A Mother's Ramblings

A couple of weekends ago, thanks to Mumsnet, Big Boy, Top Ender, Daddy and I went down to London to get a chance to play with the new PS3 game Book Of Spells at Sony Head Office. As regular readers may remember Top Ender and I are HUGE Harry Potter fans and we knew that JK Rowling had had a hand in this game and we were eager to have a play. We spent an hour in Sony HQ playing on the game and Daddy and I were amazed at the technology that has gone into this "children's" game. We then got a copy of the game and a PS3 to play it on to take away with us. The game is brilliantly simple. You are a student at Hogwarts, who has permission to take a special book out of the restricted section of the library where you meet a professor who helps guide you through the book/game. I think anyone who has ever seen a Harry Potter film, or read one of the books has a secret desire to actually go to Hogwarts and discover that they too are a Wizard and this game helps you to live this

Daddy said to me this evening that he knows I am ill as in all the time he has known me he has never known me to spend all day in bed. Today I've really felt useless and I'm sure that in a couple of days I'll be fine, but until this very heavy cold passes I'm left feeling tired, sore and very, very sorry for myself! I have to sort out the children's lunches though, even if it is just a blog post so that Daddy knows what to make if I really can't get up in the morning. Monday - Baguette Pizza I didn't end up using the baguettes last week and I thought that it would be nice to have a bit of a home made pizza. The children love it when we have it for a weekend lunch and it's one of my favourite sneaky treats too! Tuesday - Ham Roll Nice and simple and easy to work the carbs out on! The good thing about it is that it is quick and easy to prepare and to eat. Wednesday - Salmon Pitta With Wednesday being Orchestra day, it's important for Tops t

A couple of weeks ago someone on Twitter attacked my meal plans as being unhealthy and basically saying that the food I give my family, in particular to my children, is child cruelty. At the time it didn't bother me as the resulting discussion with other, more sane, Twitter users showed that the idiot who judged did so on very little knowledge on me or my family. The meals that I blog about giving to my family each Saturday and Sunday don't include the vegetable side dishes, the snacks the children have through out the day, the breakfasts we eat or even all the details of the nutrients and vitamins as well as fat that go into every meal. Today though it's got to me. I know I'm not the most healthy person. I know that some of the foods I give my children appear to be pandering to them rather than getting them to eat what I know to be good and healthy BUT nobody should judge me or my children based on that. They don't see that for breakfast the children have fruit

The first time we went to Disneyland Paris as a family was in a January. Daddy and I had been together one January (I suppose technically that was our first trip as a family but you know what I mean!) and knew that compared to what the internet said it was like in the Summer that it wasn't that busy and we thought that for our first trip abroad with a child we should go off season. That trip was magical. Top Ender was enthralled with Disneyland so much that we arranged another trip the following year because we had to go back to relive memories and to make more magical new ones. Plus Winter in Paris is rather like Winter in London, a bit wet, a bit cold but you don't really notice as you're in DISNEYLAND! We wanted to go back with Big Boy, but money was tight and it wasn't until this Summer that we managed to get back to Disneyland Paris. It wasn't that busy (despite what the internet says) and we managed to get on every ride we wanted, see the shows and meet a

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Well, it is to me. I love Christmas and love all the preparation that goes into making the whole of December special. For me and my family, things are starting a little earlier though as last Friday we headed off to the Shopping Centre in Milton Keynes to see Santa arriving with my Sister and her children (and we bumped into Playground Geek Mum and her daughters too) before heading off to have dinner together. As Big Boy has been off School ill for the last part of last week, he and I found some time to play with some decorations for our trees that Hovis suggested we make. I was a bit worried when Hovis first suggested that we make Christmas decorations using bread and fresh cranberries, I mean food products go mouldy if they are left out too long, but after some reassurance from other parents who had made bread ornaments before and confirmed that they wouldn't go mouldy if they were dried out or painted so with the Christmas Music

Yesterday I made some Tomato Tarts for Big Boy and Top Ender to take to School for lunch. When the first batch came out of the oven, Big Boy decided that they weren't for him and would much rather have a Sausage Roll (which I had luckily made). This did mean that I was left with several Tomato Tarts for my own lunch and after I had eaten them and discovered that they were delicious, I thought I'd share how to make them as they could be a great addition to a Grown up's lunch box or possibly even any family gatherings over the Christmas Holidays! Ingredients Puff Pastry Boursin Cheese Tomato Milk Method Turn on the Oven to gas mark 7. Line a baking tray with Greased Paper, this just makes it easier to remove the Tomato Tarts when cooked. Cut the puff pastry into squares. You can make the squares large or small to your own personal preference, some of mine are really rectangles. Turn up the edges of the pastry to form a raised edge with a central well.

I know there is no Gallery theme this week due to Tara having had special magic stuff done to her eyes by the team at Optical Express who have given her magic bionic eyes (her words not mine!) but I thought that you'd all like to see my gallery post anyway... it's in tribute of Tara's special new eyes. From left to right Clock wise we have Top Ender, Big Boy, Me aka Mummy/PippaD and Daddy aka Flyfour. We took this by looking down a tube at the local park one at a time and then merged the four photographs together! Have you added A Mother's Ramblings to your RSS Reader ? Make sure you never miss a brilliant lunch or a fantastic family moment.   Also don't forget to follow my Weight Loss and Fitness Journey at Pippa World too!

