Bookish things a whole month late

I was looking for my Feb post and realised.... I never posted about my books.

February was a great month for reading for many reasons:

1. We had our first book club.
2. I discovered Overdrive (free digital and audio books that are actually things I want to read, not the cheap stuff from Bookbub) 
3. 11 books!

Let's talk about the books:

8 fiction; 3 non-fiction
3 Audible; 3 Physical; 5 Kindle books

• The one that delighted me the most - Parenting without Power Struggles (but listen at 1.25 speed)
• New-to-me author that I'll definitely read again - Clare Dowling's Just the three of us
• Old but loved author - Carole Matthews's A cottage by the sea, and....
• Our book club read - I let you go, a solid 4* book

My word of the year is GIVE. And yes, I've been giving but I've been receiving a lot too. God is so fun!

One friend sent me a $10 Amazon gift card :) :) (imagine the Spanish dancing girl emoji)


Have you read a new-to-you author lately?
Or an old but loved author?

I'll be back next week with my March books ;)

Let's talk about lunches... yours, not kids

The other day I read a post on Cup of Jo about work lunches and this, of course, prompted a discussion in the office, because I am fascinated by the daily minutae of other people's lives.

Or inquisitive. Take your pick.

I generally see food as "breakfast", "lunch" or "supper" food and I don't like to mix my categories unless I'm super lazy.

So I never eat cereal for anything other than breakfast (unless there was food at a 9 am meeting and I had that instead of my cereal).

If I eat too many "lunch" meals which I actually define as "supper", I'll get bored with supper meals and that is not a good thing...

I typically bring a sandwich of some sort with a protein and veg, and then fruits and a yoghurt for my snacks.


Carb - always wholewheat bread, otherwise on a Monday, I may bring a roll if we have any left over from the weekend
Protein - tuna/ egg/ ham/ cheese (rarely, because then I have to bring a grater to work too)
Veg - usually tomato, sometimes cucumber, sometimes carrots



Favourite winter lunches:

• Garlic roll, my homemade soup (which is lentil and vegetable - always at least 1 P/ 2 V on Weighless)
• Toast, oodles of cottage cheese, Weigh-Less tomato and roasted pepper soup/ my own homemade soup
• Wholewheat toast, baked beans and soup
• Leftover pasta :)

Favourite summer lunches:

Wholewheat toast with

• tuna mixed with onion, tomato and a smidge of mayonnaise (and a mint sweet for afterwards :))
• eggs (I either make an omelette with onions, or I "boil" the eggs in the microwave at work, and slice them with tomatoes)
• cottage cheese mixed with avo, and cucumber slices

Now that I'm looking at my lunches, no wonder I'm so bored.



I'm not the type of person (there are plenty, I've found) who can eat the same thing for lunch day in and day out. I'd go mental.'

And I'm soooo not a salad person. I need salads on my sandwich, not in place of :)

So, some ideas from the comments on Cup of Jo...

• one lady said she takes supper leftovers for lunch and the fact that she needs food for the leftovers is a great incentive to not overeat at supper. LOVE this idea (in theory) because there are only ever leftovers if I make pasta, and in winter I do take this in maybe twice a month.
• some people cook a lunch meal on the Sunday and eat the same thing Mon - Thurs... 
• smoothies...

In our office, some buy a salad from the trolley (pasta for the boys and greens for the girls), some pop to the mall to buy lunch, some bring leftovers and some bring a bag full of stuff to assemble lunch at work (me!).

What do you typically eat for lunch?

PS a post from 4 years ago on the kids' lunches. And another one specifically on school lunch boxes.

Things that are making me super happy

I just checked on the date of my last post and.. it was two weeks ago.

Anyway.....

I'm using the writing of this post as a warm-up for my "real" writing on OrganisingQueen because I have a goal to write 5 posts this week.

1. It's practically a public holiday today

I feel very strongly that when a public holiday is on a Tuesday or Thursday, it's almost a sin to not take the Monday or Friday as leave :)

I always take these days off unless I'm out of leave...

Sadly, D is working but I did have a date with my cuties instead.



2. Book club

Oh my gosh, book club is making me so happy. We've started, we've had two meetings and people are reading!

I'm so enjoying all the bookish talk and really, why did I not do this earlier?!



3. Nanny S is back

Nanny S's sister died last weekend so she was off for the week again (that's three weeks in the last month). That part is not happy at all.

But she was back today. I told the kids if she's back then we can have the date mentioned above but if not, probably we'll be working.....probably doing laundry.

We did work on the kids' rooms because they want to share a room and not have their own rooms.

We'll have to see how this goes because their neatness personalities do not align...

Is anything making you happy today?
Share in the comments!

Losing your identity

So I've just read this awesome post on Design Mom about losing your identity (or not) once you become a mother.

Go read.... I'll wait.

I'll tell you what happened with me if you're interested.

I think I lost some of my career ambitions and drive while trying to fall pregnant. I honestly don't know how others get through infertility with everything intact :)

It feels like my 30's were taken up trying to fall pregnant (4 years), being pregnant, having babies, surviving the twins and then I blinked and I was 39 in that awful job.

I'm fine now but I don't think our marriage is even close to what it was pre-twins and I certainly feel like I've lost a lot of my ambition.

I love my children with an indescribable amount of all-consuming passion but I also know I love when I'm engaged in client solutions at my workplace.

I could never be a SAHM and I'm not sure if that's a brain thing or a personality thing; all I know is that I've had 5 months at home for maternity leave, 4 months on sabbatical and .... it's not for me.

Do you feel you lost your identity when you became a mother?
Or has it, as some of those commenters said, moved you towards your identity?


Tell me what you think.

We've just about survived!

Here I sit on a Thursday night and Nanny S is due to come back on Monday.

Things I've noticed while she's been away:

she's much, much better at keeping up with the laundry than I am


D took all his shirts and two of Connor's school shirts to an ironing service on Monday because I simply don't iron. Ever.

I've been doing a load every two days - first colours, then whites, etc. I did a whites load today and there's enough for another whites load tomorrow but I'm going to just ignore it until Saturday so D can help.

our food lasts so much longer

for some reason, we have only had to buy fruit (the same fruit we usually buy every week) once every two weeks.

I go through cleaning cloths super quickly



I have a love relationship with microfibre cleaning cloths. I have a ton so I use one a day and toss in the wash because I can't stand the slightest bit of smell :)

the kids are getting away with murder with her

She's definitely picking up after them a bit too much. We don't do that at all and find ourselves telling them to pick up their stuff, wipe down/shake crumbs off placemats, put clothes in the laundry basket, etc.

Connor really loves a star chart

Every day he asks me for his list and tackles that list with singular focus. He's super motivated by a goal like I am.

Kendra is motivated by chilling :)



She couldn't care less about stars but just wants to be done so she can laze around (this is Francois blood!)

So while we're excited to have Nanny S back, it does make me think we could probably do with only 3 full days or half days!



We've planned to go eat out on Sunday to celebrate all of our hard work these two weeks :)

What are you excited about these days?