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Last day of term was always going to suck.  Even at high school they have shared lunches, none of this “Choose two items and sit down on the mat and eat it”, it’s more like an all you can eat of cake, chocolate, chips and Mountain Dew before sending the kids off for two weeks with their parents. 

Even before the last class of the day where said shared lunch was held, each classroom that Jacob went to was a battle of the sugar-free wills as he turned down treat after treat.  Five different teachers offered fruit bursts, chocolate, favourites bars, by the time he got to film club last thing in the day there were a few ‘choice’ words arriving in my phone via text. Should I be happy my son feels comfortable enough to do his venting so openly to his mother? Not something I would have done as a youngster.  But then no one ever took away my shared lunches just when I got old enough to pile that plate as high as I wanted without the teachers stepping in.

So, what did we do to prepare Jacob for the shared lunch battle today?
I quietly stressed and Jacob told me to harden up.  Should have been the other way round but then Jacob’s a sensible kid like that.

 I sent him packing with a full lunchbox, a big bag of plain popcorn and plain potato chips and told him to be sensible. 

So these were the glorious foods in his lunchbox today.
(Totally trying to talk myself into believing this stuff is nice).

* Almonds with some of the choc coated walnuts we made yesterday.

* Mandarin (at least they are natural sugars)

* Egg savoury (made with egg, greek yoghurt, spinach & coriander, cooked up in muffin tins while pretending I know what I’m doing)

* Sandwich: Grain bread, chicken, cottage cheese, carrot, lettuce and some homemade chilli stuff that doesn’t have sugar added.  Yep, we are still making him sandwiches.  I know there is refined sugar in breads, it’s something we are choosing to keep at the moment.

And then came the shared lunch.

You’d have to have a will of iron to resist the kind of stuff high school kids bring to these things.  They walk into the supermarket on the way to school and present the purchases on the table for lunch.   The popcorn and chips were a good option to save being laughed at and he had some of each, but felt awful missing out on lamingtons, cakes, chocolates, glasses of sprite, mountain dew, numerous other choices of fizzy and orange drinks, crackers, pies, sausage rolls, brownies and biscuits.

Just being honest.  Like I said, will of iron.

Last word from Jacob:

The good: Being able to swallow the mega-grenade type fish oil without gagging. 

The bad: Lamingtons, cakes, chocolates, glasses of sprite, fanta, mountain dew, numerous other choices of fizzy and orange drinks, crackers, pies, sausage rolls, brownies and biscuits.  You know how hard it is not to eat that crap while avoiding being classed as a weirdo by your friends?

Laters

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Day 3 in pursuit of sugar free. Chocolate bound…

In pursuit of sugar free, day two.

In pursuit of sugar-free, day one.

Oh yea, we had fun today.  We surfed the internet for crazy recipes, spent a small fortune on groceries and saw what a mess we could make in the kitchen.

When I said a small fortune, I really meant a small fortune.  This much hasn’t been spent on our grocery bill in one week since the ‘cheese’ incident where I sent Paul to the supermarket for some crackers and a ‘few nice cheeses’.  Apparently he heard that as “Go to the supermarket and spend a manly amount on the most expensive cheese and buy lots of it and get some of that expensive meaty stuff and other olives and feta stuff and whatever else you think looks yummy but we can’t normally afford”.  Because that is what he did.

But I digress.

These ingredients were king of the kitchen today.

Yes.  I know there is probably cheaper ways to do things.  I’m starting off easy and then finding the cheaper easier budget way later.  Ease is important right now.

Raw walnuts, natural Cacao powder, an egg and Stevia.  Stevia is a sweetener but it’s natural.  Nothing chemical about it.  It’s all natural, low GI, no calories, nothing to it but sickly sweet.  20 times sweeter than sugar, infact.  I’m trying it because it was easy. Except for the part where I paid for it.  That was hard.

Before I start this incredibly easy recipe, I have to say I have no idea where I got it.  I’m sure I have browsed 800,000 blogs over the last week, I’m now making a note where I get recipes but for now you’ll have to suffice with the apologies that I’m not linking the original source.

