threelilprincesses.com

Author: Kellie O’Brien

Fur cop! It’s just a cat, Mum

Mum, pleeeeeaassee can I have a cat.

MY MOTHER’S trying to convince this allergy-suffering household it needs to become home to a cat.

Sounds harder than trying to persuade a three-year-old that no, it’s not chocolate she can smell on my breath (caught again today!).

However, this is no ordinary cat.

The ball of fluff she has in mind won’t cause the sniffles, won’t scratch its privates in front of guests and can be turned off when the ‘’new kitten’’ phase wears off.

It is … Talking Tom Cat, a pet feline with an annoying Smurf-like voice who lives in iPhone land. Yes, some of you may already be aware of what has becomes one of the most popular apps going around.

Tom not only repeats what you say, but can also be fed milk, KO’d after a decent smack to the head, purrs when patted and ‘’yeows’’ when you pull his tail.

Princess Ella can’t get enough of him on her Nan’s iPhone, especially bonking him on the noggin.

Just like some men believe Pamela Anderson is ‘’real’’ (come on, does she have any of her original self left?), Ella believes Tom is also a living being.

Here’s an actual transcript of one of Ella and Tom’s conversations _

Ella: Can you stand like a flamingo?

Tom: Can you stand like a flamingo?

Ella: Yes, I can. I’ll show you.

Tom: Yes, I can. I’ll show you.

Ella: OK, you go first.

Tom: You go first.

Ella: Oh. I’ll go first then.

Tom: I’ll go first then.

Ella: How about we do it together?

Tom: How about we do it together?

Ella: OK, let’s do it (by this stage her mouth’s too far from the phone for Tom to pick up her voice). See, cat. You stand on one leg. See. You’re not doing it, cat.

This conversation went on for 45 minutes.

It then resulted in a slight tantrum when it was time to go home and Tom couldn’t come with us.

Makes you wonder what on earth they’ll think of next.

I had real cats (they kept being replaced because they ended up flat on the Riana road) and it wasn’t ‘til I was in late primary school that I got my first taste of a Commodore 64 (that’s a games console kids, not a type of Holden).

The debate is still going in our household as to whether we download Talking Tom Cat.

The clincher is that I don’t have an iPhone (poor me), so there could be daily tantrums when the bloke in The Shed has to take Tom to work with him each morning.

So, how are your kids coming to terms with technology?

A video of Ella and Tom having a conversation.

February 4, 2011
Happy holidays with kids? You bet

No Fairy Floss, but fairy face painting instead.

HOLIDAYS pre-kids used to be different.

Pre-kids, holidays were about sipping copious amounts of cocktails poolside at resorts or staying in fancy hotels and blowing money at shopping centres like an Aussie P Diddy (without the bling and just one babe on my arm rather than 10 of them).

With kids, it couldn’t be any more different.

Nowadays, a holiday destination is chosen on how many parks it has, whether there’s affordable accommodation and if we can arrive without one of the little tackers spewing the contents of their breakfast all over the back seat.

That doesn’t mean holidays with kids are any less enjoyable – in fact, I’ve discovered quite the opposite.

Cue: Three weeks holiday.

The most common question when telling people I was taking leave was: “Where are you going?”

The answer: “Nowhere”. This was more often than not met with sad, sympathetic looks as if I’d just told them of a death in the family.

Well, I can tell you, “nowhere” has proved to be one of the best holiday destinations ever.

It was a conscious decision with the good wife (Princess No. 1) to simply spend time as a family, enjoy the lack of stress involved with packing and unpacking (with kids) and wake each morning treating the day as a new adventure.

Also, when you have a four-month-old baby who sleeps less of a night than Keith Richards, then staying in a foreign environment is frankly not appealing.

So instead, we’ve taken day trips to pools, parks, beaches and the Don River Railway (although Princess No. 2, three-year-old Ella, wouldn’t have her picture taken with the Thomas the Tank-looking train because it “doesn’t have a mouth yet, daddy. I’ll come back later when it has a mouth.”).

One of the holiday highlights has been a dad and daughter trip to Henley-on-the-Mersey, Latrobe’s remarkable multi-faceted festival on Australia Day.

Fair dinkum, there’s ferret races, woodchopping, helicopter rides, pony rides, cherry pip spitting comps – even Denise Drysdale.

