It's taken a while, but finally progress has been made on the cot bed quilt that I'm working on. An evening of 6 Music, red wine, Oban and my sewing machine and it's amazing how at peace I feel. With all eight rows now completed the next stage is to sew them all together. You never know, it might even get done this weekend. Don't hold your breath though! ... read more
Archives for March 2013
Boosting our children’s Vitamin D with Growing Up Milk Info
It seemed appropriate that this was the scene that I found outside when I woke up on Saturday ready to travel to Bristol to attend a Growing Up Milk Info Event all about how children are lacking in Vitamin D. The first snow of the winter was at the end of October and here we are at the end of March and there's still some snow on the ground. Most of Master C's life has been winter with snow nearly every month. It's often far too cold to be outside with the children, especially with a small baby who can't yet run around to keep himself warm. In fact though the start of ... read more
Review: Bigjigs Farm House Sorter
We are absolutely thrilled to be in the final 12 bloggers being considered for the role of Bigjigs Play Patrol Agents. For the final stage of the process we were sent a Bigjigs Farm House Sorter to review and we've spent the last week putting it through its paces. Like the majority of Bigjigs toys, the Farm House Sorter is made of wood and is a house shape with two removable roof tiles and a convenient carrying handle. Along all four sides of the house are cut-outs for the eight animals (horse, cow, chicken, sheep, duck, pig, cat and goose) and tree shapes that it comes with. The first thing ... read more
Ladybird Tuesday: The Story of Radio
We're going all geeky and technical again today on Ladybird Tuesday with what was one of my first vintage Ladybird purchases: The Story of Radio, A Ladybird 'acheivements' book. The whole of series 601 was based around the "history of" various things, ranging from Railways, to Oil, to Plastics. First published 1968, the Story of Radio starts off by describing how communication over distances was done using semaphore before radio's invention. Range was obviously limited and even when telegraph and telephone cables were laid on the ocean beds these were expensive and ... read more
Weston Park Cancer Charity
In a way it's hard to believe that it's nearly 6 months since my Dad died. Six months in which Master C has grown and changed from a small baby into a little boy with a personality all of his own. A little boy that sadly my Dad will never know. Luckily he did get to find out that he had a grandson before he died, and to meet him a handful of times, but Master C was only two and a half weeks old when he died and sadly he will have no memories of his Grandpa. There's so much that I wish my Dad could have seen in these last six months. The little boy that's developing into a ... read more
Ladybird Tuesday: Brownie Guides
Whilst this is not one of the oldest of the Ladybird books in my collection is it one of my faviourites purely based on the subject: Brownie Guides. The uniform on the cover is exactly the one that I wore when a Brownie in the 1980s. The book was actually first published in 1978, but it seems that not much had chanegd by the time I joined. The book covers everything from how the Brownie Guides were created as a youth section of the Girl Guides and how they fitted in with the already formed Scout movement through to Brownie Guides around the world. The structure of the Guiding movement is ... read more
Two little lovebirds
Started for Valentines Day, distracted en-route, but finished in time for our wedding anniversary. That's the tale of the above bit of cross-stitch. I happened across the pattern in an email from The Making Spot and fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. There are actually four patterns in the series -these birds, squirells, elephants and penguins - and all are adorable. I'm pretty sure it took me more than the 9 hours they say to sew though - but then their estimations probably didn't account for looking after two children whilst doing so. The last stitch of ... read more
Learning letters
Just over a month ago I wrote about how Little Miss C has started to show a real interest in letters and numbers and how we're trying to encourage her and help her to learn what the individual letters are. In this last month she's come on in leaps and bounds and now recognises several letters and can also say what letters certain words start with. Whilst at nursery they use Jolly Phonics to teach children to read, but at home we're currently trying to do things much more organically - whilst also trying to keep track of what works and captures her interest and what doesn't. We ... read more
Review: Ravensburger Crime Scene Investigation Set
When I was a child I had two favourite books. One was a children's guide to being a spy and the second which was a guide to being a detective. Full of tips and techniques, these two books pretty much summed up what my career aspirations were when I was about 8 and to be honest I'd be pretty happy with either of those jobs now too. If someone had handed me this Ravensburger CSI set (part of their Science X range) then I think I would have probably exploded with excitement. As it is even as an adult it is pretty fantastic. Developed by Mark Benecke, a German crime biologist and specialist in ... read more
Ladybird Tuesday: ‘How it works’ The Rocket
I'm going for a full on geek-out with this week's Ladybird Tuesday and a book that I'm pretty sure even Professor Brian Cox would approve of - 'How it works' The Rocket. The 'How it works' series (series 654 in case you're wondering) was the perfect series for any little budding engineers. It basically explained exactly how objects worked and covered everything from the household television through to Farm Machinery. There's plenty of detail, but all written in a simple style so that children could easily follow it. Now, bearing in mind that I did ... read more