Getting crafty for Christmas

 

It's that time of year again, can you believe it??? I cant... i still have shopping to do, gifts to wrap, goodies to bake and then there's the cards I misplaced halfway through writing them. Sorry to all our friends who normally get a card, didn't quite get it together to buy more cards. Sheesh, hand me a wine please!!!

Despite the chaos, for us Christmas means spending time with close family and friends, eating delicious food and enjoying Ava as she discovers Santa and all the elements of the season. Well ummmmm mainly the the presents. We may not be religious, but I do want to instill in her the meaning of Christmas beyond the advertising assault of the season!

It's also a time of baking for the Burnsies! Burnsy has been hard at it, whipping up a batch of shortbread for the teachers at day care.

Home baked goods make the perfect DIY gift. Ava helped out (licking the bowl counts in my books), they are low cost and you can up cycle everyday household items to put them in.

We used an old coffee jar, ribbon, a few stickers and a card from last Christmas. These yummy treats are not gluten free, so I've had to give them a miss this year. But this weekend I'll be testing out a new GF recipe, watch this space!!

So true

This is summer in Oz

There's nothing quite like the rare sight of a sprinkler to bring back childhood memories of long, hot summer days! Running under the spray of cool water, the hot sun beating down on our bare skin, this is what summer in Oz was all about before water restrictions and slip slop slap were invented.

My grandfather used to set up the hose, a sprinkler and plastic sheeting in the back yard as a makeshift water slide and obstacle course. The hose and sprinkler would run for hours while Grandpa squirted washing detergent onto the plastic. We'd all take turns flinging ourselves headfirst down the plastic, slipping off halfway or making it all the way down only to tumble into the garden at the bottom. Then we'd run through the sprinkler to remove some dirt and detergent, back up the garden to do it all again and again! There was the occasional bruise or grass burn after a particularly fast slippery slide, but there was always laughter and squeals for more bubbles please Grandpa!

Fast forward 30 something years... This water baby is now a city dwelling, water tight-ass with a mere square meter of grass where my girl can nude up for some time limited sprinkler action. I am a bit of a greenie, and want to instill my love of our planet in Ava. I want her to know how precious our resources are and how important it is to appreciate and conserve what Mother Nature has created. But most of all I am a Mum who was once a kid too.

I may be a try hard environmentalist, but I'm not the fun police!!! I want Ava to enjoy life's simple pleasures, like running naked through the sprinkler on a hot day. Have you or your little ones run under the sprinkler lately? 

This is very true

Mummy's bottomless bag

I used to watch my Nana fuss over her bag. She never let it out of her sight and was always checking the contents remained safe. She would often tell us, hold onto your bag Naomi and Jade!!! My Mum is also often spotted fishing around in her bag, but for different reasons. She carries way too much stuff in it, so is always looking for her keys, phone, tissue or whatever it may be that she needs.

I find myself carrying on the bag obsession for this generation. Like my Nana I am always checking my bag is near by, and like my mother I'm forever looking for something within. Keys, phone, train ticket, mints, tissue....whatever I need you can guarantee it has a place but I will take two minutes to find it.

Today I thought I was super organised. Ava sneezed on the train, my instinct is to swiftly remove said booger. I spotted a tissue in my side pocked, grabbed it and removed said booger. Brilliant piece of parenting, effortless.

However the blush from the gentleman opposite me and the strange feeling of plastic wrapper alerted me to a slight error. I'd wiped Ava's nose with a sanitary pad that had been in my bag for so long, it had come out of it's wrapper.  Ooops.

I was surprisingly far less mortified than I should have been, dived back into my bag for a minute or so and found an actual tissue for Ava to blow her nose on. Crisis averted!

Luckily Ava is too young to be mortified that I wiped her nose with absorbent wings. And they are just as effective for snot removal as they are for capturing suspicious blue liquid and making you want to dance on the beach.

Who stole my baby?

I'm not really sure how it happened. One minute I'm holding this tiny, fragile little baby in my arms. So wondrous and helpless, she needed everything done for her.

Suddenly I find myself being told "No Mamma. Ava Mae do self." She goes to the potty on her own and she helps cook dinner. You can classify mixing, licking the spoon and stealing your ingredients as help right? And gone is the cot gate, as we tuck her into a "big girl's" toddler bed at night! What the hell happened? How did we get here?