Stuff the ferrets though.

All Ella wanted was a ride on the shuttle bus to and from the event – a legacy of singing “Wheels on the Bus” and the fact she’s never ridden on public transport (something she’ll no doubt make up for in her uni years).

To Ella, the bus rides that day were akin to bungy jumping from the Sydney Harbour Bridge … that was until she saw kids eating strange pink fluffy wool-like stuff.

We’d carefully avoided exposing Ella to the wonders of Fairy Floss, therefore naturally she was inquisitive. So, I told her the truth.

“It’s called Fairy Floss, it makes you really sick if you eat it and mummies get REALLY grumpy with daddies if they find daughters have eaten it,” I said, using the most serious face.

Note to Kel: As a trade off for my little fib, you get to tell her about the birds and the bees when the time comes. Sound fair?

Other day trip destinations so far have included the awesome Launceston Aquatic Centre (get there if you haven’t been yet), the good ol’ Dinosaur Park at Ulverstone with adjacent safe beach and the kid-friendly Devonport Aquatic Centre.
So what’s your best day trip destination? Have any secret spots you want to share?

February 1, 2011
Tasmanian princesses drink from same boob.. er, cup

Breast or bottle?

TASMANIAN-born Crown Princess Mary may have not long given birth to twins, but this fellow Taswegian is more excited about giving life to her own li’l project – this blog (coincidentally, about my two beautiful princesses).

We may have been born in the same State, but there’s more than a few differences between my life and the woman who’s living the storybook fairytale (or nightmare, depending on which magazine you read). Our differences? Mainly the money, maids … and manners!

But what we do have in common, according to all reports, is boobie juice. As I read about Mary doing the football hold with her unnamed prince and princess, this most humbling thought makes me wonder what young Princess Isabella makes of it all.

My “two girls” (read: boobs) are a fascinating concept for my own Princess Ella, incidentally the same age as Isabella – three. My princess has decided breast isn’t best. Well, not for her ‘’baby’’.

To begin with, Ella was mesmerized by me breastfeeding Baby Holly. The child carer did a double take after catching Ella sitting in the corner of the room, her top pulled up, chest puffed out, feeding a doll. Later, the same child carer asked her what mummy fed Baby Holly. Rather than the obvious – milk – she replied: ‘’her boobies’’.

I asked her the same question again a few days later. ‘’Your big boobies,’’ was her reply. Hmm, heaven help me if that’s the answer she actually gave the child carer.

The next instalment in the milk tanker saga, after numerous attempts to feed everyone from Jemima rag doll to Astra the Cabbage Patch Doll, was expressing. While I’ve got the Avent pumping like a dairy farmer at 6am, Ella has the kitchen gadget which seals corks back into wine bottles on her own boob. And she’s pumping like her life depends on it. After a few minutes, she stops and looks up disappointed. ‘’Oh no, mum, I mustn’t have any milk left’’.

The look on her face is one akin to discovering the ice cream is all gone. She’s deflated. Well, not literally – she had nothing in there to start with. Since then, it’s been strictly a bottle for her Cabbage Patch.

It just goes to show how much kids are influenced by what they see and hear (mental note: don’t use rude words when she decides to draw a Van Gogh on the suede lounge). So what sort of influences do you think Princess Isabella has? ‘’Pardon me maid, but would you mind ever so kindly as to pop those two dolls under my arms. It’s time to do the Buddy Franklin.’’

OK, so, time to spill. What have you ‘’accidentally’’ taught your little cherubs?

January 26, 2011
Five Ways With Bolognese
This is one of those recipes that’s ideal to cook up with the kids one afternoon, then put into containers and freeze. Then, on nights when arsenic hour gets all too much, you can whip out a batch and make either…
- Spaghetti Bolognese
- Lasagne
- Pasta Bake
- Gourmet Beef Pies
- Tacos
Feel free to double or triple the quantity.

BASE RECIPE:

INGREDIENTS:

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 onion, finely chopped

500g beef mince

2 rashers of bacon, diced

1 x 425g tinned tomatoes, chopped

1 Tablespoon sugar

2 cups beef stock

2 Tablespoons tomato paste

Herbs (try basil, thyme, oregano, parsley…)

Salt and pepper, to taste

METHOD:

Heat the oil in a large pan, then saute garlic and onion. Add bacon and cook a further one minute.

