Goat Meat Peppersoup

Balogun Market version 2.0

I happened to read sisi yemmie’s post (link) on my way to Balogun to do some shopping and I thought this too much of a coincidence not to do a kind of follow up on the fabulousness of Balogun market.

If you know what you are looking for and you know where to find what you are looking for, Balogun market is much more than a market its a huge shopping centre.

I had to meet up with a couple of friends and I decided to try shopping with them but somehow it just wasn't working. I always try to cram as much as possible into one shopping trip. In-fact I think I made it home with just N200 in my purse. I tag that as a successful shopping trip and I still have my eyes on some other goodies which I’ll probably go back to get in January with my sister.

I couldn't stop around to take pictures like sisi yemmie.. Very beautiful pictures. 

Here are some of the things I got

A pair of shoes for myself and my daughter

Gardening tools: I've actually started using them

Toys for the kids (The toy section is just after the baby things section) There are like three to five big toy shops there and loads of little little shops I try to stick to the big shops. There is even a shop that stocks just inflatable toys.

No pictures of the toys as they are currently under witness protection

My son wants a skateboard, I'm still on the lookout for that

Some key shopping tips to help you discover Balogun:

• Start early as it can get really rowdy and busy.
• If you are not too familiar with the different shopping streets, Do take someone along that can help you the first couple of times. Bobo has actually taken me to get glasses before.
• Take your time and have a list.
• Always bargain, In fact you can actually walk away and then make a u-turn when you make a decision.
• Try to dress comfortably.
• Avoid Christmas week or any other major holiday week.
• And yeah … you have to perfect the-shopping-in-eko-bag-protection-hold… (ask around about this)
• And my personal tip: before going to shop, I go online to get a feel of things I'm interested in. I check sites like payless.com for shoes and walmart.com for toys. Sometimes I get lucky and get exactly what I want other times I bend a little.

Another shopping haven,The National Stadium at Surulere for sporting goods. I will definitely do a post on this sometime later.

Happy Holidays Everyone!!

Sister Me Sister Mine

Wow.... Can't believe its been since March since I last blogged. Seriously ashamed of myself. And the year is almost over .... Wow.
This year has been a whirlwind for me but in a good way and I'm so so thankful and feel extremely blessed all around.
Christmas is my best time of the year. I get all giddy with excitement its almost embarrassing. I play Christmas songs and cook and just have a blast. This year is extremely special since I'm on vacation. Yup. I'm on vacation from the first week of December up until the first week of January. The leave is so long I'm even embarrassed. My annual leave actually ends on the 20th of Dec, and by a stroke of luck my company closes the week after that to resume in January.
This is the first week and I've been jogging a lot and cooking up a storm from chicken pepper soup to pepper goat meat and Efo riro. I will try to post pics and recipes along  the way.
I hope to finally start my mini garden... yay!! and Temi starts swimming lessons as soon as school closes.
I am yet to put up the tree. I still haven't decided if we do it together or I do it up over night as a surprise for the kids. I think we should do it together. Crafty Diva that I am, This year I'm going to stay clear away from the paper crafts for one simple reason .... They never last so what's the point. I will do more of lights and I'm going to Eko tomorrow to do some looksee. My sister has warned me that its a kaleidoscope of colors, sounds (noise) and just stuff. I can't wait to see what I find.

The last time my sister was on leave after her CFA exams I did a list of things to do after CFA write-up for her. It was cute. Now I'm on leave she decided to retaliate and it has just been so much fun just reading it.
If you have been blessed to know my sister you probably know she is very very tres tres organised she didn't just make a list she put it on PDF with pictures and directions and just stuff that only my sister would put. Like go pick up your French exams results and Do a budget .... Mine had stuff like go out, have drinks with friends, fun fun fun ... Ever wondered why my sister and i are so close.. because of stuff like this. Its always nice to know that you have somebody that has your back every single time even when you don't agree about stuff. We are similar and yet so so different. I guess that's why I'm her best friend ... Not the other way around oh!! I have loads of besties ... naming will only put me in trouble .. But for Senami I'm her Best Friend .... and she's My Sister

Figuring it out...

