Mom on a Budget

So.... my son Riley’s birth date was supposed to be the 31st of January three years ago but little did we know our little one was impatient and after 27 hours of labour (unmediated and no he’ll never hear the end of that story... he’ll be like 50 and my speech will include his birth story..... FOREVER) Anyway so my guy arrived 3 years ago on the 15th of January! Yip smack bang in the middle of the brokest month of the year. So if this is the case for you as well, I’ve got you covered. Either only celebrate your kiddos birthday after payday (I mean they won’t really remember) just have family over for a mini celebration OR prepare everything months in advance. When you’re out doing your monthly shop, grab a gift or 2 and hide it away. In most cases especially with my favourite gifting lady Sayuri from All in the Presents, you can prepay for your kids party packs MONTHS in advance, same with the cake, etc. Decor can be bought from the China shops, cheap as chips. You can also grab a few ...

Good morning, So like half the population does every year, I joined gym this January, not necessarily for weight loss but for tone, health and general well being. You see, I’ve noticed a trend with every single friend I have chatted to, with or without kids, we’re all struggling with December burnout. So a few of my close friends and I created an”accountability” WhatsApp group to support and motivate each other out of the burnout zone and push us to get our minds, bodies and goals set and right for 2022. Each day we send each other our goals for the day and they’re not necessarily “hardcore” goals. We’ve made January a preparation and self love month.  As an example my goals yesterday were to, *actually GO to gym *Dye my hair * Get washing up to date *Paint toenails *Scrub my sons carpet *Change my daughters linen I only achieved 3 of those goals, so the remaining 3 will be moved to today. No pressure, lots of self acceptance and love.  If you’d like to go on this journey with...

It’s day 18 of what can only be described as a hostage situation…. Also known as “school holidays”. Day 1: This is wonderful! Almost a whole month with my two kids under 3. Day 2: Ok so the house has been destroyed by mini versions of myself but it’s ok, I’ll do a clean up twice a day. Day 3: TV time rules are now out the window. Day 4: Give out a few Christmas gifts early in exchange for 5 minutes of silence. Day 5: What the hell is that smell? Oh wait, that’s me…. Day 6: What day is it? Can I have a nap please. Day 7: Check in with fellow moms, I am not alone, everyone’s over the holidays now…. Day 8: I now understand why my mom used to send me to my aunts for school holidays. Day 9:  Christmas Eve, try to go for a last minute shop before Christmas Day…. Buy each kiddo another toy to avoid shop meltdown. Day 10:  Christmas Day, granny exhausted kids, Granny for the win! Day 11: Toys EVERYWHERE Day 12: Cake for breakfast? Day 13: I’ve forgotten what it’s like to go to the toi...

Toddlers, toddlers, toddlers…. You can ‘prepare’ as much as you want for the inevitable craziness raising these tiny humans will entail and you may think you’re prepared, you’re not….. Like everyone else with kids I’ve watched literally every single episode of Super Nanny there is. So when my almost 3 year old son started refusing to get out of his PJs into “normal” clothes for preschool, I channeled my inner super nanny. I was like “ok then you’re going in your PJs”. Did this work? No, not one bit, every morning the same thing would happen and off he went to school in his PJs. So I chat to all my mom friends about this and everyone’s going maybe he has sensory issues, etc so I’m googling that and trying to figure out what that is and what I should do. Then I mention it to my one friend (who isn’t a mom…. Yet) and she said to me “Laura his PJs sound so cool! Glow in the dark Jurassic Park PJs, Spider man PJs, if I was him I also wouldn’t want to get into “normal” clothes to go to presc...

Moms, let’s talk about baker baker. I don’t know about your schools but where my kiddos go, things have become competitive. In fact I’d equate it to the likes of The Hunger Games level of competitiveness. Without all the murder and stuff of course…. So we get the Friday before Halloween as our kids baker baker day. The only thing I could do, to make my kids cupcakes a halloween theme would be to actually bake them cupcakes myself, in which case, the entire school would end up with food poisoning or rock hard cupcakes to throw at each other…. So actually it would have been a real horror show. I needed to enlist some professional help and luckily I knew just who to call…. Zoë Fountain owner of Zoco Creations. If you haven’t heard of Zoë yet you’re in for a treat (see what I did there) she’s a mom of 2, an artist and thee best baker in Ballito! I honestly don’t know who was more excited between us to get these cupcakes made. Zoë made these amazing cupcakes for me (which I will of course b...

