Wednesday, 6 July 2016

Kids craft DIY: food and flora collage



My favourite crafts are the ones where you can use what you have already - or use things from a little hunt and gather around the neighbourhood. Then it's a drawn-out craft with bonus exercise! I was looking at the bow pasta the other day thinking how cute it would look as a little bow tie on a illustration. And so today's craft idea was born! I told Layla what I was thinking and she was in - she went around and picked some flowers and greenery from the garden, thought up her scenario of a ballet dancer and asked me to draw the girl. She then glued on the tutu from flower petals, painted a tree ("an autumn tree") and after changing her mind from rice snow to glitter snow, she then painted an ice rink and drew some ice skates onto her ballet shoes! She thought the couple would look pretty smart with a top hat with a feather and framed with some elbow pasta. I love watching her in creative mode and seeing what she comes up with. We hunted around the craft cupboard for little beads and other sequins and had fun getting creative - I had to make one too! This kind of craft is really only limited by your imagination - so many things in your garden, your pantry and craft cupboard can be used: beads, gum nuts, sticks, tiny stones, foil, confetti, leaves, feathers, sequins, buttons... you get the idea. I think a really small version could be sweet made up as gift tags or a birthday card. And while white or coloured backgrounds would look great too, I can't help but think things stand out a little more on the black cardboard. And happily, the watercolours worked too - although a little less bright than they'd appear on a white background.


Toolkit:
Black cardboard
White ink pen
Glue
Paintbrush
Watercolours - these ones are the best (Spotlight also sells it). I must have bought 5 of these palettes over the past couple of years. The colours are pretty and they dry so quickly - I've even used them on the wall of my home.
An assortment of food, flora and any other crafty bits and pieces you can gather together

Easy how to:


Step 1: Suggest a scenario or have your child think something up. Draw the basics - a simple person is easy and they can "dress" them and fill in their surroundings. A house is also a good one.


Step 2: Let them go! Let them paint, glue, rearrange and sprinkle till their heart's content. The pasta can be painted before or after it's glued in place. It's really not worth of a step-by-step, is it?! Here are  some close ups of the others...


Tuesday, 5 July 2016

Kids craft DIY: paper plate lion mask





I have this great love of paper plates. I use them for everything. A pile of 50 goes really, really quickly in my house. Aside from parties, they're often folded up into little boxes for mini craft storage or picnic packaging, cut up into gift tags or just used as craft paper - they kids draw on them and cut them up into all sorts of random things - and then we even make good use of the off-cuts for maths homework working out! They're also so brilliant for crafts. I'm running a free kids craft stand at an upcoming fete and decided pretty quickly I'd create some crafts around paper plates. One of them will be these lion masks for the younger kids. We'll most likely shred some newspaper or whatever paper we can get our hands on for the fete, but these shades of tissue paper and tinsel are perfect for a lion's mane. 


Toolkit:
Paper plate
Shredded tissue paper and tinsel (from dollar stores)
Glue
Single hole punch (or just use the scalpel)
Scissors
Scalpel
Elastic
Face paint or eyeliner pencil

Easy how-to:


 Step 1: Cut around the base of the paper plate with the scalpel so you have a hole.


Step 2: Using the circle you've just cut out, cut two ears and set aside.


Step 3: Punch a hole on either side of the plate. Thread and tie your elastic to create a mask.


Step 4: Cut your shredded tissue paper and tinsel into smaller pieces so they're not too much longer than the edge of the plate. Mix them up a little for a more "natural" mane! Glue the face of the paper plate and stick the mane in place.


Step 5: Glue the ears in place.


  Step 6: Gently cut around the inside of the mask to trim away excess "hair" so it doesn't tickle your child's face! Be careful not to snip through the elastic.


Step 7: Leave to dry in the sun and in the meantime, paint on a nose and some whiskers. Once the glue is dry, pop the mask on your child's head. The plate can be popped outwards to sit nicer on their face. ROAAR!

