Things I’m loving/not loving in my life this week.

April 28, 2018 / 2punkshadabunchofkids / 2 Comments

Hi lovely readers,

I thought it would be fun to write a recap of my week! Here goes!

What I’m Loving this week:

The school holidays. The relaxed mornings are what I love the most about the holidays. Every morning this week after breakfast, we all head out for a morning walk for an hour or so. The house is left, dishes undone, hair unbrushed. All that can wait until we get back. If I got all the stuff done before we left we would never leave! After our walk we have a warm cup of tea and something to eat and I notice the children play really happily for the rest of the morning into the afternoon because they are feeling refreshed from the fresh air and sunshine and relaxed from getting out excess energy.

Today is Willow’s 2nd Birthday! Wow I can’t believe my baby is two! Yesterday we had a fun day out in the city eating lunch and buying presents and celebrating Willow! Of course, everything she wanted was Peppa Pig! We had lunch at the mall and afternoon tea at the botanical gardens.

Botanical gardens vege patch

Listening to a busker while eating lunch

The girls found some friends in Toy World!

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Peppa pig birthday girl!

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What I’m reading:

Fast Food Genocide by Joel Fuhrman. M.D

A book I borrowed off of my parents. It certainly makes you want to stay away from fast food!! It’s scary to learn about what processed food can do to your brain!

Fast Food Genocide : How Processed Food Is Killing Us and What We Can Do about It - Dr Joel Fuhrman

What I’m Watching:

I can’t put down Sarah’s YouTube vidoes from ‘Our Tribe Of Ten.’ Her channel is my absolute favourite! I’m learning so much mum wisdom from her and am enjoying watching her beautiful family.

What I’m Eating:

This week I turned a Dahl soup recipe into a casserole type thing by adding sweet potatoes, white potatoes, broccoli and spinach to the original recipe. It was so yum! I didn’t take any photos though!

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I also made my fav sweet potato and apple brownie recipe this week. Most of my children love this too and it didn’t last long.

The recipe for this brownie is in my ebook Yes You Can Lose Your Pregnancy Weight

Challenges I’m facing:

Luke’s back keeps getting hurt at work. Eight years working in Aged care have really taken it’s toll on his body (lots of lifting people and rolling large uncooperative people around in bed). His back is getting worse and it’s looking like a career change will possibly be necessary. He does graphic design and web design on the side but the business is very slow. If you have a website you need designed he has a very unique style CLICK HERE to be taken to his website. CLICK HERE TO GO TO HIS AWESOME FACEBOOK PAGE!!

I have also gained a couple of kilograms slowly over the past month or so. I like food and in general I think I have just been eating too much. It’s enough gain to make my jeans feel really tight, so I will be trying to lose this weight again in the upcoming week.

Coming up…

Term two of the school year is coming up on Monday for us. This term I have Arrow at home homeschooling. I’m very pleased to have him home again. He is studying grade 2 and doing really well. We have a good plan worked out and a gentle approach to home education so not to get overloaded. Francis and Savannah are still in school for a while longer before we work out the right time to begin home educating them again too.

I hope to film a home school day this week and put it up on our YouTube channel.

Thanks for reading!

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Blessings, Peta xo

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The Metabolic Clock – book review

March 31, 2017March 31, 2017 / 2punkshadabunchofkids / 2 Comments

I first stumbled upon the book ‘The Metabolic Clock by Julie Rennie’ on my mum’s bookshelf. While I was over at her house, I couldn’t stop reading it and when I left I took it home. I ~~stole~~ borrowed it. Since then I have read this book over and over again. After we moved mum just gave it to me!

It has helped me set some good habits – like not going to bed past 10pm. And it has inspired me to be the healthiest version of myself I can.

I love this book!

What it’s about:

It teaches you how to speed up you metabolism to help you lose weight based on the metabolic clock. It shows you how to change lifelong patterns that have been preventing you from living life to the full.

What I love:

The gluten free flourless chocolate cake recipe in the back of the book is yum! I use coconut oil instead of butter to make it dairy free too and it turns out great. It has the consistency of a mud cake and it makes a great treat. I’ve made the spicy bean stew many times too and it makes for a hearty filling vegetarian meal. Sometimes I don’t like to eat too much meat and it’s good to have a few vegetarian recipes up my sleeve.

The pictures in this book are beautiful – I love inspiring photography and nourishing food photography.

It teaches you how to think positively and how a negative view of yourself can impact your health and weight loss.

The 21 day lifestyle challenge has helped to go to bed before 10pm. I have struggled in the past with disciplining myself to get to bed at a decent hour. And with babies still waking me in the middle of the night – an early bedtime is essential to my well being and ability to function and think clearly throughout the day.

A few things I don’t agree with:

The book briefly mentions yoga and meditation. I choose not to do these things as they are associated with eastern evil religious practices. As a Christian I don’t want any part in stirring up the wrong spirits.

All in all – it’s a great read and the best thing is that it inspires me to keep up with my health regime. I’ve been riding my bike weekly and going for at least 3 power walks a week. Plus I’m always looking for ways to improve my diet.

Blessings, Peta

*I thought I’d do a review of a few of my favourite books. There’s no affiliate links.

Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook review

March 19, 2017March 19, 2017 / 2punkshadabunchofkids / Leave a comment

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I’ve been following Trim Healthy Mama on and off for around 4 years just after the first book was released. Initially I followed it strictly and I lost the last of the weight I gained from my third pregnancy quite quickly.

Since then I seem follow THM passionately for a while, then I go off it for a time and go with Sarah Wilson’s JERF philosophy (Just Eat Real Food).

Right now I am losing weight from my fifth full term pregnancy. Once again I’ve been using THM, a bit loosely mind you. I have the original THM book but I also purchased the new cookbook.

In a nutshell here’s my review:

I didn’t like it at first – but now I do.

I opened the book when it first arrived and was horrified to see that the THM ladies had made their own sweeteners and baking blend. I’m not a fan of ‘fancy’ ingredients and I didn’t want to order their expensive products. I just wanted to make healthy recipes out of easy ingredients I could buy locally. I tried a couple of recipes that didn’t use the special ingredients and wasn’t that impressed. We got busy moving to a new house and location and I was pregnant with my fifth baby. I tossed it on the bookshelf for a year.

I tried again.

The summer school holidays just passed I pulled out my book and decided to give it another go. I even ordered the baking blend and some THM sweeteners. The recipes I tried this time – I really enjoyed.

The drinks ‘Shrinker’ and ‘Singing Canary’ – wow!

And I love the wicked white chilli, the lemon herb drummies and the pancakes. I love to eat, so eating pancakes while losing weight is a winner for me.

I won’t be ordering their baking blend again because, lets face it, it’s expensive. Instead I will make up my own baking blend based on almond meal. I’ll keep using stevia though. It’s a natural sweetener that’s very low calories and keeps your blood sugar low. Sounds good to me.

I think it is possible to follow THM without ordering the expensive products or using specialty ingredients. But if you want to buy the products then go ahead – they are top quality.

So what’s the verdict? Is it worth buying the cook book? I’ll say yes.

Goddard Family

Reaching Hearts Through Music and Words

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