8 January, 2009 by halfpintpixie
I want neeeeed a VitaMix, read Hannah’s review on Bittersweet and you will want one too! But how to justify the cost? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
We only have a handblender at the moment, so I guess getting a VitaMix would be like upgrading from a pushbike to a private jet, but I think I’m ready for a private jet VitaMix!
Or can someone recommend me their blender/food processor? Specifically we need something to make the best hummus ever, no bits, just smooth creamy lovely hummus and I am fed up of hand blenders and their stoopid overheating-ness and unwillingness to co-operate!
Please help, the world of kitchen gadgets confuses us, we are just lowly computer programmers who are not very well versed in the knowledge of kitchen accoutrements (except rice cookers, we love them!).
Posted in Family, Food & Drink, Parenting, SAHM, Vegan, Vegan Cooking, Vegetarian | Tagged blender, food-processor, kitchen, kitchen-gadget, vitamix | 3 Comments »
6 January, 2009 by halfpintpixie
You know we’re all mad about space here, ’tis no secret. And Littlepixie loves the night sky so much. She still talks about the night we saw the shooting star and she saw her first space planets. The sun sets early here in Winter (around 17:00 as opposed to around 22:00 in Summer!) so it’s completely dark by the time Mr. HPP gets home. We all check out the moon every evening to see what shape it is and we look for all the planets too. At teatime most of the major players are at the front of our house, later in the evening our back garden is spectacularly lit by the moon & stars if all the surrounding houses have their garden lights off.
Today we went out the front of the house (bundled very well against the cold) and LP starts calling “Moon, moooon”, once she located it she turns her head to the right and shouts “Weenus, weenus” looking for Venus, and upon finding that starts calling for Jupiter which is nowhere to be seen these days (we don’t have a clear view of the horizon, and Jupiter sets at 17:30 these days). So after a minute or so, she says “There’s moon, there’s Weenus, Jupider gone home to its mammy”. Awww….
Jodrell Bank has a handy site that tells us what we’re seeing in the night sky (in the UK &Ireland) at this time of the year. And here is a lovely photo & chart I have borrowed from them to illustrate my post with, see how low Jupiter is?
While I still have your attention, I will also share with you the fact that my favourite constellation is Orion, when I was a wee girl it was one of the only constellations I could ever recognise and to this day I look out for it every night.
Well, many, many moons ago, we spent a night on a boat floating among the Whitsunday Islands off the coast of Australia, it was an idyllic night, clear skies, stars everywhere, the Southern Cross bright in the sky and then there was a real blow-your-mind moment for me. We were all lying out on deck, drinking beer (as you do) and our skipper was pointing out stars to us. And he pointed out Orion!
You can see Orion from both hemispheres only he’s upside down in the southern Hemisphere, I tell you, that really shook me, I really got a feeling that we were the other side of the planet in a way that a 24 hr plane journey just couldn’t impress upon me. Mad.
So there you go! Don’t forget to look for Weenus these evenings and remember Uranus is on view later this month (I know you Americans say it differently, but we pronounce it “your-anus” so the jokes are plentiful!) It’s always been a source of humour for me, it’s my birth planet, my birth planet is Uranus. Tee hee. Anyway, it’s my birthday in a month and I want need a telescope! Make it so.
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Posted in Children, Family, Nature, Parenting, SAHM, Toddler | Tagged constellations, night-sky, orion, space, star-gazing | 6 Comments »
6 January, 2009 by halfpintpixie
I am currently sporting the latest in “stop nursing all day”-wear, the high necked jumper! I have noticed that when the goods are not on show, Littlepixie doesn’t ask to nurse as often. It’s also a little more complicated for her to gain access so she has started to limit the “drive-by” nursings that were driving me slowly insane! And the jumper is nice and warm, it’s freezing here 
Over the Christmas break, Mr. HPP was off work for almost 2 weeks and during that time he used to bring LP for a walk most days for her noon nap. The weather in Galway at Christmas is usually quite spectacular, frosty clear days, with a fog or haze in the morning and the low sun splitting the sky in the afternoon, and bitterly cold. So trundling around, bundled up with just your little face peeking out is a very cosy way to sleep and LP has been napping well in her buggy (well except for when she had her cold, then she would only nap with milkies but that’s very understandable!).
And it was a lovely break for me, not having to feed her to nap every day. So I am continuing the trend, at least while the dry weather continues (She doesn’t like the rain cover on her buggy, but who would?). I know you may think I’m mad but I have decided to tackle day-weaning rather than night-weaning, if we could cut back nursing to “just” morning wake-up and bedtime (and random night feeds) that would rock, and removing the nap feed and the waking-from-the-nap feed (which has been replaced by cuddles and snuggles and kisses and songs) is a step closer to my goal!
