ITALY AND HOLLAND

A few weeks a go I returned from an amazing six night respite break in Italy with Daughter number 2. We flew to Verona and drove to a beautiful location on the Gardone Riviera at the side of Lake Garda.

When we arrived home and reflected on the trip... it suddenly occurred to me that I HAD BEEN to ITALY!
Now I know that may sound rather strange to some of you having just said that's where I'd just been... but  I'll explain a little more later.....

Making Memories and Traditions... At The Beach - Messages on Pebbles

I know that I haven't finished writing up the posts on Malta yet (a break we took a few months back) ... but I wanted to tell you about this fun day that we experienced about a week ago when we were on holiday as a family in Rye.

One of the days we took Heni to Winchelsea beach (close to where we were staying).
As we were trudging all the bags, chairs, cool box etc on to the beach I had my eyes down, as I usually do, looking for the perfect heart shaped rock.  All of a sudden I noticed a  number of pebbles with writing on gathered together in a group. I bent down and took a closer look and a smile crossed my face…. There was another kindred spirit on the beach who likes to do  random fun stuff like we do! (In the past we have been known to make little painted prayer rocks and paper weights for the kids and other friends... and last year when we were on holiday in Cornwall...we had also done some drawing and writing on pebbles and left them behind for someone to find. It was a nice reminder for me of how much fun we had  that day and how the time seemed to whiz by as we churned the pebbles out of the "beach factory" and dotted them in strategic places everywhere…

We quickly set up camp....                                                                        

Sanity Space - In the kitchen????

 After having cooked for the family for well over twenty years I've become a little tired with preparing and making meals. The added complication of food intolerance has magnified that feeling to the point that  the kitchen is currently NOT my favourite place!

However, given a munchy attack....the space to experiment (with no one else around) and not being under any time pressure, I quite enjoy making some mess and throwing some things together. I don't particularly like following recipes though... I'm more of a "see a picture...like it... and figure out how I can make something look like that with what I have in my kitchen cupboards" type person. I have a gluten free, egg free, dairy free board on Pinterest that I like to pin recipes  on to that I use for some inspiration. https://www.pinterest.com/jadebie/gluten-free-egg-free-dairy-free/

Eating out with food intolerances - The Cliffs Restaurant - Malta (plus a bit of sight seeing)

  I have literally just arrived home from our summer holidays, unpacked everything, put the dirty clothes in the washing machine and now I'm onto blog catch up...
I thought that I would post something from our respite break to Malta earlier in the year...It seems like forever since getting back from that trip... and I have finally got round to telling you a little bit about it! This is the first in a series of three from our break....
(Hopefully I won't take as long to write something about our most recent summer adventures!!)

During the middle of our week away we decided to take a rest from the pool and head out in the rental car to explore some more of the other side of the island.  We had heard that there was a beach called Golden Bay (one of the few sandy beaches in Malta) over to the north west of the country.  We  managed to navigate the notorious Maltese traffic and arrived at the beach in much need of a swim to cool down. The beach was nice.... but the sign for the "10 different types of jelly fish"  to watch out for put us off from taking a dip in the water..... and so we lounged around in the sun and took a  paranoid paddle or two instead!

Eating out with food intolerances - Ready made snack bags

A few weeks ago I listened to a podcast by Portland Roots media called  Stronger Everyday... the  podcast was a  "Summer survival guide"...  on how to survive the summer with happy children.  One of the hints and tips shared  on the cast that I really liked (and always have the intentions of doing but never get round to) was the suggestion  of being organised .... of planning and preparing and making snacks ahead of time so that there is always something healthy to grab on the way out the door.  I was motivated to have a go this year and so today I went shopping with daughter number two for some ingredients and we made up a bunch of snack bags together.