The End

Well, I think I’m going to have to call it a day here I’m afraid. Life has suddenly got incredibly busy, Charlie is being more challenged by pre school and coming home exhausted! We are spending more time doing sport and outdoors activities which are hard to document without boring you all to death!

Charlie starts school in September, I now have 3 jobs on the go and I’m loving living life in the real world for a bit. Thank you very much for your comments and for reading, I’ve really enjoyed sharing our life. I won’t be taking anything down, the tutorials are still there for you if you want them. I’ll try and get up a link list of the tutorials and ideas for things to do.

Rebecca & Charlie x

**** UPDATE: I have added a tutorial/ideas list here ****

There’s always one…

Thats right, there is always one child not looking the way he should be, doing what he should be and here he is, the only child looking behind him for the press photograph? My son. I’m so proud lol.

Sorry for slacking!

I’m so busy right now, my other blog is taking a fair bit of my time, I have my own business and I’ve just been offered another job! I’m really pleased with life right now and it’s going great for us as a family. We routinely get out once a week on the bikes or walking as a family.

I’m currently researching running with Charlie, he wants to join me but I want to make sure it’s safe for him, I’ll post soon! He managed 10 minutes of my exercise video today and is really interested in health and fitness which is great!

I promised a recipe using the things from my veg box so here you go, this is what I made for my in laws and us. It’s not ground breaking but it was yum!

Roast Lamb Stegosaurus

1/2 leg of organic lamb
3 Garlic cloves
Fresh Rosemary
Lemon Juice

Heat the Oven to 200C/Gas 6

Put the lamb in a roasting tray (preferably one with a little shelf in it) and stab it firmly all over the top leaving little incisions everywhere. Chop the garlic cloves in to thin slices and poke them in to the incisions you’ve made. This is a great task for little hands, Charlie loved creating a Stegosaurus

After you’ve finished filling your stegosaurus you can shove some garlic under the skin if you want it good and strong. Then get the fresh rosemary and pop some springs around the pan and then add shorter bits to the incisions and under the skin. It burns, but don’t worry!

Roast for about an hour and a half for a 1.25kg joint. It easily served 3 hungry adults and 1 hungry child with plenty left over for sandwiches and boy it was scrummy.  Cut any visible fat off for a healthier meal. 

On the side we had a lovely range of organic carrots, spring greens, baked potatoes and asparagus. Charlie is a HUGE asparagus fan and I made a little sauce and added garlic stuffed olives to them. Recipe is

Orange and Wine Asparagus

3 Oranges
TBSP Balsamic Vinegar
Olive Oil
TBSP Red Wine or Red Wine Vinegar
Olives (stuffed or not your choice, we had garlic stuffed)
1 Shallot

Place chopped shallot into a small bowl and finely zest one of the oranges over the top.

Cut away skin and pith from both oranges and cut into segments by cutting down between the membranes. Work over another bowl to catch the juices. Set segments aside. Add 2 tablespoons of the collected orange juice to the shallots and zest, plus a pinch of salt and leave to marinate. Meanwhile, snap the tough ends off the asparagus.

Bring a wide pan of water to a rolling boil and blanch for 1-2 mins until half-cooked. (I skipped it as the Asparagus was ripe and ready but it’s worth it if you want to).

Lift out onto a tea towel to dry, and while still warm rub over a little olive oil and salt. Heat a griddle pan until extremely hot. Lay on the asparagus and grill for a couple of minutes on each side until nicely charred and cooked through. Finish vinaigrette by whisking in olive to taste (approx 5 tbsp) and more salt and pepper as desired.

Taste and check the balance of oil to vinegar. Serve the asparagus warm dressed with the orange segments and vinaigrette.