Add beef and cook until brown.

Then include tomatoes, sprinkling of sugar over the top, beef stock, tomato paste and herbs.

Cook for at least half an hour, more if needed, ‘til the liquid thickens into a rich sauce.

Place amounts, equivalent to what your family would eat with spaghetti, and freeze in containers.

SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE

Take out a quantity of Bolognese sauce.

To add more vegies for the kids, fry off 1 diced carrot, 1 diced zucchini, 1 stick of celery and ¼ capsicum. Add to the sauce. For further flavour, add 1/2 cup of white wine.

Boil 500g of desired pasta (angel hair is a fave in our household because it doesn’t take long to cook).

Dish up the pasta, top with sauce and add parmesan cheese.

TIP: Stir a bit of the sauce into the pasta once it’s cooked to stop it from sticking and going hard in the bowl.

PASTA BAKE

As above, except this time use fusilli pasta, combine pasta and sauce and place in casserole dish. Top with cheddar cheese and parmesan cheese. Bake for 20-30 minutes in an 180C oven.

TIP: Feel free to use whatever type of pasta you like. Maybe you prefer elbow pasta, penne,spirali, farfelle, etc.

LASAGNE

Again, it’s not too dissimilar to the previous two recipes. However, this time you need a white sauce. Melt 2 Tablespoons of butter in a saucepan. Add 2 Tablespoons of plain flour. Cook for 1 minute. Slowly add 2 cups of milk and continue cooking until it starts to thicken. Add a sprinkling of clove and nutmeg. Then add 125gs of cheddar or mozzarella cheese. Stir until melted.

Then, in a lasagne dish, put 1/3 of the meat mixture. Follow with lasagne sheets, meat sauce and white sauce and repeat. Finish with white sauce and then top with parmesan cheese.

Bake for 40 minutes in an 180C oven.

TIP: Always put a tray under the lasagne dish so it doesn’t boil over onto the bottom of the oven.

GOURMET BEEF PIES

Take out a quantity of Bolognese sauce. Heat it on the stove and add a cup of frozen peas.

While heating, cut out 6 x 13cm rounds of puff pastry and 6 x 9cm rounds. (If you have three pastry sheets layered on top of each other, you’ll only need to cut out the shapes twice).

Place the 13cm rounds into a six-hole Texan-size muffin tray. Prick the sides and bottom with a fork. Cover with cling wrap and place in the fridge for half an hour.

Take cling wrap off and replace with baking paper and then fill the paper with dry rice. (Be careful the rice doesn’t spill over into the pastry). Bake in the oven for 10 minutes at 200C. Discard paper and rice.

Once cooled, fill with the sauce, then top with the 9cm rounds, squeezing the edges of the base and top pastry together. Put a decorative piece of pastry on the top if you like. Brush with beaten egg, then bake for 15 minutes.

TIP: With the leftover pastry, we cut them into triangles and place on top to make stars. Any other remaining pastry gets twirled into spirals, sprinkled with pepper and baked for crunchy snacks.

TACOS

Another batch of sauce, another recipe. (Can you call taco’s a recipe?)

This time you’ll need to buy a taco kit. It’s up to you whether you buy the complete kit with seasoning for the mince, or whether you buy just the taco shells and a separate jar of taco sauce.

Heat the sauce. Place the taco shells on a tray and bake for 10 minutes (or however long the packet says.)

Meanwhile, shred lettuce, dice tomatoes, dice avocado (remembering to squeeze lemon over the top so it doesn’t go brown) and grate cheese.

Put each in separate bowls on the table, along with the taco sauce, taco shells and meat sauce.

TIP: This is my daughter’s favourite meal, mainly because she gets to create her own taco. There’s something to be said for kids being able to make their own dinner. It might end up all over the table (and the floor), but at least she eats the lot!
January 26, 2011
It’s competition time

Want to win product for bub’s skin?

Here at Three Li’l Princesses, we’re launching the site with a chance for you to voice your opinion and win product for bub.

Visit the WIN! page for full details of the competition, then post a comment anywhere on the new Three Li’l Princesses website for your chance to score a beautiful Holliview Way Baby Chino Goat’s Milk Soap pack to use on bub’s delicate skin.

January 21, 2011