 Hi Everyone! If you're stuck on what to do with your  kiddos this weekend. Or tired of going to the same places every weekend. I have a treat for you! Have you heard of the Ballito Ski Park? If you haven't been there you're really missing out. And for the out of towners, this is a must add, to your to-do list when you next visit Durban! Ballito Ski Park has a variety of fun activities for the whole family, a fabulous restaurant and is budget friendly! Some of the activities include: A viking slide! Tube rides Archery  Paint ball Fishing (catch and release) Water skiing What a wonderful way to spend time with your family!  

One of my top tips for first time moms is to start your baby on vegetables before fruit when starting solids. I did this so well in fact, that my son still loves his vegetables, especially broccoli and peas. However the issue I had later on though was, he hated fruit! After consulting with my go-to mommy expert, I did the following things that did work. 1) Make fruit ice-lollies! They think its a treat and not "yucky fruit". Worked like a charm. 2) Fruit snacks! Checkers has the most amazing range that was actually designed by Gordon Ramsay and his daughter. They're healthy snacks but look like sweets and my son loves them, they're his during the week "treat". Genius! 3) This actually happened by accident, I can't eat breakfast, so instead, I have a morning smoothy every day, guess what, your kids want whatever you have. So now my son has some of my morning smoothy  (1 banana, 1 green Apple, 1 red Apple, a quarter cup of frozen blueberries and full fat d...

Here's a review for all of the parents out there, to better enable you to decide whether or not to let your little watch The Secret Life of Pets. After watching it once : this movie is so cute, it has everything, action, adventure, a love story, funny bald cats with dodgey accents, a crazy underworld, Kevin heart as a crazy bunny. This is the greatest kid movie ever. After the 10th time: at least it's not Jurrassic Park 💁 Review after watching the "dog" movie as my son calls it for the hundredth time: I'm going to cancel my Netflix account if I'm forced to watch this 1 more time.

I was having this issue with my toddler, constantly finding "junk food" and devouring it during the week, now I don't mind if he has treats over the weekend, but during the week its healthy food all-the-way!! I bought these containers from Crazy Plastics in Amanzimtoti for under R200.00 for 3, found the labels and chalk in my "mommy craft box". So I go about organizing our grocery cupboard like this, making it impossible for my son to get to the weekend treats, then I put fruit in the lower shelves in our fridge.  This has worked like a charm, however, what I didn't take into consideration was that I'm SHORT so now I cant even reach the snack containers at the top of the cupboard that are there for us (savoury and sweet boxes) I know what you're all thinking, just get a step ladder or chair and reach up there to get yourself a treat. Well the thought of the amount of energy this would actually take up is exhausting in itself, so now I also don't ...

As you all know by now, I love journaling. It's something I've only recently started doing and it really is life changing. I journal twice a day, at night it's my B.E.E.T journal and in the morning I do this, List 10 things I'm grateful for and really sit with each thing I list and feel that gratitude. Obviously top of my list every day, is my kids and I sit and visualise moments I've had with them. I do this with each thing I list. Second I write down the names of 3 people who are really aggravating me. And genuinely send them love. (This one's tough but it's good for your soul). And lastly I write down and review my goals for the day. 3 Professional Goals and 3 Personal goals. So lets break this down a bit, The list of 10 things to be grateful for, now if you're in a negative space right now, that's ok. You still need to think of 10 things to list. For example, you're reading this post that means you have a device to do so on, right? You're...

Happy Friday Lovelies! Yes its Friday, which means its almost the WEEKEND BABY and more importantly its time for this weeks Mompreneur Feature Friday!!! This week I'm profiling Rakha Hiralal owner of : Ballito Baby,  "outfitting tiny humans". How ADORABLE are these tiny outfits, I want one of everything, for my daughter of course, or maybe Rakha can get me the adult version and Emma and I can go full on TWINNING! Ok checked with my Mr and this is a no-go, apparently I'm "crazy" now.  Anyway back to the adorableness, Rakha started Ballito Baby in May of this year with the idea of helping mommies source themed wear for their children, as well as comfort wear available in organic cotton. So how did this business idea come about in the first place? Here's Rakhas' story, "My Daughter always dressed in tutu’s and frill’s and they were not always easy to source. She always wore a tiara (still does, occasionally) and I was always searching the Internet ...