But of course, it ain’t easy convincing LP’s good self to get into the buggy (or indeed her coat or shoes) every day, so I always tell her the purpose of our trip (today we mailed a hand-painted card to granny), I give her a choice between her two coats, and yes, sometimes I bribe her to get into the buggy (today was a slice of toast), naughty mama!
And I suppose, the hour long walk in the fresh air is doing me some good too! Now I’m off for a cup of tea and some bourbon creams…. mmm… scrumptious
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Posted in Attachment Parenting, Breastfeeding, Children, Family, Mothering, Parenting, SAHM, Toddler | Tagged weaning, weaning-toddler | 5 Comments »
5 January, 2009 by halfpintpixie
It’s National Delurking week in the blogosphere, although Angela over at Breastfeeding 123 has dubbed it International Delurking week in my honour, thank you kindly Angela
And because I am such a fan of the Loch Ness monster, I will showcase Paper Napkin’s Lurkness Monster once more… love it!
Anyhoo, you pretty much all know who I am by now, a sorta-hippyish, vegan, breastfeeding, cosleeping, Irish mammy with delusions of grandeur and a penchant for travelling and science fiction conventions. I’m a born hoarder who loves decluttering and I love crafting stuff for my very tolerant daughter!
WordPress doesn’t do very good feed stats, so I have very little clue how many of you are out there reading my ramblings. I have a reasonably healthy hit count so I know there are a few of you anyway (unless that’s just the same 5 or 6 people clicking lots each day to boost my self esteem, if that’s it then thanks guys, it’s working!).
I love to find out who is reading my ramblings. Perhaps you popped by once during a great Bloggy Giveaway and decided to hang around, maybe you were part of VeganMoFo and I snuck onto your feed reader that way. Perchance you are another of us vegan mammies who will eventually take over the world, there are more of us than one would imagine! Or maybe you’re not sure who I am, but Google plonked you here after a random search!
So, I invite you to delurk for a moment and leave a comment, it doesn’t have to be anything amazing, just a little “hello”!
Or you can delurk and leave a comment linking to your own blog, I love reading blogs and we all probably have so much in common, so feel free to do that!
Or you can delurk and share a song, a story, a whimsical tale of walking to school in your bare feet in the snow, any old tale will do!
Or you can use this comment I have pre-written for you… (just copy & paste) “Hello HPP, you are splendiferously wonderful”, I won’t mind 
Go on, delurk and be happy
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Posted in Attachment Parenting, Breastfeeding, Children, Co-Sleeping, Family, Parenting, SAHM, Toddler, Vegan, crafts | Tagged delurk, delurking, blogstuff, national-delurk-week | 23 Comments »
5 January, 2009 by halfpintpixie
Today I introduced Littlepixie to finger painting. She loves colouring with crayons & pencils but hasn’t painted before mostly because for the last few months she has been very pernickety about getting mushy stuff on her hands, she didn’t like dirty hands at all. But over the last few days I’ve noticed her not being as mush-adverse so I decided to break out the finger paints. And she loved them!
We had such fun on her new arts & crafts table, it’s a regular Argos wooden coffee table but it’s twice as big as her last table (which we broke!) so there is heaps of room. We swept all the pine cones & colouring pencils off it, covered it with newspaper and away we went!
Today was part of my new “edu-tainment” plan, and we were doing “Apples” today so we started off by adding paint-apples to printouts of trees using our finger tips and circle-y potato stampers. LP was fascinated to watch the potato stamper-making process! I had forgotten how much fun potato stamping is, I think I spent my whole childhood doing that!
Paint-apples turned into smears and into modern art, and we broke out the blank paper for some free hand blobbing and some handprints! LP learned lots about colour mixing and she learned that mushy hands are not a bad thing! It took her a few minutes to get into it, but I am pleased to say she really had fun.
I can see mountains of LP’s artwork being a decluttering issue in the future, but for now we’ve made a stringy line in the computer room where they are all hanging to dry and we have cleared a spot on the freezer for the handprints, which I have proudly dated. I love paint handprints!
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Posted in Attachment Parenting, Children, Family, Mothering, Parenting, SAHM, Toddler, crafts | Tagged art-and-craft | 4 Comments »
4 January, 2009 by halfpintpixie
Littlepixie has been a little under the weather for the past week or so, so we’ve been quite housebound. And myself & Mr.HPP have noticed LP getting increasingly bored with her surroundings. I watched her assemble a jigsaw last night and she was barely paying attention to it, she knew where all the pieces went, hmmm… so I put my little thinking cap on and thought very hard.
And I decided to bring in more “edu-tainment” into LP’s life. I am not a fan of structured learning for the under-5’s but this will be incidental learning, sneaky teaching and hopefully a lot of fun. I have already had quite a bit of fun assembling our first week’s “work”.
