As I feared, time is starting to run away from me somewhat and I'm already starting to wonder what it was we did a couple of days ago. After the excitement on Luton on Monday, Tuesday was intended as a bit of a quieter day at home, punctuated by a lunchtime birthday party for both children at the kind invitation of one of Little Miss C's school friends. The party was held in a Scout hut in a part of St Albans that I'm not at all familiar with (and hence I discovered a fantastic new playground next door too), and as we were still blessed with gorgeous hot weather here it was particularly ... read more
Archives for July 2014
Inspiring a future generation of women #IWantToBe
It's not so long ago that I wrote about Little Miss C's varied aspirations for when she gets older. I love that fact that she thinks somewhat outside the box when it comes to this sort of thing. Just before the end of term her school had a day where children were encouraged to come to school dressed up as (or just with a suitable prop) what they want to be when they grow up. That morning the playground was full of nurses, doctors, racing drivers, builders and police officers. Stood in the middle of them was one little girl with a pair of binoculars and a RSPB bird identification book under her ... read more
Featured Post: Turning our attentions to savings
If you've been following my thrifty journey through 2014 you'll know that our attempts to have a Year of Thrift hit the buffers somewhat when we came up against the new mortgage affordability rules. The good news is that common sense has prevailed though and our building society has now agree to remortgage us - yippee! There's still a huge amount of paperwork to complete and solicitors need to do whatever solicitors do in these circumstances, but fingers crossed we're nearly there and we might actually be able to start saving again. Such a relief and it's definitely helped re-energise my ... read more
Ladybird Tuesday: Lost at the Fair
We're jumping about a bit between the years here on Ladybird Tuesday as we're going from the 1980s last week to a book that was first published in the 1940s - 1948 to be precise (although this is a 1970s reprint I think). Lost at the Fair is part of the Animal Rhymes series (series 401) which was a set of lovely stories, all written in verse, making them perfect to be read out loud to young children. Lost at the Fair is the story of two little dormice whose mother is woken one morning by Mr Squirrel telling her that the fair has some to town. She wakes up her chidden and as soon as they ... read more
Summer 2014: Day 5 – Fun in Luton
Yes, you did read that title correctly, and no it's not one that I ever expected to write either. When I started keeping track of what we're getting up to this summer I did realise that we couldn't go out and do an amazing day trip every day, and nor did I want to. Sometimes the simplest of things can be the most rewarding, and sometimes something that might have appeared very mundane actually turns out to be quite exciting. We started today without any real plans and the only things that we had to get done were to get some food shopping in and to buy a birthday present for a little boy ... read more
Where Bear? – Sophy Henn
There are some children's books that I love. Ones that I remember fondly from my own childhood and ones that I know my children have loved and that I've enjoyed sharing with them. It's rare though to fall completely and utterly in love with a children's book on first reading, but that's exactly what happened with Where Bear? by new writer and illustrator Sophy Henn. There's an old fashioned simplicity that's just utterly perfect in Where Bear? and the vintage style of the illustrations had me at first thinking that this must be a re-publication of a much-loved old title. The beauty of it ... read more
Summer 2014: Days 3 & 4 – A weekend without Daddy
It's been a bit of a funny old weekend in that most of it didn't feel like a weekend at all. Mr C's been away in the Netherlands at a wedding, and without him about it's kind of made the days merge into last week a bit, and it certainly hasn't given me the break that I so need by the end of a busy week, especially when we're in the school holidays. The first alarm went off at 2.50am on Saturday morning for Mr C to get up for a 6am flight to Amsterdam and combining that with a couple of wake-ups from Master C - who was struggling with the heat - it meant that Saturday started feeling ... read more
#RealMumsAllBran 5-Day Challenge
http://instagram.com/p/p9d-M2xI-J/?modal=true I'll let you in on a bit of a secret. I'm a breakfast cereal addict. I love the stuff. The sweet ones. The healthy ones. The ones that turn the milk chocolately. The whole lot. When I'm home alone my guilty pleasure is a bowl before bed, and it's rare that a morning passes when I don't have a bowl of some cereal. When I heard that BritMums were looking for bloggers to take part in the #RealMumsAllBran 5-Day Challenge I stuck my hand in the air instantly. The way the challenge worked is that we were sent three All-Bran flavours (Golden Crunch, ... read more
Summer 2014: Day 2 – Old friends and new experiences
In the middle of the usual morning rush of trying to get up and through the shower before the kids awoke (which I failed at thanks to Little Miss C's 6.30am wake up!) I'm pretty sure I heard Chris Evans say something about thunderstorms and torrential rain in London today. There was other stuff going on so I asked Mr C. Nope, he had no recollection of hearing it, so I just kind of forgot about the weather forecast. Bit of a big mistake it seems when you're having a day out with the kids. An old university friend of mine is currently over from China with his wife and one year old son, so ... read more
Summer 2014: Day 1 – Crafts and contradictions
It's funny how just yesterday morning we were getting up to do yet another school run, yet this morning school runs almost felt like they were in another lifetime. Little Miss C has fully embraced the idea of getting up and not having to put her school uniform on and in that sod's law kind of way she bounced out of bed without any encouragement at 7.15am and by 7.30 was dressed and raring to go. School morning's normally take lots of me hurrying her along and yet the morning I don't need her to get up on time she does! Thursday is the girls day here as Master C goes off to nursery for ... read more