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Dribble Rash Blues
3I’m getting really down about this at the moment as it seems like I have tried absolutely everything possible to get rid of Zara’s dribble rash and it just won’t shift. I’ve tried metanium cream, sudocreme, vaseline, intensive moisturiser, ezcema cream and nothing seems to help. It seems to fade during the day when I’m constantly applying creams but as soon as I put her down for a nap or overnight it just gets worse and we’re back to square one.
I have so many photos of Zara up to about 9 months but I have hardly any nice photos of her since then as they are all marred by this horrible red rash. I could cry as it’s getting so bad.
We’ve been to the doctors and we brushed off and told to use Metanium cream and I got the feeling they just thought I was yet another paranoid mum
This is what she looked like yesterday – it breaks my heart
It just looks so sore
If anyone has any tips / solutions then please let me know.
The Gallery – A Smile
7This post is this weeks entry for The Gallery over at Sticky Fingers
The prompt this week is A Smile. Now I could post one of a thousand photos of Zara smiling away but I decided instead to opt for a photo that although not the best quality in the world, it makes me smile everytime I look at it.
I give you…bored, bored, bored
Asparagus and Green Bean Tagliatelle
1This is another recipe which I absolutely love. I’m not sure where it originally came from and it’s been tweaked over time to suit the Brown household. It takes a little bit of preparation and requires a food processor or something to mix/chop the ingredients (I use a magic bullet type thing) but it’s definitely worth the effort
Ingredients:
A couple of packets of asparagus tips
A packet of trimmed green beans
1 red chilli (or a heaped teaspoon of lazy chillies)
1 inch of fresh ginger root (or rough equivalent of lazy ginger)
1 big clove of garlic
6 spring onions
3 tablespoon of smooth peanut butter (you can use chunky if preferred but smooth is baby friendly for Zara)
3 tablespoons of soy sauce (low salt preferable)
3 tablespoons water
Tagliatelle – enough for however many people you are serving (I use 6 balls of it)
Groundnut oil
Sesame oil
A handful of pinenuts to garnish
To make:
1) In a food processor mix the chopped spring onions, chopped garlic, chopped ginger and chopped chilli until you have a nice paste of finely chopped ingredients.
2) Chop the asparagus and the green beans into 1 inch pieces
3) Put the tagliatelle onto cook for however long it takes – 10/12 minutes usually
4) Steam the asparagus and green beans for a few minutes until almost cooked
5) Make the sauce by adding the peanut butter, soy sauce and water into the food processor and blending until you get a smooth paste
6) Using the groundnut oil fry the chilli and ginger paste for a few minutes before adding in the steamed vegetables and continuing to cook for another couple of minutes.
7) Once the veggies are cooked add a dollop of sesame oil to the pan and then pour in the peanut sauce and mix, once this has cooked for a minute or so add in the cooked tagliatelle and mix thoroughly.
Put onto plates to serve and garnish with a few pinenuts.
Enjoy
A little bit of news to share
32Well it’s been a tough few weeks trying to keep quiet but I guess I can now reveal the reason for me being so quiet on twitter and my blog over the last few weeks (and the reason I’ve been constantly hungry!)
This morning we went for a scan and I have this little critter growing inside me
Yes I’m 12 weeks and 5 days pregnant (the 5 days are a bonus as I thought I was only 12 so it’s nice to know I’ve a bit less time to go
)
So fingers crossed if all goes well Zara will be having a little brother or sister due on the 23rd March next year
Zara will be almost 16 months old then so I’ll certainly have my hands full!
So glad I can finally say it out loud as keeping it quiet has been driving me up the wall. I’ve been feeling pretty rough and even tweeting has been making me nauseous but it seems to be dying off a bit now so hopefully I’ll be back to full tweeting and blogging speed shortly.
I’m also doubling this post up as this weeks entry for The Gallery over at Sticky Fingers as the prompt this week is “A Celebration”
Veggie Chilli Recipe
2I thought it was about time I started sharing some of my favourite vegetarian recipes on here and to start off with I’m going to share one of my favourites. My husband originally taught me how to make this one and with a bit of tweaking to perfect it I think I’ve come up with a very tasty veggie chilli. We quite frequently dish this one up when we have meat eaters coming for dinner and it goes down very well with them aswell
This meal can serve between 4 and 6 though we tend to put half of it in the fridge and have it a couple of days later so for us it’s a meal that does 2 evenings
Ingredients:
1 Red Pepper
1 Red Onion
2 Cloves of Garlic
1 heaped teaspoon of lazy chillies or if you have it one chopped red chilli instead
A punnet of mushrooms (just one of the typical sized ones you get in supermarket)
2 tins kidney beans in chilli sauce
1 tin chickpeas
1 tin chopped tomatos
Half a bag of frozen Quorn mince
To make:
1) Chop the red onion, red pepper, garlic, chilli (if not using lazy chillies), mushrooms
2) Fry the red onion in some vegetable oil for a few minutes until starting to soften
3) Add the red pepper and continue to fry for a couple of minutes before adding the garlic, chilli and mushrooms. Then continue to fry until the mushrooms are starting to cook (I just taste one to see – usually just 3/4 minutes).