Choc-walnut treats.

The word ‘Chocolate’ in the name of this might indicate this tastes yummy.  Actually it does.  Jacob had some almonds as a snack today and I threw in a few of these choc-walnuts as well.  He loves them.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup walnuts
1 egg white
pinch salt
1/8 teaspoon vanilla
a dash of Stevia
2 teaspoons cacao

Directions:

Whisk the egg white until frothy. Add everything else except the walnuts and whisk again.  Add the nuts and fold through.

Spread the choc covered nuts on a foil-baked sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray. 

Bake at 160C for 15-20 minutes until the coating is set and crisp.

Not the prettiest picture but I took it quickly on my phone as we were losing light.

Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

Imagine if you got creative with that idea, what else could you coat in this kind of mixture, how you could change the flavours up a little, the mind starts ticking…

Anyway.  Day 3 was good.

The last word from Jacob:

The Good “I feel so much better all round, so much energy.”

The Bad : “Someone offered me chips”

Overall, a really good day.

Laters

Day two should have been a fairly exciting day I would have thought, new recipes, new ingredients, me in the kitchen making coconut butter in order to create even more yummy stuff.  It was the opposite though. 

There was the sherbet turned down at school, not really being able to eat anything when he was hanging-out with his friends at the fish’n’chip shop but the worst thing?  The realisation that film club were having a shared lunch on Friday.  Kids should be able to be kids, I feel a little bad Jacob is restricted but then we just need to remind ourselves that it’s all for a good cause.  This full-on stage is only meant to be two weeks to clean the system and load up the vitamins & minerals.  He complains but he’s a good kid and he is taking this like any other challenge.  Full on.

It wasn’t all bad though, he did find his new favourite breakfast.

The point was to take out as many refined sugars as we could from his breakfast.  So this is what he had.

Super yummy almond porridge with berries.

* 1/3 cup oats
* 1/3 cup water
* 1/3 cup unsweetened almond milk
* a pinch of salt (because my Mum’s Scottish and that is the way we were bought up).

Cooked in the microwave.

Then some frozen berries, thawed & warmed. 

Serve the porridge with the berries & unsweetened yoghurt.  There is also the slightest drizzle of runny honey and a tiny bit more nutty almond milk on top.

Now the trick is in the milk, I believe.  The almond milk makes it nutty, less need for sweetness and if the tastebuds were complaining of a lack of taste then there is always the berries & unsweetened yoghurt to wake them up.

Yes, technically there are sugars.  But it’s cut back from the weetbix & sugar mix he used to eat, at least the limited amounts here are nutritious.

So there we have it.  Day 2.

Good times:"”I think I feel like I have more energy”

Bad times *imagine Homer Simpson drooling here* “Shared lunch…….”

Poor kid.  Laters.

Jacob is the coolest kid.  He’s the hard-working one in our family.  Ask him to do something, he’ll do it. Set him a challenge, he’ll achieve it.  Give him a goal, he’ll reach it.  He was the one that used to get up with me at 5.15am to go to spin class or strive to beat his run record time after time.  Energetic kid, right?  Eeeeh, not so much. 

This boy trains like a beast and sleeps 10 hours a day but just isn’t well.  He’s constantly tired, pale, sick and can’t focus, and following a quiet comment from his trainer last week, I set myself the goal of figuring it all out.

With my mother-tiger hat on, anything for my boy, I did do something a little alternative, but also incredibly scientific.  Jacob had a blood analysis done, which means we got to see his live blood cells under magnification.  HUGE magnification even.  All on the big screen.  It was the coolest thing.

Straight away we saw amaaaaazing stuff, like big red blood cells and different types of white cells but we could see lots of nasties too.  I’ll save the details since Jacob is 14 and probably wouldn’t appreciate his whole medical history outlined on a blog post but in summary it’s surprising that Jacob gets up in the morning.  Among other things, his white blood cell count was low, his red blood cells were weak and unstructured and the amount of zig-zag or stressed out cells was alarming.

I won’t tell you what the arrow is pointing to, but it’s not good.

