Mother's Day, 25 things and getting back to "normal"

Since I last posted we've had Mother's Day so I thought I'd do a quick summary of my Mother's Day...

Not particularly exciting, I got woken up at half 6 and continued the normal daily routine (food, clothes, etc) and did our weekly food shop with my mum. We (Bubbah and I) gave my mum her cards and presents and she surprised me with a (giant) card of my own! Post food shop hubby was awake and presented me with my card and present from Bubbah. Having convinced me to open my original present (Catching Fire on DVD) two weeks previously on promise of a different present I received these:

Since having Bubbah I don't really wear much jewellery (my earrings are to intriguing and Bubbah likes to pull things, everything else was too dainty) but I couldn't resist these when making up my list (hubby likes to have choices) for Mother's day. This necklace and bracelet are from ASOS Curve and I'd been somewhat desperate to have a necklace from their collection as I like my chains longer than average. Their length is perfect for me and the bracelet matching was the icing on the cake! I also like that they're made of steel rather than silver plated; no green skin for me!

Elsewhere, things are slowly beginning to settle into some form of normalcy. Hubby has been diagnosed as having sleep apnoea and we're waiting for a special air machine and mask from the hospital to help him out. Once we have the machine hopefully he'll be sleeping better and have less sleeping fits. He's back doing a full week at work now so I've had to get back into my ironiung, breakfast and lunch making routine pretty quickly after a few months off.

To round of this post I decided to join the "25 things" posts I've seen cropping up on some people's blogs. Feel free to add a fact about yourself in the comments or pinch the format and do your own post :)

1. I'm 23
2. I'm a stickler for grammar and spelling
3. I have a diploma in magazine journalism
4. Home cooking and baking are passions of mine
5. I own way too many books (according to hubby anyway)
6. I seem to keep falling back into the dystopia genre (think Uglies, Hunger Games, Divergent to name but a few)
7. When at uni I got really into vintage clothing and accessories
8. I was devastated when my vintage ankle lace up boots died at the toe and couldn't be saved. I've been looking for a decent replacement ever since
9. My two year old brings me more stress and laughter than I ever imagined
10. I can remember weird facts
11. I'm that annoying person who sits in a film-adaptation of a book pointing out everything the film changed/missed out
12. I'm big on romance but don't need big gestures
13. Salted caramel chocolate is my favourite
14. I love the smell of baking bread or freshly cut grass
15. I'm onto my second recipe scrap book
16. I'm prepared to the point of ridiculousness - I will always have at least one pen, some plasters, some tissues, some calpol sachets and antibacterial wipes and/or gel on me
17. I can quote Dear Zoo verbatim 
18. I've been to every Taylor Swift concert she's done in the UK
19. One of my best friends lives in Leeds, which is a bummer!
20. I love making things and have made a sock dinosaur for Bubbah
21. Crafts/painting is always a big hit with myself and Bubbah
22. I always put on different voices when reading children's books (as such "Are the dinosaurs dead dad" is only allowed to be read by me as Bubbah loves my dad voice too much)
23. I love Rod Stewart, Meatload and Bon Jovi's music, it's my dad's influence
24. I've written a novel
25. My favourite flower is the germini flower

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Gosh, what an original post title! In anticipation of the weekend sun(!) last Friday, my father in law suggested we all head to Frinton on Sunday (9th March) and, never one to turn down a day trip or the seaside, I swiftly agreed! We headed off early (for everyone else, whereas Bubbah and I were up from 5:30 *yawn* and totally ready when everyone else was just waking up) and managed to hit the beach before it got crazy busy.

I'd never been to Frinton before and was completely besotted with how picturesque it was (or "stuck in the 50s" as others said) but then I like that kind of smaller community vibe as it reminds me of growing up spending summers in Hayling Island/Margate mere minutes away from their respective beaches and practically living there before returning to my grandparent's house for a picnic tea/fish and chips!

Bubbah had never been to the seaside before so I was very excited about how he'd react. He loves his baths and playing in the water, and happily spends hours in the sandpit at my mum's house. However he completely freaked out at the feeling of the sand on his feet and made me put his socks and shoes back on! He also spent an hour running screaming from the waves as they rolled in and got anywhere near him.

Finally, after that hour of many screaming runs and dog chasing (the boy is dog obsessed and the quickest flash of dog would send him toddling after them chanting "dog, dog, dog, dog!" until I either distracted him or the kind dog owners stopped their dog and let him say hello) he finally ventured into the sea after daddy and absolutely loved it!

