M & Ms Cookies

OK, after several requests, here is my recipe for M & Ms Cookies. It's another quick and easy one (my favourites these days) and it makes 4 dozen cookies. Enjoy!

1 1/4 cups brown sugar
185gm butter
1 tspn vanilla essence
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups plain flour
180gm M & Ms
1 tspn baking soda

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease baking trays. Cream together butter and sugar until well combined. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in sifted flour and soda. Add M & Ms. Roll into balls by teaspoon mixture. Bake until light brown (approx 10 - 12 minutes).

Note: I'm a big fan of cooking in bulk and cookies are no exception. Most cookie doughs freeze really well, so make one batch and freeze a second, ready for easy cookies another day (great for mornings when you realise you have nothing to put in the kids lunchboxes!)

Everyday displays of love

I had the luxury of a weekend away with the girls scrapbooking just last week. There were 60 of us and we had a fabulous time creating and relaxing. One of the projects that I worked on was creating these everyday displays of love for my girls. I like to leave post-it notes around the house for them. The girls love to find these notes and they keep them for ages. The difficulty is knowing where to leave them so they won't be overlooked. Well, this is my solution. The plan is to display these little boards in the hallway where they will see them all the time. The boards have a peg where I can pin up notes for each of them. It might be a quick note or an inspiring quote or even a drawing - whatever I can fit on a post-it note. Just another way to say "I love you" really.

Pen Pals

I am always looking for new ways to connect with my girls. When you have a big family it can be difficult to always give each of your children the one on one time and attention they crave. I recently came across a great idea for my big girls ... we are going to be pen pals. I can't begin to tell you how excited my girls are about this; they were literally squealing with excitment when I introduced the idea to them. It was an idea that came from www.mama-jenn.blogspot.com/2010/11/mama-me-journal.html. I bought each of the girls a gorgeous hardcover notebook and then I wrote them a letter (the letter was a copy of the one I found on this site).

Both of them received the same letter which said ...

Dear Megan/Alison, Would you like to be my pen pal? Instead of mailing letters to each other, we can keep them here in this notebook. Does that sound like fun? I will write to you and then leave the notebook on your bed. Then, when you want to write back, you can begin writing on the next page and leave the notebook on my bed when you are done. You can write about anything! It can be funny or serious. Just write about whatever is on your mind. I am so excited and I hope that you are too! This is going to be fun. Something special just for the two of us to share. Love Mum xxx PS Write back soon.

I took the girls out to Gloria Jean's together for our favourite beverage ... white hot chocolate. (If you haven't tried it, do yourself a favour. It is so much better than regular hot chocolate.) Then I gave them their notebooks and I watched the smiles spread all the way across their faces to their sparkling eyes. Ali asked if I had a pen then and there to reply! I convinced them to wait until they got home to write me back. They did make one additional request ... that we hide the journals under each others pillows rather than just put them on the bed. This will avoid drawing the little girls attention to them (especially our youngest artist!) and it makes it a bit more secretive which appeals to them both.

Later that night, I found my first two letters. I won't share them here because they are just between us but the girls did give me permission to share a little of what they wrote.

Megan ... "This is going to be the best thing ever.....This way I can tell you things that I won't tell other people."

Alison ... "I love having a diary just between you and me. This is going to be great ... Write back soon."

And now I must go because I have two letters to write to my beautiful girls. Xx

Polly Pocket & Me

I have a love-hate relationship with Polly Pocket. For the uninitiated, Polly is a tiny doll who lives in a tiny world and has oodles of tiny accessories. Great idea, right? I mean, straight away she is a space saver - tiny stuff doesn't require much space to store it, right? Wrong! Polly has a jumbo jet!! A scale model it would seem. Try fitting that in a lunchbox. I dare you.

My girls of course love Polly. She does after all have a lot of cool stuff and when we go away and they are limited to one small backpack each for items to entertain, Polly really comes into her own (so long as you leave the jumbo at home). Our Polly collection (sans jumbo) lives in a large lunchbox, however, you can bet that whenever the girls have played with her (and her many, many friends - she is very popular), there will always be tell tale signs left behind - a teeny tiny necklace, an even smaller shoe etc. (And I am a little ashamed to say that on occasion the temptation has just been too great and I have vaccuumed them right up! Ooh. I think that is bad. You do understand though, don't you? I hope so.)

But I have come across a couple of inspired ideas for dealing with Polly's penchant for accessories and all things small. Check these out.

