disney on ice 2019

we love love love love looooove disney on ice! i started taking madeline when she was 2 and we have been every year since. this year however, i got in within a few minutes of the tickets going on sale and we got vip tickets, just six rows from the front. worth every cent!

every year i have my friends asking me why i didn't message to ask them if they wanted tickets, so after multiple calls around, we bought 8 tickets... and only two of them were actually for kids. crack up! we had one friend that only has boys who are all teenagers, two friends without kids, a friends mum even! (we love you nannaleah!) and one other mum with a kid haha. what a bunch.

mickey and friends opening the show 

when you look this fancy, a bathroom selfie is a must. how cool is my daughter? i swear she is going to overtake me any day now.

as close to the ice as you are allowed to get! maddie has always worn princess dresses and the likes, but this year she decided she wanted to be minnie mouse. too cute. i love the sparkly red shoes!

after the show, our grown up gal gang took the most ridiculous photo by the ice, if you look closely our arms all form a six pointed star (very bad lighting...!) and we were so busy laughing it took us forever to work out how to do it and could barely keep it in place.

my favourite girl and i after the show. oh how i love her little face (most of the time...)

disney never ever disappoints and we loved this year again... my favourite was definitely the moana segment (yes! they have finally included her in the show, hooray!) and we also loved rapunzel and ariel who both rocked out an ariel routine with their princes. disney is legittt with their routines. so much effort!

last but not least... squad goals! i had the best time with these girls and cannot wait for next year! ♥

disney, we love you!!

alex's baby book

for each of my children i have been very careful in keeping a baby book where month by month i print a photo of them in the same place in the same outfit so we can watch how much they grow. a lovely friend of my mothers called chris, made joseph a book when he was born, so after i made his i felt obligated to do one for madeline because i knew one day she'd be asking too. i asked chris to make madeline one, which she did, then delivered it with a third book, saying oh here's one more, just in case. haha.

so here is my just in case book, made for baby alexander, made over two days, doing nothing else! luckily doug was home, so i actually got it done. i am super proud, because the whole time i am making them i haaaaaaate doing it, but when it's done, i am obsessed.

i am loving flicking through it and reading back over everything i wrote down while we were in hospital when he was freshly born and the weeks that followed. i am so glad i have taken the time to make all three of them.

see! how cute is it?!

we are all up to date, ready to add more pages in as he grows and i couldn't be more excited about it. the big kids love looking back through theirs and hopefully one day alex will too. ♥

op til you drop

i washed our sheets and remade the bed yesterday and while everything was looking so pretty snapped a picture... i know so many people who still have this idea that everything from the opshop is smelly and old and gross. you know what, sometimes it is, but mostly, it's not. for example, everything on this bed is second hand, other than the sheets (that you can't see anyway). the doona cover is from sheridan australia, but i snapped it up at the morley good sammy's store for $2, the cushion was $1 from the good sammy's mega barn, and the pillow cases were from st. richards guild in midland for $1 each, whilst they were still current stock at bed bath n table. mum snapped them up a couple of years ago, but is yet to have a turn.

let's go further. my actual bed frame was given to me by a friend (who knew i was after a white one) when she got a new one. bed side tables were $20 for the pair one one of the local buy sell swap pages, painted to suit my room, with crystal knobs from ebay. even the amazing patterned glass bedside lamps (unfortunately out of the shot) were an absolute steal from the salvos store local to my parents house. 

so for all you people who don't opshop, i ask you again, why not? this should be more than enough motivation for you! ♥

princess diaries

we had my sister in law and two of my three nieces (one had duties at another castle, that of the burger king) over tonight to watch the princess diaries. it's been a family favourite for many years (my oldest niece can still recite it from her childhood!) and we had a great time watching and laughing together. i love spending time with them and maddie thinks it's the best thing ever having them here. we always say we should do it more often, so we are trying to! donna and i had been sending each other memes in the lead up and she me this one the morning of, telling me to drive safely to school haha.

here's our little night owls, up wayyyyy past their bedtimes after the movie (and a bunch of funny youtube clips) had finished, trying to get just '10 more minutes" before emma had to leave.

i made "whatever you can find in the fridge" pizzas with wholemeal bases from coles that i had frozen. chicken, zucchini, pineapple, olives, sundried tomatoes, champignons, feta cheese and capsicum. whatever works hey? and the combination turned out to be quite good. 

hooray for family night! ♥

baked nachos

a favourite dinner in our house, which we have probably once a fortnight (more often if joseph gets his way!) is nachos. they are super yum (and easy and even somewhat healthy!) so i am more than happy to make them for him. they are easy to throw together last minute and a great option if i need to take dinner around for someone (that's what happened this time, please note the foil tray!)

baked nachos

1 diced onion

250g mince (500g if you're not adding grated veggies)

1/2 zucchini grated

1 carrot grated

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can baked beans

1/2 sachet mexican seasoning (1/2 is fine for us, use a whole one if you like)

1 bag plain corn chips (you can use seasoned, i'm not a fan)

grated cheese to top

*optional, sour cream and avocado to serve

1. fry onion, add mince and fry until brown

2. add grated vegetables and fry until they are soft and mixed in well

3. add tomatoes and beans and stir to combine

4. add seasoning and allow to simmer for 5 or so minutes

it will look something like this!