The whole meal was gorgeous Charlie scoffed loads, I steamed the spring greens and carrots and they were so tasty and baked potatoes. I am really finding that we can tell the difference on Organic. It’s not for everyone, not everyone sees the value and that’s fair enough, I didn’t for a long time. We have reshuffled what we spend our food budget on to afford the deliveries and it works better because we aren’t spending money on sundries that we don’t need in the supermarket. We are challenging ourselves to budget even better this month, I’ll let you know how it goes. I have some work in the pipeline too which should help. I will try and blog more but Charlie and I are doing lots of outdoors stuff and pictures aren’t always available and he’s got a better social life than me at the moment! I will get on that kids and running post though asap!

Hope you are all well  

Messy Play!

Yesterday we had a friend come and play for the day, Charlie was beyond excited when we arrived home from pre school he was looking out of the window every 5 seconds for the lovely Eloise to arrive! They are great friends and only 4 months between them in age means they are fairly evenly matched to play.

While we were waiting our lovely delivery of fruit, veg and meat arrived from Riverford so we had a little pick through it to check out what goodies we had for this week

and it was a fantastic delivery this week, loads of wonderful goodies in there including carrots (with the mud still on!), potatoes, asparagus, a turnip type thing, spring greens, spring onions, lettace, mushrooms, beans amongst other things. The Fruit bag had apples, pears and oranges, and the meat box was packed with lamb, chicken, beef and pork sausages!

I thought I would let you know what we do with it with Charlie this week, he’s a huge veggie fan but I want to get a bit more adventurous with how we cook things particularly for him to keep his veggie intake high and interesting.

When Eloise arrived the two of them scuttled off to play and then started getting a bit fed up in the garden with not much to do and damp ground so out came the spray bottles. A couple of drops of food colouring, a plain wall and voila fun for ages. I do own a spray bottle bought for 99p in Sainsburys but the other is an old window cleaner bottle which works just as well.

However this post does come with a health warning…I’m still working on cleaning his hands

Hopefully I will have some great recipes to follow using the wonderful veggies that we have in stock. I’ll update as soon as I’ve had a chance to try them out!

Spring Trees

So this morning we had a super busy morning, Charlie has a much better social life than I do!

He started with a swimming lesson, 8.30 am this morning *yawn*. We have moved him as we are members at a different pool now and we were getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress he was getting & the size of the group had crept up and up. The new group seems much more focussed on the “lesson” bit of things and the first thing the coach wants to do is get rid of the float. Charlie has a 4 stage float and has managed to shed one of them but he never moved past that as – despite me suggesting it was time – the previous swimming teacher had never felt it a good idea. I did  however after seeing him swim with no float at all with me in the pool. Anyway, whilst I think Charlie will moan about being challenged more I think the new lessons will see some better progress for him, he was getting bored at the old ones.

Then we were at a family party for 1030, his cousins 6th birthday in a soft play place in Plymouth, the boy loved it, stuffed his face (obviously really hungry after hard work swim) and left happy with a party bag with a monkey mask in.

We headed home after that as we wanted to get stuff ready for tomorrow (off for a cycle) and whilst my dear husband was outside in the clammy, damp and frequently raining garden trying to attach Charlie’s bike to his via a trail gator Charlie was pottering in the garden with him, sadly frequently getting in to quite awkward postions that only 4 year olds can and further causing frustration to the following-vague-instructions rage that my husband was experiencing.

So once Charlie had finished watering all the plants and planting some pumpkin seeds for me I decided to distract him with some painting. We’d talked about doing it earlier in the week but didn’t get around to it. We wanted to make a spring tree to contrast the autumn trees we did before and I figured finger paint would be a good way to get Charlie well and truely distracted from the toolbox in the garden.

So I painted the basic outline of the tree on water colour paper

Not the most artistic I will give you but it worked, Charlie added grass to the bottom and got started adding “leaves” and flowers to the tree with his fingers …

he enjoyed choosing the colours carefully, discussing with me which was which and how they would look on the page,

Charlie did some painting with a brush on there too in order to bulk out the leaves but then got fed up and decided that the wind had blown off a lot of the leaves, as was pretty much happening in our garden today, wind and rain. Then he decided that the dinosaurs wanted to take up residence in his tree. Cool I said, get them on there!