I got two notice boards to put in our kitchen over LP’s art desk. The boards are magnetic and came with small strong magnets, but I am wary of magnets after watching a tv program about what can happen if a child swallows them! So I got rid of them and got some magnetic printer paper in our €2 shop which is just strong enough to hold itself and one or two pages, excellent.
One pair of scissors, lots of cut up magnetic paper, some markers, some felt, a big mess, lots of double-sided sellotape and a lot of printing later and I think the boards are done! Voila… Continue Reading »
Posted in Attachment Parenting, Children, Family, Mothering, Parenting, SAHM, Toddler, crafts | Tagged edutainment, preschool | 6 Comments »
2 January, 2009 by halfpintpixie
Littlepixie only slept 5-ish hours last night, we were up from about 04:30, it’s 08:30 now and she has nursed to sleep again, ahhhh…. peace. I’m browsing my Google Reader and enjoying the whine-free silence.
And I am reading an article on Kellymom which is exactly what I needed to read right now. I reckon some of you might find it interesting & reassuring too, it’s called “Are you feeling overwhelmed by your child’s intense needs?“
Older babies and toddlers can get really clingy at times. Sometimes it seems as if your child has been nursing all day (or all night), or has been clinging to your leg all day long (even when you go to the bathroom) and you really just need a break.
These “velcro days” usually have a cause (even if we only know after the fact): teething, illness, a developmental advance. But even when you know the reason behind a clingy episode, it can still be very frustrating, particularly if you had something you expected to get done or if you were simply anticipating some time to yourself.
Do know that each of us gets overwhelmed from time to time. Remember - these moments pass, even though it may seem like forever when you’re in the middle of one of these days.
As always Kellymom is a big help, I find the simple act of realising how normal LP’s behaviour is can help, it doesn’t make the whining or clinginess any less annoying but it helps me realise that it is an important part of her development.
Also, a big thanks to Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess, in her recent post Breastfeeding until age 3, 4, or 5: more common than you think? she mentioned the Kellymom forums. I had completely forgotten about them for some reason, but they are excellent and there is one specifically for the 24-36 month toddlers, ahhhh we’re not alone, it is so goood to see everyone else having the same issues!
I must find my copy of “Mothering your Nursing Toddler“, it’s good for these days! I should photocopy half the pages and stick them up around the house! Here’s a bit of wisdom from it:
But how much intense parenting they need, possibly including frequent nursing, in the second year depends for the most part on their inborn timetable for emotional development. As parents we can slow down emotional growth by leaving needs unmet. But there is nothing extra we can do to speed it up. …your investment in your toddler who seems to be ‘always attached’ will pay off when the time for independence does come.
I know it’s all normal, I know I was exactly the same as a child (and I turned out fabulous) but this is hard work! My dad thinks it is hilarious by the way, he reckons myself & LP are cut from the same cloth, my mother-in-law reckons LP behaves exactly like Mr.HPP as a child. With genetics like that it’s no wonder LP is headstrong! So at least we have family experience on our side eh?
On a funny aside, LP’s latest favourite phrase is “coffee and bagel coming now?”! When we go into the “big city” we stop for a coffee and the coffee shop does free “babychinos”, foamy milk with marshmallows. Obviously we have foamy soymilk and omit the marshmallows! LP loves to sit there with her “baby coffee” while we have our “mammy and daddy coffees” and eat bagels. Yummy. Might do that later today as a “sorry we got no sleep” treat!
Oh she awakens, better hit “publish” and run off, byeee for now
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Posted in Attachment Parenting, Babies, Breastfeeding, Children, Family, Mothering, Parenting, SAHM, Toddler | 7 Comments »
1 January, 2009 by halfpintpixie
Happy 2009 everyone
It’s been a little quiet on HPP lately as I have been a very, very busy bee in the real world, more specifically in my house. I have been decluttering at an astronomical speed you see. One of the MDC mamas invited everyone to join her in a Post Christmas PURGE! This was exactly what I was waiting for as I love to declutter but need companionship on the way so that I keep up the momentum as I also love to hoard so if I slow down I stop! So each of us is aiming to declutter 1000 items from our houses as fast as we can!
