Packed Lunch Series: Fried Rice

Recently I attended a morning tea at my daughter's preschool to welcome her favourite teacher back from an overseas adventure. They were having a special morning tea with treat food, and carefully making sure that the children each got their share, as well as serving up fruit first, which they always do. I was shocked by the amount of packaged and processed food in many of the children's lunchboxes. I am not talking about a couple of items mixed in with sandwiches and fruit, but lunchboxes filled with processed food. Many had only items of processed food, no sandwiches or fruit.

Now I would be lying if I said that Mia has never eaten chippies, or icecream, or chocolate or any form of treat food, but I always think of it as "Sometime" food, not something to be eaten at every meal, every day. I would also be lying if I said that she eats gourmet every day, or that she isn't fussy, but the key is to try to serve food that is healthy and appealing to kids. You have to keep trying if they won't eat it, not just give in and give them chips!

I decided that I would use this "shock" about pre-school nutrition to come up with some new ideas for Mia's lunchbox.

Fried Rice

Mia loves this! It took her a long time to try rice and then to admit she actually likes it, but now she is very keen on it. You can put it in a container for your child to take for lunch, however it does require refridgeration as it contains egg.


This recipe contains several ingredients that many would consider far from healthy, but remember you do have options. You can buy nitrate-free, free-range bacon, MSG free soy sauce and vegetable stock powder if you are concerned. You can also use any type of rice that you like if your kids will eat it!

1 T sesame oil
1 c rice
1 onion
3 rashers bacon
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 c frozen veges
1/4 c soy sauce
1 large t stock powder (chicken or vegetarian)
1 T mild sweet thai chilli sauce
2 eggs

Cook rice as per instructions on the packet. Heat oil in a frying pan and saute onion, garlic and bacon over low heat until onion is soft. Add the rice, veges, soy sauce, stock powder and chilli sauce and fry, stirring, for 4 minutes. Beat the eggs and add to the rice. Stir until egg is set.

101 christmas ornaments link and ornaments for kids to make

I have had a few "yes's" to the Xmas ornament swap. but who else is keen? Good small scale way to get those creative juices flowing! Here is a link to 101 christmas ornaments you could make.

Here are some ornaments that would be good to make with kids:

- that artist woman: Orange pomander

- Curbly: Borax crystals (probably older kids!)

- Toilet paper lanterns

- Meet the dubiens fimo snowflakes

- The crafty crows weaving decorations

- Felt and sticker Xmas trees from parent.com (also has others)


Store these away to make with your kids on the build up to Xmas! Or make them yourself for the ornament swap!

Felt Cookies

This is the felt project that Mia has been nagging me to make, cookies! After finding inspiration from pictures on pinterest I decided I would make a "cookie baking" set, with the cookies cut out of "dough" and uncooked, and then the same cookies finished with icing and sprinkles so that she could pretend that she was completing the baking process.

Here is how to do it:

You will need: Light brown felt, medium brown felt, brown cotton, beads for sprinkles that can be sewn on, felt for icing (I used pale pink) and matching thread.

1. Cut out a "dough" shape from the light brown felt. Take 1 or more cookie cutters and trace around them onto the shape. Cut them out so that they can be removed from the dough. These are your unbaked cookies ready to go into the oven!

2. Cut out an icing shape for each completed cookie, using the cookie cutters. Cut out 2 medium brown felt shapes for each finished cookie, but make them bigger than the cutters as shown below. I did this because cookies get bigger when you cook them in the oven!

3. Sew the icing shape onto the top medium brown felt shape. Sew the sprinkle (beads) on. Sew the 2 medium brown shapes together for each cookie. They look yummy!

Yes there is a "well done" cookie on this plate, I ran out of the first colour of felt! And the strangely arranged sprinkles on one of the hearts are supposed to say "Mia"!

I don't think there will be too much KCWC sewing going on here today - baby up half the night and sick, tired Mummy! I will try to at least do something!

Felt Carrots

Today I wanted to do something quick to add to the felt food collection,so decided on carrots.

You will need: Orange felt, green felt, stuffing (I used wool) and orange thread

1. For each carrot cut out a matching front and back from orange. I made 4 carrots.

2. For each carrot you will need a square of green to make the greenery for the top out of.

3. Roll the square up and pin it closed.

4. Remember those paper trees you made when you were a kid? Well you need to do eaxctly the same to your roll of green felt, cut it down about three quarters of the way. Cut three equally spaced lines around your felt so that it fans out.


5. Place the greenery inside the carrot and pin around the outside.

6. Stitch around the edges with orange using the sewing machine and leaving a space to put stuffing into. Stuff it.

7. Hand stitch the opening closed with orange thread.

Felt animal mask tutorial

So here is another felt tutorial, but it is a bit of a break from the food I have been making. The inspiration for this project started from a conversation I had with Mia before she went to daycare yesterday.

"Mum can you please make me a Pepa Pig mask today?" (Mia)


"I guess so" (Me) "Yes I am sure that I can" (as I realised that this could potentially be quite a fun project!)

