Holidays!!!

Who would of thought! Chris has 3 weeks off from his fulltime job which means I get a bit of a break from the shop. YEAH!
I'm already into week 2 of his break and already I feel so much better. Today is the 2nd, that's right SECOND, day I have decided not to get changed out of my PJs, ahhh bliss. Note: I have put on a bra though. lol.
Apart from catching up on much needed sleep, I have been trying to do things I wouldn't normally be able to or fit in my days. Not only have I caught up on washing, I have been baking new/different things for Riley.
Today I plan on making some cookie dough, of course gluten and dairy free. I also made carbonara from scratch for lunch, but my eyes were too big for my stomach, so Chris has some lunch tomorrow now.
Last week, I had lunch with the girls from the cafe near work.  We went to the sports club, meanwhile I left Chris at the shop with Riley. It was great. We took our time eating lunch and enjoyed chatting about various things, followed by a little flutter on the pokies. Time flew, before we knew it we had been there for 4hrs, :o and only 1 phonecall from Chris, and that was just asking if I could bring him back some lunch.
I tried to organise a meet with the mother's group I was active with before we opened up the shop, they still meet weekly and so many new little siblings, however couldn't attend because Ri had a stomach bug. Bugger! Maybe another week.
We have done quite a bit of colouring in, with actual textas. Yeah for Riley! and we have also done painting. Wow did we make a mess. So glad we have a large tiled area because about 2sq metres was covered in paint. But I did manage to get some lovely hand and foot prints I would like to frame and hang with the ones I did when he was 2 months old.
This week I would love to catch up with one of my closest mates. She has been very supportive of me, with the shop and Riley and just life in general. She has spent many hours keeping me company up at the shop and also taking Riley for many walks to give me a break. So I would love to get out and up the coast on her day off and enjoy spending a day with her, just the 2 of us.
One thing I wont be able to do this break is take a road trip to visit my mate. I was really looking forward to being able to catch up with her but unfortunately I wont be able to make the 9hr drive. :( However she might be this way in the next couple of weeks so hopefully we can get a chance to catch up still.
So far my break has been relaxing, I'm not looking forward to it ending and having to slog it out again till the next lot of holidays. . .

Play-doh!

I thought making playdough was easy, oh how wrong I was.  I printed off a recipe from the net and thought great I will just substitute plain flour with GF (gluten free) plain flour. Why did I not think to google a GF playdough recipe.

I get home and set about my way to make what I thought would be a super easy mix. I start well, I get the flour, oil, water, colour - Blue, and salt ready...a cup of salt, What the..? I thought there was meant to be cream of tartar in here somwhere...no recipe doesn't want that.

I follow the recipe and I end up with this bowl of sticky goop. Well thats not what I wanted. I add more flour, it wasn't helping. So I thought wait maybe I need xanthan gum (to replace the gluten), Quick Chris I need reforcements, come help. Out he trotts giving in to my every demand until I decided this just isn't working. My hands, bench, bowl and glass cutting board are covered in this blue goop that is meant to be playdough. At my demand he goes to the study to google "Gluten free playdough recipe". It says boiling water but mine said cold...lets microwave it. Back to the kitchen we go. "Hold the board while I scape it off" "easy don't pull it off the bench", It was like glue. finially we get a good portion of it into the bowl and in the microwave. EWW its drying out. Oh well. Chris goes back to google more. We saw slight improvements after microwaving it but really had little faith we were on a winning track. This is no longer an individual task! I decide it now needs the cream of tartar, I know it should be there, google tells me 4 table spoons. In they go....slight improvement again.... in goes more flour, last of that box. I keep trying to knead it in hope it will come together, it isn't so back in the microwave, this time for longer. Its now hot, all crusty and dried out on the top, but workable. I can knead it. I work the dry bits in and they disappear...wow this isn't too bad. We had managed to rescue what we thought was beyond hope. I did add a little more oil, which ended up everywhere too, oops. The end result is something that quite resembles playdough.

Ingredients:
As Per Recipe
2 cups plain flour
1 cup salt

1 cup cold water

1 tablespoon oil

2 drops of food colour.

Mix dry ingredients, then add wet, wella!

What else I added

~1 cup more of GF flour
4 tablespoons Cream of tartar
1 tablespoon xanthan gum
1 tablespoon oil.
More food colouring, 2 drops didn't give very much colour at all.

The result.
It's quite tough, I wonder if this is the xanthan gum.
It's very grainy, prehaps next time I will desolve salt in boiling hot water 1st.
Its taste is discustingly salty worse than I remember it as a kid (We all know you have to try recipes when you make them :S ), so next time I might use less salt too.
Here it is.

. . . Riley better like playdough!

Play Room Overhaul.

Time has come for the much needed overhaul of Riley's playroom at the shop. Hes getting to that stage where I think he is over it. He is driving me bonkers at the desk touching and pulling EVERYTHING down. So now the cogs are turning...what can I do? I'll try to organise before and after pics soon.
Firstly I think I will keep his plastic fort with slide and tunnel.
I am going to move the TV out of his playroom and see how it goes in the main area.
I might try and set up his car track, but I might need to look at getting a big table for that to try to get him to leave it together.
Someone has suggested these mats you can get where they "colour" in using textas, but they actually aren't ink just water. No idea how it works or what its called but sounds interesting.
I might have a google for a playdough recipe I can make...and try to make it gluten free. It will be interesting to see how that goes. Hmmm I will also have to try and convince him he needs to stay on the tiles to play with it though. I wonder how that will go.

I'm thinking I might need to draw up some kind of play "routine", to try to keep his day interesting. Maybe I will have a talk to daycare and see how they structure their days.

Oh the joys. :D

Welcome/Introduction

Welcome to my blog. I have never had one before, so here goes.

Who am I? Well that depends on who is asking. Most importantly I am Me. . .

My name is Jaz and I married to my lovely husband Chris and we have one child together, Riley, he is 2yo. In this blog I will be sharing my journey through motherhood, dealing with food intolerances, being a wife, and running a business with a toddler in tow. Yes, I am very busy and in need of some "Time Out!"