Eat your way to lovely, strong nails with blancmange!

If biting your nails is a problem, start growing them from the inside out, with this easy coffee blancmange recipe! All you need is:

One x 400g can coconut milk or cream. 2 tbsp gelatin 2 tsp coffee 1/4 cup hot water Sweetener of your choice, e.g. sugar, stevia or artificial sweetener

Stir the gelatin into the hot water and mix well.
In a separate bowl, put in the coffee and sweetener of your choice and stir, then tip in the can of coconut milk or cream. Pour in the hot gelatin mixture and stir all together well. Refrigerate for one hour.

The result? Delicious, smooth coffee blancmange, with the health benefits of coconut, and gelatin for nail growth!

NLP means great nails for me!

If nail biting or picking is an issue for you or someone you know, you may like to consider Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). I had just one session and it made a fantastic difference for me. I was sceptical throughout the session, until the end of the session when the problem had completely gone away. I was really surprised and completely pleased! Would definitely recommend.

Fresh fruit straps your kids will love

I have found a cheap and healthy way to make preservative free fruit straps that kids love. This works best with pears and apples, just boil them up, then puree them, making sure there isn't much water left.

Once you have done this, spread it out in equal portions onto baking paper and bake in the oven for a few minutes. Allow them to cool and there you have it! Freshly made fruit straps with no extra preservatives in them. Healthy and fun for the kids to help prepare. You may need to add a little sugar or sweetening agent if you are using more sour tasting fruit.

Make inexpensive liquid plant food

I can make hundreds of litres of liquid plant food from just $12 worth of Dynamic Lifter pellets! This will buy a 10kg bag. Just add around four handfuls of pellets to a nine litre bucket of water and let steep for a couple of days, mixing occasionally. When you have a nice 'tea', pour a couple of litres of the liquid, into a nine litre watering can, top up with water and give your garden a drink. Repeat until all the 'tea' is gone, then add more water to the residual at the bottom of the bucket and repeat this process. As the mixture gets weaker, you can use on seedlings, vegetables and more delicate plants such as azaleas and gardenias. The 'weak' mixture can be used as a health tonic or sprayed directly onto the foliage of plants (remember not to spray if the weather is over 20 degrees Celsius, as this will burn the foliage). Once you get to the real weak stuff, simply pour the residual under a tree and water in well.

You can also make hundreds of litres of liquid fertiliser from a 10kg bag of Blood and Bone pellets at an initial cost of approxiamtely $1.20 per kilo. Compared to a litre bottle of liquid plant food (such as Seasol) which costs about $10 and will make just over 300 nine litre buckets (going on the manufacturer's average of 30ml per bucket), your bag will make many hundreds of buckets of first grade solution followed by many more second and third grade 'weak' solutions which are ideal for foliar feeding. A huge saving, which will give you enough fertiliser to last you a whole year or more!