Fun Chocolate Mousse

The thing about trying to eat a little healthier, sugar-wise, is that you discover a whole world of healthy eating that you never intended to delve into. I don't have any particular desire to be dairy free or gluten free or anything else free to be honest, but I am certainly reading a lot about it and know it works well for many people.

Finding beauty - Bought flowers iii

 This week's flowers. Anemones this time.

5/52

 A portrait of my children every week for a year.

Doing it different

I was sitting on the floor picking up some old spoons that I use in food photographs (someone had pulled them out of the sideboard and made a mess) when I was struck with quite a revelation. I'd much rather eat with old cutlery - like those lovely sets they have in the second hand shop up Cuba St, you know, white bone handles, the kind your Grandparents had - than the run of the mill "modern" Briscoes kind of cutlery.

Making quiet times happen

Hi Parents. I wrote recently about having a quiet time for kids each day, and I've had a few comments from you (outside of the blog) so thought I would follow it up. The big challenge for many, of course, is how to get our kids to participate!

I've done a bit of thinking, reading and asking around (thank you so much those of you made suggestions) and I'm afraid there's no simple answer, but perhaps you can be encouraged with a few ideas.

Orange Cocoa Balls

You're a tough crowd you lot. I'm very excited about some of the sugar alternatives I wrote about recently, but wasn't greeted with a long list of rapturous responses. Being mostly Kiwis, I'm thinking you're probably just excited on the inside. So. Keep up the excitement everyone...

The challenge with many of these sugar alternatives is how to swap them for sugar when a simple straight swap won't work. I see my experimenting with them in two ways. 1. -  using them in new and different kinds of recipes where other people have done the hard work or swapping in the new ingredient is an easy swap, and 2. - fiddling around with favourite, standard recipes to include the new ingredient but still getting the consistency right.

Finding beauty - Bought flowers ii

   

Ranunculas this week. We could get quite used to the florist that is conveniently next door to the supermarket.

Lessons in party planning

We had a party at our place a while ago. You will have seen somewhere along the way that Reuben had his 4th birthday recently. I didn't write a post about it because, well, just because I had a fun time, that doesn't make it an interesting read for you. And let it be said, I don't write this blog and include pretty pictures just to try and make you think I have a beautiful life, but to remind me that there is beauty in this life.

But as it happens, I do have something interesting to say about the party. Lucky you.

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A portrait of my children every week for a year.

My list of Favourite Things

I think I have done it. Here it is, my list of favourite things. It's *really* long and very precious, I feel like I'm revealing a big piece of my insides. Thank you so much, all of you who had a go at this too, you helped to unblock my blockage! And I loved reading about you. I love your lists! Some things that you wrote down I already had on my list in exactly the same words, others helped prompt me of similar things.Thanks for really understanding the angle I was getting at on this too, it's a broad topic but you got it just as I meant.