I wish I could draw on here like a big blackboard because this, although obviously not cool, was amazing and I feel compelled to draw big diagrams to show you.  The doctor could tell us so many things about Jacob’s history by looking at the state of his blood.  What a mess.  Longer story short, Jacob is eating nutritionally well, but none of that nutrition is getting anywhere.  His systems are super weak.

Straight away we moved to causes.  Experience, tests and feedback from Jacob have all pointed towards a hypersensitivity to sugar for a start.  Not the fabulous natural fruit type, or the gorgeous organic honey type, but the no-use-to-anyone-nutritionally-only-there-for-comfort refined white sugar type. 

Sugar has no real nutritional place in our systems.  I see so many of you cringing.  I am too!   We don’t need it.  It serves the purpose of taste and comfort only.  It’s extremely addictive, don’t I know that for sure, and is about as good to us (I want to use the farmer’s expression my Dad uses because it’s the only one I can think of right now but I won’t).. it’s about as good to us as a useless thing that’s really really useless.

And as the doctor is saying this, Jacob is hiding behind her invisibly mouthing “HELP ME!” and doing the cut-throat sign.  He was never a kid that got many treats but he could see the last of the Oreo biscuits and sugar on his weetbix, plus infact the weetbix themselves, slipping away as she was talking.

And so today we start the difficult journey towards getting Jacob healthier.  Step one.  Two weeks entirely sugar free.  And no. I’m not just another person that has jumped on the Pinterest-fuelled bandwagon in order to do something that seems almost cool to do. We’re doing this because we have visual scientific evidence that it needs doing.  We are doing this for health.  For fitness.  For waking up refreshed, for getting rid of dark circles under eyes, eliminating sore tummies and getting a little colour in our cheeks.

So today is day one, and tomorrow will be day two, I'll be posting recipes, updates and poking a little fun at ourselves just to make light of the fact that OMG we really are giving up sugar!  Did I say we?  Not sure I meant to say that.  Jacob is keen, 100% dedicated and looking forward to feeling better.  Today was the day we made lists and figured out recipes.  Tomorrow the plans turn into action. Hope you can tag along.

Laters.

Quick post – here are the 25 winners of the Stampin’ Up! post from last week.  If you are one of these people, please email me (Link in the sidebar) with your postal address so I can pass them all on to Stampin’ Up! and they’ll send a catalog directly to you.

If you know any of these people – please make sure they know their names are here, the sooner I get everyone’s address, the sooner I can send all the details in to Stampin Up!

Congrats ladies!

Ann-Marie Campbell
Rebecca (Comment July 3rd, 9.40pm)
Fiona Angus
Tanya Leigh
Kim Theyers
Shani
Sue Alexander
TopKatNZ
Lynda Bagnall
Tanya Watson
Alisa (comment July 01 9.09pm)
Lainie T
LeeAnn (comment July 02 12.49pm)
Jayne (Comment July 01, 3.28pm)
Lianne (comment July 01, 5.24pm)
Nic C
Jenny (comment July 01 4.25pm)
Kirsty W
Neroli F
Brenda (comment July 01 1.59pm)
Julie (comment July 01 2.02pm) There were a few so make sure it is your comment!
Sheree Silson
Carmel Keane
Vicki Parker
Annelie Maddock

It's that time of year.  The 2013 Stampin' Up! Catalog/idea book is released today and there is two very cool things about that.  Firstly I get to share my most favourite techniques and products in the new idea book and secondly I get to give 25 of them away.   Last year I enjoyed creating this post with my favourite products and techniques in the book, it was fun, I have stuff to give away again, so here we go for 2013. Hang in there.  The giveaway is at the end.  But first you need to hear all about the stuff I love.  Because I had a bad weekend and today I woke up and declared Monday would be all about me. 

So this year.  My favourite things. In no particular order. This is kinda like a Five for Friday, right? Except it's Monday. 

