Guilt free chocolate-banana thickshake

This delicious chocolate-banana thickshake is so easy to make it's ridiculous, and it's completely sugar and guilt free. Great for using up over-ripe bananas, this drink is my go-to treat for Madeleine when I want to give her something sweet that is also nutritious. Last night Madeleine came home from daycare sweaty and exhausted but hyped-up (as is so often the case), and not keen for her dinner. I'm never too worried when this happens because she always seems to eat more at daycare than she does at home, but I do need her to have something in her stomach before bed time or she'll wake in the middle of the night, hungry (one baby doing that is enough, thank you). So I made her this thickshake, first seen on the blog Traveling Sheep, and it went down a treat.

Next time you have over-ripe bananas sitting in your fruit bowl, skip the banana bread and, instead, peel the bananas and pop them into the freezer in individual zip-lock bags. Then when you're ready, you can whip up this sweet, healthy thickshake in one minute. It's just as good for the grown-ups as for the kids!

Ingredients:

1 x frozen banana 1-2 x cups milk 1-2 x teaspoons cocoa powder

Method:

Throw everything in a blender and wizz until it's thick but lump-free and frothy. For extra points with the little ones, serve it up with a colourful or bendy straw.

If you wanted to go dairy free, I reckon soy milk would make it extra creamy and quite delicious. I also think you could add a splash of vanilla or substitute the milk for coconut milk (or half half) to make it extra decadent. Add other frozen fruits, like passionfruit or berries, for a different flavour. Just ensure your frozen base is a super sweet fruit, like banana or mango, then go to town!

How does your garden grow?

When I was in high school we all had to do a couple of stints of "work experience," which essentially meant unpaid internships in fields we were considering for our careers. Since my career goal was "author," I was a little bit stuck. As far as I knew, there weren't any successful authors in my little country town who were willing to let me come along and write a couple of chapters of their book (or make their tea) for them. In classic teenaged-girl style I left things to the very last minute, and so I ended up doing my work experience with a park ranger who was a friend of my parents, simply because they agreed to have me. I showed up on Day 1 expecting to do some bush-walking and perhaps save a wild animal or two from extinction. Instead, we rode around a summer-yellowed picnic area on the back of a 'ute, jumping down every 100 metres or so to empty the garbage bins amid swarms of flies. Work experience as a park ranger was highly successful in strengthening my ambition to become an author.

But at some point during the week, they asked me to help pull up a kitchen garden next to a historic house that was part of the park. The garden had been planted by the lady of the house more than 150 years earlier. Some of the plants there, through seeds and propagation, were the great, great grandchildren of those first plants. I was allowed to take them with me, so each day I would return home with my arms full of lavender, rosemary, comfrey and verbena.

Herbs became a new passion for me. Not just how they looked and smelled (beautiful!), nor the way they filled out a cottage garden (rampant! lovely!), but also the ancient histories, mythologies and healing stories that herbs carried with them through the centuries. I loved how the botanists of the past considered the behaviour and qualities of herbs inseparable from the behaviour and qualities of the planets.

Take sage, for example, a herb I happen to enjoy fried up all crispy in butter and served with pumpkin ravioli. Nicholas Culpeper, on the other hand, preferred to use sage to heal diseases of the liver, for curing itchy testicles, and to turn hair black. Among many other things. "Jupiter claims this herb," he wrote in 1653, and, "Sage is of excellent use to help the memory, warming and quickening the senses." That's something I might need to try, given that my brain seems to be leaking both knowledge and memory at an alarming rate ever since I became the mother of two very small children. I wonder if the memory serum will turn my hair black.

Anyhoo... what all this has been leading up to is to say that I really love gardening, ever since that fateful albeit mostly crappy work experience week. Particularly gardening that has a practical side, like fruit and vegetables and herbs you can eat, and flowers you can pick for the table. But we have been renting for a long time, so building a garden just hasn't been an option. Add to that, the courtyard space out the back of our new house is fully tiled over. One day, we plan to rip up the tiles and turn it into a proper walled garden, but the budget doesn't stretch that far just at the moment!

Last week for Valentine's Day, Mr B gave me the best present I could have asked for. A crate from Little Veggie Patch Co, complete with organic matter to fill it up, so I could start a little herb and vegetable garden in our back yard, tiles and all. I'm really excited to start growing some of our own organic food, and to teach Madeleine and Harry about the whole where-food-comes-from process!

