Love is in the air...

I'm looking forward to photographing good friend's of ours on Saturday to celebrate their engagement.
It will feel good to get back behind the camera and focus on adult subjects.... poor Arthur is a little over-photographed and I've been looking for new subjects to shoot for a while. I hope to also do a family photo shoot on Sunday for my close friend and her adorable brood. Loving these long summer days and beautiful light.

Ok time to feed this little bear...back soon.

Here's some inspiration shots I'm liking for Saturday... it's an outdoor shoot in a rural area.. long gravel roads, uncut grass... perfect!

Source: 100layercake.com via Victoria on Pinterest

Source: libbyjamesblog.com via Victoria on Pinterest

Source: amelialyon.net via Victoria on Pinterest

Happy Half Year!

Happy half year Mr Arthur Bear. We made it this far and you're still a healthy, happy baby, so I'm going to give myself a pat on the back as your mumma, because I must have actually done something right somewhere along the way.

After I've finished patting myself on the back I'm going to give you the biggest, squishiest bear hug ever to exist, because I just absolutely adore you.

Oh Arthur Cohen... to say I love you is an understatement. You have shown me new perspective, taught me patience, perseverance, and the true meaning of unconditional love. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Making Meals

We introduced Arthur recently to the world of solid food. It's a whole new world to me too - feeding a baby... so I'm pretty much winging it here. 

I've had a bit of a look around the world wide web for inspiration and tips for how to go about this, and had some great advice from friends as well. I'm looking forward to creating some more adventurous combinations and flavours for this little guy, but we have started off very basic. 

I've gone for pear, kumara and butternut squash at this stage. He has had avocado mixed with his milk too which he loves, I just need a better mashing technique for getting the lumps and stringy bits out! 

For convenience, we have offered a few of the ready made meals in jars and pouches - pear & mango, apple and sweet potato and a few others that are applicable to his age group.  It's been a great way to introduce him to a few different flavours while I got myself organised. With moving house and sunny weather, I've spent very little time in the kitchen. 

Yesterday, being a nice lazy Sunday, I decided to make up a whole lot of food and freeze it. I decided to steam his food to retain as many nutrients as possible, and I used the water in the pot below to add to the puree to get the right consistency. Once I got going I decided it was easier to do a whole lot at once. I kept topping up the water in the pot - so by the time I was making the final kumara puree there were pear and butternut flavours in the water as well, which may just add a little extra taste to the final brew. 

I then poured the mixture into ice trays, covered them in glad wrap and froze them overnight. I mixed sometimes 2, sometimes 3 of the ingredients together. I had a smaller ice tray as well which I used to make some mini cubes to fit in his little muslin bags for him to suck on when it's a super hot day. I also made some larger portions in freezer storage pots to cater for when his appetite grows.

All of this - an entire drawer in the freezer filled, using one butternut squash, one large kumara and 4 pears... not bad at all and inexpensive. It's great for times when I can't freshly prepare his dinners. I'm in the market for a smaller blender tool for preparing smaller portions, as the big blender was a bit much and the 'magic bullet' attachment kept leaking. I'm open to any suggestions here on what other's have used. I want to avoid purchasing a new blending machine or appliance if possible, so I'm thinking the manual tolls may be the way to go so I can control the textures as he gets older. 

It's nothing revolutionary and no culinary brilliance here, but just thought I'd share the process anyway for others looking to start in the world of solids. 

Please please please share your recipes with me! 

Get in my belly!

I don't think it would come as a shock that this boy likes food. We've just started playing around with solids given that he is just a little shy of 6 months. I don't think milk is going to cut it anymore.

(6 months next week! can you believe it!)

He didn't really like his dinner tonight. It was from a jar. Give me a break, it's been a long week as a working mum and broken sleep due to what I suspect/hope to be a temporary growth spurt... 

So instead of trying to force it in his gob, I thought he could just play around with texture and touch as he is a rather tactile we lad. He LOVED squishing those little fat fingers into his horrible dinner.

Cheeky monkey - couldn't believe his luck when I just tipped his dinner on the table

Blue steel pea mush face

Finger dimples kill me

 He may have not wanted to sleep much today or eat or drink much milk... or do anything I wanted him to do, but I think I just forgave him

 Mum - I'll just sit here and play with my dinner, you take a seat 

and watch Home and Away O.K? 

Another new favourite around here - Rusks and sippy cups. I'm a big boy now mum. 

So that's Art in his new chair - kindly lent to me by my friend. 

Just as well I love them

It's no secret I love my cats, and just as well, because they completely ruined our sofa. We had just had Arthur and didn't have the energy or heart to discipline the cats or yell at them when they worked their claws on the upholstery. We figured they'd been fairly good at adapting to life with this new little human, so we'd spare them.

The couches SUFFERED! big time. The arms now look like they're shag pile.

So we weren't in the market for a new sofa... but... Mr D purchased some newspaper while we were moving, so I could wrap up my massive mug collection. As I was wrapping my prized possessions, out came this flyer advertising a furniture sale. Low and behold, there was a glossy, photo of my dream sofa staring back at me with a massive, beautiful 50% off sign.

I'd emailed the company a few years ago about the sofa to enquire the price. Needless to say my eyes popped out of my head it was way more than I wanted to spend.

But here it was, in front of me again. It was fate. There were three left at the time of print! I know, I'm such a sucker, you'd never thought I'd studied consumer behaviour.

We drove to the store first thing in the morning to sit on it. It was mine as soon as my ass hit the thread. I got an even better price than I'd intended and decided that I'd splash out. Why not? we were poor anyway... may as well be poor with a nice sofa in our new house.

Sooooo... the cats decided they liked their new scratching pole. EEK! Time to discipline.

So now I have a nice sofa covered in glad wrap until I'm armed with my water pistol.

Classy.