Lots of splashing (and falling/bumping down deliberately) later I managed to drag him out of the sea (now kicking and screaming about coming away from the sea rather than running kicking and screaming away from it) and get him changed out of his absolutely soaked clothes and into Frinton high street to grab some lunch, whereupon Bubbah promptly fell asleep in his pushchair!

After a quick tea of fish and chips (so filling) we got home just past Bubbah's bedtime and, clearly affected by all that lovely sea air, he just about managed to stay awake for me to get him in his PJs and into bed and not a peep was heard from him until his normal wake up time the next day!

Budget busting: stock check

Like many people at the moment, our budget is down to a very fine line. Hubby gets paid and things are great until about the week or so before he gets paid again and it gets a bit more tight. So to help our budget and reduce feelings of panic I began looking into way to keep on top of our money. One such way is a monthly/fortnightly stock check.

Now clearly I'm talking about my house and not a shop but the principle is much the same. So once a month or fortnightly (depending on how tight the purse strings are) I drag everything out of the cupboard, fridge and freezer (one at a time or I'd end up putting peas in the fridge or something silly) and list down to the minute detail what we have.

This works in several ways, firstly it helps reduce waste. I did a stock check last week and found four tins of coconut milk. I barely ever use coconut milk but went through a phase where I made curries or coconut rice, And then I forgot about it and the tins sat languishing at the back of the cupboard. Thankfully because I'd forgotten about tins over something fresh there's a bigger scope for using something before it goes off. When it's something fresh that's looking a bit limp I'm faced with one of three choices; chuck it, freeze it or cook it. Thankfully most fresh things we have can be frozen in some form or another!

The fridge usually goes next and this is where the second bit of help comes in. By knowing what I have in that needs using up quickly, it helps with meal planning. I haven't posted a meal plan on here for a while but I do it every week. When I know I have a load of mince in the fridge that needs using up next week I can use my lists from the cupboard/freezer to see what I can make with it (e.g. chilli, lasagne, spag bol, burgers or rissoles) which in turn saves us money for the next week's food shop.

Somewhat unconventionally it can also give you a few nice surprises. As well as the coconut milk languishing at the back of my cupboard, during the last stock check I found an unopened pack of m&s Dutch shortcake biscuits (a firm favourite of mine from childhood) that had clearly been pushed to the back of the cupboard by other things.

Yummy!


So, let me know in the comments below, do you ever do a stock take?

Radio silence and a difficult diagnosis

Phew so it's been a while hasn't it readers?! Apologies for my radio silence for...oooo the last few months. I took a few weeks out at the end of November just to sort some real life things out and get organised after falling behind with my usual stuff. And then it happened...

One night my husband came home from work complaining he felt exhausted. Fair enough, I thought, he's been working really hard recently. So I suggested we get an early night. Halfway up the stairs he collapsed. I was walking behind him and leant forward to check he was conscious/breathing. He was breathing. In fact he was snoring. Months of investigations, tests and doctors appointments later and we've finally got a diagnosis of sorts; narcolepsy.

In a nutshell, narcolepsy is:

What is narcolepsy?

Narcolepsy is a rare neurological condition. It affects the brains' ability to regulate the sleep-wake cycle, which can cause a range of symptoms such as excessive sleepiness, cataplexy and more.Source

So we have the diagnosis and now we're dealing with it. We're waiting for an official diagnosis which involves an overnight stay at a sleep clinic as until then hubby can't get the medication to help control narcoleptic episodes.

And that's what's been going on and where I've been. Hopefully normal schedule will soon be resumed!

Meal Planning Monday; 28th October 2013

I'm aware this is Tuesday but for once I have a good excuse...storm Jude blew out our electricity from 7am to 2pm yesterday and hubby pinched my laptop to use for work when his laptop battery gave out. I wasn't too fussed but lack of power and the chest infection Bubbah and I seem to have now passed on made others in the house a bit more frustrated.

I took the opportunity of being free from electrical distractions (dvds, t.v., laptop, etc) to finally finish Bubbah's sock creature! He's yet to be named so it just referred to as the Sockasaurus but I'd love a proper name for him!

Wood walk

Last week's attempt at a meal plan (which I didn't put on here) sort of went out of the window with my chest infection rendering me incapable of doing much more other than opening the fridge/freezer and pulling out the first thing that came to hand. Thankfully a course of Amaxicillin later (I've got three tablets left and then I'm done) and a nice long walk in the nearby woods, and I'm feeling much better so I'm back with a proper meal plan.

