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Life

August 15, 2016

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My 2 in 1 healthy flapjacks and granola recipe! 🍪

When my eldest was a toddler, I wanted to get more nuts and seeds into his diet, so scoured the internet for some kind of baby friendly healthy oat/seed bar. After all, what better way to hide bundles of nutrition than in a sweet bake? Especially when it’s so yummy all the adults love it too!

I discovered @hedgecomber’s healthy flapjack recipe which I used as a base, then over the years I have trialled lots of different additional fillings. Taking inspiration from the granola recipe by @rebeccawilsonfood I then discovered that after baking, if you crumble it up and pop it back in the oven it turns into a banging granola.

📝 Ingredients for the base

180g oats
Approx 75g butter of your choice (melted)
3 bananas
1 heaped teaspoon mixed spice (or cinnamon if you’d prefer)

Your choice of ingredients for the filling, I normally throw in as many of the below as I have in my cupboard:

Chopped dates
Chopped dried apricots
Raisins/sultanas
Dried cranberries
Chia seeds
Flax seeds
Sunflower seeds
Sesame seeds
Dried fruit and nut mixes
Coconut shavings
Ground almonds
Chocolate chips if you fancy being cheeky
My latest addition: chopped glacé cherries!

👩🏻‍🍳 Recipe

Throw all of the ingredients for the base into a bowl and mix well. Add the fillings of your choice in and again mix well so they’re evenly distributed.

Pop your oven to 180°C and allow your mix to soak in all the buttery banana goodness.

Grease and line a square baking tin, then pack the mixture in. Press it down with the back of a spoon and really try to apply pressure to flatten it down as much as you can.

Sprinkle with coconut shavings.

Pop it in the oven for approx 20-25 minutes until it’s golden brown and the edges are crispy.

Leave it to cool in the tin then cut into big slices or enjoy it warm and a bit more crumbly!

🍫 If you want to be really fancy, drizzle over some melted chocolate for decoration. Enjoy!

Let me know if you give it a try!

Earn £5 of Boots points for recycling your emptie

Darenth Country Park 🌳🛝 Nestled just behind

Darenth Country Park 🌳🛝

Nestled just behind Darent Valley Hospital, Darenth Country Park has been a go to for us for years. I first discovered it accidentally as an excellent place for conker collecting in Autumn - honestly, I’m yet to find somewhere with more conker trees than here!

Boasting a large (and FREE!) car park, there’s lovely walks lined with fields of horses, steep hills with views of Kent and London, orchards, a small area of woodland and plenty of large open fields perfect for a picnic. You’ll likely find lots of dog walkers so be prepared for dogs running off lead.

They recently had their play area re-done and it is absolutely excellent for younger children - just take a look at the pictures! There was plenty to keep both my 2 and 5 year old occupied whilst also nothing being too large and unsafe for them.

Highly recommend for all families, especially toddlers and pre-school ages. We can’t wait to spend many a day here with a picnic in summer!

📍Darenth Country Park, 68 Darenth Park Avenue, Dartford, DA2 6NN

🚗 Large FREE on site car park

☕️ NO cafe - make sure to bring a picnic!

🚽 NO toilets

If you visit off the back of my recommendation, please tag me in your photos and let me know! #JodetopiaInKent

Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ok, so a contemporary romance with a whole lot of sex isn’t my usual go to fiction (I’m normally a psychological thriller type of girl!), but I have to admit I quite enjoyed this book! It was a solid 3 stars for the majority of the read, until everything came together in the last segment, which had me racing to turn the pages with tears rolling down my cheeks. I had no choice but to bump it up to an unexpected 4 stars!

Pros:
📖 Easy to read which makes it a very quick page turner
📖 Switches between perspectives and timelines, leaving you desperate to find out what happened in between
📖 Great for a light read between heavier novels…
📖… but still be prepared to cry! The last quarter of the book is very emotional in a few different ways, but for all the right reasons. It’ll leave you smiling and crying and pondering your own what ifs. Any book that garners that kind of emotional response from me is always going to earn that extra ⭐️
📖 A great ending that left me satisfied (I cannot stand a book that doesn’t have closure at the end!)
📖 Leaves me wanting to read more from this author!

Cons:
👎🏻 too much sex for me, I found myself skipping over it a lot as it was very repetitive. I need more intellectual stimulation than just knowing who’s hands are where, but I can see why the girls over on #booktok go crazy for Colleen Hoover if that’s their jam
👎🏻 too much doormat behaviour from the female protagonist. I’ve been out of the game for a VERY long time - please don’t tell me women act like this in real life?
👎🏻 at face value, it’s a very boring and overdone plot. A friends with benefit situation where the girl ends up falling for him and things get messy? Yawn.

I’ll be dropping this off to my local #bookswap at @thebluebeancoffeeco soon - if you’re local to #ebbsfleet then pop in and keep an eye out!

Today I did my first ever @parkrunuk with my Couch

Today I did my first ever @parkrunuk with my Couch to 5k running group! 🏃🏻‍♀️

I joined the Ebbsfleet Community Runners for their Couch to 5k programme at the start of the year and what a journey it has been! I was fully committed for the first 5 weeks, fell off the radar for the rest of the programme then nipped back in for the final week of 35 minute runs. I definitely feel like I cheated the team a little bit, but it’s SUCH an amazing supportive group of people that honestly just want you to do the best of your own personal ability.

Today was our graduation run at @shornewoods.parkrun - it was harder than I thought it’d be and I made a lot of mistakes (most notably, getting ballsy and going off on my own and wearing myself out too quickly!) but receiving my medal and the certificate at the end made it all worth it.

Anyone that knows me personally will know I am NOT a natural runner. I’m not sporty in the slightest. I probably can’t even catch a ball if you threw one at me. So to run my first ever park run, let alone run it in sub 35 minutes is SUCH a big deal for me. A super big deal. Never thought I’d be able to run 5k kind of deal.

For anyone local to #Ebbsfleet that’s interested in running with a great bunch of people of varied ability levels, the Ebbsfleet Community Runners meet on Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings - reach out to @ebbsfleetbaptistchurch or DM me for timings and location.

Can’t believe I did it!!

Kid’s Hobbycraft Workshops! 🎨👩‍🎨 Did

Kid’s Hobbycraft Workshops! 🎨👩‍🎨

Did you know that @hobbycrafthq host children’s workshops?

My son is really into arts and crafts, so we’ve attended many of the children’s workshops over the last couple of years. From making pipe cleaner spiders and paper mache spooky houses at Halloween, to painting and Christmas bauble decorating, there’s loads to choose from. Today we made some silly clay monsters at Crayford’s branch!

They’re small groups of normally around 5 children, and adults are free in the ticket price, which is usually £5-10 depending on the craft and whether it is a half hour or hour session. The Crayford branch are great at letting you crack on after a demo, doing as much as you can within the time limit, and will even grab you extra resources if you ask for them. I’ve heard that unfortunately not all branches are as accommodating, though!

Have a look on their website to find your nearest branch and see what workshops they’re hosting. Check back regularly as more get added on frequently, and they do book up quickly - especially half term and seasonal workshops. If you’re an avid crafter yourself, check out their range of adult’s workshops too!

Top tip - keep an eye out for their regularly advertised offers on workshops. We often bulk book a few whenever there is a 20% off workshops offer or similar which makes them great value for money, especially if you’re booking for more than one child as this can add up quickly!

If you visit off the back of my recommendation, please tag me in your photos and let me know! #JodetopiaInKent

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