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Children, Food, Inspiration, Recipes

Camping with kids- a little guide

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I posted a while back on my IG @arangoirene about going camping with our kids sharing some of the adventures we had while we were visiting a UK coastal town. I was surprised by the amount of parents that asked about it- what did we take, did the kids like it, was it cold, what did we eat while camping etc that I decided writing a blog post sharing all my experience in the matter was a must, and here it is. My guide to camping with kids! The most important part of camping is having the right kit. For us, these are the essentials: A good tent. We love our Regatta tent (www.regatta.co.uk) It’s a six person tent and the way its structured works perfectly for a family of 4-6 people. It’s called Karuna. It has three bedrooms, one of them on the opposite side of the other two giving some privacy as the kids grow older. For now, we all sleep in one large bedroom that can later on be divided in two by a very practical fabric zip (included). We use the other bedroom as storage keeping the living room as a place to chill if cold…

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14 August, 2021
1690
Children, Food, Recipes

Bounty style bars

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The kids absolutely love making (and eating!) these. They are not only easy to make, but they also needs very few ingredients and the result its always delicious. I don’t usually follow a recipe but because we did an Instagram Live cooking session with @triplets_in_my_kitchen I actually wrote the measures down so I though it would be good to share it here. You will need a large bowl to mix all the ingredients it, a pan and metal bowl for melting chocolate bain marie style, and a spoon for mixing. Ingredients100gr shredded coconut1 tablespoon date paste* or maple syrup1 tablespoon coconut oil, melted1/4 tsp saltChocolate of choice for melting. I make our own or use Raw Halo or Pico. In a bowl, mix the shredded coconut with the date paste and coconut oil. shape with your hands into logs or press the mixture into a tray. Place in the freezer for 20-30 minutes. Melt the chocolate using the bain marie method and dip the frozen logs until covered in chocolate. Let the chocolate set by placing them onto a parchment paper sheet after dipping. To watch our videos on how to make these, click here *date paste can be made…

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26 February, 2021
1941
Children, Food, Recipes

Vegan Fluffy Spelt pancakes recipe

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I don’t know if your kids are the same, but Ariana and Oliver love making requests for special breakfasts (other that the usual sugar free cereal I give them daily) and one of their all time favourites is pancakes! As you know traditional pancakes are made with white flour, eggs, milk and sugar so not really the type of thing I would make for my kids but luckily they are pretty easy to make vegan and, in my opinion, way more delicious as well. My recipe uses spelt flour, but I have also made them gluten free using buckwheat flour and the recipe works too. I personally love using spelt for the slightly nutty flavour they bring to the end result. I tend to eat my pancakes plain, so using spelt flour is important to me. The other reason I love this recipe is because, although I am giving you measures, I make it without measuring anything so its really a one bowl to clean kind of breakfast recipe- less mess, less cleaning makes it easier for me to say yes to requests for special breakfasts in the house. It is simply a very forgiving recipe and one that I…

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16 February, 2021
2044
Children, Food, Recipes

Heart bagels- perfect for a quick lunch!

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We are so excited to have started our half term holiday. I think this time around, the most excited one is mum as I don’t have to be a Primary School teacher for the next week and trust me, it was hard work 🙂 So, now we have full 10 days ahead of us to fill with adventures and of course, we are limited on what we can do. No traveling, not mixing with other families etc, but we won’t let this bring us down! We are going riding this weekend as the horses still need to be exercised and cared for regardless of lockdowns so at least we have that to look forward to for tomorrow. We have decided to bring our lunch along and make a day out of it and thats why these bagels were made. Just to keep the kids busy I decided to make our own sandwich bread. I usually buy the pita style bread from @farinalondon because its soft easy to eat for kids while being big enough to make a good sandwich size even for the adults. Plus as they deliver it every morning, we always have it freshly baked. But for this…

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14 February, 2021
2299
Children, Food, Inspiration

Allotment life with kids

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Some of you might know that we have an allotment as I share snippets of our time there on our IG grid. Many times I have been asked how we manage the kids while we are there and what do the kids help with so I thought I would share some of the things the kids enjoy doing and what do I do to ensure we have a pleasant time at our veggie garden. We have had the allotment since four years now and we share the site with another lovely family (the founders of our all time favourite lollies Lickalix) and between us all we have four children in between 0-7 years old. Very early we discovered that the key to kids enjoying the allotment is to make sure they have their own set of easy tasks to complete (and plenty of snacks!). They do not like to do everything, so we try and allocate them considering what each child likes most. For example, Oliver loves digging while Ariana enjoys planting more. All the kids absolutely LOVE picking strawberries and raspberries and these never make it home with us 🙂 So my tips for a successful allotments day are:…

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9 February, 2021
2158
Vegan Christmas Vanilla Cookies
Children, Food, Recipes

