loving : bardot junior crochet short

{ https://www.bardot.com.au/Crochet-Short.aspx?p374417&cr=091844 }

loving : binny pinky & pocket tshirt dress

and if you're a leopard lover, have a squiz at the curlewis street maxi. leopard print at it's gorgeousness!

{ http://www.shopbinny.com/shop/index.php }

loving : this cute cover of rolling in the deep

love it or hate it. it's monday.

cheap eats : mocha cookies

every 3 or 4 weeks i miss a shop and try and 'get by' on what we have in the cupboards. not only to save a couple of pennies, but also to use up those stray meal base packets hanging around at the back of the shelf, and to even try and get creative with what ingredients we do have. look, i'll be honest with you, it normally ends in a phone call to nan asking what i can make with such and such. but if i'm not calling nan, i normally dig out the cheap eats recipe book {women's weekly}.

this recipe is from that book. be warned, it's not the healthiest of foods and probably not something you would pack in your child's lunch box. but if you're a coffee and biscuit lover, you'll probably love it!

150g butter, softened
3/4 cup {165g} firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons instant coffee granules
1 tablespoon hot water
1 1/2 cups {225g} plain flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
20 dark chocolate melts

{1} preheat oven to 180/160c fan-forced. grease and line two oven trays with baking paper.

{2} beat butter, sugar, egg yolk and combined coffee and water in small bowl with electric mixer until smooth. transfer mixture to large bowl; stir in sifted flour and cocoa, in two batches. knead dough on floured surface until smooth.

{3} roll level tablespoons of mixture into balls; place 5cm apart on trays, flatten slightly. press 1 chocolate melt into centre of each cookie; bake about 12 minutes. cool cookies on trays.

next time i will use milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate melts, the dark was too much for me. and my oven isn't the best, so my cookies were in there for about 20 minutes.

do you have a favourite 'cheap' meal you like to cook? or a recipe book you use often? does anyone use the 4 ingredients book? i see there is a kids version of that out now too.

review this : myrtle & tuppence night night sleep tight + crusty coconut

do you have a couple of items for your baby that you couldn't imagine living without? the ones that you suggest to other mum's when talking about your babies? well get ready to add 2 more awesome products to that list! if you haven't already discovered myrtle & tuppence, do read on...

i'll start first with the night night sleep tight lotion. i'm a firm believer in a night time routine. i used a night time oil on my first baby and she was always an excellent sleeper, sure she woke up during the night for breast feeds, but was always happy to go straight back down in the cot and settled herself well. i believe the oil i was using back then played a vital role in her sleep. the first couple of months with my second baby were quite full on, with lots of wind issues and what i thought was going to be a cat napper. 6 weeks in and still trying to find our new family groove, which now included a toddler, i realised i wasn't following a night time routine. i'll tell you right now, i was finding it hard to find the time to cook dinner let alone have that beautiful spare hour of bath and massage time for the baby like i did with my first {poor second child right?!}. once i realised i wasn't doing the same things that seemed to worked for my first {night time cream and music playing sweetly as she lay down to rest}, i was straight onto the internet to see what new products were about. and that's where i found the myrtle & tuppence website.

the night night sleep tight is as it suggests, a lotion for restless babies. ingredients are chamomile, mandarin and lavender essential oils in a plant derived base lotion, citricidal. i definately smell the lavender scent firstly, and then the mandarin and chamomile hit your nose and give the lotion a slightly fresh scent. it's really quite nice. you don't need a lot of cream, which means the bottle will last a while, i pump out 3 squirts {as below}, rub together on both hands and use one hand to massage onto the chest and the other hand for the back. the cream, along with a couple of other practices put into place {that music cd i was talking about and the love to swaddle up wrap}, have made our bedtime routine for frankie hassle free and pleasant. coincidence or not, the first time i used the cream i got a 7 hour sleep from frankie. that might not sound much to some, but for us, it was heaven. i've also been known to pin my toddler down and smother her in the cream aswell! worked a treat the first couple of times i caught her, but she's onto me now and runs away when she see's me rubbing frankie with it!

now the other product is the crusty coconut. this oil is fantastic and if your child has cradle cap that you are trying to get rid of, seriously grab yourself a bottle of this magic lotion. both of my kids have had cradle cap, frankie much worse than summer's. the baby oil wasn't seeming to work too well on frankie's, i felt it was drying her head out too much. so i saw this on the myrtle & tuppence site and didn't even hesitate to grab a bottle to try. glad i did, it has worked a treat! i tried to take some before and after shots but they didn't turn out too clearly, so you'll just have to take my word for this one! ingredients are coconut oil and rosewood essential oil, citricidal. the rosewood is quite a strong pleasant smell and that's what i smell straight up with this. you rub the lotion onto baby's head and leave it for half an hour and then wash off as normal. i done this every second night, for 5 sessions and the cradle cap was mostly gone. she just has one small section of cradle cap left on her soft spot, which obviously i am very gentle around, but i don't participate it being there after the next couple of doses. fantastic product, i'm extremely happy with the results we got for frankie and definately recommend it to my mum friends!

i think the main thing with baby products is to not be skeptical and give a product a go. it may just change your routine around for the better! the night night sleep tight cream is $9.50 for 100ml and the crusty coconut {clean my coconut} is $9.00 for 100ml. postage is $5 and to order you enter your details through their website and the girls will call or email you to arrange payment.

myrtle & tuppence

{website} http://www.myrtleandtuppence.com.au

{facebook} http://www.facebook.com/myrtleandtuppence

iphone italk : play-doh

art and craft really isn't one of my strongest mum assets. i'm that mum that draws stick figure people and the two stroke mcdonalds symbol birds on the chalk board. and i'm totally ok with that! when it's play-doh time at our house, it's normally sausages and rissoles that get made by me. but i've stepped it up a knotch thanks to the play-doh iphone app!

sometimes you need to make a morning out of an activity. when i downloaded the play-doh iphone app {free app - search "play-doh"}, i decided we should make some play-doh from scratch, you know, just for fun...

{play dough recipe} combine 2 cups of plain flour, 1 cup of salt, 4 tbs of cream of tartar, 2 tbs of cooking oil and 2 cups of boiling water in a bowl and mix well. add more flour if it's sticky, which i did. section out your dough and colour as your heart desires.

note : when it comes time for the food colouring - wear gloves!

so how the app works is it gives you idea's and instructions on what to make with play-doh, you can take photo's of your creations and share them via email and facebook, you can make your own designs and load and share them, and you can browse play-doh products.

we decided we would make the backpack creation already loaded. it gave me step by step instructions by both pictures and words, and before we knew it, mum was suddenly a play-doh pro. we snapped a photo of it with the iphone {as per below} and we saved it into our play-doh app and we emailed it off to grandma.

i cannot tell you how impressed summer was to see our backpack creation. so impressed that when dad walked in the door, it was THE very first thing she rushed to tell him about. go mum.