Safe Laaities

I've recently discovered Safe Laaities, a non profit cause to promote the use of car seats. 

The following statistics are from their website:

South Africa has the highest motor vehicle accident rate in the world!
Each day 3 children die due to motor vehicle accidents, more are left critically injured, brain damaged or paralyzed.
Car accidents is the fourth leading cause for unnatural deaths in children in SA
84% of our children travel unrestrained on our roads!!

Isn't these statistics shocking!

Car seats reduce the risk of death in an accident by 71% in infants and 54% in toddlers, this is why we need to buckle up our children in car seats.  Please read some of the articles on the Safe Laaities website on non car seat use.

How can you help this cause?

If you are a company you can donate in various ways.  Contact mag@mommies.co.za for more info.
If you are an individual please head over to their website and sign the petition. Signing will enable Safe Laaities to approach government to pass a car seat law.  To do this they need your signature!

Please help and support this cause, even if you just sign the petition.  I already did.

Disney Princess Theme

Little Mouse absolutely loves the Disney Princesses.  I've been meaning to do a proper Princess Theme with her for ages now and only got round to it last week.  We had so much fun and she enjoyed it so much!  I made all the printables and all links to both english and afrikaans pages are at the bottom of this post.  Please feel free to download and enjoy!  If you do download please email me with links / photos.  I would love to see how you enjoyed this theme as well!  All the pages are for black and white printers, you can either colour the pics yourself, as I did, or ask your little one to colour it.  I've downloaded the clipart from Disneyclips.com

We started off our Princess theme with a cupcake party!  One of our special friends joined us for a cupcake decorating feast.  Mouse wore her tutu and both of them had a blast.

She had to of course also wear her Belle T shirt!

 I made her this I spy page, it was so easy to make.  I simply cut some pictures from her Disney Princess Magazines and glued them onto a piece of card stock.  She then had to look through the magnifying glass to find certain items that I called out to her.

 We practiced some pre writing skills as well as the letters A, B, C, D, F and S.

 We matched some friends.

 Coloured in some items in certain specified colours.

 Counted with flashcards and with these bingo marker pages as well as completed a story sequence and size sequencing.

She also enjoyed playing with her paper dolls that I made for her - again pics cut out from her Disney Princess Magazines that I glued onto card stock and covered with contact paper.

This week we will be doing some activities from Clever Kids Club - looking forward to sharing those with you as well!

Links to printables:

English

Aa for Aurora
Bb for Belle
Cc for Cinderella
Dd for Dopey
Ff for Flounder
Ss for Snow White
Match the Friends
Princess Colours
Size Sorting Belle
Size Sorting Ariel
Count Flounder
Complete the Story
Writing exercises
Princess Bingo Markers

Afrikaans

Aa vir Aurora
Bb vir Belle
Cc vir Cinderella
Dd vir Dopey
Ff vir Flounder
Ss vir Sneeuwitjie
Pas die Maats
Prinses Kleure
Grootes Belle
Grootes Ariel
Tel vir Flounder
Voltooi die storie
Skryf oefeninge
Prinses Bingo Merkers


Enjoy!

Guava Chocolate Cake {Pudding}

This cake turned out so divine!  Soft and moist with yummy cream and soft, gooey guavas.  Yummy!  Ideal pudding cake!

I preserved the guavas myself, but you can use fresh or tinned ones.

Recipe for preserved guavas

Thinly peel all the guavas, cut in half and immediately place in a bowl with the following mixture in, 5 liters of water plus 15ml salt and 15ml vinegar.  This will stop the guavas from turning brown.
Make a syrup by boiling 200g white sugar and 500ml water for about every 500g of guavas that you have.  In the meantime boil your guavas for about 5min till soft.  Add the guavas to your prepared syrup and boil for another 10min.  Bottle the guavas immediately in sterilized jars and seal immediately. 

I like this recipe since the guavas aren't too sweet, they are gooey and soft and heavenly!  If you are planning on preserving your guavas yourself, make them a day ahead of the rest of the cake.

Chocolate Cake recipe
This is my all time favourite, never fail, always a success no matter what, cake recipe!  I got this from my home economics teacher in grade 8!


Ingredients
500ml Flour, sifted
10ml Vanilla essence
450ml Sugar
4 Eggs, seperated
20ml Baking Powder
125ml Cocoa Powder dissolved in 250ml boiling water.  I used the Willie's Cocoa, but you can use normal powder
125ml Oil

Method
Pre heat your oven to 180 degrees celcius and grease two 20cm cake tins.
Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, oil, vanilla essence and egg yolks well, it is best to use an electric mixer.  Slowly pour in the  cocoa mixture while mixing.

In a seperate bowl whisk the egg whites till soft peak and then gently fold into your chocolate batter.

Pour batter into prepared tins and bake for 30 - 40 min.  Cakes are done when a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Leave to cool completely in cake tins before removing.

Cream recipe

250 ml fresh cream
30 ml icing sugar

Mix the cream and icing sugar and whisk the cream until soft peaks.

Assembling

Place a layer of cake on a plate, top with half of the cream mixture, place the other cake half on top and top of with the remaining cream.  Add some of your gorgeous preserved guavas on top and drizzle with some of the preserving syrup.  Enjoy!!! This makes the perfect pud!

I'm linking this to Heidi's Crafts: Fortnightly Baking Fun Challenge

Please visit this inspirational young lady's blog.  She is 14 years old and such an inspiring young lady!

Staying Organized as a Mom

Being organized is always a huge mission, and yet, when I'm not organized it feels as if I just cannot function properly.  Things get left behind or not done and then I have to work twice as hard to just keep everything under control.

I've started a new habit since January of this year, each night I sit down and list everything that I should do the next day.  In order from most important to least important.  The next day I start at the top of my list and work through it, things that does not get done moves to the next day and their priority changes to urgent.  I also sit down in the beginning of the month and check for any birthdays, making a list of gifts that I will need to buy.  This is then worked into our budget and I go out and buy all the gifts when I do my main monthly shopping.  Everything gets stored, including wrapping paper etc, in our gift drawer.  All ready!  Doing little things like this has so simplified my life, my life seems to run on autopilot in certain areas.

This has left more time for me to concentrate on homeschooling and caring for my family.  I also write down any cleaning duties that needs to be attended to, for example to clean on top of the fridge in my diary.  This is then scheduled for specific days, in this way I stay on top of any cleaning that needs to be done.  I also schedule my days away from the house to only 2 days a week, all errands are done on these two days, saving time and petrol!

Two brilliant resources for keeping me organized and sane is Flylady and the MOM Diary.

I just cannot function without my beautiful pink diary!  It is A4 sized, which means loads of space for me to write down everything that needs to happen at home, homeschooling, errands or anything else that needs to get done during the day.

The diary was developed by a mom and really meets all my needs.  There is even a little space to jot down any appointments or need to remembers for your kids!

The MOM Diary is available in beautiful colours, A4 and A5 sizes and only costs R175.00 each.  You can order it through Alison, deliveries of the diaries for 2012 is scheduled for November of this year.  I've already ordered mine!