Toddler in the toilet! Oh No!

My 17 month old son, let's call him "Mr Toddler", cannot be left alone for a minute! Today he sneaked into my bathroom and came out rubbing his little hands together as though washing them. I smelt a distinctive and very strong "cleaning" smell as he strolled past grinning his cheeky and most evil grin. Toilet bowl gel!
You know those new gel plungers that you squirt the gel onto the side of the bowl and it sticks there and cleans the toilet when you flush it? Well apparently they are pretty good and safer than the blue cubes in the toilet bowl baskets because they can't get them out. My cheeky little man couldn't get it out, so he poked it and scratched it and then used it for hand soap! When cleaning him up, I noticed a big blob of it on the top of his head, so I am assuming he has put his whole head in the bowl for it to rub off on there!

At least the gel would have killed any germs he got from the toilet I suppose, and well, he smells pretty fresh!

Kitchen tip

Ya know when you cook a gorgeous juicy chunk of roast meat and you get it out of the pan to carve it and all the beautiful juices drizzle out all over the bench and because of the fat content it is a real pain to clean! Don't ya just hate that!
Soluition! Put your cutting board in a shallow baking pan/tray, then when you carve up your meat the juices will be caught and won't go everywhere, you can even use the caught juices to add into the gravy. Less waste, BEAUTIFUL gravy!

What's brown and sticky?

A stick!

Mums, I salute you!

Being a miner's wife,  every now and then I get a taste of the lonely life of single parenting. It is soooo hard! The afternoon tasks are near impossible, the kids homework, the sports training, the bathing, the tantrums, the home readers, the dinner, getting the lunch boxes ready for tomorrow. And then there's making ends meet when you are the only bread winner! Then at about 2am when you are finally getting into your lonely bed you have noone to lend a sympathetic ear, or share adult conversation or give any words of support or encouragement, not so much as "dinner was really yummy tonight".
So if you are a single Mum I salute you! You are doing an awesome job and you should be proud of all you do!
If you are a working Mum, hats off to you, you are doing the hardest job in the world and some! It takes incredible discipline and organisation skills to hold down a job aswell as keep your family functionable.
If you are a single, working Mum, you are the bomb! Maybe you should be giving Julia G advice, we could use some more Mums in parliament, if we ever got time to play that game!
Well done and keep up the good work, on behalf of Australia, thank you for doing what you are doing! Just remember that we don't have to be perfect parents, just good enough parents, don't beat yourself up over your mistakes, learn from them and pass your wisdom onto your children, when people ask what you do, remember that you are raising the next generation of Australia, hold your head high and wear your title with pride "I am a Mum!"

$ave money and lose weight

Don't eat!

From my 9 year old son....

My son was swimming in the pool one day and he said
"Mum listen to this I will go under the water and say something and when all the bubbles get to the top they will pop and all the talkness will come out and you will hear what I said!"

$aving money, looking good and feeling great!

Love going to the day spa, getting facials and make overs? As Mums we don't get much "me" time any more, and the household budget doesn't really have room for facials. Save money and contact your nearest Mary Kay lady for a FREE appointment! They will do a skin analysis on you, show you some beautiful skin care products, colour match your foundation for a flawless finish and give you a colour make over all with no obligations! They even have microdermabrasion that you can do yourself at home with the same grade aluminium sulfide crystals as the expensive clinics! And they have a set for your hands called "Satin Hands" where you do an awesome scrub followed by this yummy peach hand cream. Save even more money by sharing a class with some friends and you will get freebies! I LOVE freebies! Oh and if you have a wedding coming up you can save HEAPS of money on professional make up by having a make up colour class with the wedding party girls (and boys actually) and learn how to do it yourself! I love Mary Kay. Their products are top of the range and girls get togethers are so much fun!

