Photo Credit: RSPB With a daughter who currently has her heart set on being "a nature explorer who also is an artist" an invitation to the RSPB reserve at Rainham Marshes to meet Hattie Garlick, author of the wonderful new book Born To Be Wild, was absolutely perfect. Both kids love being out in the fresh air, but Little Miss C really gets a buzz from doing nature based things outside. At school she seems to spend hours and hours in the playground building bug hotels and feeding snails and when inside she's always happiest when sat at the kitchen table with some gloopy glue and a load of ... read more
Aldi’s Easter Drink Offerings
When an email pops into your inbox from Aldi asking if you'd like to review their Easter alcohol offerings you're not going to say no are you? Well I know I certainly wasn't going to. Especially when I'd literally just been having a chat with someone about how good I've always found wine from Aldi. And what a selection of drink they sent me to try! Everything you might need to get you from pre-dinner drinks, through dinner and on to a nightcap. Now, I'm no Jilly Golden (if you're old enough to remember her!) but I know what I like when it comes to a tipple or two. We started off with ... read more
I Have an Orange Juicy Drink – Andrew Sanders
I was completely intrigued when I opened a parcel containing I Have An Orange Juicy Drink. What a wonderful title for a book. Especially so when you have a small boy like Master C who is always talking about his "apple-y juicy drink". The little boy in this story loves his orange juicy drink. So much so that when an alien, a dinosaur and an elephant try to take it away from him he squashes them. With a garden shed, an ocean liner and the moon. Obviously... But when the little boy's brother comes along and asks nicely for some he hands it over with a big hug. Because whilst he loves his ... read more
The Children’s Garden – Matthew Appleby
It may be freezing cold whilst I sit here writing this, but looking out at our back garden there is no doubt that there are lots of signs of spring out there. A very early spring when you consider how many daffodils are already brighting up the flower beds. I have so many good intentions about how we're going to use our back garden going forwards. Every year I say that and so far I've been foiled every year by the kids not quite being old enough to join in enough for me to make actual progress. 2016 WILL be different though. I'm sure of it. Master C is now very nearly three and a half, and ... read more
Review: My Fairy Garden
Little Miss C is absolutely fairy obsessed at the moment. I think it's probably got something to do with the Rainbow Fairy books that she discovered in her school library, and now pesters me to buy her whenever we find some in the local charity shop. As soon as I heard that people were looking for children to review My Fairy Garden I just knew this would be perfect for her, and how right I was! My Fairy Garden has to be be one of the sweetest things I have ever seen for fairy loving girls (or boys - Master C seems quite taken with it too!) and also a brilliant toy which combines small ... read more
Exploring nature in our back garden as a Wilko Wild Bird Blogger
I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only parent that's keen for their kids to understand and appreciate the nature that's all around us, but the thing that always amazes me is how many people overlook the nature that's right there under their noses in their own back garden. Mr C and I have always been big nature lovers and that was cemented when we bought our first home together. Instead of having a back garden we instead explored a local community nature reserve that was at the end of our street. It gave us the desire to create our own little bit of a nature paradise once we had our own back ... read more
Ladybird Tuesday: Cataloging the Collection
You may have noticed I've gone a bit quite again. There's a very simple reason this time - I'm spending every spare minute finally cataloging my Ladybird collection! When I started collecting Ladybird books I have to admit that I had no real idea what I was doing. I remembered them fondly from my childhood, but had no idea of how many Ladybird books were out there - I just liked the ones I'd spotted in charity shops so decided to start buying them. Several years down the line there are over 400 books in my collection and they are somewhat scattered across the house. With the help of a ... read more
What I read in January
2016 is the year that I'm going to get back into reading. Both for pleasure and to educate. There are so many subjects that I am interested in, but feel like I know very little about, so this is the year to change that. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce This was passed to me a while back by a member of my knitting group. She told me it was a book she'd received from a friend on World Book Night, but she thought it might be a bit too sad for some of the older members of the group, so she gave it to me instead. I wasn't too sure what to make of that, but actually I ... read more
January – all the things I’d forgotten I’d done
Did I fall asleep or something? Where on earth did January go? It seems like only two minutes since Christmas and New Year, but then at the same time they also feel like a lifetime ago. So, what exactly have I been up to in January. Sitting here now it seems a bit hard to work out exactly what I've been up to for the whole month, but I'm sure I'll work it out. The biggest thing has probably been that January has been the month in which I started running again. Here I am on the 29th of the month and I'm delighted to say that I've clocked up a whole 70km in January (so far!) and am ... read more
Ladybird Tuesday: Learnabout Camping
I couldn't really feature any other Ladybird book after last week's blog post, could I? Learnabout Camping is one of the later books in the Learnabout series (series 634) and was first published in 1977. The thing which sets it aside a bit from some of the other Learnabout books that I've featured here before, is the inclusion of cartoons like the one on the cover. Whilst the book contains the typical Ladybird illustrations (this time by Eric Winter) there are also a series of cartoons by Martin Aitchison dotted throughout the book. These are very different in style to the illustrations ... read more