A mama with ideas...

After living in Texas for 3 years, I like to think I have embraced the lifestyle! And one thing I have come to appreciate well is the charms of a classic frozen Margarita! I always thought I hated tequila... thanks to awful drinking games with neat cheap tequila back in my student days... but have been won over by this very popular cocktail here in the US. Apparently, the key is to get tequila made from 100% agave as this is the best indication that you are looking at a quality liquor. These spirits were produced using only fermented and distilled agave juice with water, whereas, cheaper tequilas use other sugars in the process. This is really the most important thing to look for - the rest is a matter of opinion. I was told if you stick to 100% agave tequila, you won't get a hangover, but I'm yet to test that theory!!!

The problem is that to recreate a classic frozen Margarita at home requires an ice blender (which I don't possess). It is also difficult to make in large batches, say for a party, unless you invest in a very expensive frozen Margarita machine (which I also don't possess). So, I tried a bit of an experiment and thought I would share the fabulous results!





You will need:

- Blanco Tequila (preferrably 100% agave)
- Tequila mix (either shop bought ready mix as I did, or the ingredients from your favourite Margarita recipe)
- A volume of water equal to the amount of ice (if melted) you would add to the margarita recipe before blending
- A freezer-proof container with a lid







I used a large plastic tub that can hold 7 cups volume (approx 1.65 litres). I then simply created a mix using the following ratios:

- 1 part tequila
- 3 parts tequila mix
- 3 parts water




Then simply put the lid on and stick the tub in the freezer overnight.  Take the tub out of the freezer about an hour before your guests arrive and using a fork mix up the ice and break up any larger chunks (it will have the consistency of quite hard slushy ice).










By the time your guests arrive it will have the perfect slushy consistency and can simply be ladled into your margarita glasses ... garnish with salt on the rims if you like and a fresh squeeze of lime! Store the tub in the fridge and it will stay slushy for several hours!







Super easy and delicious! Enjoy!

1. Get prepared in advance

Do your research now, while the little blighters are still at school! Look up local attractions and events calendars (try your local newspaper's website, local parks, libraries, cinemas etc...) so that you can plan a schedule of things to do in advance! Use a paper diary/calendar, use your calendar on your smartphone, or create one in Microsoft Publisher. Put together a calendar of events for your family, even if it's only a loose schedule. It gives you things to look forward to and to plan around.

Also, consider putting together a 'Ready To Go' bag! See the blog I wrote on this last summer.




2. Set a routine, and stick to it... sometimes at least

The temptation may be to let things slide. Lay-ins in the morning, late nights, mooching around and skipping chores are a wonderful prospect when you and the kids are exhausted getting towards the end of the school semester, but in my experience, too many unstructured days are a recipe for disaster. Try to have a flexible routine. Perhaps a later start in the morning, but still an expectation to be up, dressed and ready for action by a certain time! You could set aside certain times of the day for specific activities... for example, outdoor activities in the morning before it gets too hot, and then maybe, quiet time activities for an hour after lunch. Also, have set days of the week for certain activities, e.g. Monday is library day, Tuesday is for baking (you can incorporate a trip to the grocery store before hand and get the kids to help with the shopping for ingredients), Wednesday is for playdates, Thursday is Movie Day, etc...! Kids and adults benefit from structure and without it, the 100 days of summer hols become a haze!




3. Home school

Yes. You did read that right! Two and a half months off will undo a lot of the progress your child will have made academically if they don't utilise their little brains. Set aside a 30 minute chunk of the day (maybe at a regular time slot ... see point 2 above) to do some school work. It doesn't have to be dull as dishwater and can be fun! Try educational puzzles and games, video games, online resources and activity packs. Just a little bit of educational activity a day (especially if it revises stuff they have been doing at school) and it will keep their brains limber ready for the start of the new academic year. Just make sure you start as you mean to go on. If it's part of a daily routine established at the start of the school holiday there will be fewer complaints!

Check out these great workbooks and video games.


4. Play dates and reciprocal babysitting

Before the last day of school, exchange contact details with some of your child's classmates' parents. Take the initiative and organise a park play date for the first week off school with a few families and then organise a schedule with the other parents for the weeks ahead! You could even take the play date thing one step further. If you have friends with children a similar age you could set up a weekly play date swap. This enables each parent to have some well-deserved child-free time to run errands or just relax. For example, you could arrange for your children to go to a friend's house for a few hours on a Tuesday and then return the favour looking after their kids on a Thursday. The kids have friend's to play with (and so pester you less) and you get a few hours to yourself each week. Everyone's a winner!




5. Themes & projects

You could set a weekly theme and base all your activities around that theme. For example, you could have a farm theme... visit a farm park with another family, plant some vegetable seeds, bake a carrot cake, do some garden themed literacy/numeracy/art activities and etc... You could get each child to keep a summer holiday scrapbook, keeping photos, mementos and artwork from each week together.