At some point in time it easy to feel like we are pulled in different directions in our lives. We juggle different balls while trying to make sure we don't drop any. When i think of it, it's like tracks on a field and trying to run on all these tracks at the very. same.time... Trying to loose weight, Trying to change jobs, Trying to study, Trying to learn french, Trying to craft, Trying to finish my book,Trying to move places,Trying to grow my hair, trying to do this and trying to do that.

For a while now i have been having the blues and I was getting a lot of questions from my friends, why are you feeling blue, if i could actually pinpoint when it actually started,etc. Initially I couldn't  but after thinking about it for a while I realized it starts when I'm trying to figure things out. Trying to figure out 'how'...

In life no one person has all the answers (well except the Almighty God), we are all on a path figuring it out... So don't get discouraged. As long as we don't stop peddling, as long as we don't stop moving It all works in the end. For the past couple of weeks I've been hearing and reading the same thing over and over again , Make a move Make a move, Rev Sam Adeyemi, Rev TD Jakes even Ofili (http://ofilispeaks.com/)says make a move, keep pedaling. And I realized that as you keep moving a pattern starts to emerge, a picture, a painting, a creation, a design, a beautiful work of art, a life, this life we live, touching each other's lives, hopefully in positive ways.

So here are some of the things i figured out,i hope it will touch someone out there positively.

1. Lists. It's very easy to get distracted with lists, to do list, lists of the to do lists. At one time i had like 3 notebooks of lists and i had books teaching me of how to organize my to-do lists. i even have a book on time management that i never read (and it's by one of the top dogs in business management) the print was so small and the book so big. It lies there on my bookshelf just gathering dust.So here's my own fix for all the lists, Get a full scalp sheet of paper and write every thing in all your notepads on this list if you need more space get another sheet and staple it together. Why this works? because you never know where you will find yourself and do you want to get home from a craft store only to remember that you could have done some grocery shopping right next door to the craft store? Examples of what's on my list, crafts i want to make and a list of things i need to make them with, websites i want to vist, meals i want to try, our grocery list is there, my son's bday is in a couple of months so things i need to shop for, my wardrobe update is there... and so on. And i tick off things from time to time and add some things and sometimes i just write a new list especially once my list starts to get rough.

2. Make up: i like make up but I'm not obsessed with it. My basic make up is good foundation and by that i mean good skin. A lot of my friends will argue that genetics has a role to play with good skin. So whether you have good skin or not, it is still very important to take care of your skin. I have to admit I have a very simple face regime but i do take care of my face, i really really do. I use a  face wash  or a cream wash in the  in the evenings.I don't sleep with my makeup on. I use a mask almost every week and do some facials for myself as well. I hope this doesn't sound time consuming because its not and I do skip a few days, Hey!

3. Eyebrows: I have never known how to trim my eyebrows. I never even tried to learn how. I would wait for friends to help out, whether they did a good job or not I had no choice. I was recently inspired by a close  friend of mine. Now let me explain, when we were in Uni (college) my friend was a total geek, I have nothing against geeks,, I am a geek as well. But I used to spot her out in a crowd by one very childish hair grip she used to wear.. fast forward to now, my friend sells makeup as her side-trick and her make up is flawless! impeccable! no training! so what guess what... we can figure it out. So here's how i got the eyebrow i wanted .. my company Id card and my eyebrow razor, i used the card to guide the lines i wanted to maintain .. and voila!

Here's a Pic of what i ended up with. Not bad for my first attempt!

3. Children's Meals: It takes a lot to get home from work and have to start cooking and wake up in the morning and start thinking of breakfast and the children's lunch boxes. When i was younger we had a meal chart... i can tell you there are lots of kitchens in Nigeria with dusty old and ABANDONED meal charts pinned to the back of the door or the fridge. So i have a meal list and beside it is the list of my monthly groceries... everything we eat is on the list. So i just take a quick glance at it for inspiration. This is my go to solution to stop or at least reduce the mom-standing-in-front-of-the-fridge-wondering-what-to cook-for dinner. I also try to think at least 2 meals ahead.

