Category: Inspiration

  • Camping with kids- a little guide

    Camping with kids- a little guide

    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 or rainy. We love that it has a large sitting room, a must if the weather turns, but also very practical to store all camping items and luggage. Also for those that are not keen on building their tent or if they are the only adult, I highly recommend checking the inflatable Kolima tents from Regatta. One only person can set them up and it really takes only 10 minutes!  My dream tent 🙂
    • Sleeping bags- for camping in the UK, I highly recommend a warm sleeping bag as it gets quite cold at night. I am not particularly a person that suffers with the cold, but I do appreciate having a good & warm sleeping bag. For the kids I highly recommend the sleeping bags from Regatta (the Hilo collection) that extends in size as they grow. The kid’s sleeping bags are two seasons but they are always warm in them as we don’t camp if the outside temperature overnight is lower than 8 degrees anyways. Also, I highly recommend the thermal base layers from Muddy Puddles for sleeping. They have a little hole for the thumb making sure the kids arms keep covered through the night. My kids move around a lot and this way I am not worried they will catch a cold! They also wear woolly hats if very cold.
    • Insulation mats. I find this is essential to have a good night sleep. In fact, we are never cold because we always make sure we insulate the sleeping area properly.  We use a combination of foam mats topped with self inflatable mattresses. We create a sleeping surface with the mats and then put the mattresses on top for each of us. We put the kids in between us to make sure they stay on top of the mats during the night and to insulate them from the outside temperature as much as possible.
    • Travel pillows- one of the items we have but we need to change because they are not fluffy enough. Even the kids don’t like much the ones we have. They are small to carry, but really thin once in use. My advice- invest in better ones from the start. It will make camping more enjoyable if you have a decent night sleep! NI have been told these ones from Decathlon are amazing and definitely my next purchase. Also a good price to pay for ultimate comfort don’t you think?
    • Table and chairs. We didn’t have these before and we simply used a camping blanket but after going camping with @allmumstalk and @alldadstalk and using their Regatta chairs and table we decided they were essentials too! We now have a folding table with extendable legs and comfy chairs from Regatta. The table folds and closes as a flat box and the chairs come with their own bags. Really like them and wouldn’t go camping without them!
    • Gas stove. Nothing better than coming out of your tent early in the morning and having a hot cup of tea! We have a basic Camping Gaz stove and it works perfectly for a family of four.
    • A cooler bag. We bring a basic one from Decathlon and I consider it an essential item as we bring pre (home)made meals to simplify food prep while camping. I will write more about this later on.
    • A water container. We have a collapsible water bag and we fill it for drinking and cooking without the need to go to a water source every time.
    • We also bring a frying pan and a pot for making breakfast and dinner. We usually have lunch out while we explore the area where we are staying. We also have a popcorn pan the kids love using as well as s’more sticks for the fire. Most camping sites rent or simply have firepits for use while there. Otherwise we would recommend the foldable firepit from Regatta- does the trick and can be used for cooking as it comes with a grill, its easy to empty and carry back home inside a large rubbish bag (don’t forget to bring rubbish bags too!). Can’t link it as it seems to be out of stock at this time, but keep an eye pout for it- its a fabulous item to have!
    • Head lamps and a hanging lamp for the tent- bathrooms are usually on one side of the camp and walking to them at night is tricky. Specially if like us, you prefer to camp more on the wild side rather that fully established camping sites.  We use headlamps for that to keep our hands free. The kids absolutely love these and play with them at night.
    • Frisbees and any other outdoor games you can carry for the kids, although they usually find friends at the campsite and enjoy wild play. This is the best about camping- children enjoy nature with very little else than their imagination and truly have the best time.

    We really like Regatta and have multiple items from them so we reached out to collaborate with them as we already owned a lot of their camping gear. They are well priced, have great sales and their items are durable, so definitely a great brand to get your equipment from. They provided us with the tent and the camping table.

    Another topic that seemed of great curiosity amongst our followers is what to eat while camping. Between me and my friend Esther Kufrin @ekufrin, we came up with the perfect meals to bring for two families for our last camping trip. I am sharing here our tricks and how we bring the items needed to reduce space and amount of things needed. I am sure you will come up with many other meals while reading ours, which is great!

    Breakfast. This meal we always do at camp, because the kids wake up early and its just easier to make something there for everybody before packing everything for a day out. We usually bring vegan, eggs (for those that eat them), baked beans, mushrooms and bread for the first breakfast of the camping trip. We bring the items refrigerated in the cooler and are cooked the next day so they are always fresh.  Other breakfasts we bring along breads to make toast with butter and jam and porridge. Porridge is definitely the best breakfast for camping! Doesn’t need refrigeration and its cooked fresh every time. It can also taste so different depending what you add to it. Esther makes hers with cinnamon, maple syrup, nuts and seeds and uses almond milk while my children love theirs with banana, cinnamon and maple syrup and made with oat milk. Both amazing options for a good start to the day. Sometimes I bring my spelt pancakes along to the trip (pre made) and heat them up for the kids. They can also double as snacks if we don’t use them in the morning.

