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it's out now.....& worth a read.....so if you can grab a cuppa......& some 'me time'........you will not be disappointed.......enjoy!

Recipe: Baked Salmon

Tonight's dinner, another success! Another one from Food & Family recipes! 
(Amounts changed just slightly.)

What you'll need:

1lb. Salmon 
1 1/2 cups of Spinach, chopped
1 Tomato, chopped
3/4 cup of sliced Mushrooms
1/2 cup of Sun-Dried Tomato Dressing


(I used Ken's Fat Free Dressing- Yum.)
To Make:
Preheat oven to 375.  Grease 13x9 baking pan. Place fish fillets in pan, skin down.  

Combine the rest of ingredients in a mixing bowl.

Spoon onto and around fish.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until fish flakes easily.

Ours was enjoyed over a bed of jasmine rice. 
The taste of everything mixed together was DELICIOUS!
Picture doesn't do justice.. Hubby was impressed :)

So good for you, and nearly fool-proof.  I'm still learning, so I don't expect all my meals to come out good, but I think I'm doing pretty well for a newbie! Tomorrows meal looks a bit more challenging...so we'll see how it goes!

easy & yummy

dinner at our house is never complete without dessert! & this banana bread & butter pudding is easy & yummy



Ingredients (serves 4)

  • 40g reduced-fat spread
  • 9 slices oatbran and honey bread
  • 2 cups skim milk
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 tablespoons yellow box honey (see note)
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 small bananas, thinly sliced
  • low-fat ice-cream or custard, to serve

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 170°C. Spread reduced-fat spread over both sides of bread slices. Cut off crusts. Cut each slice of bread in half.
  2. Whisk milk, eggs, honey and cinnamon together in a jug.
  3. Layer bread over a greased 5-cup, ovenproof dish. Top with banana slices.
  4. Pour over milk mixture. Set aside for 10 minutes. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until puffed and golden. Serve with ice-cream or custard.

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Day Five- 31 in 31

Day Five Photo
31 in 31

My parents will be adding a new addition to their family on Thursday! 
They found her at an animal rescue organization called All Things Pawssible. 
They are not a shelter. They are a group of volunteers who foster homeless animals and provide them with vet care and more until they find them a GOOD home. 

Her name is Kali. 
(Click her name to see and read about her!)
I bought this today for her welcome gift :)

The Bundchen Booby debate


The  unexpected Women Supporting Women Trilogy (Friendship, Fark off* and Frenemies) last week really took it out of me. It's hard for me to sustain thoughtful and deep. I'm much better at frivolous and shallow. However, there is a sad matter that I briefly mentioned on Friday and has stayed sad all over the weekend. It's Gisele Bundchen and the booby debate.

I'm sad because I don't understand why breastfeeding is such a loaded topic. It's such a personal, personal thing, yet as a society we judge, we criticise, we gloat, we complain and we sneer. I'm not going to go further into what I think of Gisele Bundchen and her thoughtless remarks (she is, after all, recovering from being runover by a Bugaboo) but I am going to tell you about my own experience with breastfeeding. I feel the need to share.

I struggled with breastfeeding. Struggled and struggled. I did everything I possibly could for every one of my three children, but it's never felt enough.

After a shaky, emotional, difficult eight weeks, I finally got Maxi-Taxi feeding and happy and maintained breastfeeding until just after 12 months (thank you ABA!). My milk supply was never great and we needed a nipple shield to begin with, so feeding, especially in the early months, took forever. I dedicated myself completely to getting the feeding going. I kept a feeding journal (I'm that kinda gal) and some days that child was on the boob for up to 14 hours a day. Really. But we got the milk going and everything was calm and lovely after those first weeks. I even picked up the night feeds again at eight months when I went back to work in an effort to keep the breastfeeding going for as long as we could (WMG? Yes, a little!)

