How our recipes get from brain to blog!

I am always getting emails or questions from people asking me how on earth I can come up with new recipes all of the time to put on the blog – so I thought I’d give you guys a little look at how our recipes get from brain to blog. It involves a whole lot of notebooks and pen scribbling and random bits of paper tucked in here there and everywhere – but here it is!

Succinct Saturdays: December 7th, 2013

Lately, we've had quite a few readers leave us comments or messages or write us emails letting us know how much they love reading our "everyday post". To be honest, Jesse and I thought we were pretty boring - but I can see why you like them - and you ask, we deliver! 

So we decided that, in addition to our other posts, we're starting a new series called Succinct Saturdays - basically a short but sweet way to tell you all about our weekend! But as well as what we're doing - we'd love to get to know more about you too!

If you're a blogger, feel free to post your own Succinct Saturday posts (we may even create a link up if enough of you are interested!) and readers, leave a comment or send us an email telling us about your own Saturdays!

This is how I found little miss Chanel when I woke up this morning - fast asleep, snuggled into the crack of the couch (her favourite spot). I got up at around 6am whilst Jesse snored away :P 

Chanel is the biggest snugglepuss in the world. Her days are spent sleeping, snuggling, snoozing and then add in a dash of barking, eating and playing. I guess you could also say she's just incredibly lazy - and you would be right! 

I always start my mornings with tea and the day's reading from Jesus Calling. Ohhhhhhhh how I love this book! I cannot recommend it enough. It gets me thinking and it's really helped to strengthen my relationship with The Lord. 

Saturdays are Pancake Days at the SIL House. Well, it's always pancakes for Jesse - but for me it's "fancy breakfast day" - as in breakfasts that take more work than simply spreading peanut butter on a breakfast bake.

This morning I tested out a new recipe that was reallyyyy good - and it only has three ingredients! I'll be sharing the recipe soon so keep an eye out. These babies were smothered in PB post photo :P 

My lazy husband got up at about 7:30am so I made pancakes for him too. Since I know Jesse can be picky, I always let him choose what type of pancakes he wants. He didn't want banana pancakes so for him it was our Better than iHop Healthy Pancake Recipe topped with maple syrup. 

Jesse is a gamer as you may already know - and this is what I have to deal with :P Jesse doesn't like food hot (I say it's because he's always been too busy playing games to eat food hot) so this is him "letting the pancakes cool" while he plays his PSP. 

If you're interested - the top games according to Jesse at the moment are; Harvest Moon Back to Nature (PSP), New Super Mario Bros (Wii U), Pokemon Y (3DS), Zelda Windwaker (Wii U). It's safe to say Jesse is a big dork! :P 

I finally dragged Jesse away from his games a few hours later and we headed out for a bike ride. 

My bike has been giving us issues - brakes broken, gears not working, evil sticky outy things stabbing me in the back of the legs and cutting me open, clunking and clanging. 

I almost gave up on the bike completely, however, I'm stubborn as a mule - so we gave it another go this morning and probably rode for around 20 minutes around the neighbourhood. 

Riding a bike is way harder than I thought... especially when the gears aren't working properly. 

After our bike ride, we got showered and dressed (and snacked - though unpictured because snacks are usually gone in 0.002 seconds :P) and then headed out to buy some pumpkins. 

These pumpkins were destined for pies so into the oven they went to bake before pureeing. 

Lunch snuck up on us and we both had quite snacky lunches. Corn chips with veggies and a garlic and herb yogurt dip for me and corn chips with cheese, salsa and a pickle for Jesse (he's not pregnant - don't worry guys!).

I've always been a snacky eater and on the weekends Jesse tends to follow suit. I like small meals more frequently so most times my lunches will be a little bit here and a little bit there. Jesse also had some veggies with the yogurt dip and we had sliced apples as well. And the best part? A deeeeeeeeelicious Bondi Chai <3 

The recipe for that yogurt dip is coming very very soon - we love it!

We're heading to a barbeque after church tomorrow so I did some baking! We're bringing two of our Healthy Pumpkin Pies (one of the two which is totally ugly thanks to my horribad cookie sheet warping in the oven and causing the mix to spill out of the side :( 

Then of course the foil stuck to the top and ripped bits off.... Murphy's law, my friends - it happens to us all! Even this obsessed baker makes really ugly baked goods from time to time.

So that I can have something to munch on too, I made our Healthy Apple Almond Cake Recipe into muffins (in 'I'm Gluten Free muffin' cases from Allergy Riders) which also look quite ugly - but taste soooooooo good! Hopefully the gluten free-ness doesn't put anyone off as we all love this recipe!

 We've had a super lazy day and other than baking the majority of the day, we've pretty much just watched TV. Jesse now actually likes Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Say Yes to the Dress as well as all of the different wedding-y shows. 

For dinner, we decided since we had so much time, we'd do something a little bit different! I just received an awesome new crepe pan from Kitchenware Direct and I wanted to put it to work so I've been thinking up some different ideas. What I ended up making for dinner for myself were some deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelicious savoury crepes which I'll be sharing the recipe for very very veryyyy soon! (They're SO easy!)

My husband, on the other hand, was inspired by something on TV and decided that an Asian Style Noodle Soup would be perfect - so that's what I whipped up with him (and a bit of a clean out the veggie drawer meal using up the veggies we had).