    For dinner while camping we have enjoyed having vegan burgers and sausages made in the fire pit. We bring buns, lettuce and tomatoes in the cooler and enjoy this dinner the first night. Another dinner option is what Esther calls Campsite chilli, which we make using cans of beans, passata and cans of corn cooked together in a large pot with cumin powder, a dash of chilli powder. We top the chilli pan with grated cheese and we eat it using corn chips for forks. A fun meal for the kids and very filling.

    We also have had pasta Bolognese. We make the vegan Bolognese at home and freeze it so it keeps in the cooler for a couple of days. We simply need to cook the pasta and add the defrosted chilli for a hearty and easy meal.

    Before I forget! There is another little trick I have for camping, to make the evenings and bedtimes easier for the kids. I bring their hot water bottles and fill them just before bed so they get warm and comfy in their sleeping bags. I now also have one for me, specially if we camp when the nights get colder- a total game changer!

    For any questions, please simply contact me through IG on @arangoirene and check out my reels and posts there for more images.

  • Allotment life with kids

    Allotment life with kids

    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:

    • bring plenty of snacks
    • allocate a couple of tasks to each child so they feel useful and part of the ‘team’
    • bring games like puzzles or figures for free play.
    • go in blocks of a couple of hours, too long and kids get restless
    • bring a friend of the kids along for longer days

    The things the kids help woth are:

    • preparing the ground. Oliver enjoys the digging in March preparing the soil fro planting in spring and summer.
    • Ariana enjoys helping with the potting and growing the seeds at home to them plant at the allotment.
    • both kids enjoy picking. Their favourites to pick are the fruits because they eat them as they pick them, but they also help with beans and peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes.
    • digging for potatoes. They both like this and play competitions to see who gets more potatoes out of the ground and who gets the largest.

    I think kids learn to enjoy things as they go, so don’t get frustrated if they complain the first few times. These two have learnt to search for lady bugs, play with butterflies, dig for worms and recognise different types of birds and now enjoy these things and ask to go to the allotment to do more of it.

    A lot of other allotment people say that it is a great idea to leave a space for the kids to grow their own plants. I have given the kids a space in our garden at home for this and Ariana is growing flowers instead of vegetables. I think the important thing is to let kids discover nature and understand where food comes from and that it takes time and effort for this to happen. The rest is just getting dirty and having fun and we all know kids are experts at this!

    The kids are wearing Molo clothes from our favourite clothing store Childrensalon. You can read more about kids and allotment life here in a lovely blog post done in collaboration with Childrensalon.

    Ariana’s outfit

    Oliver’s outfit

  • Homemade bath bombs

    Homemade bath bombs

    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 the answers to the questions I thought she would ask and I was prepared! So I started to explain about chemical reactions and how when baking soda and citric acid are mixed and are then put in water, react against each other making all the little bubbles that we see while the bath bombs dissolves in the bath water. These bubbles that make the water become so fizzy are made of carbon dioxide gas. I stopped the explanation right after explaining what carbon dioxide is because otherwise there would have been no end!

    So, without further info to share except the recipe, I’ll just write that up for you 🙂

    You will need:
    – 2 cups baking soda
    – 1 cup epsom salts, powdered
    – 1 cup citric acid
    – 1 cup cornstarch
    – 5 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
    – a bit of water in a spray bottle
    – 30 drops your preferred essential oil
    butterfly pea powder for the blue, turmeric for the yellow, pitaya powder for the pink (or you can use food colouring)
    – a large bowl to mix into and separate smaller ones for the different colours
    – bath bomb moulds (we used these ones), chocolate silicone moulds or similar

    In the large bowl, mix the citric acid, epsom salts, cornstarch and baking soda. Add the coconut oil slowly and mix well, spray water regularly until you can just about press the mixture and it keeps its shape. Don’t add more water at that stage. It’s important to not add the water all at once at the beginning as you can activate the chemical reaction and have the bubbles starting before you even made the bombs!

    At this stage you can add the essential oils and mix well and then divide the mixture into smaller bowls ready for colouring. Add the colours to each bowl mixing well to have an homogeneous looking bath bomb.

    Now it’s time to make the bath bombs! All you need to do it to fill both sides of a mould with your preferred colours, whether its a mixture of various ones in layers or just one. you need to fill the bath bomb way more than to the top but don’t press the top much as you want the two sides to merge when you press them together and it doesn’t happen if each side has been already pressed down. (hopefully this makes sense to you!)

