When Whitworths challenged me to use their lovely new sugars I wondered what I could make. Fortunately they have a handy section on their website which you can search by category or sugar type. It’s probably no surprise I have a bit of a sweet tooth. I love honeycomb so was excited to see a recipe for it on Whitworth’s website. I found it difficult to get the right consistency so I had a few attempts. Fortunatley you really don’t need many ingredients and it literally takes 5 minutes to heat and transfer to a tray to cool. Using Whitworths…
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I felt a bit emotional yesterday. My 11 month old is growing up in leaps and bounds and I can’t help but feel happy and sad at the same time. She’s been giving us loads of problems lately – first it was off her milk completely, then off her food, then waking constantly in the night. However, in the last week or two (fingers crossed) things have improved. I’ve made a huge effort to give her more finger food as she prefers feeding herself to being fed, she’s drinking milk and water from a cup herself and she’s sleeping better.…
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Over the past few evenings I’ve been busy making 12 festive decorations from Cath Kidston’s latest book – Make Your Own Christmas Decorations. Featuring 12 projects the book includes the patterns as well as the felt, thread, pompoms and cord so all you’ll need is a basic sewing kit and some toy stuffing! There are patterns for a Christmas Robin, Father Christmas, Striped Stocking, Gift-Wrapped Present, Christmas Tree, Frosty Snowman, Winter Reindeer, Holly & Berries, Christmas pudding, Snowy Cottage, Festive Stanley and Christmas Angel. Make your own Christmas decorations! Each project is well laid out and includes a large colour…
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These early dark evenings are not conducive to losing weight! I am really enjoying baking at the moment and finding it quite difficult to not over indulge. However, my jeans are getting looser so I must be doing something right. When I started the challenge I was sent some Weight Watchers products to try. You may remember this photograph of my son having a good look through the products! To be honest I thought they were a real mixed bunch. We liked the bread rolls, digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits, cakes and crisps, but didn’t like the curry sauce, juice, or…
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I love eating fish and always make sure the toddler eats a healthy portion at least once a week too. One of our favourite recipes is for tuna pasta bake. It’s really quick to put together and I always make plenty so I can freeze a couple of portions. Ingredients: Dried pasta (I usually use 60g per adult and used 240g for this recipe) 1 onion, chopped garlic puree 1 tin of Reel Fish tuna 1 tin of chopped tomatoes (400g) sprinkle of dried mixed herbs grated cheese for the top Method: Cook the dried pasta, drain, and leave to…
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I’m so glad we’re back in our ‘normal’ routine – as normal as life can be with a baby and toddler. The little man is back at his school twice a week which means I get a couple of hours with the baby. We’ve just started going to a weekly music class and it is lovely doing something together and getting out of the house. However the end of summer means getting back to our plans of moving. We’re doing all those small jobs around the house which we’ve ignored since moving in 5 years ago. We’ve replaced the broken…
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Last month two new books were published by the Irish fashion designer, Orla Kiely, in her range of cloth bound board books. Just like numbers and colours, creatures and shapes are two beautiful books for babies and toddlers. Shapes focuses on some of the most common geometric shapes and then places them alongside a common object or animal featuring that shape. I love the hexagon and honeycomb page, but there are also a rectangle and house, an oval and a ladybird as well as a star and starfish. Creatures shows her strong geometric-style graphics and patterns to illustrate a variety of animals, from monkeys…
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Although we don’t take the children trick or treating I can’t resist making some sweet treats with them. This Halloween Lyle’s has revamped their traditional black treacle with the name ‘Trick or Treacle’ and turned the entire tin into a pumpkin head. It’s a really lovely collectable item so I snapped one up to go with my Lyle’s ‘Happy and Glorious’ Golden Syrup from the summer. They make great pen pots! Did you know you can use black treacle to make lots of yummy treats? There are some great recipes floating around for Halloween – how about Witches’ ribs with…
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Woo hoo! Time for another update… On the 19 September 2010 I started a Day Zero list: a place to record goals, discover new challenges, and gain motivation to achieve them. I made a list of 100 things I want to do over 1001 days. The list is due to be competed by 16 June 2013. 9. Lose baby weight For the past couple of weeks I’ve been taking part in the BritMums challenge to lose weight with WeightWatchers ProPoints. I have to admit it’s not going brilliantly but I’m enjoying trying lots of new recipes. 50. Join the WI!…