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Dairy free gluten free sugar free chocolate spread.

So my son has this genetic problem, he cannot eat dairy or gluten and he gets hyper with sugar, but what kind of a workd would it be without some lovely chocolate spread for him every so often? So I looked at my options and the solution was so easy there was no fussing about it. I had 2 options: with hazelnuts or without. I started without and just, very simply, added cocoa powder to clear honey until I had the right consistency and colour. There. Done, no added crap...if you have once read the labels of chocolate spread you know what I am talking about. Of course you can add hazelnut but this does complicate things a little. You can add them in tiny little crunchy bits to add to the texture or you can blend the lot to get a creamy result. You can also add soy milk, rice milk, any alternative milk but you then have to compensate the liquid intake with something that will bind such as cornflour...and cornflour needs cooking as we all know. So these are a few ideas for you. I hope you enjoy a healtier spread ;).
Pictures will follow soon ;)

Make your own...

...Toothpaste! Simply mix baking soda and hydrogen peroxide in the right amount together and add either Stevia (natural calorie-free sweetener) or peppermint oil or any other tasty oils to make it the flavor you want. You can also make it more fun by adding a natural food colorant. Some recipes suggest also to add glycerin as an emulsifier and salt as an abrasive but I don't like the idea of it plus this simpler recipe can be used with kids too without any possibility of harming their young mouthes.

Making your own toothpaste saves you money, produces less waste (no used tubes to trash), gives you the certainty of having a healthy product with no Fluoride (which is not needed anymore nowadays as opposite as what you might know), to use with no toxic ingredients for you and your kids and the choice of flavoring it as you like.

Once produced, store in a small soap dispenser (better if travel size) so that you can dispense some on the toothbrush easily and if you notice that the compound is getting a bit dry simply add a little bit more hydrogen peroxide.

Enjoy!

Cakes and more

This is the second Mei Tai i made, once again for a Barter and once again I used Ikea Fabric and I liked this even more, even if this version is not padded as it's a spring-summer version. Soon I'll be publishing the third one, again for a Barter :)... then I'll start production for customers.







This is one of the cakes I made with the bread machine, pretty awesome! It was very very good and came out with a thick spongy consistency, very good to dip in the tea too, later cakes came out softer and even better, practice makes perfect =)

Home made bread

My husband got me a bread machine for my 30th birthday =)
The bread machine makes wonderful bread if you follow some simple rules and you can make it as you like it =) only one thing annoys me a little and I'm not quite sure it can be done otherwise, this is the fact you must use a little sugar in order to have the yeast work and make the bread rise. I don't like using sugar, i do like brown sugar but would still prefer not to have any sugar in my bread.

My first washable pad

Not perfect but after all it was my first therefore kind of an experiment, it works well for the start or finish of the period, but for the other days i'll have to use another kind with more absorbing material, in this one I used cotton and a waterproof fabric that I was given by a friend, not as cool as PUL but still working fine, the next one will be flannel lined as it's softer and feels better =)

Mei-Tai! Make your own, with Ikea fabric and...

Here is the first Mei Tai realized for a Barter =) not perfect but hey it's the first I make! It works and it's tough so... I used Ikea fabric and premade shoulder straps and belt made of soft inside+nice fabric ouside, they were one long piece given to me form another barter that I divided in 3 pieces for the purpose.

Easy peasy: Cloth nappies inserts from old towels

First of all buy pinking scissors or zig zag scissors, then choose your towel, in my casa kitchen towel made of thick cotton and cut some stripes as long as you wish to make your nappy insert. You can cut them in a straight rectangle like I did or in an anatomical shape like a pad.

Then with the sewing machine following the line of the cut, 1cm away from it, more or less, sew two or more layers together.


Cut the eventual eccess fabric with the pinking scissors after sewing the borders.

There you go, ready to use (if the towel was clean of course...) =)

REUSABLE NAPPIES PART TWO

Almost a year has passed, full of events, and busyness, at first one does not realizes how fast your child grows and the evolution process he goes through is very much taking time that was before dedicated to other activities. Less than a year ago he was still a baby, now he's a walking-almost-running toddler that is almost stronger than mummy here and has almost a full set of theet. Still using mixed nappies unfortunately as mummy, having to work as well as taking care of him, the house and daddy, could not make more washable nappies but 2 and together with the ones received as gift, they are still not enought for a full cycle of washing-drying-wearing-washing. But at least we do not make as much environmental damage as other people using solely disposables.
We're on the right road and will get there eventually. Soon enough my little one will hopefully also be out of nappies although EC is not an option at the moment giving the lack of possibility to monitor him closely enough (mummy works in the afternoon and daddy works in the morning and all 3 of us are doing all sort of things like tidying, playing, washing the dishes, sleeping, eating etc at different times).
But let's go back to the main subject, how the nappy was finished.


After the elastic part was done, i procedeed with applying, on the oustide of the nappy and between the plain and the patterned fabric, a layer of plastic cut out from a frozen mixed vegetables bag (obviously washed properly and dried) in order to have a barrier for the pee not to come out and then finished applying the outside patterned fabric in order to have a rather good looking nappy.

I'll be posting the picture as soon as i find it in my immense computer memory... LOL

Another nappy I made was out of a small cotton towel with some added velcro and was very much simpler. With this nappy I can use a number of inserts that I use with the other nappies and also those created by me with recycled fabric such as soft cotton, cotton flannel or cotton towel. I always need a proctective plastic or microfibre pant on top as this very simple nappy has no other protection for pee.

REUSABLE NAPPIES - PART ONE

Reusable nappies are of course the best environmental choice, there are some biodegradable disposable too. However, if you want to buy a product that costs more and then trash it, it's not the best thing you can do for your home finance.

Reusable nappies are of course more expensive to buy at the beginning but they pay off for themselves in the long run buy saving you lots of money. Example: in a day you use on average 6 nappies, by 365 days that make it 2190 nappies.
Now let's use as a comparison price the cheap €8,99, 56 nappies pack I used to buy at Lidl (they now stopped the CIEN brand i liked and after trying the TOUJOURS brand I can honestly say they lost a nappies' customer).
In a year to use 6 nappies a day would mean buying more or less 39 (,10) packs of nappies which equals to a total expense of €350, 61.
If I make 12 or more nappies out of recycled used fabric (old towels, t-shirts, etc.) I will be spending only the money involved in the water, electricity and soap for the washing machine that I use anyway.
The only problem is that I can't really use them when we go out if they are handmade as they will not be as good as the ones you can buy, unless they are perfect and mine are rarely going to be perfect... LOL
So what I was planning on doing is use the washable ones in the house and the disposable ones when we go out. Better than just using just disposable.
Making a washable nappy is not too easy neither too difficult, I started mine buy using a disposable nappy as a template. While stretching it, I marked the used bed sheet with a special pencil and cut the shape (i had previously folded the sheet so that I will have more than one nappy cut out).

After cutting it properly and leaving a couple of inches of border I ironed the fabric and divided the fabric in 2 nappies formed by a few layers each.

Then I chose another piece of fabric (synthetic) that was put on the outside to make the nappy look cuter and since I have a baby boy I chose this pattern. Cut it and then leave it aside for a while.


I sewed the top and bottom of the nappy so that the fabric would keep in place and then along the inside lines applied elastic with a zig-zag sewing.



Then I pinned the other fabric on one side and decided how to apply it later and left it pinned on.


Because the elastic would have rubbed against the baby's skin I folded over the excess fabric and sewed it on, in order to make an all-cotton feel for the skin.

TO BE CONTINUED....