Vegan Vanilla Sugar Christmas Cookies

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Nothing better than homemade gifts for Christmas (at least I feel that way!) So the kids and I have been making bags of cookies for our friends and neighbours to gift them this Festive Season. To be honest, it’s both for our friends benefit as much as ours as I keep the kids busy in the afternoons baking and decorating and we get homemade cookies every day 🙂 So without further delay, this is the recipe we have been using for years and we would love to share it with you! I love that we now have block vegan butters such as Naturli, as the texture of the cookies in this recipe has very much improved since we use this brand. Of course the look of the cookies will depend on which cookie cutters you use. I have purchased these cutters from Wish that come with a stamp, so we don’t necessarily have to use icing to make the cookies look pretty. It saves time and reduces the amount of sugar used, but obviously the kids love icing cookies, so we also make lots of the plain type. Vegan Vanilla Sugar Cookies 250gr vegan butter at room temperature. I use @naturli 220gr…

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24 November, 2020
2078
Children, Crafts

Lockdown and homeschooling- how we are learning and having fun

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During these difficult times in the world we, like many other people, are suddenly in charge of our children education. This can be quite a shock for many parents, just like it was for us until we realised that there is a lot of help out there to make learning fun at home! I think I have mentioned before that Ariana is super creative and loves to make artistic things while on the other hand, she absolutely loves maths, science and coding! So there is not surprise here that Ariana’s favourite thing to do is use her Osmo Creative Kit to fill her creative side and then spend hours (and I actually mean HOURS) coding with the Osmo Coding Awbie game that connects to the base that comes on all Starter Kits. In the meantime, I can spend time doing things with Oliver knowing that Ariana is learning valuable skills. The Osmo Kits go from 3-12 years of age, so fit all ages in primary and has plenty of different games and activities for the kids to enjoy. Due to the success of the first couple of games we tried and taking advantage of the Spring Sales on Amazon (that…

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6 April, 2020
2422
Beauty, Children, Crafts, Inspiration

Homemade bath bombs

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Ariana is a big fan of bath bombs. I mean, who isn’t right? It’s just so satisfactory watching them dissolve in your bath while the smell of the essential oils surrounds you, the colours make your bath water look cool and you see all those tiny bubbles disturbing the surface of the water… Unfortunately, good quality bath bombs tend to be very expensive and a lot of them use not so good for the skin colouring agents. That’s when Ariana asked me why couldn’t we just made our own. And I though, oh well, why not? We had previously attended a workshop at Lush, where they taught us how to press the bath bombs together, so it was really a matter to make the mixture beforehand. I started my research and I discovered that making your own is pretty popular and you can even buy kits for it on Amazon (like this one) but I preferred to select our own essential oils and use different colourings for ours and we simply bought each ingredient separately. Obviously being Ariana who she is, an aspiring scientist, she started asking me why bath bombs fizz, but during my research I had already prepared…

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2 April, 2020
2423
Children

When fun meets learning

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There is nothing I appreciate more than time spent with the kids having fun, but when that time also doubles as time spend with the kids learning its even better! We have been reviewing games from Orchard Toys and I have to say that we have loved them. We already had their iconic Little Bus Lotto Game, (possibly you have this one too, check the cupboard!) but we have got to know a few more than have become favourites around here pretty quick. you see, games are a fantastic way to keep the kids away from the dreaded TV, or if like us you don’t have oner, the iPads, most of them need to be played by 2 or more kids, so they encourage participation and builds social skills and teaches the kids good lessons on winning and losing but because the games are short, its great that all kids can win a time or two in an afternoon playing so nobody feels bad about it. Our current favourite is Giraffes in Scarves, a funny game, where the little kids like Oliver practice addition and it is also fun for children Ariana’s age so they both play it together most…

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10 December, 2019
1826
Children, Food, Recipes

Vegan Crunchy Oat bars

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If there is one thing I love is crunchy snacks so when I received these gorgeous pots of Honea (vegan alternative to honey) from PB  I had to try to make crunchy oat bars with it! Talking to the brand through Instagram I asked them if it really tastes like honey and they responded ‘We’ll let you be the judge of that’ and sent me some jars to try.  I am super happy to report that it TRULY DOES taste like honey and it has the same consistency as well. Perfect balance of sweetness with a floral undertone. I loved it and so did the kids. Now on to the recipe. I made a very large batch on the roasting tray of the oven because we are 6 people in my house right now and I didn’t want to have to fight the guests for the bars 😉 200gr oat flour (oats grounded) 300gr jumbo style oats 1/2 cup Honea (vegan honey alternative) 1/4 cup coconut sugar 1/2 cup coconut oil Pinch of Himalayan salt Pinch of vanilla powder Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Melt the coconut oil, add the Honea and mix well. In a large bowl…

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20 March, 2019
1602
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