Tonight, we're just hanging out at home with my sister and my should-be-sister Lily as SIL Mama and Papa are away for the weekend! We're currently obsessed MTV's Catfish so we're planning on watching the movie tonight. Since Jesse and I did meet online and were in a long distance relationship, we totally cringe every time they open a door to see if the person they've been talking to is actually who they say they are.

But tell us, what are you up to this weekend?
And what TV shows are you loving at the moment?

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A day in the life of a Nanny

This week has been crazy busy for me - and it's not even finished yet! I've definitely been one busy bee!

I've had my first full week of nannying with my new family (plus extra days), freelance writing jobs, photography work, blogging things and I've also been writing for my hubpages apprenticeship as well!

I also managed to bake something this week, though it wasn't too successful so you won't be seeing that recipe! 

I have a few recipes that I want to share with you, but I just haven't had a chance to write them up!  Hopefully this weekend I'll get a chance to! :) 

Source

Tonight my Mum and I are going out to see Motherhood the Musical as I won tickets in a competition, so that will be a good reward for our busy weeks! Tomorrow I have doctors appointments and a whole list of to-do's so hopefully I can get all of that done! 

Someone emailed me asking about how my usual nannying days went, as they were considering it themselves, so I thought I'd do a quick run through. My schedule is a little different as the girls both go to school, however I also do full days (which are always my preferred days).

5:30 AM  This is when my alarm goes off. Since it's winter, this is when I start to dread getting out of bed because I know the second I peel back the covers, the cozy warmth will be gone and I'll have to face the cold.
After crying to myself for a few minutes (and doing the whole yep! I'm getting up.... no... no... one more minute... thing), I pluck up the courage to run to the shower. 

6:00AM 
By now I am showered and dressed and my makeup is done, unless of course I'm having a slow day or I lingered too long in the warmth of the shower. 
I can't be the only one that would happily live in a warm shower on winter days, could I? Hope I don't get too many creeps finding my blog from this statement! 

6:15AM
Breakfast! Time to make something to eat or reheat a quick make ahead breakfast like my baked banana oatmeal.
Once I've gotten breakfast, I sit infront of my computer (I know, some people will cringe because they think that you shouldn't eat while doing something else - but I don't have time!) and answer emails, do as much as I possibly can before I have to leave.  

6:45AM
This is when I make my all important tea, in my lifesaver pink travel cup.
The house of the family I nanny for on these days is reaaaally cold, as is everywhere else at this time of year so hot tea is essentially. Generally its green tea or peppermint tea and as hot as my mouth can handle!

6:50AM I realise it's time to go and I make a face similar to this as I realise once again I will be walking 4 miles or 6.5 km in the freeeezing cold to get to the girls schools, home and back again.
This is also when I curse myself for not having my drivers license and really appreciate my other job as a freelance writer and photographer.  

6:55AM
Out the door! If only it was lovely and sunny like that picture, unfortunately it's usually gloomy and freezing cold and not so appealing!

7AM-10:00AMI get to the house and the girls are eating breakfast. Mum and Dad leave and we're off upstairs to get dressed then back downstairs to get teeth brushed, hair done, faces washed and shoes on. 

Then, as long as everything went to plan, we play for a little while before leaving for school - usually it's colouring in, drawing, UNO or Barbies and I do any washing and tidying up.
Once it's time, we leave for the walk to school in the cold, checking that everything is packed and we aren't forgetting anything. Once we get to school we wait until Miss G starts before Miss H and I leave to catch the bus to daycare. We wait at the bus stop before getting on the bus and waiting until we get to our stop - then we make a short walk to the daycare before I sign Miss H in and leave to catch the bus back home. 

Then it's back on the bus for me until I get to the closest spot to my home and make the 20 minute walk to my house as quick as possible so I can get back to my warm house.

I get home to my Chanel who is very jealous of me being with 3 cats all morning so I catch up on some snuggles for a while whilst replying to emails on my ipad. 

One of the first things I do when I get home is turn on the kettle and the air conditioning so I can defrost!

Then I either work on writing jobs, articles for HubPages, blog posts or edit photos for photography jobs/blog posts and grab something for lunch. 

3PM-5:30PM After a quick snack I am once again out the door. Hopefully by now the sun is out so while I'm waiting for G at school I can soak up some sunshine.
Once she's finished, we walk back to the house and she gets changed before it's snack time and we do her homework. Once homework is done, we play until Mum and Miss H get home. Usually this is painting/drawing/barbies/monopoly/UNO/whatever G feels like. 

6PM OnwardsBy now I'm home, quickly make some dinner and then once I'm finished eating, I head into the front room next to the fire with a hot cup of tea and my iPad. I reply to emails, work on whatever I can on my iPad and get to relax for the first time all day.
Before I know it I'm back in bed and getting ready to start my day all over. 

The above schedule is generally 2 days out of my week, other days are full days nannying or working on my freelance writing/photography jobs and doing other errands. Full days nannying are much more enjoyable than rushing back and forth - but you do what you've got to do!

On full days Miss H and I do fun things like have Kit-tea parties or just regular tea parties. 

Truth be known, it's taken me until now (5:18pm) to get this post written and I started writing it at 6am - but like I said, I've been very busy! I had to leave early and didn't finish until 3pm today so it was written and dribs and drabs as I had a chance!

So tell me, when you were a kid - what was your favourite game to play?

I was always a tea party girl but my favourite game was definitely mummies and daddies :P I was always the mummy.