Summer 2011 To Do List

The weather has finally improved so hopefully we can soon get started checking things off our summer to-do list.
I left some space at the bottom of the list to add a few more things over the next few days/weeks incase we can think of more things to do.

On our German/American Days we will learn a little about the countries, eat (stereo)typical food and listen to children's music(this mostly relates to the German day as we already listen to mostly American children's music)

School's Out For Summer

It's a wrap!
Today was Belle's last day at nursery(pre-school) and she'll be home for the next 7 weeks.
50 days from today she'll be back at school, not full time for the first two weeks but at least for a couple of hours most days.

She's ready to learn, she desperately wants to read and write but I don't want to work on it too much over the summer as her school has a way of teaching them the alphabet which I am not familiar with.
So for now we're just carrying on what we've been doing. She knows how to write all upper case letters but none of the lower case letters, which I think is what they learn first at school. I don't really want to teach her anything 'my way' and then cause confusion once she starts school.
And also I want her to enjoy the summer, not spend too much time learning -her last chance to do so.

I'll try and post our 'summer-to-do-list' soon, let's hope the summery weather returns at some point over the next 7 weeks or else we can cross 'play in the water fountains' off the list ;-)
It's been in the 60s with lots of rain, so not exactly swimsuit weather

Veganomicon Quinoa Salad with mango and black beans

Ok, I admit this post hasn't got anything to do with nannying because even though this salad is super colourful and delicious, my 2 lovely charges aren't getting a single bite-ful of it...it's all MINE.
I'm sure Belle would give it a taste if I asked her to, but the crunchyness of the quinoa might not be up to her liking.

I was first introduced to this salad by one of my ex-bosses when I went to visit them last summer.
It's super easy to make(especially if you cheat like me) healthy, delicious and just screams 'summertime' and cook-outs to me.

I'm not sure where I stand legally on posting a recipe from a cookbook, so I'm just going to link to another blog where you can find out how to make it. Cheeky, I know.

Recipe on 'cooking for the other half'

I substituted the rapseed oil with 2 tablespoons of orange juice as that's what I had seen on another website and it was a good way for me to save some calories.
My 'cheat' was using ready cooked Quinoa by Merchant Gourmet
I also didn't measure the spring onions or coriander/cilantro, just used a bunch each.

Veganomicon Cookbook on Amazon

First Post

Well hello there and welcome to my humble little blog.

Since this is my first blog entry I guess I should write a little about myself, I'm 'The Nanny' and have been working as a nanny for almost 9 years now.
I'm currently working for a wonderful family in London and have been with them for just over 3 years now. Their lovely 2 daughters are 'Belle', who's 4 and 'Boo' who's 2. These are obviously not their real names but I'm trying to keep thing anonymously on here.
I started this blog mostly to document our upcoming summer, school's about to finish and I'll have both girls home until they start again in September.
We sat down together and created a summer 'to do list', which includes things like 'go see sheep' and play in the water fountains. We live just a short train ride from central London so finding something fun to do this summer shouldn't be difficult.
I'll post our 'summer fun list' soon.

The three of us enjoy arts&crafts, baking(and eating), reading books, dressing up and much more.

One of my addictions are blogs, mostly China-adoption and cooking blogs.
I started reading the China blogs back in 2006 and it's been fun 'watching' the children grow up over this time.