After dropping Madeleine off at day care yesterday, Harry and I took a walk to Ceres to buy some plants. With summer drawing to a close the seasonal pickings were a bit limited (I really wanted heirloom cherry tomatoes but they were a no-go until next October), but we found some lovely seedlings of rainbow beetroot, carrots, kale, green beans, strawberries, sage (!), and one very hot chilli plant. I bundled them all into a box underneath the pram and hurried back home as storm-clouds gathered overhead.

Meanwhile, in our little courtyard, we already have lemon-grass, basil, mint, thyme, oregano, rosemary and a lemon and an orange tree all eking out an existence in the narrow border beside the tiles. My parents are coming to visit in a couple of weeks and bringing with them parsley and Asian greens. There's still more I want to plant, especially next spring, but I think that is a pretty good start.

Santa's coffee run

After a big night visiting approximately 132 million homes worldwide (according to these calculations), nobody needed a caffeine hit on Christmas morning more than Santa. Who knew Santa was a teenaged girl? Or that she lived in Carlton North, Melbourne? Now you do.

ps. Dancing Santa

Joy

On Christmas Eve, just as we climbed into bed, church bells rang out across the sleepy neighbourhood. Midnight Mass on Lygon Street, we realised, and wished one another a drowsy "Happy Christmas" before resting our weary heads. Two hours later we were awake again, changing and feeding a hungry baby. Then again another two hours after that. When Harry woke and fed a third time only another two hours later, it was time to admit defeat. We carried both wide-awake-though-we-wished-they-weren't babies downstairs, woke our big baby Emily, and by half past six in the morning, everyone was sitting on the carpet in the lounge room in their pyjamas, surrounded by a sea of wrapping paper and witnessing the steady depletion of the satisfyingly fat Santa sacks that Father Christmas had filled overnight.

Weary, weary bones aside, yesterday was filled with joy.

Joy in waking up with Madeleine, Harry and Emily all in our house together, the first time we'd had the children with us on Christmas morning EVER. Joy in children's faces when they opened their presents (Madeleine saying "Wowwww" at everything, just because it was fun to say). Mr B's favourite Elvis Christmas album playing in the background. Friends and Meg joining us for breakfast: croissants, muesli, summer fruits, shimmering glasses of prosecco.

Sweet, plump Harry, not featured in any of these photographs because he slept through the entire breakfast, upstairs, catching up after a busy night of baby gluttony.

Later, Emily dressed up in an inflatable Santa costume and walked up to a local cafe to buy coffees for us all, in the process bringing joy and laughter to every passer-by. (This adventure will warrant a post of its own so stay tuned). And in the afternoon, more friends and extended family came by for wine and cheese and fruit and leftovers, and the house was awash with excited, overtired children, toys and pieces of toys, pets, paper, tinsel and laughter.

By the time everyone went home and our babies were in bed, Mr B and I were about ready to collapse. So we did, on the couch, watching Notting Hill on DVD. As we climbed into bed that night there were no church bells, but we whispered "Thank you" to each other, because it had been such a good day.

Two hours later, we were awake again to change and feed a hungry baby...

Bunkering down

Christmas is just around the corner and summer has finally put in an appearance (40 degrees yesterday, folks). Today is the last day of work for most people and everywhere you go, crowds are spilling out of trams and onto cafe tables and beaches and shopping centres and parks. But we are staying home. Or at least we are keeping very local. Neither the double pram nor the newborn Ergo insert I ordered online quite some time back have arrived, so getting out and about with a toddler and a newborn baby is pretty tricky. Add to that the Christmas rush: last thing I want is to be caught in the city with a million other people and a crying toddler at her nap time, with a hungry baby and leaking breasts and a line-up for a chair in the Myer nursing room!

Instead, our days are taken up with quiet cuddles, making Anzac biscuits (we are not slaves to the season), playing with water in the courtyard. I cut out paper snowflakes to decorate the house, and Madeleine chose silver and red sleigh-bells to hang from each one. We wrapped Christmas presents while watching Harry Potter movies for an entire afternoon.

But while we have been bunkering down, friends have come to us, with visitors and house-guests almost every day. So we've served up simple meals of antipasto or sandwich fillings eaten outside in the sun, delicious beef stroganoff courtesy of the one and only Deb, and one night I made another giant batch of Mr B's favourite (and incredibly easy to cook) pork ragu.

