Wordless Wednesday - Wear Sunscreen!

Just a reminder to wear sunscreen this summer!

This happened to me a few weeks ago after forgetting that I no longer had long hair to cover my upper back.

It stung for two days, making sleeping really hard and then it peeled.

So not worth it when a squirt of sunscreen would have stopped it occurring.

Linking up with My Little Drummer Boys for Wordless Wednesday

Christmas at Our Place: Planning the Christmas Meal

I am very excited to be hosting a family Christmas event on Christmas Eve this year. It will only be a small group of us but I am excited nonetheless. 

One of my Christmas jobs in the last week has been to put together a meal plan for the day. Of course there will be way too much food but really, what is Christmas if there isn't leftovers for weeks afterward.

I used my The Organised Housewife Christmas Planner (click on the link to see my review of the Christmas Planner) to plan the meal and to create a shopping list and here is what I have so far:

Starters/Snacks: 

• Cheese Platter and crackers (hopefully supplied by my bro with some cheeses suitable for his preggers sister) .
• Chips and Dips (planning to make the Christmas Dip -from Toddler Tastes as it is yummy)

Entree:

• BBQ Prawns 

• Cold Cooked Prawns (supplied by my Dad) 

Mains: 

• Cold Leg Ham (we were given a whole ham this year)
• Cold Turkey Breast -which I will cook the night before

Salads:

• Creamy Potato Salad
• Christmas Salad (which has cos lettuce, boccacini, croutons, red currants and pecans)

Bread: 

• Crusty Italian bread from our local farmers market (if we can get it -or bake at home rolls)

Condiments:

• Cranberry Sauce
• A variety of sauces/mustard my Mum brought back from Tasmania recently.

Desserts: 

• Three layered ice cream cake (Choc layer, vanilla with white choc bits and macadamia nuts and vanilla with real coffee mixed through)
• Christmas cake with custard 

Drinks: 

• Beer/Wine/Soft Drinks

We also have a whole gingerbread house to eat and a big box of chocolates that we were given.

As you can see there is a fair bit of food but it is actually going to be really simple to prepare and when I put together a shopping list there was not really all that much I had to buy. If you can it always helps to have people bring along food etc to contribute and it cuts the costs down a little.

Anyway I thought I would share this with you all. I hope your Christmas meal planning is going well (if you have to do it at all).

I would love to know what others are planning to cook up for Christmas. Are there any must have foods for your Christmas table? 

Wordless Wednesday - Vampire??

Don't worry it was just some cherries....she looks so scary in that last one though :)

Linking up with My Little Drummer Boys for Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Pancakes at the Gym?!?

This was on the T.V. Screen of my bike at the gym the other day. It certainly was NOT helping my motivation.

Linking up with My Little Drummer Boys for Wordless Wednesday

Beginning New Christmas Traditions

This Christmas is the first Christmas we are able to celebrate with a child who is old enough to understand the basic concepts of Christmas. Last year all she managed to understand was "Santa" and "Presents" despite our attempts to tell her about the real meaning of Christmas.

I recently posted on Life on a Hill about teaching kids what Christmas really means where I had some ideas about what I would like our Christmas traditions to look like. This year we have decided to make a more deliberate effort to form our own family Christmas traditions.

As our extended family don't live locally, this will be the first year since the kids were born that we are going to have Christmas in our own home as Tim will be working over Christmas  (preaching at the Christmas services). This means that we can try out new ways to share Christmas with our family and create our own traditions.

To mark the beginning of our Christmas celebrations, we decided that the first Saturday of December would be filled with decorating the house and beginning our talks with the kids about the meaning of Christmas.

For something special we started the day with yummy croissants and read the Christmas story from the kid's Bible. We then got ready and took a trip to the local farmer's market to purchase important food supplies for the day (fresh bread and a massive bag of cherries). We couldn't resist and began eating the bread and cherries in the car on the way to our next stop.

The next stop was the Christmas tree farm. As both Tim and I grew up in families which had real Christmas trees we decided to include this tradition in our family. I found a farm just outside Canberra Christmas Tree Keng where you can choose and cut your own tree. The kids were excited to see so many Christmas trees and they helped us pick the perfect tree. With a saw they provided we (Tim) chopped down this tree and popped in the the trailer to take home. The lovely people at the farm gave us lollypops for the kids and lollies for us (that worked nicely in keeping the kiddies quiet on the way home).

Our tree!

