Easy Ham and Cheese Muffins

Camden did a complete 180 around August this year. He went from being the best eater and people always commenting on his healthy appetite to a child who is not interested in food. He nibbles if and when HE feels like it end of story.

I try to keep things interesting because if he could he would live on peanut butter sandwiches and full cream milk. Sometimes when I try new things they are a success and other times he just shakes his head, says no and walks away with his nose in the air.

So difficult trying to please a toddler lol.

I tried these this morning as Camden loves cheese and ham so why not put them in a muffin and see how it goes. To be honest he wasn't so keen, all he ate all day was a peanut butter sandwich and cried all day for his bottle, nevertheless everyone else in the house loved them and there are only 5 muffins left...shock horror!

These are really simple to make, if you want to give them a try, find the recipe below.

Ham & Cheese muffins

makes 1 dozen muffins

2 cups of all purpose flour

2 tablespoons of honey

1 tablespoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of salt

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup of milk

1/4 cup of olive oil

1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese, plus more for garnish if you feel it is necessary

1/2 cup of diced ham (about six slices)

Fresh black pepper, for garnish (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. 
2. Spray a muffin pan with Spray & cook
3. In a medium bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together.
4. In a separate bowl, combine the egg, milk, olive oil and honey. 
5. Add these wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix lightly with a wooden spoon.
6. Once the batter is smooth, fold in the cheese and ham.
7. Spoon the batter into the muffin tray, filling them about 3/4 of the way. If you like, sprinkle some more shredded cheese and freshly cracked black pepper on top.
8. Bake for abut 17 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean,
9. Remove muffins from the oven and allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and finish cooling on a rack.

These are awesome for kiddies lunchboxes and these make a wonderful early finger food for beginner eaters who are safely managing small pieces. Just break a cooled muffin into age appropriate bite sizes and serve!

New version of the old me

This morning I laced up my trainers for one last workout in 2015.

This year hasn't been the best year for fitness for me. I had all these hopes and dreams of being back to my pre-pregnancy weight but life happened and I missed that mark by a mile.

This year has been one of yo-yo weight, many moments of " I will start again on Monday" and one week of crazy training followed by 5 weeks of laying on our bed eating crap and feeling sorry for myself.

I can give you all the excuses under the sun and blame my fiance for not being the most motivational person on the face of this earth but why bother, many people who have a crappy year still manage to stay motivated and stay in shape, I didn't and YOU are your OWN motivation.

Do I feel gross about myself, yes. I feel gross about how I look and gross about my pure lack of motivation.It is like my motivation migrated for the winter and it never returned.I have found this very frustrating and I cannot understand it because, " I have been there, done that and got the T-shirt" waaaaayyyy more than once in my life. I used to be that FIT girl that other girls looked up to...it is depressing to say the least. I am now that fat girl looking to others for motivation.

I am angry with myself and I no longer want to be this girl and I refuse to let her back into my life or rent space in my head. She has been here for the last year and she has got to go!

2016 is going to be my year to...

Find this girl again and actually feel happy on the inside...

Leave negative thoughts and talk behind in 2015
Eat zero junk food
Get back in shape
Ditch fake friends
Spend time with people who make an effort to spend time with me
Make more of an effort to get to know people who want to get to know me instead of pushing them away
Have more patience
Be kind to myself and not expect Rome to be built in one day

Cheers to 2015

#2016imcomingforyou

So this was Christmas...morning in our house

It is hard to believe that this is our second Christmas as parents. Time has gone by way too fast.

At 17 months of age, Camden is still too young to appreciate what Christmas is all about. This year we decided to keep the gifts as educational as possible and to a minimum as this child of ours has too many toys than he knows what to do with. I find he can't even concentrate on one toy long enough to enjoy it because he has too many to distract him.

5:30 am and our little monster was up and about hovering around the Christmas gifts. His fingers were wandering and he was trying to check what was inside the colourful packages. We wanted to wait until 7:00 am for him to open the gifts as my mother and grandmother wanted to be there to witness the excitement.