Harry has been pudging up beautifully, like a little champion. Madeleine is paying him lots of loving attention; holding his hand, smiling when he smiles (ok I tell her it's a smile), and solicitously placing wet-wipes over his legs like blankets if I don't stop her. She is adjusting to this big sister gig incredibly well, being (mostly) very patient with all the time I need to give him, and releasing all that pent-up energy that used to go in trips to the park by racing up and down the house pushing her own baby in its own pram, playing with her big sister, and dancing in her nappy like a whirling dervish when her cousins come to visit.

I read this book in the middle of the night for a week while nursing Harry, and it left me feeling a little strange and unsettled. Empty, expectant, like its post-Soviet Ukraine setting. Have you read it? I'd love to know how others felt about it. Now I have turned my nocturnal attention to this book. I'm only just starting it and so far it's kind of lovely, but I have a prickling foreboding that things might get sad. I'm nervous.

What are you reading? What are you doing? Are you getting out or bunkering down?

Where I live

I live in a quiet neighbourhood, half an hour's walk from the city centre of Melbourne. It is zoned under a historic overlay, which means almost all the houses are more than a century old, and people aren't allowed to change the facades when they renovate. At night from our bedroom window upstairs, we look out over all the tin and shingle rooftops and cobbled laneways and think about how that view has been essentially unchanged for more than 100 years. We talk about how children in 1880 would have held hands and skipped along the very same footpaths on their way to school that Madeleine and Harry will skip, on their way to the very same school.

The streets are quiet, and everyone has teeny, tiny little gardens at the front of their homes. Yet only a few minutes' walk away we can be in the midst of all the wonderful hustle and bustle and culture of some of Melbourne's best streets and villages: Brunswick Street, Nicholson Village, Rathdowne Village and Lygon Street, for example.

Our own street is divided by a wide, grassy area in the middle, dotted with palm trees that inspire hyperbole-loving real estate agents to dub it "The Plantation" when advertising homes. In summer, everything happens on this grass. People read books, sun-bake, hold yard sales. Last Christmas one family set up a marquee with tables and chairs enough to host a Christmas lunch for more than 20 people. The day we moved into this area was a stinker: 38 degrees. As I drove by, two men in their 20s had dragged a hose from their house across the road onto the grass and filled up a toddler's wading pool. They were sitting happily in the pool, drinking beers.

Last week on a warm but wet evening, four of my neighbours brought out a little round table and some chairs, poured glasses of wine, and sat under umbrellas enjoying a mini garden party in the rain.

The night we brought Harry home from hospital (the Tuesday just gone), someone rang the doorbell just as Mr B and I were about to sit down for dinner. It was the Salvation Army Band, to let us know they were caroling outside. We carried our dinner and a celebratory glass of champagne out onto the front stoop and sat in the fading sun side by side, listening to carols played gloriously badly, while our two babies slept. It was all kinds of just right.

(Top photo is the rainy garden party. The one above is the Salvation Army band. Sorry about the dodgy, blurry quality. These were quick iPhone snaps and for some reason they came out extra-low res when I emailed them to myself. Tech fail.)

Taking stock

It's Sunday afternoon and the sun has come out at last and probably we should be out in it but, instead, we are sitting on couches with our feet up while our little girl plays. It's been a busy but lovely weekend. Yesterday we walked Madeleine into the city while she slept, to join the growing Christmas crowds and buy some decorations to celebrate the season in our new home. Madeleine got to watch the big kids ride the Santa Train at Myer and she was absolutely enthralled (she kept making "Woo Woo!" sounds all the way home). We wandered up and down Collins Street and pretended we were Christmas shopping for four-carat diamond rings and Montblanc pens, while the weather danced the classic Melbourne dance of drizzle and sunshine and downpours and sunshine all over again.

This morning started out with coffee and croissants from Rathdowne Street, before some dear friends came over for lunch. They had daughters ("big" girls of four and nine) who Madeleine absolutely adored, so she had a fantastic time playing with them and copying them and bossing them around to within an inch of their (very patient) lives. I'm really loving how adaptable this new home is for entertaining, with separate living areas so the kids can play and run amok in another room if they want to while we eat at the dining table, but a little outdoor deck right next to the dining room for when they want to play and run amok with us!

I really will take some photos and show the new place to you, I promise. I'm hoping this coming week will be my last week of work so unless Baby B comes early, I'll have some time to take pictures in a week or two.