4. Writing on my pictures with my tablet. Seems simple enough but i just didn't know how to do it. Well I just asked somebody cos well if you don't know, you better ask somebody.

I'm always on the look out for solutions that can make life easier so please feel free to share something you figured out or something you will like figured out... you know maybe we could figure it out together.

Saying No.....

Is it just me or is parenting so much more challenging now compared to when we were kids. There's so much more to say No to.
Growing up things were so much simpler. My sis and I derived so much pleasure from the simple things. Our mischievous experiments and just hanging out with our friends.
There's a danger out there, clear and present, and we can't bury our heads in the sands... we are not Ostriches. From the media to technology, from strangers in our midst to even the friendlies (yes the enemies are within as well). This is not a call to raise our children in an atmosphere of fear, This is a call to encourage us to keep on saying No. It's tough not to be the 'cool' parent, the 'nice' parent, but every time they give you that dirty look, just remember you are saying No from a place of Love. This is also a call to seek knowledge, information, wisdom... whether we care to admit it or not, what we know determines how we will react in certain situations. As parents, we never want to admit to our kids that we don't have all the answers, but we can admit it to ourselves, that we are figuring this thing out as we go along. So when your son or daughter asks you something you don't know, you can just simply say you know what, I don't have the answer but why don't we figure this thing out together.

Part of saying No is being the bad guy 
My kids got a balloon at a major shopping mall in Ikeja, and like all kids they started tossing it around and chasing it. At the back of my mind I saw the possibility of the balloon floating into the car park and the possibility of them chasing it right to the front of a moving car. I had to burst the balloon  I didn't feel good about it but I knew that one burst balloon would not 'scar' them for live, but one silly mistake could get them injured.

So as we celebrate both the International Women  Day and Mothering Sunday ... Here's a toast to the women in my life that never stopped saying No, Yes or Let's Figure it Out Together!

Have I bitten more than I can chew?

As a sort of dare of sorts with myself and as a sort of challenge I decided to start the "Insanity Workout" 60 day challenge. This is day 8 and yes it is insaneeeee! I have to admit, I have never completed the full 45mins - 1hr workout. I started out with 15mins, the 20 mins and on and on and with a lot of rests in between to catch my breath. When i see the the caption on the screen saying "rest when needed" it cracks me up, because i'm probably resting already ! But really its not even the workouts or the rotations, its how hard my heart beats when I'm doing it, like its about to jump out of my chest!

This is my first post this year so Happy New Year! it isn't too late is it? and Happy Valentines' Day! How was it? 1st of January also happens to be my birthday. I got a Samsung Galaxy Tablet... cool! me likey! me likey very much!!
How was Vals day? Was a little bit irritated with how much emphasis the children's school put on it. I was like "really?" T-boy actually had the day off from school... like really?!! I'm so changing him from that school.  Well, I made dinner for Bobo and the kids. A real sit down dinner with candles and all the works. Fruits, Jollof rice, Coconut Rice, Smoked Chicken , Red velvet and Chocolate cake and Ice cream. Ribena for the kids and red wine for the grown ups. The kids didn't even make it to dessert!! They were so stuffed. I felt as proud as a peacock!!
My go to recipe for Jollof rice - www.sisiyemmie.com 
My go to recipe for Coconut rice - www.9jafoodie.com

In my head I have this amazing kitchen with an island, marble floors and tiles, yellow and very sunny with a dinning nook where i can chit chat with the kids while i cook and definately music so i can groove yeh! Please don't judge. Anything is possible in my head. so while i work and wait, I collect reciepies. Plus with a picky eater like T-boy it helps when i can make the stuff he likes like puff-puff and jollof rice.

So how's the year been going? This is the last month of the 1st quarter. Exciting hun? Today's also Bobo's Bday. Pretty quiet this year though.