Posts filed under ‘Life Issues’
Natural remedy for athlete’s foot
Ok so maybe not the most pleasant of topics to write about, but I just ‘had’ to share my amazement and excitement on this one.
The other day in a shop called Emmaus (helping the homeless) in Hastings, I bought a second hand book all about making your own herbal remedies. I must admit I was rather skeptical but willing to at least read all about it.
I discovered that one of my sons had mild athlete’s foot and thought it worth trying out a suggestion from the book, and why not?
- it was potentially cheaper than buying a special cream
- if it worked it was a lot easier than going to a shop to buy the cream
- if it worked I’d much rather use something natural than a medicine
Having said that it was raucous laughter coming from the bathroom as I turned half a squeezed out lime inside out and tried to coat it’s oils and juice all round his toes lol!
Fast forward to three days later and it’s almost completely cleared up – I’m stunned! All the itchy redness has gone and left a bit of peeling skin – what a result!
I almost want some one in the family to have something that needs treating so that I can try out something else on them!
I’m going to try again at growing herbs on our kitchen window sill. I have tried growing all sorts in the past but slugs have always won the day when I’ve ventured into growing outside but that’s another post for another day 
My way of losing weight
Hi All,
My new year’s resolution was to finally shift the weight I put on 8 years ago when having my twins. I’ve shifted bits of it every so often but my attempts have normally fizzled out quite quickly and the weight’s gone back on.
This time it seems to be working, yay, so I thought I’d share it with you
I’m doing various different things so that if I mess up in one area I know I’ve still done ok in the others:-
- I’m parking our car a 10 min walk down a very steep hill away from school so that I get 20 mins of walking at least 3-4 days out of 5;
- I’ve swapped my regular bag of crisps at 10.30ish for several pieces of fruit;
- I’ve cut potatoes, pasta, rice etc right back and swapped it for veg;
- I’ve cut down my breakfast and evening meal portion sizes a bit;
- I’m not eating puddings;
- If I can’t resist something sweet in the evening I’ll only have a yoghurt;
- Because my 10.30 food is much more than a snack I’ve cut back how much I eat at lunch;
- I’ve swapped the four slices of healthy brown bread sandwiches I used to have for lunch for a bowl of home made soup (gorgeous!) and one slice of bread and marg;
- Two or three times a week I prance about in front of the tv doing a quick 15 min exercise dvd lol!
- Every night I do two different girlie sit up things. One is with legs flat, finger tips behind your ears and raising your shoulders off the floor and back, the other is similar but with bent knees and bringing one knee and the opposite elbow towards each other, touching, putting them back and then doing the same thing with the other knee and elbow. This works on both sets of stomach muscles. This is developing some rock hard abs below the flabby bit in the middle! I’m hoping one day I might be able to see as well as feel them lol!
I think that’s it. I didn’t realise I was doing so many different things until I wrote I down! I’ve found it fairly easy to keep to most of the time, although I’ve found if I’m extra tired I can give in to sweet temptations quite easily. Although if they’re not in the house in the first place then it’s easy to resist lol! Also weekends when the family are around much more it can be harder too.
I’ve heard that it’s better to eat more meals and small ones rather than three big ones which is why I’ve sort of chopped lunch in half and made it a healthier version. I’ve found doing it this way, having part two of lunch at about 2pm that I can then easily go to 5.30pm without wanting to snack. Apparently eating like this helps your metabolism increase as if you leave it so long between meals it goes into starvation mode and slows your metabolism down.
The weight’s come off at about 1/2-1lb a week so I’ve lost nearly 3/4 stone so far in two months which I’m really chuffed with, even though it’s slower than I’d like I think the key here is that it’s a way of eating that for me is relatively easy to maintain. Which means that in another two months I should have lost about another 3/4 stone, which will be 1 1/2 stone! I’ll be so pleased if this happens and I can then keep it there! I’ve also noticed a distinct reduction in the ‘love handles’.
I’ll post again at the beginning of May to let you know how I’m doing
Bye for now
Anyway
I think this is an awesome poem so I thought I’d share it with you.
“People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self centred;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, People may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build Anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.”
By Mother Teresa
Cash Saving Tips No.6 How to save time on jacket potatoes
Aren’t jacket potatoes great? I love them!
I realised a while back that I wasn’t cooking them as often as I’d like too due to them needing 1 1/2 hours in the oven. I knew you can cook them in the microwave in about 15 mins but they’re just not the same without that lovely crispy outside!