Roll on 7:00 am and we let Camden start opening his gifts. He jumped into the biggest present and started pulling and smacking at the wrapping paper like a crazy person...that is our boy!











It wasn't long before he jumped out of the sandpit shell my mom bought him to go and investigate the other gifts and see what more he could destroy.







The look of pure excitement on this little guys face when he saw what was in the next gift was priceless! My mother had also bought him a bucket and spade set to play in the sandpit she had bought him. Camden has seen kids playing with these sets in the sand every time we go to the beach and I have felt terrible for him as you can just see how badly he wants to play with the kids buckets and spades but I knew he was getting one for Christmas so I didn't want to spoil that and get him one before then,



He was so happy, he started clapping his hands. This moment was too precious for all of us.

Camden has a really short attention span at this age and after he got to open his cart with bucket and spade he was off and not interested in the other gifts for some time. You have to leave him to let him do what he wants to do, he doesn't like to be fussed with or told what to do, so we left him be.

Shortly after he got bored of that gift and ventured over to see what was next. He got a magnetic fishing rod from my gran that he can pick up little fish with as well as colouring in books, crayons, apron, paint brushes, paint,a Noddy DVD set, an inflatable pool tube, sippy cup and a nursery rhyme book with CD.

We left our gifts for last, we bought him clothing which for him isn't exciting in the least and a plastic motorbike. We left this for last because we knew if he opened this first that would be the end of unwrapping gifts. Every Birthday party that Camden has been invited to he has been infatuated with these plastic motorbikes and never wants to get off or give the other children a turn.

Just like we thought, the bike wasn't even out of the black bag we had wrapped it in and he was trying to climb on it.

He was glued to the bike for the rest of the morning and we had to take it with when we left the house to go and celebrate Christmas by having Christmas Lunch with the family at my Uncle and Aunts house.

Camden got a blow up car for the pool from my Cousin Jade and his girlfriend Megan and he got an awesome tent from my uncle and Aunt.

All in all Christmas was good, way quieter than the years before and my grandfather and great grandfather sure were missed.

It was almost like a family tradition for my grandfather to set something alight on Christmas day, either the table cloth, serviette or himself and this year my mother took over when she set the cloth that we had put over the food to keep the flies away alight, that was funny and we all had a good laugh...once the flames were out of course. I am sure my grandfather had a good chuckle while watching over us.

We hope you all had a good Christmas with family and friends.

Happy Holidays

May God’s blessing shine down upon you and your family this holiday season. 

Sending love from our family to yours.

Wayne, Tarrin & Camden

xx

Family Shoot - Kirstenbosch

A fairly warm Sunday afternoon we ventured to Kirstenbosch Gardens, to meet with Marysol for a family photo session.

I was really paranoid about doing this family session as I was hoping to have lost more weight before the shoot and I was toying with the idea of postponing it but Marysol said something to me that made me change my mind. She said there are no such things as "fat photos" these are photos of life NOW. Beauty NOW. Family Now and that is not to be taken for granted as life is short and you never know how much of it you have left....I am so glad we did this shoot of our family NOW.



Marysol was there to capture Camden's birth over a year ago and this was the first time she was seeing Camden since then. Well "in the flesh" as she has seen pictures of him but the pictures just don't do the size of Camden justice. She was so shocked to see how big he had gotten in such a short space of time.

Camden being the busy bee that he is made it rather difficult to take photos as he barely sat still for one second and he kept wanting to join other groups of people that surrounded us but Marysol captured these photos that I am about to show you beautifully and you would never say that this photo shoot was hard work with our little toddler, we look so relaxed on the photos but a behind the scene's photo would have shown an entirely different story.

Enjoy x

I am so happy with how these photos turned out and I would HIGHLY recommend Marysol to anyone wanting to have the birth of their child documented. She offers these "Day in the Life" family sessions to her clients who have made use of her for their birth photography. Go have a look at her website.