Dreaming of a Life

So it's not secret that I love the idea of a country lifestyle. A pretty cottage, a garden full of vegetables, herbs and flowers, cycling to the local village to buy my bread fresh front he bakers. Yes, I know that sounds like something out of and Enid Blyton book but a girl can dream right?  My obsession for that lifestyle was encouraged this weekend when I took Haydn out on a gorgeous Sunday morning to a local flea market.

He was so well behaved and let his mama walk round all the vintage furniture while I mental placed it all in my cottage. After we shopped (and I purchased one or two kitchen items) we went to sit out in the sunshine and had a drink, this boy is just so cheeky!

You wouldn't know it to look at this photo but he was feeling a little poorly so as a treat we went to feed the ducks and see the pet area to cheer him up a bit. Well, we discovered they were selling lots and lots of different types of chickens...so I have a new obsession. Yes, I want some chickens, so a large concealed garden is going on my ever growing 'house must have list' that I have generated for when we finally buy our house. I would also like a pigmy goat, I have always wanted a goat but Im scared it will eat everything I own.

I thought this coop was pretty nice! Just need a garden now....

Another part of the lifestyle I am working towards is the healthy aspect of it and that includes widening my food vocabulary! I want to try lots of wonderful and different fruit and vegetables and eventually grow my own. I'm looking into any local farmers markets at the moment as I have never been to one and I'd love to say I bought locally to help my community.

I think my first challenge is to start with a herb garden that I can keep alive more than a week. At this very moment I have an empty window box which systematically gets filled with fresh herb plants which I forget to water and then have to replace.

These were the herbs that I did not kill. They were fantastic but the plants that remained were not so lucky. Maybe I need to grow a little myself before I take on a garden, but its all there...in the dream.

Love Danielle
xxx

On Feeding Littles

Let me start off by saying that I am not a super-healthy, natural, organic mama. As much as I would like to be, and am working on changing towards. I have been thinking a lot recently about what I feed my son and how it affects him. As you may know, I work for Slimming World and one of the things I hear most often is that School Holidays are the hardest time to slim because all the children's snacks and treats are in the cupboards and temptation is just too much. THIS SCARES THE CRAP OUT OF ME!! I know its easy to give children, high sugar, high fat convenience snacks to calm them, please them or (as we have all done) bribe them when they are screaming or playing hell in the supermarket! But while we let them nibble on these unnutritional snacks do we really think about what lessons we are giving them and what the effect that the food is having on their little bodies. Anyone who is losing weight or has lost weight, is constantly saying to yourself...I don't want this in my body, its not good enough, when it comes to these snack foods. We know it isn't good for us and therefore refuse to eat it. So why then if it's not good enough for our bodies, do we insist that it's ok for them? Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that children should never be allowed to have these foods, but surely having them in the cupboard to be used as a daily food or even worse when they are eaten many times during the day removes the 'rarity and specialness' from them and they get transitioned into everyday food items that children are helping themselves to more and more often.

Recently I have been paying a lot of attention, not only to my food intake but also that of my family. It has been noticed that (kinda obviously) Haydns behaviour and attention span deteriorates after eating certain foods and this made me think long and hard about what I was letting him eat. I want to involve him in this process and not just suddenly swap out all of his foods so we got a book called The Healthy Lunch Box and sat together to choose some foods he would like to get from our next shopping trip. To my surprise, this was his favourite:

We made a list together and hit the shops, we choose lots and lots of fresh fruit and veg and absolutely by accident, when we got home there was no chocolate or processed junk in our shopping....at all! Everyday now we make better choices and have still eradicated ant form of junk in our house. Please don't get me wrong, we still eat chocolate, ice cream and cake but its appreciated so much more as a one off treat we can enjoy on days out or as a family date.

I have also been encouraging him to help me in the kitchen with the cooking as I think it's quite scary how so many people grow up without the basic knowledge of how to cook!

I know it's not a perfect system but I feel confident that day by day I make baby steps towards becoming a healthier person and am teaching my family to have eating habits for life!

Love Danielle
xxx