5. pour chips into dish and evenly spread mixture over the top

6. top with cheese and bake until cheese is melted and going brown

serve immediately before the chips get too soggy. we top with sour cream and avocado.

i love making these as they are just so easy to do. plus, it's so easy to modify the recipe...

it's gluten free and dairy free prior to cheese and sour cream, can be made meatier by adding extra mince and less vegetables and can even be made vegetarian by leaving out the meat and adding more veggies. there's something for everyone. enjoy!

the best banana bread ever

in my opinion, there are a few recipes that every girl needs to have to make it through life. 

number 1: an amazing carrot cake (with cream cheese icing of course!)

number 2: awesome chocolate chip cookies

number 3: to die for brownies

and

number 4: the best banana bread

i wouldn't be lying if i said i spent a lot of time looking for them. i had the first three, but needed the last one... when i was in america, staying with my sister in laws (my husbands sister), sister in law (my husbands sisters husbands sister), weird yes i know... but it gets better, their sister in law (another brothers wife) turned up with banana bread. it was spectacular. i was almost frightened to ask for the recipe, because if it was store bought, i was going to be devastated. thankfully it was not, the recipe was from food network here, just slightly modified and with a little googling, we made it australia friendly. because seriously, a cup of butter? a stick of butter? fahrenheit? pass.

anyway, here it is here! i promise you it's the best banana bread you'll ever have! every single time i make it, someone asks for the recipe, which is hilarious because i went to america 2 and a half years ago and still haven't shared it. it's super yum!

banana bread 

ingredients

1 cup granulated sugar

113g butter, room temperature

2 eggs

3 ripe bananas

150g any flavour yoghurt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 cups plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bi-carb soda

1 teaspoon salt

directions

preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius (160 fan forced). prepare a loaf pan. 

cream the sugar and butter in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. 

in a small bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. mix in the yoghurt and cinnamon. add to butter mix. add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and mix to combine. 

pour batter into prepared pan and bake 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes. 

lego bricks and pieces

i know after this week i am officially a lego mum. oh my word. joseph has been super lucky and well loved by friends and family over the past couple of years and has received many lego sets, much to his delight - and as a mum, i have to say i've been well impressed with him. he's been very careful with the pieces and has rebuilt the sets over and over and over. he is absolutely lego obsessed. bonus, he likes to follow the instructions and do it "right."

however. he is only five years old now and over time, a few pieces have been misplaced... so doug and i decided we would do something about storage and replacing the pieces that went missing. doug went through and rebuilt every single set, which was not an easy task, especially with said five year old wanting to "help" the entire time, which mostly consisted of him hoarding the pieces doug needed. each of the sets went into a large ziplock bag with the manual once complete and i wrote down any missing pieces (amazingly only 11 in total from all of them) using the set code and then brick codes found in the back of each of the manuals, before each of those bags went into a storage tub. he is now playing nicely by the rules of one set at a time and is thrilled to have a system (he's obviously been brainwashed by his very ocd parents, because he is just as particular as us), so when he is does, he brings it to one of us to "zip up" and then he puts it away before choosing another. funniest thing is, some of the zip lock bags have arrows to show how to close them. heaven forbid that you close them sliding the arrows the wrong way. he has a fit! "no! no mum! slide it the way it says!" such a little character.

anddddd, you can order single pieces online from lego.com. does everyone know that?! massive thanks to my friend for that tip off a few years ago. all of the pieces we needed, minus one, which was part of a disney cars lego set were available, but that was an easy solve... we ordered the same piece, without the dinoco print across it! so easy to do and our lego boy is thrilled to pieces.

heads up though, if you're in australia, the postage is outrageous! $15 for those 11 tiny pieces!i keep reminding myself that i'm the one that wanted them and as it's a demand thing that they can charge whatever they want haha. andddd it's not quick. i ordered in april and they came earlier this week. be prepared for a long wait. but it's done, they are here and everyone is happy.

hooray for lego!