The Sain Mummy Shop Game

Do your children send you absolutely batty at the grocery store? Mine do! Don't worry, it's not just us, according to the PPP parenting course I did, apparently the shops is a common place of, shall we call it,  "challenging behaviour"! How many times have you witnessed a shocking display of "NOOOOOOOOO I WANT IIIIIIIIIT AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!"  at the checkout, often combined with a routine of throwing self onto the ground and headbutting the ground and kicking and more screaming. How many times have you thought "gasp, you poor, poor mother!" and an even deeper thought of "I'm glad it's you not me!" Are these your children? If they are then firstly, my deepest sympathies and secondly here is an idea that might help you. Kids get stroppy at the shops because of 2 reasons, 1, you are occupied with something other than them, your guard is down and kids come with their own built in "guard down" radar, and 2, because they don't have reasonable expectations.
Mum's head at the shops-"milk, bread, nappies, wipes,what els do I need, ooh is that Huggies on sale?"
Kid's head at the shops- "shops yay shops means lollies!"
For kids to act appropriately at the shops they need to know exactly what to expect, eg
Mum's shop prep talk-" Now Tommy, we are going to the shops to get all the things on my list and ONLY the things on my list. We are not going to get lollies or chocolates or comic books. You need to be on your best behavour at the shops or the man with the pricing gun will switch it to laser spontaneous combustion mode and incinerate you!" Well, maybe not that last part but you get my point. That takes care of the reasonable expectations factor. To help you with the getting borred and not getting your attention factor, why not make a game out of it, then you are turning a boring trip of torturous temptation into a fun positive experience.
When you do your shopping list (and remember we are shopping fortnightly now to save money) give them a copy of it and a marker. Tell them that they are your big helper today and if they tick off everything on their list they will be rewarded with..........? I usually say $2 to spend at the checkout. Kids love to help! I find this works a treat! If the kids are too young to read, make a list of pictures for them, really basic, they don't have to be detailed, they don't even have to be what you need, the point is to occupy the child while you concentrate on your task. If the kids are old enough to write, get them to copy the list themselves, it's good writing/spelling practice, and introduces basic budgetting skill. My kids are 9 and 7 and they still love this game!
Try it and see how it works for you! If all else fails, buy them that chocolate they want and then stand out the front of the shop and eat it in front of them! Very slowly and with lots of delicious facial expression and groans of satisfaction! They may cry a lot and scream but it reinforces the lesson for next time, they wont call you bluff again!

$aving money! Personalised stationary so cheap!

Ever heard of Vistaprint? You know the ads that pop up on pages that say 250 FREE business cards! They are Vistaprint and I am their biggest fan! And they didn't even pay me to say that! You can get so much free stuff off these guys and only pay for P&H. It's not just for business either, although if you run your own business they are AWESOME! They have home and family stuff too like baseball caps that they will print your designs on, you can design your own little characatures for all the members of your family including pets and add a slogan like "Team Jackson", TShirts, Address and phone number cards, personalised sticky notes, letterheads that look great for printing your resume on! Calendars, banners, mugs, pens! So much and so much for free!
Here's how they work, you create an account with them, straight away you can design and order all sorts of stuff for allready cheap prices, or, wait until they send you an email (probably the next day) offering you all this weeks deals! They send you emails every week with free items! Most of the items will be free for standard which are pretty good, if you upgrade to premium designs they charge a bit extra. You can get up to 10 free items per order and only pay for postage, but when you see what they can create you will probably get hooked like me! It is sooo easy to operate the site, I have never had any problems with payment for them and postage is always quick and arrives before the ETA! I vouch for them!
My last order was a car magnet, 250 business/appointment cards, 140?return address label stickers, 25 small fridge magnets (business card size), 50 post cards, 50 survey cards, 25 brochures, 25special offer cards, an address stamp and a T-Shirt, and all I paid was P&H which was about $50 for express post.
Here is a link for vistaprint http://www.vistaprint.com.au/frfau?frf=619196213097

Yummy, quick and easy! Some of my kids favourite recipes!

I will never be famous for my cooking abilities, perhaps more so for my lack there of! The "Today's specials" board in my kitchen usually comprises of microwaved frozen veggies served with either "chop biscuits" as my husband calls my overdone chops, or stir fry on wraps which my children tell me is like eating carpet!
But here are a few quick and easy recipe ideas that even I can't mess up, they are not the most healthy but nice for a treat!
Slow cooker- any cut of cheap lamb + 1 cup of coke + 1 cup of tomato sauce + 1 table spoon of brown sugar. Chuck it all in in the morning, high for 2 hrs then low for 5 or 6 and you have the yummiest tender stewed lamb and the kids love it!
Home made warm caramel topping- put 2 spoons of brown sugar and half a cup of cream in the microwave for a minute, stir it until thick (might need to zap it again) and pour it over ice cream! mmmmmm! So good on french toast ot pancakes or toasted waffles!
Simple dessert- Make your own cold-rock icecream! Crush up chock chip coockies and have them with ice cream, OR let the ice cream soften a little and mix a heap of coco-pops through it! YUMMO!
Try some of these for an unhealthy treat, you kids will love them! Let me know what you think!

$aving Money-Clothes Dryer

Clothes dryers are a necessary evil when you've got kids, especially if you live in the tropics and when you're coming into winter. But with clothes dryers you not only have the initial cost of the machine but the running costs are HUGE! They will send your power bill through the roof!
Solution,

Almost every house has at least 1 ceiling fan,a rack like this only costs about $30 from KMart, you can hang the clothes straight onto the hangers and space them out with the socks that need drying. Open a window in the room if possible, it only takes about 1/2 hour on high for the kids' school polo shirts to dry. It also makes packing the clothes away so easy, just hang them in room order on your rack and they can be put straight into the cupboards. For towels I have one of those railed racks that fit about 10 towels at once, they take longer to dry so leave the fan on them overnight. The cost of running a fan is only about 0.25c per hour, a fraction of the cost of a dryer!