1. Save the Date stamp.

This may have been around in previous years, but I wasn't addicted to the Pocket page style of scrapbooking in previous years.  Project Life + the Stampin' Up 'Save the Date' stamp, + my Stazon ink= easy embellishing of photos and other stuff in my Project Life album.  I love the little sayings you can put beside the dates if you like.  Cool for cards and other little projects and a cheap investment too. 

2. Stampin’ Up!  into the pocket page scrapbooking market…

Stampin’ Up have moved with the times, they’ve dabbled with digital and bought out some other pocket page type scrapbooking things.  They’ve realised how HUGE project Life is and created something to meet the market.  I’ve already created a blog post about it here but I see it’s in the catalog too.  Smart move, Stampin’ Up!

Yes, that is washi.  Any washi addicts here?

3. Cool shaped Framelits.

Framelits.  You know, stuff to put in the big shot, sizzix, whatever cutting bizzo you use.  I’m considering moving my Big Shot off the shelf and on to my desk.  Brave move but with new shapes available like these ones , I think it’s time.  I also love how Stampin’ Up design cool stamps to go inside the shapes.  Smart thinking.  Fav from this catalog was the ‘Chalk Talk’ with tabs, curly bracket tags and other cool things.  They also have some Apothecary accents that go with some really cool vintage stamps that I’m considering getting. 

For those that have the catalog already I’m talking pages 107 + 187.  Christmas pressie, right there.

4. Little tips and tricks through the idea book.

I love that their catalog really is an idea book.  I love easy little things that make crafting easier.  So simple but I wouldn’t think of it myself.  Here is one of my favourite framelits, used with the Big Shot that is now moving beside my desk, and a circle punch.  Cute little accent.  Boom. 

They’ve also started writing the names of the cardstock colours they use as backgrounds in their pictures too.  Like the PInk Pirouette above.  Gives you good ideas of colour combos too. 

5. A hexagon punch and stamps to fit them.

Praise the person that thought of this one!  I’ve got about 3 ratty torn cardboard shapes I trace around to get my hexagons when I use them on a page.  Now not only can I get a punch, but stamps that fit right in there.  Smarticles!

Plus sayings that fit IN the hexagons for this stamp set.

Alrighty – do YOU want to be one of 25 winners of your very own 2013 Stampin’ Up!  Idea book/catalog?  200 pages of ideas delivered right to your door?

It’s easy to win and with 25 catalogs to give away the odds of winning are HIGH.  All you have to do is share this post.  Whether it be on Pinterest via pinning the graphic below, whether it be sharing my blog link and the fact I have a giveaway on facebook, whether it be linking to this post on your own facebook, linking me in a blog post, whatever sharing you can do – each time you share, come back here, comment and let me know and I’ll put you in the draw. 

Just one thing – due to the huge amount of postage 25 catalogs takes, this giveaway is only open to New Zealanders BUT if you are overseas, maybe you could nominate a NZer to receive your prize if you win.  A chance to pay it forward, it’s gotta be a good thing.

Now ready, set, share and come back and let me know.  Let’s spread the catalog love.  You have ‘til Midnight Thursday night, NZ time. 

(Oh and if you you are a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator, please feel free to add your link to your blog or website and I’ll link you up!  Delys Cram looks after all my Stampin’ Up! stuff, but let me know any demos in your area and I’ll link them up too!)

Laters

Demos:
Delys Cram, Bay of Plenty & online
Kelly Nelson, Lower Hutt. 
Katrina Criglington, Christchurch
Alicia, Hamilton/Waikato

I’m such a self-confessed wuss that I could spend all these five-for-Friday’s moaning about the cold.  Yes I know it’s not really cold in the standards of those that chose to live in Southland, Canada or even, well, Taupo.  But this girl hates the cold.  I hate placing my butt on my cold leather car seats at 5.30am when it’s 1 degree outside.  I hate walking to meet the kids from school, heck I even hate walking to get the mail.  I know I’m soft but I promise to refrain from complaining anymore about it while I celebrate this week’s Five for Friday…

1. Awesome kids stuff for the week.

My Abby has turned into something quite amazing in that she’d the kid that represented her school at the district speech competitions, she is a wet-day monitor, road crossing monitor, helps out with sausage sizzles, gets given all the jobs they give to the responsible kids, all that stuff.  However she told me of the moment she was told she had been picked to attend the Principal’s lunch, an honour saved only for those that have truly excelled in a number of ways.  “Children are chosen for their effort and for responsibly demonstrating the school virtues” the principal said.  “Well they must have the wrong Abby or I must have done that really by accident” my Abby declared to me on the way home.  I guess doing it by accident is still a good thing, right?