You can wear your Polly Pocket accessories so they don't get lost (or vaccuumed up 'accidentally'). And let me tell you this from experience, Polly loves to change her outfit regularly but she rarely has time to worry about accessories because she is always in a rush. My girls won't miss them at all. I love this idea - very very cute. This is where I saw it www.kidsactivitiesblog.com

The other idea I saw was for an I Spy bottle at www.meetthedubiens.com This could be fun in the car - try to spot all the Polly accessories that have been mixed up with rice. I think I would use some of our rainbow rice as this would offer a little more camouflage. Actually, now that I really think of it, she is rather fabulous isn't she? And the girls would all love one of those bracelets. ... Perhaps I should have a look on ebay and see if I can grab the girls another set or two!

Organising with Post-It Notes

I have been doing some of my favourite things today .... moving furniture, rearranging things and getting rid of clutter! It's been a great day really. I'm sure my darling hubby would tell you that I jump into these things with little thought but I actually spend a lot of time planning and measuring before I ever move anything. I try to think through how I use the space (or want to use it), what has worked and what I can change to make it work better.

Today I have been working on my craft studio which is quite a large space and has a lot of storage (read a lot of clutter!) I am not quite up to photographing this space yet, in fact, I will probably be working my way through the debris for the next 2 or 3 days or so. But as I use the same technique for any space I reorganise, I thought I would share some pictures I took earlier in the week. This is my overflow pantry.

If it is at all possible (and it is not always) my first step is to empty out the space I am organising completely. Many of the organising books / tips I have read suggest that you start with a shelf or a small area. I much prefer the all in method. This way, I really know what is in the space (even in the back corners).

Next comes the planning for what is going to go back into the space. I am just slightly obsessed with post-it notes but they are so handy! I write all the items that need to be stored on them. I like that I can move them around to plan my space on my kitchen bench and then move them to the area that is being organised while I put everything back.

And back it goes! Now I must get back to the mess I have made downstairs but I promise I will share pics once it is all complete. Happy organising!

My own planner

Over the years I have tried all kinds of planners. I have had week-to-an-opening, day-to-a-page, a gorgeous leather filofax style planner, a monthly planner and many variations on the above mentioned diaries. But since my move from career woman to family manager, I have struggled to find something that really meets my needs. The past 2 years, I have even tried a couple of mum-style planners but they have still not been quite right for me. So born of my frustration with what was currently on offer, I decided to make my own.

The Baines Family Planner (Mark I) was just what I wanted but couldn't find. It didn't have lots of pages that weren't relevant to my family, had my preferred vertical layout for my weekly calendar pages and of course, it had my lovely family on the front. What's not to love? Well, 7 months down the track, (I began working on this last October) I am, overall, still very happy with my planner but there were a couple of changes that I thought would really make a difference and so I designed Mark II.

From the outside it looks just the same but the inside has changed a bit to make it more user friendly and to work with the way I tend to record things. The key change is that I scrapped the week-to-view pages because while I have appointments most days, they are primarily the girls activities which I am quite familiar with and the details don't change often. And so I replaced them with a larger monthly calendar which fills 2 pages and has plenty of room for me to write my activities on.

I have also added a page for my weekly to do list. This is an idea I have been using for quite a while. My to do page has 9 boxes that fit a mini square post-it note in it. This allows me to prioritise the tasks I really need to get done in the week and then when I have completed them, I just chuck the post-it note in the bin. This keeps my to do list neat and tidy and stops it from becoming overwhelming. I use a bigger version of this to do list on my kitchen bench for tasks that need completing at some stage (but not necessarily this week). I need to see the reminders regularly as since having children, I seem to have the memory of a goldfish! (The exception to this is an uncanning recall of phone numbers and song lyrics - the former is more useful than the latter!)

I have lots of other pages in my planner so that I can keep all my notes together. I just prefer to have one "go to" book. And so far, so good.

Missing In Action (...on holidays with the family)

Happy Easter. Well I know that I have been M.I.A for the past couple of weeks. My apologies. The girls were on school holidays and then we went away as a family for 10 days where we took a technology break - no TV or laptop. I am not a big TV watcher but I do spend quite a bit of time on my laptop ... Facebook, Pinterest, various blogs. I think my family enjoyed having my full attention for the time we were away and we got active as a family ... bike rides, hiking, rock climbing and abseiling all featured.

We arrived home to family visiting from Perth and staying with us for a few days. I grew up in Perth so I don't see my extended family as often as I would like. Which means that when we do get together, we have a lot of catching up to do and invariably stay up way later than is conducive to being productive in the following days. This time our visitors were my aunt, Cavelle and cousin, Coelli. We shopped throughout the day and then talked throughout the night. And oh the ideas we swapped. Cavelle has 6 children so we chatted large family logistics for much of our time.

I love to know what other people do in their families. How they manage meal planning and preparation, chores and housework, handling behaviour. I love to discover new ideas to trial with my own family. And I have SO many new ideas I am just itching to try. So watch this space .....