Those seemingly endless nights of feeding, crying and nappy changes feel like only yesterday. They were so precious and so fleeting upon reflection. It's easy to see NOW why people say, "hold onto every precious moment. They grow so quickly."

The first few months were a sleep deprived blur. In fact I am not sure how I even managed to maintain some degree of hygiene for myself and ingest the occasional snack but we got through it.  We were trying to figure each other out and the lack of sleep really did mess with my brain!! It may sound like your worst nightmare if you are attached to sleep and planning at all. But really (expectant and one day Mum's to be, bear with me here) I would not change a thing. Like any new challenge it was a huge learning curve, it gave me a deeper understanding of myself and it made me change my whole perspective on what matters in life.

Now I have a little girl. Talking, laughing being cheeky and defiant! Yes, she still baffles me and surprises me everyday, just like she did in the early days. Only now she answers back and and questions me!!

Easter time rocks

Ava is really loving Easter as you can see. Me not so much.... Here I am trying to get my body back and teach Ava about a healthy balanced diet. She needs to understand that lollies are a sometimes food or a rare treat. And then Nana Burns makes her the most amazing Gingerbread House - lets call it GBH like the drug. The detail was amazing and the lollies, OMG I was back in primary school heaven with all my faves on that house!!

So of course I limit Ava's consumption, for her own good and for my sanity. You can only imaging how hyped up her and Maxwell were after they got stuck into it. Problem is, with this tantalizingly evil GBH hanging around the house, I am the one who picks away at it. Did I mention I was trying to get my pre-baby body back!!!

I would be steaming healthy veggies for dinner, only to find GBH staring at me, beckoning me to have just a taste. One or two lollies are fine. It's about balance right??  Well if there is one thing I have learned over the years, I do not do balance well. It's all or nothing with me. That is why I do not keep sweets in the house, I have zero self control.

Needless to say, I saved my innocent Ava Mae from the evils of GBH by demolishing half of it myself. Then I took the rest to Mum's and shared the love around.

WTF??

 

Happy Easter from Paynesville! This snappy little performance comes to you live from a tin shed on the lake performed by a strange looking rabbit and banjo playing local. It was very Donnie Darko meets Deliverance. 

Food, life and scale OCD!

Is it just who has a love hate relationship with the scales?

I am doing this 1 Million Kilo Challenge healthy eating plan to trim down for Jade's wedding and get back to pre-baby size.

I actually hate dieting, apart from a stint on weight watchers before my wedding and the occasional 'trendy' detox I have never really been a dieter.

I tend to go through phases of eating really well and doing regular exercise then fall into the trap of eating really bad coupled with plenty of time spent on the couch munching chocolate and hoping Chewy will take himself off for a walk. So I entered this challenge with the intention of learning a few new healthy recipes and making exercise a non negotiable part of my daily routine.

So far it's going pretty well. The wedding is next week and I've finally dropped the last 3kgs of baby weight that was hanging around! Now my goal is to get back to my pre-marriage weight, so another 2kgs to go! Simple. Right?

There are the usual challenges along the way like my birthday which always equals cake & wine, kids parties which means cup cakes and sweets, there is work which means I'm too busy to make up the fancy salads I'm meant to eat on the plan and of course there is my family - Ava, Chewy & Brett who consume (in a totally awesome way) the rest of my time, heart and head space! Oh that's right, it's called life!!!!

Life is what makes me dread and obsess over my scales or should I say the number that appears on my scales! I have an annoying and compulsive tendency to jump on the scales whenever I'm in the bathroom, (which is quite often with my teeny bladder) or when I am thinking about the progress I have made or the naughty treats I have slipped in. It's all a bit tiring really, because if I put as much time and effort into just making better choices about the exercise I do or the food I eat I probably wouldn't even own a set of scales!!

As a mum I try to teach Ava balance and moderation, and yes I am aware of the irony in that statement!  I really don't want to pass my food and weight obsessions onto my daughter, she is so perfect and untouched by society's view of what is beautiful and normal. So perhaps I will have to throw out those scales after all, but only after I reach my goal weight!!

Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid.

Controversial ads to come out of Georgia, which has the 2nd highest rate of child obesity in the USA. A whopping 75% of parents do not recognise that their child is overweight. Do you think these ads will make a difference?

Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid.