Leave the haircuts to the professionals

We've let our guard down a little around our house lately. It's been ages since we've had to worry about accidents with scissors, so we started to get careless about where we left them. Surely my kids were past the stage of playing hairdresser, right? Wrong! Earlier this week our little ginger-haired moppet got a hold of a misplaced pair of scissors and thought it would be great fun to cut a chunk out of the front of his hair. He actually came to me with said chunk of hair and asked if I would add it to the small baggy of hair we have from his first haircut. Yes, my heart melted at such cuteness, but this needed to be fixed immediately! So instead of taking him to a hairdresser to fix it properly and professionally, I thought I could fix it myself!! One wiggly four-year-old + one inexperienced mama = one ginger-haired mess! Now he is fighting going to the hairdresser and picture day at school is next week!! Yikes! Would love to hear your bad haircut stories!

It's been a slow weekend around here! I'm afraid the first colds of the season have befallen us - well Finn and I anyway! I wonder, how is it that a four-year-old can bounce back so quickly!!?? I've been dragging myself around all weekend sniffling and aching and just all-around miserable! So it was pretty timely that my good friend Nelda posted on her blog Staying Healthy in the Autumn Season. There are some yummy recipes that I can't wait to try to strengthen my system - for I know this is only the beginning for snotty-nosed kindergartners swapping their germs! Brace yourselves!!


By Sunday, I was ready to drag myself off the couch to soak up the last hours of summer, and the few remaining weekends of flea marketing!

The above vendor is one of the boys' favourites! Too many fun things to look through - so hard to choose just one!

But it was the wide variety of books that caught Nate's attention - and what better than a book about drawing dinosaurs? We did leave with a few good reads that we will tuck away for a rainy day when we want to remember warm summer days of treasure hunting up on the Square!

What's for dinner?

Dinner time is a pretty important time of day in our house. Mornings are so hectic as we run around trying to get ourselves ready and out the door on time while trying to maintain our sanity! But it is at supper time that we can reconnect and share our day's experiences over a nutritious meal. It is our family time and enjoying it over wholesome food, well, what could be better? 

I'm sure for most of us out there, cooking at the end of a long work day is a dreaded task. It is easier to grab for the pre-packaged convenience food, and there are many nights when I wish I could go this route. But, as I've mentioned before, with the food allergies in our house, this just isn't possible. So I have a rotation of quick and easy meals that I thought I would regularly share through this space - hopefully to inspire homecooking on a weeknight! The following recipe came together as a mix of the fresh peppers and onions we had in the garden, the homemade salsa that I just can't seem to get enough of, and the bags of tortillas we found stuck to the bottom of our freezer. This dish was made pretty quickly and was perfect served with a garden salad. In no time at all, you will have a nutritious and delicious dinner that I hope your family will love! 

So here's the recipe for this yet-unnamed-dish:

1 chicken breast

1 can of black beans

1 onion

1 green or red pepper

2-3 cloves of garlic

cilantro to taste
18-20 tortillas (corn or flour)
1-2 cups of salsa
Cheddar Cheese (optional)
Plain yogurt or sour cream (optional)

Preheat oven to 375F. Cut chicken into strips and fry in a little olive oil until no longer pink. Add sliced onions and peppers, and minced garlic. Fry until soft and add rinsed black beans. Line baking dish with a thin layer of salsa and one layer of tortillas. Top with half of the chicken and veggie mixture, and enough salsa to cover. Add another layer of tortillas and top with remaining chicken and veggie mixture and salsa. Add one more layer of tortillas and top with salsa to cover and cheese if allowed. Bake about 15 mins. If baking without cheese, cheese can be added individually afterwards for those in your family who are able to eat dairy. Top with yogurt, if allowed.

Before & After

This, believe it or not, was once a curtain. Pretty funky, non? I can only imagine its brightness led to a few sleepless nights for the child who had this hanging in his or her bedroom, thereby leading his or her parents to dump it at their local Salvation Army. As a regular visitor to my local Salvation Army, I was overjoyed when I found this vibrant swath of canvasy-type material, and I knew that one day it would serve a greater purpose in our lives. Well, this unfortunate curtain has been reborn...

...into this lunchbag that Finny has been toting to SK for the past week. What I love about it, besides the lack of the nasty (and I'm quite sure, toxic) smell of new vinyl, is that it is completely washable. One of my least favourite chores was opening my kids' lunchboxes at the end of a school day to get a whiff of vinyl and spilled apple juice that has soaked through to the foam insulator - that smell lasts the entire school year! So I wanted to make an easy-to-wash, good-for-the-environment, healthy-for-kids alternative. The dimensions I used can be found here, and to this pattern I added a mesh water bottle holder to the side, and easy-to-carry handles to the top. Don't worry, there is plenty of curtain left - hmm, lunchbags for all??

School is back in session!!

Flashback to back-to-school 2008 - Nate and Finny both look so bright-eyed and eager to learn!! And so much younger! Really, where has the time gone?

Flash forward to back-to-school 2009! Notice anything missing? It seems that adolescent body snatchers snuck in over night, took my 8-year-old and left us with teenage attitude that refused to be photographed before heading off to Grade 3. You pick your battles, right?  But Finny was eager to pose for a photo before he headed off to join his friends in the kindergarten sandbox! Thankfully our day ended better than it began as it seems the attitude was left behind on the school playground! Happy back-to-school everyone!

Zoet alors! Can you believe how quickly summer has passed us by? It seems that we haven't had nearly enough beach time this summer for that to be so! But the kids are breaking in their new backpacks and trying on their back-to-school outfits in preparation for the first day of school on Tuesday. (Already??!!)

While it has been far too many years since I can even remember getting a new backpack for a new school year, September always brings out in me a desire to start something new - whether it's signing up for a new art class, joining a new group, or starting this blog! I have been wanting to start this blog for some time now, but I wasn't sure how to start or what the focus would be. I had originally intended to focus on our family's struggles with food allergies, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that these food allergies (although a challenge in the beginning) have turned out to be anything but a struggle. They have been an inspiration! Having to do all of our own baking and cooking has shaped our family from one that easily relied on the conveniences of our modern lives to one that has come to rely on the gifts of our own hands. Using these gifts in the kitchen has spilled over into the rest of our lives and it is here that I will chronicle our journey as a handmade home.

I must first explain the name I have given this blog, Zoet (zoot) alors!: I'm sure most of us remember learning our first French expletive - zut alors! Well, sometimes life needs an expletive or two, and with a family name of Zoethout, well, the play on words seemed perfect!

I'm going to leave you with a recipe that will be a perfect treat to add to a back-to-school lunch! This recipe saved our lives so many years ago when our son Nate was diagnosed with severe dairy and egg allergies. In fact, the entire book, The Parent's Guide to Food Allergies, where this recipe came from, saved our lives! But it was this recipe that helped us to realize that yes, we can make safe, yummy alternatives for our son. Warning - these cookies do not last long!!

World's Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 C margarine

1/2 C white sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/4 C flour (spelt and rice flours work equally well in this recipe if you are trying to keep wheat out of your diet)

Mix together in a small bowl before adding to dough:

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp vinegar

1 tbsp water

1/2 C chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Cream together margarine and sugar. Add vanilla, baking soda and flour. Mix in baking powder mixture. Add chocolate chips. Drop onto cookie sheets and bake about 10-12 mins. or until golden.