Broccoli salad

This salad has a long tradition in our family and can be found in many variants in danish cookbooks. This is how we make it.

Ingredients
300 g bacon
2 broccoli
1,5 dl raisins
1,5 dl sunflower seeds
1 red onion

Marinade:
1,5 dl miracle whip
3/4 dl sugar
3 tsp red wine vinegar
Salt

Cut the broccoli in bitsize pieces and steam for a few minutes. They should still be crunchy like they were fresh. Fry bacon bits and chop the onion fine.

Mix the marinade and mix it all together.

Raisins can be switched with cranberries.

7 year birthday

Alexander

Alexander requested a soccer themed birthday party. So I went online a bought a bunch of FC Barcelona plates, cups and table runners. I also bought balloons in red, blue and red.

I made some labels for waterbottles.

For the cake I made a soccer field with spectators - it was a chocolate cake with green frosting.

For activities Alexander had many ideas. We ended up with a treasurehunt where they had to perform certain tasks along the way:

Jumping on trampoline

Walking on a "thin line"

Tug of war

Throwing balls in basket

And of course a soccer game.

Emmeline

Emmeline wanted a Barbie party. Barbie decorations and balloons were bought and I also made labels for her water bottles

She wanted cupcakes so I made vanilla and chocolate cupcakes:

She does not have the same imagination as Alexander so her activites was a bit the same

But there were also time for more girly activities

Stop dance

Decorate a cupcake. I had made extra cupcakes and three or four different shades of frosting and tons of sprinkles in different shapes and sizes. The girls loved it and they got to take their cupcake home.

Diaper bag

Went shopping for a diaper bag about a month before my due date and OMG they are expensive!

I have a thing that if I can make it myself and I have the time to do so then I can't make myself buy stuff - the diaper bag fell into that category.

I found some black thick nylon fabric, some white and grey cotton fabric, velcro and other misc. items and started drawing and measuring.

I wanted it to be big so I only need one bag even for a weekend trip. I also wanted a portable changing mat and padded.

The only thing I had to buy was plastic fabric for the mat.

I love the end result. At first I thought I had made it too big but it can fit several outfits, tons of diapers, all you need for changing a baby and still have room for a blanket!

Mini projects

I went on maternity leave a month before my baby was due ... and she decided to take her sweet time arriving so I spent many hours on the couch. These are some of my projects.

I knit two hats (with twins I can never just make one).

I also crochet some Christmas egg cozys.

And one Santa coaster ... when I realized how many I had to make I gave up after just one.

Weekly meal schedule

In a family time is usually short and I keep trying to find ways to optimize our time.

One effective trick was to plan our meals on sunday and use an online supermarket to shop for a whole week.

But I needed to do it more efficiently than just writing it on a piece of paper.

I found an old bulletin board and cleared it of old notes and found some gift ribbon. I divided the board into says and left room on one side for shopping lists etc. I simply used thumbtags for the ribbon. The original plan was to replace it with something more permanent if we decided to use the planner for a long time. We have now used it for over six months ...

The problem that presented next was to come up with meals. I quickly abanded the notion of trying new recipes or being the super mom that has 30 different dishes a month and made a list of what we like as a family to eat.

I used word to make little boxes where I wrote dishes. Beside the usual dishes like Lasagna and meatloaf  I also made one for leftovers and a number of blancs where we write dishes that hasn't a little sign with a whiteboard marker. I printed them and laminated them.

I even made a cardboard box to store the extra cards in.

Each sunday we sit down and plan the week armed with both the board, a shopping list and the supermarket ads.

It frees up time during the week and we actually eat a lot more different things because it is easier to come up with interesting meals sunday afternoon than in the supermarket 30 minutes before dinner.