4) Once mushrooms starting to soften, pour into the pan the tinned chopped tomatos, 2 tins of kidney beans complete with chilli sauce, the drained chickpeas and half the bag of frozen Quorn mince (you can cook this from frozen!). I then use one of the kidney bean tins to fill with water and add to the mix though you can use some vegetable stock if you prefer.
5) Leave everything to simmer for 20 minutes or so (when it tastes cooked it is!).
Serve with whatever you like, rice, nachos, baked potatoes, refried beans, sour cream, guacamole or anything else you care to eat it with
If reheating some for another day I find it helps if I add another tin of chopped tomatos to the saved mix before reheating as it keeps it nice and moist.
Enjoy!

This photo was taken mid cooking so it really doesn’t do it justice but you get the idea
Things that bother and annoy me…
2I’ve been tagged by Whimsical Wife to share some of the things that bother and annoy me. Oh dear I could go on all day here so I’ll try and limit myself to a top 5
1) People who seem to find it strange that Zara is being brought up vegetarian. Both myself and her daddy are vegetarian and so for us it is only natural that we raise Zara as vegetarian aswell, afterall we are hardly likely to start buying and cooking meat for her when neither of us eats it. Yet for some reason I find myself constantly having to defend this decision even though if it were for religious grounds people wouldn’t even dare mention our choice of diet but just because we like animals and don’t eat them, people just don’t seem to understand.
2) Fashion annoys me, particulary at the moment. Whenever I look in the shops all I can seem to find are dreary greys, blacks and browns. What happened to the world, when did it all go dull, dull, dull? I know we are heading for winter now but is it really necessary to dress as if we are all going to funerals everyday? Can we please have some lovely bright winter clothing please that doesn’t depress me everytime I open the wardrobe?
3) Other mums drive me insane! OK so not all other mums, just most of them
I just can’t seem to get my head round other mums who just go on and on and on and on and on and on about their little darlings all the time. OK so I know I like to talk about Zara quite a bit but I also have other things I like to talk about and if I meet another mum for a coffee I’d occasionally like to talk about tv, shopping and life in general. An hours conversation about why “babyX” is the most gifted and amazing child born since Einstein is not what I signed up for. Oooh I can see my followers dropping off by the dozen now
4) Cars annoy me, ok so I know they are pretty essential but they constantly need something doing to them, whether taxing, insuring, MOTing or fixing. It seems like you just about get on track with your monthly budget and then something goes wrong with the bloody car and bang their goes your overdraft limit again. If I could live without a car I would be oh so happy!
5) Trying to think of people to tag with meme’s annoys me because I’m far too shy to tag people and so I tend not to tag anybody and just plead for people to take up the challenge and pick up the meme if they would like to do it
I like doing meme’s and I like being tagged myself, I’m just annoyed with myself for being too shy to tag other people for fear of rejection. So is that me I’m annoyed with? I guess so
So if you would like to tag yourself with this meme and share what bothers and annoys you on your blog then please feel free to pick this up and comment below to let me know so I can come and read it
HIPP Organic Review – From a BLW Viewpoint
0Now we are very sucessfully baby led weaning and loving every minute of it and so baby foods are not something we buy or use. However there are occasions when it’s good to have some baby friendly finger foods to have close to hand to offer as snacks or extras to add to a meal when parts of our meals are not suitable for Zara.
HIPP Organic very kindly sent us some of their finger foods to try out and see what Zara thought of them. What is important to me when giving Zara food is that it is as natural and unprocessed as possible. We are vegetarian so this is also a must and where possible we try to use organic food. Low salt and sugar are of course top of the list of things I look for and HIPP Organic are great as when you read the list of ingredients it’s a list that you can understand and not like reading some kind of chemical analysis. You can check out their website HERE for more information about their products and you can even find them on twitter @HiPPOrganic
Zara particularly loves their rice cakes which come in 3 flavours. Apple, Carrot and Pumpkin and Zara’s personal favourite Tomato and Sweet Red Pepper. The great thing about these rice cakes are that they are ideal finger foods for when we are out and about. It’s easy to pop a few in a little container which can be whipped out and offered to Zara in order to distract her from her mum eating chocolate cake or a thousand and one other sinful foods which she doesn’t want to share
They are also relatively mess free which is always a boost when out and about as it doesn’t require constant bibs/outfit changes to keep her looking immaculate for her public. The rice cakes also form a fabulous base for homemade houmous or guacamole. These are definitely a must have for our store cupboard from now on
Another fantastic finger food we tried were the Crispy Biscottes, little wheat biscuits which are an ideal base for mashed up banana, fruit puree, yoghurt and anything else you care to pile on them. Zara loves these by themselves and will quite often have one or two with her breakfast which usually consists of fruit and yoghurt. The crunchiness of the biscottes is a texture that she seems to particularly enjoy and it seems to soothe her teething. Yet another item that will be living in our store cupboard from now on
1st Birthday Parties – Really Necessary?