Our tree with us girls and my bump

Emily helps with the sawing

Lolly pop and a free fly which Claire couldn't shake

When we arrived home we put some Christmas music on and reenacted the Christmas story with the help of the Fisher Price Nativity play set. This is such a great toy as the kids can play with it without breaking it, while learning the story of Jesus' birth. 

Reenacting the Christmas story

After some lunch and putting our littlest person into bed we started to decorate our gingerbread house. It was an interesting experience trying to balance the creative talents of two adults with the creative talents of an almost three year old....but we were happy with the result. Even little Claire "helped" when she woke up (mainly by stuffing her face with lollies and pulling lollies back off the house).

The constructions begins

Claire eats some lollies

I get creative

Claire eats some lollies

I eat some lollies

Finished house

When the time came to decorate the tree the girls were very excited. I think they just thought we would have a naked tree and were happy with that idea. We went for a silver and red theme and the kids get excited every night when the lights go on.

For the rest of the day the girls enjoyed watching the Colin Buchanan DVD, King of Christmas. They watched it over and over and over again. We just relaxed and enjoyed our new Christmas traditions coming to life. We can't wait to continue to see our kids learn more over the coming weeks and to show them how important the birth of this little baby born over 2000 years ago is to us.

What are your Christmas traditions? Are you planning to create new ones this year?

Linking up with Jess from Diary of a SAHM for IBOT for the first time!

Frost Bite: Easy Cooking for Your Freezer: A Review

A little while ago I entered a competition on the Lovely Living Presents: Cook.Eat.Play Blog and won a copy of the cook book Frost Bite. I was very excited as I was planning on getting a copy anyway as it looked great. I have had the book for a little over a month and have been busily working my way through the recipes so that I could tell you all about this book. I have not been asked to review this book I just love it and wanted to share it with you all.

Frost Bite is written by Susan Austin a home cook who swears by her freezer as a place to save time cooking everyday meals and even make entertaining easier. 

The cook book includes the following sections: Baby Food, Brunch, Lunch, Lunch Boxes, Snacks, Soups, Finger Food, Entertaining, Weekday Meals, Kid’s Parties, & Desserts. 

Each recipe lists all the ingredients (and there is no super expensive or ultra hard to find ingredients), then how to cook the recipe up until freezing time. There are then instructions on how to freeze, how to defrost and how to serve.

So far I have cooked these recipes from the book:

• Chicken Sang Choy Bow
• Chicken Balls
• Cheesy Scones
•  Fried Rice
•  Lemon & Blueberry Mini Cheesecakes
•  Soy Glazed Chicken Skewers
• Chicken Wrapped on Prosciutto with Creamy Pesto Sauce
• Eggplant & Roasted Pumpkin Lasagne
• Chicken with Coriander Peanut Pesto & Turmeric Rice
• Cream Tuna Pasta Bake
• Pasta with Pesto Sauce
• Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
•  Brownie & Coffee Ice Cream Cake

All of these recipes are straight forward and easy to cook and those that have made it into the freezer have defrosted and served really well. However most of the time I have just served the meals up as they looked too yummy to store in our freezer.

So far my favourites have been the Chicken Wrapped on Prosciutto with Creamy Pesto Sauce which we served to guests and it was absolutely delicious and so simple to prepare, and the Brownie Ice cream cake (we used the snickers instead of coffee option). This cake did not last long in our freezer, little by little pieces kept disappearing and when my sister-in-law and her family came to stay we served it to them and they loved it and took the recipe.

One other great thing about these recipes is my kids who are both under three have eaten every meal we have served them from this book. They are not fussy kids generally but often won’t eat anything too fancy (for example the Thai Beef Salad I recently tried to serve them...I don’t really know what I was thinking), but Susan’s book has been a winner 100% of the time so far.

 I have been trying to think of what I don’t like about the book and there is not much. If I was being really picky I would like to see more beef recipes that are not mince (but I say that because we had some steaks in the freezer and I wanted to cook them). Although, there is the Thai Fillet of Beef but I did not think the kids would eat it.

I can highly recommend Frost Bite as a cook book, it is simple to follow and has lots of lovely recipes that can be made in advance when entertaining or just made in bulk to save time during busy weeks. I like it as it has provided me with different ideas for our church freezer which we like to keep stocked for when people have babies, get sick or just need some time off cooking.

To find out more about Frost Bite, get other recipes or to order a copy visit Susan's blog http://www.frostbitefood.blogspot.com/and you can also follow her on facebook at www.facebook.com/frostbitefood