Monday, 4 July 2016

Wintery woodland queen



 Ugh, winter. We don't get on at all. I quite enjoyed winter when it was still summer-like weather, but then the cold had to come and ruin everything. And now the school holidays are here and of course so is the rain! ALL WEEK, apparently. So it's going to be one big craft-a-thon here these next few days, me thinks. I have a few up my sleeve and I'll do my best to post them here in case you're in the same boat and after some kids craft inspiration. 

Perhaps you could start with a nature crown. Last week, a flower hunt on the walk home from school yielded lots of pretty flowers, so I added them to a stick crown I'd started making a day earlier. A little greenery sandwiched in-between and it became quite the flora headpiece. It's not one to last for long - and it's hardly made delicately (hello glue gun!) - but they'll have fun feeling like a woodland fairy queen for a day...






Toolkit
Two strips of fabric
Sticks in assorted lengths
An assortment of flowers
A bit of greenery - we used a few sprigs from our conifer trees
A hot glue gun

Easy how-to
1. Glue your sticks to one length of the fabric in the centre.
2. Glue on the greenery followed by flowers
3. Run the glue gun along the whole length of the fabric over the flowers and press the second strip over the top, sandwiching the sticks and flowers in-between the two strips of fabric.
4. Wrap around the head and pin place or use velcro dots to hold in place.


See? Easy! I'd have made the fabric strips slightly narrower as it did swamp Layla's little head! Ha! Contrary to the first few pics where she is all Grumplestiltskin* (because my camera not focusing was keeping her from running on the rocks. The horror), she loved the crown. Tomorrow? We're making lion masks. Rrrrrooooarr.

*Grumplestiltskin is my favourite tease for when they're grumpy. Annika is the grumpiest Grumplestiltskin of all. She's hilarious.

Thursday, 16 June 2016

Want to save money with your smartphone? (Free 5-day course!)

save-money-smartphone-PINTEREST



Are you looking for creative ways to stretch your income and maximize your budget each month?


If so, I'm super excited to share that you can now sign up for my FREE 5-day e-mail course on How to Save Money With Your Smartphone!


In this course, you'll learn about simple, quick ways to save money using some of my favorite smartphone apps. The best part is that you can save a pretty significant amount of money in less than 15 minutes per day!


Go here to sign up for How to Save Money with Your Smartphone.


Aha! The Case for 'Buy and Hold' Investing

This chart from a financial adviser illustrates the decreasing probability of a negative return in the S&P 500 based over ever-longer time horizons.

Tuesday, 14 June 2016

The big lie about “food porn”

Look at these photos. What do you notice?






Damn that looks good!



I don't know about you, but the first thing I noticed was DAMN THAT LOOKS GOOD.


Maybe a little jealousy.


But also a tiny moment of happiness at imagining putting one of those in my mouth. Ahhhh…so good.


And yet, most of us will never make a dish like that. In fact, by looking at those photos, we'll treat them like a tiny morphine addiction to feel good for just a minute…and then go back to our day.


Remind you of anything?



food porn

Ahhh…I feel so good. But I'm not going to do anything. Thanks for nothing, Obama



Guys, I completely get how fun it is to look at pics on Pinterest and Instagram, and (if you're a huge fucking nerd), Money Magazine.


But I also know that stuff is engineered to give you a quick dopamine hit. You feel good, you even feel accomplished, then you go right back to your normal day.


And as part of IWT, I've always been fascinated with areas where we feel better but don't actually change anything. Because I know that if we make a tiny change here or there, our entire life can change.


We did it with money. We did it with careers and entrepreneurship.


Now I want to talk about food

What do you put in your body every day? How does it help you perform?


There's a reason why I'm talking about this now: I think a Rich Life is about much more than money. I'd made plenty of money and I was still eating the same stuff I'd always eaten.


In fact, my food became part of my identity. I would brag about eating Taco Bell at 25. I even wrote about it in my book!