Lets talk about PCOS, one of my followers, who I now consider to be a friend, lets call her D, asked me to please do a post on PCOS as she suffers with this condition and is wanting to expand her family. To be perfectly honest, I had absolutely no idea what PCOS was, I'd kind of heard about it in the past but never actually looked in to it. So I go three places for information. 1) Google 2) Facebook mom groups 3) Ask my go-to mom friend who knows everything about everything (she really does, trust me) So the information on Google is quite hectic, PCOS is the abbreviation for : Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. What the heck is that? The below is an extract from the CDCs website: "PCOS is one of the most common causes of female infertility, affecting 6% to 12% (as many as 5 million) of US women of reproductive age. But it’s a lot more than that. This lifelong health condition continues far beyond the child-bearing years. Women with PCOS are often  insulin resistant ; their bodies can ...

Hi Lovely Ladies, Here's a great beauty on a budget trick, I got from one of my readers: use mayonnaise as a hair mask! Its FAR cheaper than actually buying a hair mask and you probably already have a jar of mayo in your fridge right now. Ok so anyone who reads my blog or lives within a 30km radius of me, knows, that I've been having some, lets say.... "Hair Issues". For those of you that don't know, I'm brunette naturally and decided to do what all crazy people do at some point or another in their life and dye my hair blonde AT HOME. This resulted a long journey of trying to fix my yellow, orange and purple "unicorn hair". I eventually did and when I posted the story of the 5 stages of hair grief I'd gone through TWICE, a lovely lady told me about how to fix the next problem - what all of this had done to the health of my hair and that I should try using mayonnaise as a hair treatment. This works! And the best part is, its cheap. You're look...

Guys, I've figured out the biggest question on all of our minds since March 2020.... No, not whether Bill Gates created this virus, or if you'll get better signal once the "5G microchip is implanted" in to you via the vaccines, or even if you'll grow an extra arm or something after getting vaccinated. I'm talking about THE BIGGEST question..... What's with the toilet paper panic buying???? I mean really, why on earth do people panic buy toilet paper, in times of turmoil? Well my friends, it's actually quite simple, these people aren't crazy, they must just have toddlers. Exhibit A My son at 1 years old eating toilet paper... Exhibit B  My daughter who's just turned 1, guess what, eating toilet paper. So there you have it, don't point and judge these "toilet paper hoarders", they know that they're about to be in an enclosed environment with their toddler and they're just trying to make sure there's enough, of this vital...

Alright, this is the third and final instalment of the "night bottle weaning battle" (I hope) We're sort of getting there, my daughter has a bottle around 9pm now and then sleeps until 4am BUT now wakes up at 4am FOR THE DAY. Read that again, 4AM FOR THE DAY. Time to bring in the big guns, I'm a quarter Scottish  (perhaps that's why I'm frugal 💁) so I thought let's channel my Scottish routes and get my "Braveheart" on.  Here. We. Go. 

This weeks Friday Feature Mompreneur is really important to me personally, as she was my doula for Emmas birth and was ultimately a HUGE part of saving her life. With all of the chaos going on last year, we looked in to going, the midwife & doula route because that meant that obviously my fiancé would be able to be there for the birth, as pretty much all hospitals weren't allowing dads in. Which is so sad and my heart truly goes out to all of the dads out there who couldn't be there for the amazing experience of watching their baby be born and to the super moms who had to do it alone. Bronwen was absolutely amazing, she held me, rocked me, massaged me, reassured me and kept us all calm through the entire birthing experience. I have such a huge amount of respect for Doulas, they are so underrated and underappreciated. If you're currently pregnant, please do yourself a favour and look in to getting a doula for your birth! Bron isn't just a doula though, she actually s...

When we found out I was pregnant with baby number 2, I scoured the internet for cute or funny ways to announce this (once it was safe to do so of course, ie second trimester). There are TONS of ideas online, we went with this eviction notice one. Side note, my son had just woken up from a nap and was grumpy when we took these pictures, so no, he wasn't traumatised by the "eviction notice", he had no idea what was going on. So don't hate on me...