2. Awesome App of the week: PicLab.

Another picture taking app for my already-overloaded-with-pic-apps phone.  I like this one, it’s easy, has nice filters and text is easy to add.   I do have to pay to get the watermark removed (I might splash out on that $1.29 maybe) and to add more fonts, but it’s cool all the same.

This was my first play with the app. I love the way Paul is humouring my picture taking antics while is trying to have a quiet beer while watching late evening fishing programmes on TV.  That’s his leave-me-the-hell-alone look.

3. Awesome scrapbooking discovery this week.

Fav scrapbooking discovery this week, apart from realising that Stampin’ Up are coming up with a Hexagon punch (did I say that?), was learning that Finnabair has a new collection coming out with Prima.  I feel in love with the journal first, the A4 pad of papers second and I had an order in for class kits for Prima ArtVenture about 3 seconds after that.  Boom.

4. Awesome I-forgot-I-had-that discovery of the week

I’d tell you about how much I hate the cold, how much I despise winter, how much I know I’d never cope down south, but I promised I wouldn’t.  Instead I thought I’d just post a pic of my new best friend.  We share an office.

5.  Awesome classes released just today.

Best for last.   NINE amazing classes released for those booked into ArtVenture, just released today.  This retreat is about 3/4 full.  I know there are people out there that will be saying “I wish I’d signed up for that retreat” when they see the photos start to appear in a few months time of what we have planned, what Prima in the USA have planned, boxes of stuff are already leaving the USA destined for those joining us for the weekend in September.  

This could quite possibly be THE girlie weekend away you’ve been waiting for. 

I’m so proud of the work gone into these classes by the teachers already, they’ll sell fast to those registered for the retreat.  If you were on the fence about coming along at all, jump off, join us, we promise you won’t regret it.

(Cue Nike ad:  Just do it…)

ArtVenture Details here:

laters

I have a new class kit ready to go – and the best part?  Order any class kit from me before Sunday night and I'll include a Prima Chalk Edger, colour 'SweetPea'  FREE.  But be warned – a mauvey, pinky shade, "Sweet Pea" is could be the start of an addiction, once you have one chalk ink, you'll only want to track down more of these little beauties!  

(Sweetpea is a mauve/pink, it is not a matching colour to the Engraver Kit, I didn't think far enough ahead to be that organised – next time!)

AND as a bonus, everyone that orders before Sunday night will go into the draw to win my completed page from my new 'Engraver' kit.  With no pics & title of course, you don't need the pic of my kiddos!.  Yep, I made a second page while creating the instructions so what better fun than to give it away to someone.  So order ANY kit before Sunday night and I'll put you into that draw. See the kits for sale here.   I can combine postage for class kits, trinkets, charms, order by emailing me!  

So here it is, the new Engraver Kit – a single layout with instructions.  Enough stuff to create more, and order before Sunday night and get a freebie ink PLUS a chance to win my layout.  $42.00 plus postage and it's yours – find out more here.   

Have a good weekend,

laters

If someone says to me "Do you do digi scrapbooking?" my answer is usually no.  I've never really got on well with my computer, actually the feeling is probably mutual, I don't think it gets on with me either because it's a common occurrence that it'll take all my hard work and wipe it, jumble it or stash it in some black-hole of irretrievable important files.

So.  When I was asked about digi yesterday, I repeated the usual "nuh, don't do that stuff". To which I was encouraged to check this video out.   It may just change my mind.  What's that saying about "You should make a career out of whatever you use to procrastinate"… yea… that's the computer….  this looks good for Project Life… think I may give it a go… (take a little look and let me know what you think!)

""

Laters