Cappers went straight on and was breastfed until almost six months when she self-weaned. Bit mortifying, but a bit of a relief, really. She hadn't been thriving on the boob as my milk supply was dodgy and I just couldn't devote the same amount of time to my second born as I could to my first born. Reality bites. By six months, we were both really over it and she was close to eating 'real food' anyway. Putting her onto bottled milk at that stage just felt right. Consequently, I didn't contact the ABA about her self-weaning because as much as I had valued their support in the past, I just didn't feel like a big lecture. We both moved on to bottles without a hitch.

Then along came The Badoo. She was a sluggish, enormous newborn She had been breech and 'stuck' so she didn't move much in utero and was consequently... er... fat. And hungry. And The Badoo. On first presentation of the breast, a little hand leapt out of the wrap and slapped the boob away. I couldn't believe my eyes and nor could the midwife. We both burst out laughing.

I stopped laughing very quickly because The Badoo wouldn't go near the boob at all. She would get her mouth to the nipple and... nothing. Her sucking reflex sucked. She just never caught on and consequently breastfeeding just wasn't an option. She preferred having a bottle poured down her throat.

I didn't take the news lightly. For over eight weeks I expressed milk. Remember that low milk supply? It would take me over an hour to pump 150mls. I would get up for the night feeds, attempt to get her on the breast, feed her a bottle and then sit there with my electric pump for hours, pump, pump, pump. To this day, when I hear the suck and wheeze of an electric breastpump, I feel cold and lonely and tired and defeated.

The Badoo had a few other 'breechy' birth issues and at eight weeks we were due to go back to her Paediatrician for a check-up. Dr Lilystone is an ancient, kindly, old-school kind of doctor and.. get this... he bulk-bills. A specialist who bulk-bills? Immediately you can tell that he's one of the good guys.

I poured it all out to him. How sad I was at this failure to provide basic nourishment to my child. How I had managed with her siblings and I felt I was really letting her down. How I worried that she wouldn't be as clever, as beautiful, as happy because she would be formula-fed. How she just wasn't interested, even though I had been trying and trying and trying. His response was simply, "Maybe she's French".

"I beg your pardon?" I said, thinking did he not hear me?; thinking maybe it's time he retired.

"Well, only a really small minority of French women breastfeed," he explained. "And the French seem to be doing okay."

The relief I felt was instantaneous. He's right, I thought. The Badoo will be okay, breast or none. It's not the end of the world. I'll just make an extra effort to ensure I feed her right for the other 17 some years that I'm in charge of the food.  French, yes. Maybe she's French.

As parents, we will make millions of choices on behalf of our children. Many of these choices are carefully planned and executed. Many of them are not. Still others are choices we thought we could carefully plan, but found out that we had to improvise and adapt and change the way we felt as we went along.

Breastfeeding was like that for me. I'm a huge believer in it, huge. But I'm even more of a believer in letting the parent decide how they will feed their child. Most of all, I believe that the choice they would like to make is often not possible. Let's not judge such a personal matter lest we stir up a whole tangle of emotion. Please.


* Not being coy, really. It's just that Mum reads my blog and she might be a tad upset if I said the word fuck. Oh fuck, I said fuck. Sorry Mum.

[Image by Nicole Canto chosen to represent freedom of choice]

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My Gender Neutral Nursery Reveal...

Oh hello! Come inside and make yourself welcome...

Here she is, folks! The new nursery... all filled up with baby-esque debris. I debated whether or not to show it to you -- being gender neutral, I feel I got a bit confused somewhere in the middle! There are quite a lot of colours (a few more than originally intended) and, not being a 'neutrals' kinda girl, I really struggled with how to colour the room without it looking distinctly girly or boyish.

You be the judge on whether or not I succeeded; I sort of feel like the nursery is geared more towards a boy rather than a girl and certainly I'l make a lot of changes to it if a little sister for Fern pops out in 3 weeks time!

She isn't an expensive nursery; indeed a lot of the furniture is from Ikea and was given to me during our home photo shoot a few months back. Most of the rest of it I either made myself or 'borrowed' from Fern! I feel very lucky to have been given the cot and change table in particular -- saved us from either having to buy a second one or forcing Fern into a bed before she was entirely ready! To be honest, I've bought very little for this nursery as I know I'll end up changing it as soon as I know what I'm having. So, more as a record of posterity than anything else I'm sharing these pics with you today!