• Meat slices (minced beef and onion/chicken and mushroom) with wedges, Yorkshire puddings, stuffing and veg
• Veg  soup for hubby on a fast day (Monday's was thrown out as he was feeling very sorry for himself) and fish, wedges and peas for me
• Chicken casserole with butter dumplings
• Lasagne with garlic bread
• Tuna pasta/chicken and mushroom meat slice (as hubby hates tuna)
• Pizza with the rest of the garlic bread from the lasagne
• Toad in the hole with roasties, stuffing, Yorkshire puddings and veg

Chicken casserole and soup will be done in the slow cooker with extra portions ending up in the freezer to be used up on lazy days! I'm taking advantage of the next few days of sun/dryness to get the washing on the line as opposed to spending three days on our airer!

Ready for the mud!

 As usual I'm linked up to Mrs M's meal planning post so pop on over there to have a look at what everyone else is up to.

Times'a changing

So looking at my stats and I'm informed I haven't posted anything in two weeks...oops! My defence is that Bubbah came down  with a horrid cold which, at the end of last week, turned into a chest infection that promptly got passed on to me .

Thankfully after a course of amoxicillin (aka penicillin but that lovely banana flavoured medicine of many people's childhood) Bubbah is beginning to get back to his normal self and keeps presenting me with the contents of my CD collection to put on while he plays with his diminishing Play-Doh collection (to be remedied at Christmas) and I'm soldiering on with my more grown up course of amoxicillin film coated capsules and 9pm bedtimes.

Moving on though...how suddenly has autumn come on?! It was all lovely and sunny and suddenly there's rain and leaves practically throwing themselves off their branches - much to Bubbah's delight when we went on a wooded walk and ended up collecting several of these leaves, some holly, acorns and a lone clean feather to use for a "keep the semi-sick child occupied in a way poorly mummy can cope with" craft.


We've also been working our way through the Disney/Pixar films now Bubbah has reached the stage where he'll sort of sit still long enough to watch some, if not all, of a film. So far we've watched;

• Beauty and the Beast (where he thought the wolves were dogs and pointed at them sagely informing me "woof" whenever they appeared)
• Mary Poppins
• Aristocats (wasn't too sure on this, I think the story focus at the beginning put him off)
• Finding Nemo
• Robin Hood
• Lady and the Tramp (whereupon I was informed every time a dog came on screen which, funnily enough, is quite a lot)

Finally, and please allow me a moment of joy/pride at this, I have finished ALL my Christmas shopping! Everything! Presents, cards and wrapping paper have all been bought/pinched back from my mum's house where we left wrapping paper/gift bags/cards last year and stored in what I now refer to as "The Grotto" but is actually just the spare shelves in our bathroom...and the floor space in front of it...and the top of our bookshelf...okay so it may have expanded a bit which will probably cause me stress when it comes to the week/s beforehand and I'm trying to sort it all out but I don't have to worry for a good month and a half about any of it! I'm not normally so organised but as I knew we'd be on a pretty tight budget this year I started shopping in...oooh July/August time I think! Charity shops, online shopping and cheap/discount shops (think Home Bargains, B&M, etc.) have made up the bulk of my shopping as has a few cheeky discounts/offers in places like Tesco (such as their half price boxes of chocolates being snapped up ready for visiting various family members and a GIANT bar of Toblerone for my dad who loves the stuff).

I think my best buy was for Bubbah and it came from a charity shop (this is where we come back to the Play-Doh situation) in my mum's local town centre. For £8 I got a mega Play-Doh kit called mountain of colour which gives you 10 Play-Dohs (4 5 big, 5 small if I remember correctly) and loads of shape cutters. I googled it later and found I'd saved between £8 and £20 depending on where you shopped (it normally costs £30[!] but some places had it half price) and was practically in the same condition you'd get buying brand new!

So, has anyone else dared start their Christmas shopping yet or are you ignoring it for now? If you've started buying, what's been your best present so far? 

Recipe binder: sage stuffing

Years (nearly a whole two decades ago) I swore off onions. Even in stuffing. But I liked stuffing...I just didn't like the onions in it. So my lovely grandma who was already making the stuffing from scratch anyway would always make me my own little dish of stuffing sans onion. My grandma died a few years ago now and I never got the chance to get her recipes from her (she never wrote them down, simply remembering them) but after several attempts I finally managed to recreate it last weekend, allowing me to introduce hubby to the wonders of home made stuffing.

Image taken from BBC good food

What you need

• 80g breadcrumbs (blitz a slice of bread on high/ice crush mode in a blender for a few seconds)
• 1 egg
• 3 or 4 tea spoons of sage (depending on taste)
• Boiling water

What you do

• Mix the sage, breadcrumbs and egg together
• Add boiling water as you would boxed stuffing mix (like Paxo)
• Cook for 30 minutes in a dish or roll into balls, place on a baking tray and cook for the same time on gas 6