    Once you have boths sides overfilled, merge them quickly together and press to make the bath bomb shape. Some excess mixture will come out- that its normal. And that’s it. Definitely not rocket science and its a lot of fun to do. Apart from the science lesson, you can also ask the kids to help measure the ingredients etc so they get engaged during the whole process. Keep each bath bomb on its mould until the next day so they set. After 24 hours they are ready to be taken out of the mould and use or store for up to 6 months 🙂


  • Living Plant Walls- are they good for a private garden?

    Living Plant Walls- are they good for a private garden?

    A couple of days ago, I passed by this wonderful wall close to Paddington Station and spotted this beautiful living wall. That little stretch on the side of the Canal is full of street art and inspiring views and architecture. I love walking by the Canal, checking out the little boats (one of which is actually home to a dear friend of mine!), seeing the swans swim by and people strolling around enjoying the walk. It always feels like a little break from the city. (more…)

  • Autumn baked apples with cinnamon & cashew cream

    Autumn baked apples with cinnamon & cashew cream

    My mum is an excellent cook. She has pretty much, ‘veganised’ all her family cooking repertoire to adapt to our eating ways. I am pretty impressed of what a fabulous job she has done as some of these dishes are very much meat based. I truly think achieving such a spectacular flavor as she has done has a lot of merit! (thanks mum)

    This recipe is not of those those, though, but it is a recipe my mum adores and we made together for dessert while I was visiting them. We used my mum’s favourite apples, the Reineta variety, but can be made using other apple types. Large apples seem to do a better job though. In the UK, Braeburn and Granny Smith are my favorites to use.

    Baked apples, are delicious this time time of the year, with apples bought at the Farmers Market or picked from the garden (or in my case, from the neighbors garden). They also pair well with coconut yogurt, banana ice cream, oat cream… you name it!

    These are topped with homemade cashew cream and they were super delicious and filling.

    You will need:

    1 large apple per person
    1 tablespoon coconut oil per apple, melted
    1 1/2 tablespoon coconut sugar per apple
    1/4 tsp cinnamon per apple
    1/8 tsp vanilla powder per apple

    Heat the oven to 160/180 degrees. In a bowl mix the melted coconut oil, cinnamon, vanilla & coconut sugar. Remove the core of each apple without taken the bottom off so you create like a little container inside the apple. Place the apples into an oven safe tray and fill the holes with the coconut oil and spices mixture. We also like to put a cinnamon stick inside the apples, looks fabulous! Bake for around 15minutes until the sugar start to caramelize. To serve, you can add some coconut yogurt, cashew cream or similar over the top. Best eaten while warm but they are also pretty amazing cold 🙂

     

  • Working with concrete for succulent planters

    Working with concrete for succulent planters

    One of the projects Ariana and myself enjoyed the most this summer, was making these super cool concrete planters. It was fun (and easy) from beginning to end- choosing the paper and plastic containers for the shapes, choosing the plants for each, mixing the concrete with water and finally, assembling the whole project together! Oliver just watched us through the whole process highly uninterested, but I am hoping to get him engaged in our craft making soon 🙂

    There are different ways to make concrete pieces; you can buy the ready to mix powder, like Breton (which we did on this occasion) or mix the concrete with sand yourself to various proportions.This lat option is certainly the way to go if you are planning to do larger pieces because the other mix would be too expensive. I have been looking for a white coloured concrete for a project I have in mind and it seems Snowcrete is widely available, but regular concrete would do for a grey looking finish.

    Making these super cool pots didn’t take long at all (except the waiting time for the concrete to dry!) and it was super easy. I mean, Ariana is 3 and she managed to get them done almost by herself. All you need to do is to choose two containers per pot. The larger one will make the outside of the pot determining both the size and shape of the final product. The smaller one, will set the size of the interior of the pot and that would be the space that you would have for your succulents. We are not leaving a drainage whole, so bear that in mind when choosing the plants to go inside.

    Mix your concrete powder with water as specified in the instructions, foil the pots you are going to use to make it easy to remove them once the concrete is set. You will need to oil the inside and bottom of the larger pot and the outside and bottom of the smaller one. Fill the larger pot with the mixture and press down the smaller container inside to create the hole. Clean the top of the pot or flatten the concrete on the surface for an even finish. You will have to weight down the inside pot as it is difficult to keep it down without applying pressure. It is also a good idea to tap the container a few times on a hard surface to help the bubbles to come up making sure the whole pot is even and stronger without any air pockets.

    Leave the pot to dry for 24 hours and remove (or peel) away the containers. Fill them with soil and plants and they are ready to decorate your house or to give as a gift to someone else. We made one for us and one for Tia Hele (The kids adoptive auntie here in London). She LOVED it 🙂