I love that Top Ender and Big Boy are such good friends with their Cousins and that they could all share seeing Santa arrive at the local Shopping Centre together. For more pictures from the day, including some Top Ender took on her new Barbie Photo Fashion Camera Doll see our Facebook Album ! Have you added A Mother's Ramblings to your RSS Reader ? Make sure you never miss a brilliant lunch or a fantastic family moment.   Also don't forget to follow my Weight Loss and Fitness Journey at Pippa World too!

Now that we are counting carbs, it's a lot easier for me to fall into the trap of making the same thing for lunch everyday as I know how many carbs are in certain foods off the top of my head, but I'm not going to. I know how important it is for children (and adults) to have a varied diet and I like thinking of new ideas too. With that said, don't be surprised if you see a few regular foods start to pop up each week. Monday - Beef Baguette If there are some left over veggies I'll add these to the lunch too, I'm sure that the children love roast potato sandwiches as much as I do. If not I'll have to come up with something super cute to make the lunch more visually appealing as a Beef Baguette sounds a bit boring! Big Boy is going to be sampling some different Indian foods in school this afternoon, so his lunch box might look a little empty. Tuesday - Tomato Tarts I have some pastry in the freezer that I'm wanting to use up. I figured that Tomato

Last week things went a little awry with Big Boy being ill, and a few meal swaps. This week we might not have Daddy at home with us a few nights and so the meals might get swapped round again depending on if he can or can't be home with us on time, or if he is super late and won't be eating with us at all. Saturday - Pizza and Salad When Big Boy was ill this last week we couldn't have his friend round for tea, so I swapped a couple of meals around and we're having the Pizza that we didn't have on the Thursday tonight. Although as we're going to be in London until dark we're not going to be making our own bases and using some pre-packaged gluten free ones. I still thinking about toppings, but I think mine has to be red onion and sweetcorn. Actually can you put Boursin on pizza? I had some delivered this week to try... hmmm I'll experiment and report back! Sunday - Sunday Roast Roast Day! Yay! We had pork last week, which although nice just wa

There is a way to verify your blogger blog on Pinterest, but it does involve a little work (isn't it always the way?) and this will hopefully help you to do this. 1) Go to Pinterest and download the verification file. You will find it in your account settings, fairly close to the bottom. Click the button and you'll be taken to a new screen, where you can download the Pinterest HTML File. 2) Open the HTML file in notepad and leave open on your desktop for a minute. 3) Go to your blogger account and create a new page. I know you don't want to, but it's only for a minute or  five. 4) Swap to the HTML compose section for your page and then copy the HTML file from notepad and paste into the blog page. Title the page something obvious, as you can see I went with TEST. Publish this page. 5) Open your blog and go to the new page you have just created. You will need the URL of this blog page for the next step. 6) In you blogger dashboard, you need to

If you follow me on Twitter or know me on Facebook then you can't have missed that last weekend I was in Disneyland Paris with some lovely other bloggers to see Wreck It Ralph , which is out here in the UK in time for February half term ( read my review of the film now so you can get really excited for it!). We loved the film so much that I had to swap around a few of my lunches in order to make a Wreck It Ralph Friday Lunch for Top Ender and Big Boy and I thought you'd love to know how I did it. Let's start with the pudding, because who doesn't want to start a meal with pudding?! If you've seen the Wreck It Ralph trailer you will know that Ralph is seen eating a Cherry. I thought, wouldn't it be cool to make a Cherry Cake Pop? So I did. Making Cake Pops is surprisingly easy, all you have to do is make a cake, crumble it up and mix in some butter cream icing until you have a dough like substance and then roll it into balls. Now comes the hard part. Y

Last Friday night we were very lucky to have been invited to watch Wreck-It Ralph at Disneyland Paris. We were so pleased to have been invited as we have been eagerly waiting for the film to be released here in the UK since we saw the trailer before Brave . If you haven't yet seen the trailer, take a look. I promise you it's worth the two minutes and twenty seconds. The storyline for the film is quite a sweet one, it's about Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) a "bad guy" from an arcade game called Fix It Felix Jr, who has been the bad guy day in, day out for the last thirty years and has become disenchanted with his life. He wants something more and he knows that in order to do it he is going to have to stop being bad. Ralph goes rogue and tries to be a hero in other games that he has access to via the Game Central Station (a multi socket extension cord), but the problem is he was coded to destroy things, not to be the hero. On his quest

Big Boy told us that Mickey and Minnie were his best friends. For more pictures of our trip see our Facebook page Have you added A Mother's Ramblings to your RSS Reader ? Make sure you never miss a brilliant lunch or a fantastic family moment.   Also don't forget to follow my Weight Loss and Fitness Journey at Pippa World too!

