There is no denying that the photos on my blogs have suffered as a result so I am going to work on that from now on.

Sugar Free {Week 1&2}

I am lumping week one and two of the eight week programme together as the idea at this point is to just cut back on sugar so there isn't cold turkey style changes made to your diet.  I like the idea of this gentle approach but I don't need two weeks of it.

Last night we cleaned out the pantry and removed any food that had more than 6% of sugar; for future purchases I won't buy anything outside of this range from now on.  A lot of things went but I was surprised by how much of our staple pantry items got to stay.  The I Quit Sugar cookbook does not use many cereals such as rolled oats, pasta and couscous but I have left those items in too as the sugar content is fine and as I use them I will work on buying less in the future.

Next week is cold turkey week.  I am not making the children go cold turkey as it would rule out fresh fruit; I think their growing and active bodies will handle that much fructose but I will rule out dried fruit.  I did not realise that dates are 46.7% sugar and raisins are 69.1% sugar.  Read your labels!  Fresh fruit is not ruled out forever, just the first few weeks as you recalibrate your body to not crave sweetness.  Some fruits have less fructose so I will buy more of those for the children and for us too when I can eat them again.

I am very grateful that a lot of our cooking is safe to stay, this would never work if I had to give up milk, meat or coffee.  I feel very positive about this right now, especially after seeing how much sugar was in some of the foods I have been eating and even worse, feeding the children.

Sugar

My husband has always said that fat was not bad, it was sugar you had to watch out for.  Our generation have become experts at sugar production and it is in everything.

I first read about Sarah Wilson on a friend's blog, I wish I could remember which one.  Then another friend decided to sample a range of diets to see what worked for her and I thought again about sugar.  I don't think fat is the enemy and most diets target fat; so much fat free food is VERY high in sugar.

I bought the book 'I Quit Sugar' while I was in town and The Mr. Has read it and was caught muttering a lot; things like 'I agree' and 'that is what I said'.

We are going to spend the next little while getting to know how much sugar is in our pantry items and them in a couple of weeks we will begin this programme.  At this point I am a little worried by sourcing some of the ingredients in our rural town but I will just have to be organised and find a good online shop if needed.

Craft

Or 'cwaft' as some in the house might say!

He thinks, plans and designs in his head and then sits down to build a 3D model.  The 'camera' he built by himself, the 'frog' he got me to help wi the sticky tape but the rest is his own handy work.  I love that he feeds the frog by popping the end of the tube off and putting drawn food inside; simple, but clever.

The camera has interchangeable lenses too, a toilet roll as a prime lens and a paper towel roll as a zoom lens!

I know it is just stuff stuck together but I find it amazing that a 3 year old can take a three dimensional idea from conception to construction in this way.

This set of shelves for Blue's room has been in progress for so long that I am starting to fear he will outgrow it before we get in done.  A shame we don't get our craft done as quickly as Blue does!

Testing, and a bit about Lego

This post is to test* an app called Pages which I downloaded from Apps gone free.  I have been so busy lately that Blogging has flown out the window so when I saw this app I wondered if it would help.  

For three days the children upended my husbands lot of Lego and mixed everything up.  I was worried things would get lost and only wanted them to play with one unit at a time but The Mr said it was important for kids to play and use their imagination in order to learn so he let them play as they choose.

They created, mixed and had so much fun so The Mr was obviously right.  At the end of three days we have lost small gear stick but that seems like a small price to pay.

*the post drafting phase went well and access to my iPad photos was easy enough.  I think for good photos from my camera my computer would still be the way to go.  I will have to see how managing the comments goes from this point; also, I can't work out how to do labels... 

I went to publish and it told me there was an error as my photo was still uploading.  There is no progress bar to tell me when this should happen which I find annoying.  Then, when I came back in to edit all my line spaces were out.  I remember when Old Blogger used to do that and it was annoying.

Edit: there was a progress bar and an outbox!  I missed them in my haste.  Also, it easily let me in to edit this post so I have to say that given this is the first time I have ever used this app AND it is early in the morning and I still have not finished my first cup of coffee I am going well.  They say more haste, less speed so perhaps I was the problem when I first hit publish.  I also found the tags under the little 'i' so I can't complain about anything in the drafting and posting phase yet.

Jamie Oliver HomeCooker {Mother's Day}

I was spoilt this year.  Normally not much happens to mark the occasion on Mother's Day but this year I put in an order and was given the Jamie Oliver HomeCooker.  Jamie Oliver is so wonderful and his cooker is just as good as I would expect from a product underpinned by him.  

I got the Cooker with cutting tower and also the pasta and steamer trays.  This lot cost me $300 on sale at Harvey Norman and there is also an extra $30 to come off that via a promotional cash back deal running right now.  It all made it such a great deal.

The big difference between this machine and the Thermomix, other than the price, is that the HomeCooker does not have built in scales and the cutting tower is used instead of having the built in cutting system.  I can live with that when you consider this was $1700 cheaper.

I have used it a lot as I may have opened it before Mother's Day, I just couldn't wait!  It really does make tea time so much easier, put ingredients in, press button, beeps when something else needs to happen or stirs until you are ready to eat.  Simple!

The whole thing is dishwasher safe too which is a big plus in this house since we recently put a dishwasher in.  It is easy to assemble and clean and so far I have not found anything I don't like about it.

I love the Jamie Oliver cookbook too.  There are more recipes online and because I registered new recipes get emailed to me.  It is not hard to cook most of the foods we like using this system so a lot of old favourite recipes are being cooked as well.

I had originally wanted a Thermomix but I am glad I didn't rush out and buy one as there are now a number of similar products about.  I won't claim they are exactly as good but I do think this goes close and if value for money is important this is a much better option for us.  

Term 1 {Catch Up}

On the last day of Term 1 Possum got to wear 'crazy socks' as a reward for having earned 10 merit awards. I did not have any socks so decided that stripes on stockings under her sports shorts were crazy and would count.  She looked great and was so proud of herself.  In addition to her Bronze Award for merits she also got a reading award so she had a great day at school.  Kindergarten also hosted the final assembly for the term and Possum had memorised her readings and spoke clearly and well into the microphone; yay!

The holidays included a trip to Nan and Pop's for the children, craft and a quick trip to the Northern Rivers area of NSW.   ANZAC Day also featured and Possum wore her school uniform and marched with the school which was a nice experience for her.  It was not a nice experience for the rest of us as Blue hit his head when he fell off a fence so the Mr and I took him up to the hospital for some glue and we missed the big event.

Little Athletics also finished up last term.  We still have to have the presentation night but I am looking forward to having a few months off with quiet winter nights on a Friday in front of our fire.  I am trying to be less busy but I have no idea how long that will last ;)

This term I popped my head in and helped the Kindergarten class do some cooking for Mother's Day.  Possum was so excited to see me in her class as a 'teacher'.  I will have to do that more often; it was fun to help the younger Kindy children as I work with Year 1 and 2 and also help Year 3 and 4 with reading groups a couple of times a week while I am there but had not helped in my daughter's class at all as I was worried that she would find it hard to switch between mum the 'teacher' and mum the parent.  It wasn't an issue which was great.