6OK so the time has arrived where we are starting to receive invitations to 1st birthday parties from some of our fellow NCT mums. Either I’m a shocking mother or maybe I’m just living in cloud cuckoo land but I wasn’t planning on doing anything for Zara’s first birthday apart from baking a cake with a candle for Daddy, me and Zara to share on her birthday with maybe a few presents. The thought of a party had never entered my mind.
But it seems to be the done thing for mums to organise huge birthday bashes with fancy dress, party games, party food and the whole schbang? Am I really going to be doing Zara a diservice in life by not throwing her a first birthday party of mamouth proportions, am I going to scar her for life? Should I just throw caution to the wind and organise a party complete with limosines and disco?
I suppose one issue I have is that, apart from the odd baby here and there I wouldn’t have a clue who to invite, my family are miles away as are my husbands family. I could probably count the number of guests on one hand so it hardly seems worth the effort and I can’t see Zara giving two hoots whether she gets lots of presents of guests or not.
It’s a tough decision, do I forever brand myself as a mother who just doesn’t make the effort or do I bite my lip and do what seems to be expected?
OK OK OK – how fast things change!
2It was only a few weeks ago I was on here moaning about being fustrated at Zara’s inability to progress and start crawling after being stuck in a rut for what seemed like months.
Well surprise surprise she did start crawling and sitting up properly by herself a couple of weeks ago and since then she has developed a real taste for freedom. I’ll stop moaning about it now, though I do have to post this photo that I caught this morning, it’s the second time she has done it and she is looking VERY proud of herself
Now how long will it be before I’m moaning that she isn’t walking yet?
My little girl is growing up fast!
When You Were Young
1I was tagged a while back by @Kateab over at The Five F’s in this meme which originated from @himupnorth and The Blog Up North. It’s taken me a while to get round to posting it as I’ve been having a busy teething time with Z recently but I’ve eventually managed it
When I look in the mirror now, do I see what I thought I’d see all those years ago when all those childhood dreams were fresh in my mind and the world was mine to conquer? Gosh that is such a tough question!
I guess I have to go back many years now and try and remember what it is I wanted when I was young. I don’t think I was ever one of those people who knew from an early age what they wanted to do career wise. My career just kind of happened because I was good at Maths and Business Studies and going on to become an accountant just seemed the logical thing to do. I’m very logical like that, if you’re good at something then use it to your advantage. I don’t really see this meme as being about my career though, I’m going to go a bit deeper with it and talk about my childhood aspirations.
In these days of divorce and broken families I guess I’m unusual in that my parents have been married almost 45 years now and are very happy together (don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t always a bowl of cherries but compared to a lot of my friends it seemed like heaven!). Growing up I think I wanted that stability and love for myself although it took until only 4 years ago for me to find it. It took a lot of searching but I think I’ve finally found my soulmate and with just starting our own little family I hope my children grow up in a happy and secure environment aswell.
We grew up in deepest, darkest Derbyshire in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere so had a relatively sheltered childhood. Lots of climbing trees, playing in the countryside and generally spending 90% of our time outdoors whether it be on bikes, rollerskates, skateboards or just walking for miles. I always wanted a similar lifestyle when I was older, living in the countryside, owning a horse, small village life etc and when I first graduated and started work I resigned myself to city life. I still got my horse though but I lived in a 2 bedroom flat on the waterfront in Hull, surrounded by other business people. I missed being able to look out of my windows and see miles of green but I just accepted that it was part of my new life. Of course now I live in a little village, just outside of Durham. I have miles of countryside on my doorstep and when I look outside I see green. I haven’t got a horse up here yet but give me time, I’m already itching to buy Zara her first pony lol.
I think I’ve done pretty well for myself really, I’m financially stable, in a very happy relationship, have a beautiful daughter and a gorgeous house. I think the one thing I would have liked to have seen which I currently don’t have is job satisfaction but that’s going to take a bit more work on building up my little accountancy business
Now I know it’s the usual to tag people now but I’m not going to tag people as I’m a bit shy so if you’d like to pick up this meme from me then just comment below


















Zara is...