There's nothing wrong with Taco Bell. But isn't it interesting how our food becomes our identity? Where we eat, how much we eat, what type of cuisine we eat.


As my business grew, I wanted to find every edge I could. And I knew that if I could understand how food works, I could have endless energy every single day.


More than that, I wanted to figure out why I kept saying things like “I should cook more” or “I should really start eating better…” BUT I NEVER DID.


What I learned about the food-marketing complex

I started reading all these food articles - Paleo this, Atkins that, use extra-virgin olive oil! I've even watched The Food Network (notice I said “watched,” not “cooked”).


And here's what I realized: Most of the food stuff out there - the cooking shows, the articles, even the Instagram photos - is designed to get you to consume more food photos.


It's food porn! It feels good for a second…but doesn't change anything long term.


Check out this quote from Allen Salkin, author of a tell-all book about The Food Network:


“Food Network is not in the business of teaching people to cook or improving our knowledge about kale. Food Network is in the business of getting people to watch more Food Network. It's always been about selling advertising to a target demographic…”



YES! Exactly.


The Tyranny of Takeout
The worst part is…food porn works. We look at some food model's pan-seared ahi lemon tuna and think, “oh, it seems so easy!” We even feel like we learned something. But deep down, we know we can't cook that.


I don't have the right pot. I don't know how to fillet that fish. And our most common go-to…“I don't have time.”


So what do we do? We open our fridge, sigh, and eat the same old stuff we've always eaten. Takeout, “grab a quick bite,” leftovers. The same old stuff - for years and years.


It actually gets worse, because each time we try (and fail) to cook, we're less motivated to try again. We get flabbier. We eat more takeout. And we start to give up on the possibility of looking and feeling our best.


Look, I'm as guilty as anyone.


For years, I was focused on growing my business. I never cooked anything. Every single day, I ordered delivery. Every day. FOR YEARS!


I got so good at ordering delivery, I could order food from Seamless (delivery site) in less than 15 seconds and the food would arrive while I was still on a call.




instagram

Pics from my Instagram. Don't judge.



3 things I learned that “food experts” don't understand

I learned that I “knew” I should eat differently…but I wasn't ready to give up the foods I loved. I figured there had to be a middle ground instead of going from Zero to Kale.


Along the way, I realized food is a HUGELY underrated part of a Rich Life. It's what we eat 5+ times a day. Yet amazingly, all these years, I never stopped to think about what I was putting in my body.


I was just eating whatever was in front of me, never connecting the dots to how it made me feel.


So I googled “healthy eating.” I bought a few cookbooks. And yes, I even tried paleo.


But I don't want to eat broccoli and skinless chicken breast for the rest of my life. And I'm damn sure not making a lovely saffron soup on a Wednesday.


First, yes - I want to eat healthy…but I also want to eat DELICIOUS food. Sorry Mr. Nutritionist, my first rule is that I have to like what I eat! (Is that so weird?)


Second, food needs to work around your life. Are you really going to cook tilapia and take it to work? What happens when you warm it up and your coworkers smell fish in the conference room? People will hate you.


And finally, I want my food to give me energy and keep me focused, not leave me craving chips an hour from now.


My dream is simple: I just want to be able to make a delicious meal, in less than 20 minutes, that will actually leave me feeling GOOD, not tired.


I'll show you how to do that next Tuesday on my cooking show.


Click here to register. It's completely free.


-Ramit


P.S. By the way, this isn't just me. Over the last year, we've been testing a new course behind the scenes. We took students with no cooking experience and showed them how to create meals like this:




cooked a meal




chicken




yum


If you're curious for a sneak peek, come to next Tuesday's cooking show.


The big lie about “food porn” is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

Saturday, 4 June 2016

7 Ways To Shrink Your Grocery Bill

grocery bill


Guest post from Chrissy of Littles and Laundry


I am a frugal mama. Don't get me wrong, shopping is one of my favorite things to do – I be shoppin'. But most of the time… I be window shoppin'. 
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