One day I had a brain wave…I cooked my jacket potatoes in the microwave as normal then popped them in a hot oven for about half an hour whilst the rest of my dinner was cooking. Then they were all ready at the same time and had a pretty crispy skin too!
If you’ve got any time saving tips like this please do share them with us all below
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Taking Time Out
Hi Guys,
I just wanted to let you be the first to know that I’m going to take some time out from blogging. I’ve enjoyed it enormously, both the writing and the reading of all your great comments
It’s been a great tool for telling you guys about life stuff that I wanted to share with the world as well as keeping everyone up to date about the business.
But now it’s time for me to allow more time for building my fleece business and learning how to become a better teacher. I’m teaching IT part time to grown ups in my local community centre whilst my fleece business is growing but there’s only so many hours in my working day as I only work when my children are at school. So I’ve decided to concentrate on the two things rather than spreading myself too thinly.
So bye for now guys and see you around on Twitter and Facebook
How to make home made chicken nuggets
Reading Time: 2 mins
This recipe is so quick and simple it’s become a staple in our weekly menus I owe this recipe to a good friend from California – you know who you are cos you taught me when our children were toddlers together XX
Ingredients:-
- 1lb diced chicken (recipe is for 3 adults)
- 3 tbs flour
- 1 egg
- shake of pepper
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp mixed herbs
- lots of oil (I use olive oil)
How to:-
- Get a small bowl and beat your egg in it;
- Get another small bowl and add the flour and seasoning to it, mix them well together;
- Heat about 1/2 inch of oil in a deep frying pan until it’s pretty hot. I expect you can do this in a deep fat frier too but they scare me so I don’t own one
; - Using metal tongs pick up a piece of your diced chicken dunk it in the egg;
- Then put it in the flour and roll it around lots until it’s well covered in the flour mix;
- Then put it carefully in the hot oil;
- Repeat this process for the rest of the chicken pieces;
- Cook them all thoroughly until they’re nice and crispy and brown all over. I guesstimate this bit myself but it’s probably a good 20 mins to cook the larger pieces as you need to make sure they’re well done in the middle too.
And that’s it – simple
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Cash Saving Tips No.5
Are you a list writer? Do you like adding things to your lists just for the satisfaction of being able to tick them off when they’re done? I write lists for my food shopping each week; I keep a list of things to do for my work; if we go on holiday I write a list of what to take; if I’m arranging a social event I write lists of who’s doing/bringing what, where and when….and so the list goes on
Well I’ve discovered a never ending source of premade list paper!
The paper off of food cans! When you’re just about to use the contents, before you open it, other wise some of the contents may spoil the paper, take the paper off and stash it in a draw or put it in a bulldog clip or similar. Then you can open the can as normal.
If you do this every time you use a can you’ll at least have the paper for your weekly shopping list, if not alot more What else do you write lists for? Do you write lists for anything other than to make sure you don’t forget anything on it?
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Cash Saving Tips No.4
I recently heard about the amount of heat that we lose through our windows, even if they’re double glazed. Now I love getting natural light into my home for as long as possible but having realised that I’m now letting heat out as well as light in I now pull my curtains a bit earlier.
I also realised that I’ve got a large amount of glass in my front and back doors. Figuring these must be letting heat out too I’ve bought myself some material to make fleece curtains for these panes of glass.
Why fleece? Well if it keeps us warm it’s got to make good insulating curtains too, other than it’s partially made out of recycled water bottles and I sew with it all the time for my business that is!
If you enjoyed this tip you may like these ones too:-
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Cash Saving Tips No.3
You know when you’re cooking pasta on the hob and you bring it to the boil and then turn it down to a gentle simmer and allow about 12-15 mins for it to cook? Well what you can do instead is once it’s come to the boil is turn it straight off and keep the lid on.
Your pasta will be cooked in more like 20 mins instead of 12 but you’ll have saved 10 mins worth of gas or electricity!
This works because pasta doesn’t take long to cook and so with the lid on the water retains it’s heat long enough to cook it without the heat source.
Happy saving
Cash Saving Tips No.2
Quick and simple one this.
I’ve often heard people suggesting that you only boil the right amount of water that you need. Personally I’ve not very good at guesstimating this and my kettle needs a minimum amount of water that is bigger than the one cup I’m often making.
So instead what you can do is when you’ve boiled the kettle for your cuppa you put the left over water into a thermos flask and keep it for the next one!
This way even if the water isn’t hot enough to make a drink straight from the flask you can at least pour it back into the kettle and it will boil loads quicker saving you electricity! Simple!
