My Raisin Family

Hey Everyone! As a busy mum with kiddos who have after school activities most of the week, planning and prepping meals is a big part of my week.  At this point, my son has futsal games on Monday and Tuesday late afternoon, and futsal training on Monday and Wednesday straight after school. Speech therapy is also straight after school on Tuesdays.  My youngest daughter also has gymnastics straight after school on Wednesday and Friday. So making sure I have meals prepped (for the most part at least) is really important for us to keep to our routines. Here are some tips I have picked up in my journey of feeding my family on a budget! Tip #1: Pre-cook your mince, chicken breast etc. We eat a few meals that use mince as the base (tacos, spag bol, savoury mince etc) and in order to make the most of my time in the kitchen, throwing a couple of kilos of mince in the pan or putting some chicken breast in the slow cooker takes little effort. Freeze in ziplock freezer b...

Hey Everyone! Welcome back to Meal Plan Monday! Most of these meals I have tips on saving time in the kitchen on another post, so keep an eye out for that in the next couple of weeks! Snacks for the week include: Popcorn Yoghurt Fresh Fruit Muffins (with sneaky fruit and veg) Homemade muesli bars Lunches have been a bit different lately because we have not really been having sandwiches. The kids are really not liking them at the moment so we have moved to having things like mac and cheese, ham and cheese scrolls and leftover dinners. Having lunch boxes like  these  make it easy to have a variety of things in the lunch boxes. My kiddos tend to not eat a lot during the hot months, instead drinking a lot of water. This is why they only have one small portion of a main meal for lunch, a snack (usually home baked) and a piece of fresh fruit.  Afternoon tea items are usually something protein packed due to the fact that after school sports hav...

Hey Everyone! A couple of months ago, my thermomix started to not work very well (so not happy about this). I talked to the Thermomix Customer Service who said to send it in for a service and to get checked. I use my thermomix all the time, so if I was without one for so many days or weeks, I would definately feel it.  So we talked about it, prayed about it, and decided it was time for a new TM6! And.... I am still getting used to the new format in the TM6, but so far it has been AMAZING! As of Sunday night, I have made a couple of things apart from the delicious veggie stock paste the lovely consultant made with me at the time of delivery. As always, the thermomix custard is the easiest and most delicious custard recipe ever, as well as the basic muffin recipe on the guided cooking platform Cookidoo. The muffins were choc chip (having a special needs child in the house, foods can feel repetitive but neccessary at times), and the recipe said it would ma...

Hey Everyone! I thought I would change it up a bit with the meal plans and add in a grocery haul! This is not quite a weeks worth of meals and groceries, but it is enough to get us through (with some snacks for mumma!).  Here is an overview of what I bought: I did buy a few things for snacks that I don't normally purchase, and there are ingredients required for 3 dinners. The dinners we are having this week are (it is already Tuesday, so these will be for Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday), Spaghetti Bolognese, Savoury Mince and Chicken Tonight and Rice. Tonight's dinner is Mac and Beef with Garlic Bread and veg.  The fruits I bought today are bananas (2 bunches), 3 punnets of strawberries, a bag of pink lady apples, and 3 avocados.  The items for snacks and school lunches are:  Mini Pretzels Baked Twists (Rasberry and Blueberry) Cruskits Vanilla Yoghurt Honey Ham Cheesy Peelers Twiggy Sticks Breakfast items: Milo Cereal ...

Hey Everyone! As my Essential Oil business is growing, I thought I would share with everyone our Essential Oil journey. We started out a few years ago, when a friend of mine helped me out with getting my daughter's sleep under control (still an on-going issue but with different underlying issues). I signed up but never really ordered anything else and never shared or anything. Until September last year. I have had issues with anxiety myself, my daughter was experiencing some separation anxiety and sleeping issues, plus I was getting headaches all the time. This is when I decided that I needed to do something to help myself and my family that wasn't going to do us more harm in the long run.  I already knew the oils work. I had seen that with my own eyes, so I ordered the Family Essentials Kit from doTerra and added a diffuser onto the order. Coming from someone who is pretty stingy, the cost was a fair amount. So I asked my husband if we could go ahead with the orde...

Hey Everyone! There has been a few things I got in June that really get a lot of use and I am really happy with, so I thought I would share! Okay, the first thing I have LOVED is a book called The Essential Life.  For those of you who are not familiar with essential oils, this is basically the essential oil bible. There are 6 sections in this book that go through an intro to oils, various ailments and which oils to use for each, what each essential oil is good for, focus areas such as children, nervous system, etc. This book also has recipes, DIY's and blends to make for gardening, pregnancy etc. I have used this book so much this last month, it now lives in the lounge room! Second item is a doTerra essential oil blend called Peace. For those of you that know me, I get very anxious in certain situations, so when I ordered the Peace essential oil and started diffusing it, I ordered the Peace Touch (it is the same oil, just in a roller bottle and diluted with Frac...

Hey everyone! We are 1 week in, of 3 weeks of school holidays. We are actually coasting through nicely at this point. We have had a few outings and activities that haven't cost anything so far which is really good on the pocket.  Today we had my Mother In Law over teaching the kids how to make beaded Christmas tree decorations. They loved it! It was a bit difficult for my 12 year old (she is developmentally delayed with a range of other issues) so I helped her a fair bit. My son, Knox, had a really good crack at it, didn't finish his but he was there for most of the time. My youngest and my oldest daughters both really enjoyed and finished theirs and they are both looking forward to making more! My mother in law had all of the stuff required to make these so they did not cost me anything and they got to spend some quality time with their grandparents!  Baking is also a really good, cheap school holiday activity. Spending time in the kitchen with your ki...