As I said yesterday, we're at Disneyland Paris this weekend having a lot of fun. It does mean that I have to go shopping on Monday instead of my normal Saturday trip. I just have to work out quickly how to feed the Children on Monday and as we've also just swapped from being reactive to Big Boy's diabetes to proactive I do have to do a lot more counting... Basically a way to help manage diabetes and the whole blood sugar level issue is to work out how many grams of carbs Big Boy is eating and then according to the wonderful ratio that his lovely Doctor has worked out for us we calculate how many units on insulin Big Boy needs. This means that no longer will I have to tell Big Boy that he has to choose between Yorkshire Puddings and Roast Potatoes or only give him a pudding if he is going to do a lot of exercise after or his blood sugar was on the low side to start with. The Doctor has a lot of faith in us and so Daddy and I are kind of crossing our fingers and really h

This week I'm skipping the meals we eat at the weekend as we are in Disneyland Paris to see the film Wreck It Ralph , we're all really excited about the film because we've seen some great trailers for it! Anyway don't forget to follow me , Flyfour , Top Ender and Big Boy on Twitter for some fab behind the scenes pictures and tweets. Monday - Roast Something I'm not sure what it will be until I've been shopping, but I couldn't go without having a roast and as I'm at home on my own I figure I'll have lots of time to prepare it just how I like it. Tuesday - Gammon and Potatoes I love Gammon Steaks and although I don't eat it with Pineapple like Daddy and Top Ender, I think that it would be a great Tuesday meal. I'm going to do mine with a sauce. It will probably be a Mushroom and Parsley Sauce, but I'm not sure just at the moment. Wednesday - Baked Sloppy Joes I really can't explain how lush the baked Sloppy Joes I mad

Over the last few weeks Top Ender and Big Boy have been so loving towards each other that I've had to check a few times that whilst I'm in the kitchen preparing dinner that they haven't actually knocked each other out and that is why there is near silence in the living room. Gone are the fights over what they are going to be playing on the Xbox, gone are the temper tantrums when one of them chooses a game that the other didn't want to play and instead they are playing together. Nicely. Helping each other and generally being the great kids that they appear to be in all my other blog posts! It turns out that the copy of the game Madagascar 3 - Europe's Most Wanted for the Xbox has transformed my children into gamers who share... Now I haven't actually got a look in on the game, but having watched Big Boy (aged 4) and Top Ender (8) play the game in Story Mode I can tell that it is easy enough for them to understand and to be able to work out that each of the d

Last week we were on holiday in Scotland. It was a lovely Autumn break, although at times it felt more like winter. As the 3G service was patchy at best in the caravan we were staying in, Daddy and I found ourselves of a loss of what to do once the children were safely tucked up in bed (under layers of blankets and duvets, bed socks and hot water bottles) and so we started watching Autumn Watch on the BBC. The night before we were going to go out to Loch Leven, a Loch near where my Mum grew up, Chris Packham talked about the Pink Footed Geese that were doing their annual migration from Iceland to Loch Leven. What a coincidence we thought. Wouldn't it be lovely to see them we said. We were at the Loch for several hours and didn't see a single Pink Footed Goose.  Disappointed but not too disheartened about it (it's a big Loch they could have been anywhere) we were ready to head back when suddenly a flock of Pink Footed Geese flew over, rather noisily too. We were

Have you added A Mother's Ramblings to your RSS Reader ? Make sure you never miss a brilliant lunch or a fantastic family moment.   Also don't forget to follow my Weight Loss and Fitness Journey at Pippa World too!

It's a good week this week, we have Monday as an inset day and then this Friday we are heading off to Disneyland Paris with a few other bloggers for a weekend of fun and all things Disney! So, here are this weeks lunches; Monday - Ponyo Noodles As the Children are at home today, I decided to go with the Ponyo Noodles that I brought a few weeks back at the Chinese Supermarket. You know in the film Ponyo how  Sōsuke's mother Lisa puts hot water on some noodles waits a few minutes and has magically turned the dry noodles in to noodles and soup? That's what I did. Although with out the magic and with more trying to read Chinese characters so I could work out how to make them! Tuesday - Cheese Pizza Wraps I love Pizza Wraps, They are quick and easy to make (so means I can get back from the Gym and still have more than enough time to shower and make lunch before the Children go to School) and as they are pizza on wraps they are quite economical to make and of course

I was so ready for this weeks menu that I actually planned it before I planned last weeks! We're back at School on Tuesday and we have another little break for the end of the week (skip ahead to Friday, see where we are and then come back!) that I am SOOOOOOOOOOO excited about. Actually we all are excited but this is about food, so on with the menu. Saturday - Baked Sloppy Joes If I could choose what Country I was from I think I would choose America. I think that it's because most of the TV programmes I watch are American, most of the books I read are set there and of course because most of the foods that I see on Pinterest are from there too! I saw a pin for Baked Sloppy Joes, instead of serving it as a sub sandwich, the sandwich is baked on top along with the mince. I think it sounds like a great lazy Saturday meal so we're going to try it! Sunday - Roast Pork We had pork during the week and it was lush! Seriously though out of all the roasts the one I think is