6. Bribery

When all else fails and the kids are driving you crazy, don't feel bad about resorting to bribery! Just be sensible about it. Try using charts where the kids have to work towards getting a reward. Set out your expectations clearly first and agree the reward in advance. Think outside the box when it comes to a reward. You could treat the kids to a frozen yoghurt after a trip to the park on a Friday afternoon for good behaviour throughout the week rather than a monetary amount, candy or material object. Stick to your guns though, and only reward the behaviour that has been asked for! For more ideas check out my earlier post which includes a printable LEGO reward chart I created.

7. Camps

Summer camps can be really expensive, especially if you have more than one child. However, they can be a good option, especially for older kids with specific interests.




8. Low-cost options

If you have more than one child, summer camps can become cumulatively and prohibitively expensive. Short of picking your favourite child and only allowing that one to attend a camp, you could limit them to one week each, or just avoid them completely and come up with your own low-cost activities. This can be especially fun if you join up with other families. Suggestions:

- Use your local library - and not just for borrowing books. Many have free story times and activity classes you can sign up for.

- Local businesses sometimes have free kids' activities: Lowes DIY stores have a free build-and-grow scheme where kids can do building projects, Barnes & Noble hold free story times and etc...

- Parks - are a brilliant option. Many have play equipment, even splash pads, suitable for a wide range of ages. They also often have restrooms and picnic facilities... great for a change of scenery when the kids are driving you crazy, and even better when you meet friends for a play date!

- Museums and galleries sometimes have free days. Do your research ahead of time (see point one)!

- Cinemas often run a summer program of matinees for low cost. They won't be new releases, but you can see family favourites for just a few bucks! Treat the kids to some popcorn to make it a special (low-cost) occasion!

- Visit the dollar store and select some art supplies for a project.

- Get an annual pass to a favourite local attraction. For example, you can buy a family pass a local zoo for about $80 and visit as many times as you like throughout the holidays!

- Create a den or pitch a tent in the backyard (or in the house if the weather is bad)!

- Visit the beach, local nature reserve, woodland or river and get closer to nature!

- Try geo-caching to make walks and bike rides more exciting!

- Volunteer - find a local food bank, nursing home, or animal shelter and spend some of your summer holiday doing something worthwhile with your kids!

9. Remember... it's a holiday!

After a full-on academic year, you and the kids will need some time to relax. Don't try to fill every moment with activities or you will end up exhausted and needing to go back to school for a break. It's okay to have days with nothing planned. Let (insist) the kids play on their own sometimes... it's important that children learn to use their own imaginations and initiative. Trot out that really annoying line that your own parents used: "Only boring people get bored"! It's not true of course, but sometimes a little boredom is unavoidable and you should not feel obliged to entertain the troops continually!

10. Drink...

After a particularly stressful day with the kids... treat yourself to a glass of wine once they've gone to bed and remember the holidays won't last forever!

I have waxed lyrical about my obsession with Pinterest before... but it's really starting to become a problem. I am getting dissatisfied with perfectly functional areas of my home because they don't have perfectly coordinated accents and creative & ingenious storage solutions. The thing is, that functional does not equal pretty.

Take my laundry room slash cloakroom slash downstairs bathroom. It is what I like to refer to as an organised mess. There is:

• a cupboard above the washer & dryer to store cleaning supplies. Check.
• a row of hooks for coats & bags. Check.
• storage shelving for shoes. Check.
• a basket for dirty laundry and a basket for clean laundry. Check, and check.

But it's still a mess and quite frankly an eyesore. Unfortunately, this utility room opens directly from my open plan kitchen and dining area so everyone gets to see it. It is also where our downstairs toilet it is located, so most visitors need to actually venture in there. Cue embarrassed me. So after a recent depression-inducing browse through Pinterest, I decided to something about it. I felt there was no harm borrowing ideas from the grand schemes displayed by people with A, lots more money than me; B, no kids; and C, domestic help!!! I would just adapt them to suit my budget and lifestyle! :-)

Firstly, I took stock of what I had in this area and made an inventory of the things that needed storing and a list of activities/functions that the room had to serve. I employed this strategy recently when organising my kitchen junk drawer. While I call the area a laundry room, it is in fact much more than that. Functions carried out in the area include: laundry & ironing; storage of coats, hats & scarves, umbrella, bags & shoes; storage of cleaning supplies & equipment; storage of DIY items such as lightbulbs, flashlights etc... It is also where the washbasin for the downstairs bathroom is located!

Ultimately, what I needed was storage that worked! The biggest investment was replacing the wire cube shelving with some cupboards from the Stuva range from Ikea. I chose these because they are sturdy, well built and spacious, allowing laundry baskets to be stored on the shelves comfortably.