After our friends left we cleaned up (that only took about 20 minutes - amazing!) then did a spot of dancing with Madeleine before settling down on the couch with our feet up. I thought it might be fun to do one of these "taking stock" posts, inspired by Pip from Meet Me at Mikes. Do you want to do the same? Let me know and send me a link if you do.

Making : a series of board books for Madeleine, from here Cooking : this pork ragu Drinking : orange juice and soda water (but dreaming about white wine) Reading : The Agrarian Kitchen for fabulous foodie inspiration, and The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton, for my book club Wanting : a glass of white wine Looking : at my daughter host a tea party for herself under the lounge room rug Playing : tea parties with Madeleine. every. single. day. Deciding : whether or not to join this digital conference. Will you? Wishing : I hadn't left the door open, because a fly just came in Enjoying : my little family on a rare Sunday afternoon off Waiting : for Baby B2 to arrive! Liking : planning Christmas decorations. What do you think of these for the table? Wondering : whether I will find time to make this advent calendar for Madeleine Loving : my new night-time freedom, with Madeleine now sleeping Pondering : life, family, work, creativity, love, motherhood, time, friendship, ambition, priorities and the great, big, messy mix of it all Considering : whether that smell heralds an imminent nappy change Watching : Mrs Brown's Boys on DVD (blame Mr B) Hoping : I'll be able to finish up work this week Marvelling : at how my body can grow a human being Needing : more rest Smelling : that suspicious nappy Wearing : maternity jeans with banana smeared all over the knees Following : a grand total of 125 blogs! (I just counted) Noticing : how quickly I get tired this late in my pregnancy Knowing : I was right about that nappy (excuse me while I go change it) Thinking : about this blog and where I want to go with it Feeling : nervous and excited about the new baby, in equal measure Admiring : how easy it is to entertain guests in my new home, and keep it clean Buying : Christmas presents Getting : excited about spending Christmas with my growing family Bookmarking : home decorating ideas from blogs I like Opening : a new box of tea bags Giggling : at Madeleine, running in and out of the room on chubby legs Feeling : incredibly lucky

Are you still there?

Oh hello Internet, how have you been? I've missed you! I am obscenely pregnant. My belly is like a beach ball out in front of me, an alien beach ball that warps and wiggles and thumps and seems to manage to be everywhere at once, on the inside. Only five short weeks and Baby B2 will be out in the world with us. That is insane! I will love this baby with all my heart but I am SO not ready to manage the extra responsibility. In the past few weeks since we were last in touch I tried out (temporary) single parenthood. I don't recommend it. My hat is well and truly off to those who do it all the time. You guys are my HEROES.

While working, and battling a horrible virus (I coughed so hard I cracked a rib), and caring for my child 24-7 (and I really mean the 24 bit, Madeleine took to sleeping not only in my bed but on my pillow and ON MY HEAD), I also trialled life without a couch to sit on, without books, and without a television. At meal times we watched a lot of Peppa Pig on iView in order to keep Madeleine still (because we were also living life without tables to sit at). By night I watched a lot of previously-downloaded-on-iTunes Dr Who while packing boxes (because I happened across an old episode while flicking randomly through channels a couple of weeks earlier, and just had to find out what the deal was with that woman called River, and Amy "the girl who waited." Most intriguing).

And then while still single-parenting, Madeleine and I moved house. That was fun.

Actually it wasn't too bad, due mostly to my gorgeous friend Tonia, who took the day off work and filled her car with drop-offs for charity shops, ferried the dog to and from his hair salon (new houses require clean dogs), fetched lunches and dinners and emergency groceries, unpacked and tidied up a storm, made the beds, AND made Madeleine (and me) laugh. What a trooper! What a friend!

Oh but then we entered life without Internet as well as TV, the couch arrived but it was wrapped in plastic and needed the feet put on and I was too pregnant to be able to lift it (and therefore we couldn't sit on it), the books were still in boxes, and the cat wouldn't come out of the back shed. AND no hot water for almost a week. AND no curtains on the bedroom windows (helloooo neighbours, helloooo lack of sleep).

Still, Madeleine didn't care. She and I were well and truly used to sitting on the floor by then, and we could make our own fun. We'd boil the kettle and bathe her in my fabulous new ceramic farmhouse kitchen sink. I had a lot of wash-downs. Plus, Madeleine had a whole new house to run up and down in like a crazy person, and stairs to be constantly told not to climb (no safety gates yet).