Pretending to be an animal is big with Mia at the moment. We have Whiskers the cat, Wuffy the dog and most recently the whole family has to pretend to be Pepa Pig's family. This latest role play was inspired by her being plonked in front of youtube watching Pepa Pig clips while Nathan "babysat" while the All Blacks were playing. Nathan thinks Daddy Pig is hilarious (he is actually, completely clueless as many father cartoon figures are) so plays along with it. Ellie has to be her little brother George and pretend to be obsessed with dinosaurs (as much as a 7 month old can pretend) and I have to be Mummy Pig who sorts out all Daddy Pig's mistakes (quite like real life really!)

So while Mia was at daycare and Ellie asleep I decided to make each of these 3 characters a mask.

Pig mask

You will need: Pink felt, elastic, pink thread, black felt

These are the pieces you will need to cut out: Front and back mask panels, nose and 2 ears (from pink) and 2 black nostrils

Sew nostrils to the nose. Sew the ears onto the front of the back mask panel.

Cut elastic to fit around the child's head. Sew ends of elastic to front of back mask panel.

Top stitch the 2 mask panels together around the edges. Top stitch the nose onto the mask. You can also top stitch around the edges of the ears if you like.

Here's Pepa:

Cat mask

You will need: Black felt, pink felt, elastic, black thread

Cut out: 2 mask panels and 2 ears from black felt, a pink nose.

Follow exactly the same process as you did with the pig mask.

Dog Mask

You will need: Brown felt, elastic, brown thread, black felt

Cut out: 2 mask panels, 2 ears from brown felt. Black nose.

Follow exactly the same process as you did with the pig mask.

Wuffy the dog:

Discovery Box

I have read a couple of times on peoples blogs recently about how they have given their newly sitting up 6 or 7 month olds a discovery box and how it has kept them busy for ages. Ellie is 7 months and (unsteadily) sitting so I quickly (read: In about 1 minute!) chucked several things in an icecream container for her and set it in front of here. If I was a better and more organised mother there probably wouldn't be any plastic in there and I would have trolled the environment for natural things, but I haven't yet. Will get round to that some day!

Ellie loved exploring everything with her hands and her mouth, and it also made me ponder the differences between our two precious girls.

At first I thought to myself "why didn't I think of this with Mia!", but I guess I actually did in a way as I gave her household items to play with all the time, just not in a box! And then I thought "To be honest I don't think Miss Mia would have sat there for over half an hour playing with things and not wanting to move!". Mia came into the world wanting to do the next thing. She reached all her milestones early and then promptly worked on getting to the next one. She was also quick to tell you if she was annoyed and still is! But she is so smart and so like me in personality that it is scarey. She has the patience of a, well a 3 year old, and wants constant attention and playmates (as many firstborns do I think!).

Ellie arrived into the world calmly (and quickly!) with her unworldly big blue eyes calmly taking in the surroundings. She is content just to watch the world go by, and idolises her big sister. It is actually difficult to bore her, hence the discovery box being perfect for her! Having said that she has also had her challenges. Her big sister was quick to sleep for hours at night, Miss Ellie not so much! She was also refluxy and uncomfortable at feeding early on but that has long passed.

So each of my girls are so different from each other, and its wonderful that they already have different strengths and personalities. I look at them both in awe and cannot imagine having anything different (sorry mothers of boys I would love them just as much if I had them!). They are also so lovely to each other at the moment, and I am hoping that lasts for as long as possible!

Making a Mia

Mia has finally stopped having a sleep in the middle of the day. I guess I have done pretty well, she is over 3! I have vowed that on the days she isn't at preschool I will make an effort to do something fun and educational with her while Ellie sleeps.

Today we made a "Mia". I am sure that most of you have drawn around someone in chalk before and coloured them in, well we did a variation on this and decorated the outline with things from the garden. Stones for a face, grass for hair and socks, flowers and leaves for clothes, twigs for hands and flower pots for shoes. Mia was very proud of her "Mia". It was fun spending a half an hour in the sun with her being busy and happy.

Real Biscuits! (Not playdough!)

I have probably mentioned before that baking is one of my dearest childhood memories. M loves to play cutting out "biscuits" in playdough so I promised her that we would make some real biscuits using biscuit dough and then icing and decorations. She cut them out using cookie cutters and then I got a whole range of decorations and icings and we went to town! Needless to say she lost interest before me!

Mixing colours

Most of my best childhood memories, apart from playing with my siblings and cousins, are about making stuff with my Mum. Probably why I love it as an adult, although that gene wasn't passed onto my sister! Baking, learning to sew, learning to knit, making bread, watching her bottle stuff, playing with playdough and making artistic creations. So since M was born I have naturally been looking forward to being able to create with her. She already loves to help me cook and bake, and recently she has been pestering me to mix colours with her. Finally the other day I managed to coordinate baby sleeping with a suitable time to do this and we learnt about mixing colours! Very cute how it can be such a wonder that red and blue make purple and blue and yellow make green!