However, they are also not one-trick ponies! They are actually a range designed to be used as furniture in a child's bedroom. You can buy hanging rails for the interior to turn them into wardrobes. This is important to me as we rent our home and as expats are likely to move on in the next couple of years... I want multi-function furniture that can be re-purposed in other parts of the house! Taking inspiration from many of the aforementioned Pinterest gems, I purchased some extra laundry baskets to aid the sorting process. One is for the clothes ready to put away in the boys' closets upstairs. One is for Him Indoors & myself! The other is for items that require ironing. Each basket is labelled using some nifty box labels I found in Target (far more practical than fancy chalkboards)... these are similar!

The square Sterilite ones fit the shelves perfectly and they come in white or beige!

Another great aspect of this range of furniture from Ikea is the option for deep drawers.  These are perfect for storing shoes of all sizes (including the boats that Him Indoors wears)!!!

For taming the clutter in the wall mounted cupboards above the washer/dryer I bought a variety of plastic baskets and bins and sorted the contents of my cleaning storage cupboard, making things easier to find.

A major improvement was in de-cluttering the coat hooks and putting a basket for the school backpacks on the floor below. This helped remove some of the bulk on the hooks. I labelled each hook for a member of the family so that the kids can take ownership of their own items. I found this worked brilliantly for some stair baskets I set up. To label each hook without damaging the walls I used some brilliant Post-it Labels. I also invested in a wall rack to organise the brooms and mops that were cluttering up the corner. This has made a huge impact on reining in the clutter.

I used suction hooks to hang things like the clothes horse off the side of the dryer.

One of the best investments I made was to get a countertop ironing board. As with many ironing boards I found the pad that it came with was a little thin, so I also invested in a universal fit felt pad. I have another suction cup on the side of the wall mounted cabinets to store it when not in use, but it really doesn't take up any space so is actually easy to leave out.  It really streamlines the laundry process too, as if an item needs a quick iron I can do it as I pull it out of the dryer. I added an over the door hanging rail to help with this.  I store hangers here to put ironed items on.

One of the most effective things I employed in cheering up the room (without being able to actually decorate) was to pin a piece of bright patterned fabric to the wall behind the washer & dryer!! The fabric was only about $5 a yard from Ikea and really creates an impact... I love using cheap fabric for cheap & easy DIY wall art on a big scale!

BEFORE...





AFTER...

I am the Queen of Over-Catering. I can't help myself. I think it's because I was a guest at a memorable (for the wrong reason) event where the catering was woefully inadequate to the point where people were jostling over the last sausage roll at the buffet. It was utterly cringe-worthy and has left me scarred for life! So I nearly always end up with a glut of food after I have hosted a party. This Halloween is no exception and it wasn't helped by some last minute illness-induced cancellations. Oh boy.

So, I ended up with a large quantity of lasagna, cannelloni and pizza to use up. I froze what I could and sent Him Indoors and the Big One to work/school with packed lunches of pasta & pizza for the last few days. But I still had rather a few slices of cold and frankly unappetisingly dry pizza left in the fridge that would look at me accusingly every time I opened the door. If there's something I hate more than under-catering, it's wasting food!

Thankfully, whilst I was trying to convince myself that the pizza wouldn't be so bad once reheated and slathered in ketchup, I was struck by inspiration. Bread pudding. After all, what is pizza other than bread with tomato sauce and cheese on top! However, bread pudding is usually sweet with sugar and dried fruit... would a savoury version work? The answer is a resounding and delicious 'yes'!





You will need...

• leftover pizza
• eggs (1-2 per slice depending on the thickness of the crust and size of the slice)
• milk (about 1/2 to 1 cup depending on the number of eggs used)
• Parmesan (approximately 1/4 cup, plus some extra for the top)
• seasoning
• Optional: oregano
• Optional: extra vegetables/cooked meat.

First off, you will need an oven-proof baking dish that will accomodate your pizza neatly.  Lightly grease the dish with butter or oil and set aside.  Then simply cut your cold leftover pizza into chunks about an inch or so square.  Spread them evenly in the ovenproof dish.  You can add extra vegetables or cooked meats to your pizza if you'd like.  I used bell pepper and mushrooms (although only on one side with the mushrooms as my kids are fusspots)!

Then beat your eggs and add the milk, Parmesan, seasoning and herbs.  Pour the eggy mixture over the pizza until it is all coated.  It doesn't need to be swimming in it, but you will need enough liquid so that all the pizza will fully absorb it.  You can always beat a few extra eggs and add if your dish looks too dry.  Cover the dish in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least half an hour so that the pizza has a chance to fully absorb the liquid and go soggy. You could even leave it overnight so that you have a pre-prepared brunch dish just waiting to pop in the oven!  

Sprinkle a handful of Parmesan over the top and season before popping in the oven at 350'F (180'C) for 30-45 minutes until golden brown and cooked through.









You can either serve hot, cut into slices and served with a nice green salad.  Or it's good cut up and served cold too!

Enjoy!