Author: Oana

Emma’s Halloween Buns

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Halloween week, can you believe it? This autumn has flown in for me, I can’t believe I have less than 3 months left of this pregnancy! Well, it’s also half-term officially. Emma will  be going to playgroup until Wednesday, when she will have a Halloween party with her friends there, so she has been asking from today for some “scary” buns for the boys and girls. I am not very inventive when it comes to baking so I had a wee look around the Internet and found this Hearty Spiced Carrot Muffin recipe which sounded quite straight forward and mentioned a “toddler who devoured her muffin all Tasmanian-devil style”. I thought this would be spot on if we were to take them to the party on Wednesday and if we adapted them a little bit to look more…spooky. So here is a list of my ingredients. I forgot to include the olive oil (of which I added half a cup) in the picture: 2 cups of self-raising flour(approximately 250 grams) 2 teaspoons of baking powder …

OralB Love Your Gums Challenge

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The lovely people at Oral-B, together with the wonderful team at BritMums, teamed up this month to ensure that British mums are looking after their own oral health. I received a tube of the new Oral-B Pro-Expert Premium Gum Protection toothpaste to try out. Who would have thought that a simple tube of toothpaste would act as such a catalyst for change in our family? As you know from my previous posts, I am pregnant and yes, indeed, my gums have been bleeding like crazy since May. I sort of brushed it under the carpet as this is not the first time I get bleeding gums and used traditional methods to try and stop the bleeding. One of the methods is what my mum would have advised, which is brushing my teeth with a mixture of fine salt and baking soda. It didn’t really do the trick and besides, left my gums feel a bit tender due to the harshness of the salt grain. So I started using the Oral-B toothpaste I got and things …

Giving and receiving

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This post ties in well with what I wrote yesterday but it looks at our children’s side of things, for a change. I was writing yesterday about how busy a mummy’s life can be when it is centered around her children, her work and the well-being of the ones she loves. We work to provide for our children. We strive to ensure they get opportunities to develop and thrive. We sacrifice our careers, our comfort and our healthy sex lives 🙂 in order to bring up individuals who will serve the society and themselves well as adults. BUT there must be a balance, and this balance needs to be introduced early on in our children’s lives. They need to grasp the concept of giving as the natural reverse of receiving. They need to understand that the sacrifices we make for them, done in love and with the utmost pleasure and enthusiasm, need to reflect a similar attitude in themselves. And folks, flash news now, giving ain’t natural to a small child! The natural thing is …

The Juggle of Modern Motherhood

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I remember asking my mum as a child, as I saw her working hard every day until late: “When is your work going to finish, mum?” Her reply stayed with me forever. She told me, juggling cooking and helping us with homework: “Never, it will only end when my days end!” At the time, I found her answer weird and stuck in the “weird things mums say sometimes” box, in a corner of my consciousness. Now that I am a mum, I totally get what my mum said back then. Although I don’t work in the traditional sense of the word at the moment, my “work” never ends either. A typical weekday for me at the moment includes playgroup runs, shopping errands, blog posting, PR email approaching…and this only describes my mornings. Once I pick Emma up from playgroup, it’s lunch prep, drama, ballet and girls’ brigade lessons. Then rushing home to cook wholesome dinners for the family, packing lunches for hubby and ironing/laundry/house cleaning. And if you thought I had the evenings to myself …