You'll notice I'm only showing you two sides of the room; that's because the other two are a work in progress. And will probably stay that way until the baby comes! And there are some blank spots on the shelves etc -- I know they'll fill up real fast so I'm in no hurry to buy more baby clutter before the baby comes.

Want to know more?
Visit here for stuff about the stripy wall.
And here for how I made the cot sheets.
And here for info about the fabric screens.

Without further ado, here are a few happy snaps of the nursery. I hope he/ she likes! -- enjoy! x

Long shot of the room

The cot...

Some visually stimulating balck/white artcards and a colourful mobile from Cocoon Couture hang above the cot on a lime green coat hook from Ikea (no longer avail).

My stripy and wall and artworks! LOVE print from Made by Girl.

The mobile - some cheapo rice paper lanterns and a blue polka dotted lantern I picked up from a stall at Mathildas Markets

Close up of some of the screens and LOVE print.

My rattan feeding chair (a rocking chair bought years ago from Ikea - no longer available) - super comfortable as I prefer no arms when I'm feeding. Recycled from Fern's room (she has my pink Eames rocker now, but not for long! I want it back!)

Don't you love this whimsical little orange lamp? It's from the children's range at Ikea. Blocks from Target. Softie from Alimrose Designs.

I made this little monkey softie. It is missing a tail because I was a little impatient and stuffed up the design somewhat. I decided to keep it anyway! The artwork in the frame is just some leftover colour paint samples I rejected when painting the nursery's stripey wall! Waste not, want not!

And there you have it. Well, two walls of it anyway. You'll have to wait til the baby is born to see the rest! I hope you enjoyed my little nursery tour! x
It has been a very busy and full on weekend but thoroughly enjoyable...

On Friday night my husband met me after work for a quick bite to eat before we went and visited our wonderful friends who just got engaged! A simple meal of subway at the Kangaroo Point cliffs allowed us to witness this gorgeous sunset! I tried to capture it on my phone to show you all...


It's the simple things in life that are so beautiful!


On Saturday morning I packed my little over night bag and drove, with my dad, the 2 and a half hours to the lovely town of Lismore. Its was my grandma's 81st birthday on Sunday and it has been 1 year since my grandpa passed away, so even though I was fighting off a cold and had a lot to do at home I felt I needed to be there this weekend to be with my family. We spent a lovely day on Saturday with a pub lunch at 'Tommys' with my grandma and Aunty and Cousins and then enjoyed a cup of coffee and hot chocolate at a little cafe down the road. This cafe was very special as this was out the front...


Each brick had been engraved with special messages from "1982" by the people who had 'bought a brick' to help lay the path! Although 1982 isn't that long ago for us but imagine how special this path will be in 100s of years to come! They definitely put a new meaning to 'leaving their mark on the world' Many bricks had names, pictures, hang 10 symbols (must of been the 'in' thing back then) and a lot of "jesus loves you" but one brick really stood out to me! There was a dad, mum and girls name with the year 1982 written on it. It really really intrigued me and got me thinking about where that little family is today! Was she their only child? Did they have any more? How old is the girl today? Is she married yet? Does she have kids of her own? Are the parents still alive? ~ It's funny how one little brick can trigger a train of thoughts and imagination.

~

Sunday morning we were up early for a Hungry Jacks birthday breakfast treat for my grandma! Her choice! We then headed off to the Channon markets! These markets were incredible - alternate - but incredible. And the food there - oh my gosh - divine! Everything there was organic - hand made - or one of a kind. My cousin had her first store there as she makes and sells tie dye baby clothes (stay tuned for pictures in the next couple of days!) If anyone is looking for a lovely day out I hihgly recommend driving through the gorgeous countryside to the Channon markets and then taking a detour via Byron Bay on your way home! Gorgeous day out!

~ I hope you all enjoyed your weekend ~

x S.K.K x

what makes you happy?








Love is: seeking to make another person happy 


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