As of last year (well ok, yesterday) my count stood at: 167/1000 comprising:
Charity shop:
- Various old plastic toys that need a new home: 41
- Box of Christmas cards: 1
- Random Greeting Cards: 10
- Clothes: 24
- Duplicate books: 6
Recycling Bin:
- Box of shredded bills: 2
- Bag of mostly scrap paper: 2
- Big box full of un-reuseable cardboard: 1
- Random recyclables (food containers, boxes etc.): 40
- Old worn & torn magazines: 3
Rubbish Bin:
- Rubbish bag of junk: 4
- Old cards (old bank cards etc.): 20 (chopped up & binned)
Other:
- Glass Bottles: 2 bags (bottle bank)
- Glasses: 8 (donate to charity through opticians)
- Out of date medicines: 3 (off to pharmacy for disposal)
You could quickly sprint off towards the 1000 items if you estimate how much paper you are chucking, but I’m making it a little harder on myself by counting some things by the bag not individually. Although I’m fairly sure that by next week I’ll be throwing out boxes of toothpicks just so I can write down “toothpicks: 250″ to boost my totals
My only tip is “be ruthless” and think of three things (not my ideas, I read them elsewhere)
- Is this item packed away in a box? When did it last leave the box? Could it have a happier life elsewhere?
- Have you worn this item in the last 6 months / 1 year? If not, why not? (Maternity/baby clothes/seasonal clothes in storage can be excused from this!)
- If the item is not useful or really, really important to you then away it goes!
And use boxes and parcel tape prolifically. Box up all your charity-shop goodies as you find them then seal up the boxes as you go. Never open the boxes again! Give the sealed boxes directly to the charity shop because if you open them again then the contents will look so lovely you will want to keep them all again. I speak from experience here
Because you know, as a stay at home mammy, our home is where I spend most of every day. I work here, I play here, I rest here, I look at the same stuff day in, day out. And quite frankly all the stuff that was previously cutely sentimental is now doing my nut in, so it is time for some serious decluttering! As I continue on my decluttering path I will share any tips and tricks I find with you all Bet you can’t wait!
And I know, I might need all the stuff once it’s gone, why do you think I’ve kept it all so long? But did I need to keep a paper bag from Hong Kong Disneyland for 4 years? Perhaps not. Or the chopstick set from Thailand that I’ve never used because they are too slippery and we have about a million chopsticks anyway? Ok so, they can go. And the lava lamps? I do like lava lamps, so kitsch and so cool. I’m keeping them for the moment, but I’m not sure, I might need them, but when does one actually need a lava lamp, much less two!? But I am keeping them, I think.
Fascinating 1st post of 2009 eh? Anyone else in a decluttering mood? It’s very freeing! My dear friend Jumbleberry Mama is decluttering her abode too and she has invented De-Thinging Thursday, the weekly update of our progress, stay tuned next week to see how we are getting on!
So come on, join us… come to the dark side…. we have cookies!
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Posted in Family, General Musings, Parenting, SAHM | Tagged declutter, decluttering, housekeeping | 8 Comments »
28 December, 2008 by halfpintpixie
Wandering around our local supermarket just before Christmas we stopped briefly at the “health-food” section to pick up some soy custard and noticed an exciting little bottle peering back at us from a lower shelf. Life’s Worcester sauce! We usually have to adapt recipes that call for Worcestershire Sauce because we could never find an anchovy-free brand, yet there it was in our local supermarket all along!
In terms of taste, I really like it, but I’ve never tasted real worcestershire sauce. Mr.HPP has, and reckons this is similar, good but not exactly the same.
And, bonus of bonuses, finding the worcester sauce required the cooking of more Chickpea Sensation Patties to test it out. Oh the hardship
Posted in Food & Drink, Vegan, Vegan Cooking, Vegetarian | Tagged vegan-worcestershire-sauce, worcestershire-sauce | 10 Comments »
26 December, 2008 by halfpintpixie
I know I’m on a blogging break, but I had to share this photo… those of you who were following my neverending felt food making adventures can now gaze upon the final setup! Santa brought Littlepixie a wooden kitchen and a wooden market stall. And mammy provided a basket of food, et voila! Shoppy time
We have had hours of fun so far with these, everyone has had numerous meals cooked for them and the veggies have been flung all around the house! I’ve temporarily retired the pizza as the pieces were getting lost too quickly, methinks some velcro might be handy on them.
And Santa brought me a new camera to replace my old white-balance-challenged one, yay! It’s a Panasonic Lumix TZ5, it’s a compact camera, coloured silver & burgandy-brown (very retro) and has a 10x optical zoom (yes 10x, woohoo!), ahhh… such splendidness! I’m getting to know it, getting to know all about it and I like it a lot
And Mr. HPP bought me a staple-less stapler as a trinkety present, any of you who know me in real life will know how much I love things like that, and a staple-less stapler is the best thing like that ever, and it’s a really cute cat too, actually if you look up in the market photo above you can see it peeking out from behind the watermelon along with my 1-up mushie (yes, I am an old-style Mario nerd too).
Christmas has been fantastic fun, well it still is fantastic fun, there are plenty of days left till Little Christmas, hurrah! Hope you are all well!
Posted in Children, Family, Parenting, crafts, felt-food | Tagged christmas, felt-play-food | 12 Comments »
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