So we chipped away at the unpacking and the setting up and on Saturday afternoon (a whole 24 hours early) Mr B came home. And darn it if I wasn't just a bit more than a LOT glad to see his jet-lagged face. (If you want to know what he was doing overseas, read this blog).

Earlier this week the hot water came on. Yesterday we finally got the Internet working. I have a tiny office of my very own, in a converted wine cellar. Madeleine has a play room. We have a grown-up living room AND a dining room (with a dining table at which we actually sit to eat. If you'd seen our previous several homes you'd know what a posh luxury this is for us.) There's still a lot to do (curtains on the bedroom windows pleeeease), but room by room our new house is starting to feel like a home. I can't wait to share some befores and afters with you of this renovation experience.

(Photo is of the three of us about a week before Mr B went away. Madeleine wore that strawberry costume all day, a gift from this Deb, stroking the shiny sleeves like you stroke a sleeping kitten).

Mangosteens

The mangosteens are amazing right now in these here parts. Actually I don't know that they'd grow too well this far south so maybe the ones I've been eating have come from Queensland, which isn't all that sustainable from a food miles perspective, but... I repeat, they are amazing right now! I'm currently supporting a three-a-day habit. What's making your morning tea happy?

Renovation inspiration - living and dining

Small spaces are tricky to furnish and decorate, aren't they. For example a combined lounge and dining area that isn't entirely teeny-tiny but certainly isn't spacious, like the one in our new house... how would you fill it and make it yours in a way that worked? For us, the big challenge is designing the rooms so they look great and function practically, but don't feel overcrowded. Here are some ideas I've gleaned from the Internet so far.  

↑↑ The dining area has to visually fit in with the lounge area, so the decor needs to work on a broader scale than just "eat here." I love the pop of these yellow chairs, or this amazing cross-stitch chair (which unfortunately is a DIY, so let's face it I'm stumped). I also thought putting open shelves above the dining table was a lovely idea that was both decorative and space-saving. Meanwhile, those pendant lights? I LOVE them and think they would be perfect above our dining table. Mr B disagrees. Cue sadface.

Clockwise from top left: open shelves in the dining via Design Sponge; cross-stitch chair via My Poppet; yellow dining chairs via Living Room TV; pendant lights via Marz Designs

↑↑ In a small space, furniture that shares wall-space or serves multiple functions is great, because you get maximum use and appeal while taking up minimal space. My favourite? This stylish fold-out wall-desk. I think it would be fantastic in our hall, to dump keys and mail and Mr B's ties on as we walk in, before folding the mess up and away.

Clockwise from top-left: wall-desk via Swiss Miss; low bench and mini-gallery via Old Brand New; mid-century-modern style pet boxes (so stylish they can double as coffee tables!) via Modernist Cat on Etsy; wall-leaning side-tables via Kenyon Yeh

↑↑ We've decided to splash out on new lounge chairs to go with our new house. Our existing lounge chairs were around before Em started school (she's 15 now). They have taken a LOT of family-related love and rough and tumble and wear and tear. They're threadbare on the arms, and seem to have magical talents when it comes to collecting dirt and food and cat hair and goodness knows what else. It. Is. Time.

Clockwise from top-left: leather armchair via Design Sponge; granny-square covered mid-century couch (I love this so much!) via Zakka (originally seen on Meet Me at Mikes); the after in a 'before & after' upholstery project on a small sofa via Design Sponge; super comfy-looking antique-style sofa via Home Life

↑↑ For these small rooms, Mr B and I have somewhat reluctantly reined in our love of colour and opted for fairly neutral bones: white walls, pale floorboards (the original colour), simple sheer curtains. So we're relying on all the finishing touches to add character and interest to the rooms. Walls are a great canvas to start doing that, and I've been searching around for creative ideas.

Clockwise from top-left: gallery wall via Poppytalk (I've been thinking of these a lot lately but I'm nervous about doing it right, I'd love your tips); a classic 1950s Eames Hang It All coat rack; eclectic mix of ornaments, recycled objects and plants on the wall via Old Brand New; gilt mirror (for above the fireplace) via English Muse

What are your top tips for decorating in a confined space? What do you dream about having in your lounge room, or dining room, or both?

Want more renovation inspiration? These are my kitchen ideas.