It was a nice afternoons activity, well an hour or so anyway, and just as the husband finished preparing the bikes for tomorrow the sun came out and shone beautifully on my lovely tulips.

Stay tuned for cycle update tomorrow

Marvellous Veg!

We are really lucky, Charlie has always loved fruit and veg as much as he loves any other food, over the years (all four of them lol) we have reinforced that fruit and veg make us strong and healthy and Charlie loves to make a healthy choice, his biggest asked for dinner is broccoli and pasta. Since we only have wholemeal pasta that’s an awesome choice for an active boy!

In our move to being a more healthy family who are living on a budget we have started to get a veg box, meat box and fruit bag delivered to us from a local organic farm. Now instantly brows furrow and it’s frown city as people tell us “oh my isn’t it more expensive?” when I say this is a money saving and health exercise and I get their concern. Rumour about town is that eating Organic is really expensive, cries of “doesn’t it double your shopping bill?” ring in my ears still but no it doesn’t.

Thing is Organic farms don’t deliver fizzy pop, they don’t deliver sweeties, or the toy that Charlie demands in the store, they don’t deliver the impulse buys, the cakes, the “we’ve done well” treats, they also don’t deliver Blu Rays, Clothes we don’t need (well clothes at all but that’s not the point) or shoes or handbags or gardening things and all other kinds of impulse, retail therapy type shopping that often happens in the supermarket. So our food budget goes on food now not all the other things. We do a tesco shop for sundries like tins and washing powder at the beginning of each month and then we top up with bread, milk, etc in the inbetween. We are going to start being super strict soon and only get bread and milk on top ups and anything else is tough if we didn’t order enough at the beginning of the month. I’ll let you know how it goes. I saw this video about sneaky supermarkets and it made me really think about how we shop. It’s american and not accurate to every supermarket but it did make me think about things.

But so far it’s having a very positive effect on our eating and shopping habits, we’ve stopped going to the supermarket a few times a week which means no opportunity for all the rubbish to creep in, and we have veg, meat and fruit in the house so we always have a simple meal we can whip up. BTW, the meat tastes better than any I have EVER had from a supermarket, so does the veg.

A major factor in our decision to move to veg boxes was we wanted to really commit to eating better. We have been doing really well this year in our quest to be healthier adults but this really does take it to a new level and is really setting the example for our child to be healthy and active too. Financially it utilises our food budget much more effectively which is a very happy by product.

Charlie is so impressed when they arrive with our box, he has a dig through it, we don’t get a choice as to what is in it so we get things we would never normal think to try or buy, so Charlie is learning all new fruit and veg and showing a real interest in what comes in the box.

So I urge you to have a look at your local farmer, do they deliver, can you shop more locally and avoid the big supermarkets dirty tricks? Riverford.com deliver to most of the country now and are worth a go if you are in the UK.

End of April Already!?

I’m confused, it’s May already!? Seriously!? Jeez, I really need to get on with things the year is 1/3 gone already! So the 365 project carries on, I’ve been taking the pictures but slow to upload them, if you follow me on 365 project stick with me they will appear! I will try to be better I promise.

This month I tried to move out of my comfort zone and photographed myself. I’m good at hiding behind the camera, just not so much in front of it all.

I’m pleased I’ve done it even though I won’t be doing it again! I’m so uncomfortable with it it’s untrue. It’s another step I need to take though and it’s done now.

So Charlie and I are getting back in to routine after the double 4 day weekends and I’ve managed to find him new swimming lessons at a better pool with a smaller class and it’s slightly cheaper so pleased with that. We live near lots of water, river and seaside so I want him to be prepared a bit. I know it wont necessarily mean he can save himself if he got in to trouble in the water but he’d have a fighting chance of staying afloat until someone saved him. Plus how can you live by the sea and not swim?!

Right, off to make 2 batches of cupcakes for the man shaped one. See you later!