Apologies for the little holiday that Ladybird Tuesday took the last couple of weeks. A bit of "blog housekeeping" took over all my assigned laptop time in both weeks and short of staying up until the wee hours everyday something had to give and sadly that was Ladybird Tuesday. This week though we're back and I'm restarting with a bit of a classic from the "well-loved tales" series (606D for those of you keeping notes!): Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Now, I'm pretty sure that there can't be anyone reading this who doesn't know the story of the three ... read more
Garden preparations
Recently I've been doing a lot of looking back at old blog posts and it's fascinating to see how much has changed over the years. Before I was doing as much commercial work here on Being Mrs C I really did use the blog to capture so much more of what was going on day to day - both in terms of our lives and also what we were doing with the house and garden - and I really miss that I'm not doing so much of that any more. It's always been fascinating to look back and see what I was planing or doing with the kids a year or more ago and I fear that in future years when I look back ... read more
Bigjigs Weaving Loom
I'm always excited when a new Play Patrol package arrives from Bigjigs and the latest one looked like it was perfect. For Little Miss C they'd included their Weaving Loom and the French Knitting kit. With a crafty mum it looked like these couldn't have been chosen better as LMC is always wanting to do knitting, sewing or just "making with wool" with me. We started off with the Weaving Loom as I thought that the larger size would make it a bit easier for her to use - after all she is only three and a half and the loom has a recommended age of 5+ on it. To see how to use ... read more
I Want My Mummy! – Tracey Corderoy and Alison Edgson
With Mother's Day fast approaching it's the time of year when publishers bring out a variety of mummy related books. Many of these are along the theme of how wonderful mums are (and there's certainly nothing wrong with that) but what I particularly liked about I Want My Mummy! is that it seems to go a bit further. Arthur (a toddler mouse - if that's the correct terminology!) is going to spend the day at his Granny's house. He's not spent a whole day apart from his mummy before so he's understandably a bit apprehensive about the whole thing. Dressed ... read more
Dino-Mummy – Mark Sperring and Sam Lloyd
As I've mentioned before there seems to be a bit of a thing about books featuring dinosaurs at the moment and Dino-Mummy clearly fits into that category too. Dino-Mummy is actually a follow on from Dino-Baby, which somehow passed me by when it was released, and it sets out to show just how amazing us mums are and how we all have multi-tasking down as a fine art! As I know only too well life in a house with two small children (an older girl and a baby boy) is pretty chaotic and it seems that Dino-Mummy has exactly the same challenges as I do. She amazingly keeps on top of ... read more
Helping Fussy Eaters with PaediaSure
We're having what I think you would call a few "issues" with the kids at the moment when it comes to meal times. Little Miss C (who is now three and a half) is becoming increasingly fussy over food and Master C (now near enough 17 months old) seems to prefer throwing food rather than eating it. Needless to say it's driving me mad and making mealtimes rather stressful for everyone. When Netmums got in touch saying that they were looking for bloggers to review PaediaSure I jumped at the chance. I'm constantly worried that Little Miss C is not getting the balanced diet that ... read more
A Stationery Addicts Dream – Smiggle
I can still remember the first time that I had stationery envy. I was about 7 years old and had gone on a playdate to Lucie's house. I think most of the girls in my class were slightly in awe of Lucie as she had an older sister, and in those days an older sister meant that you knew and understood what was on trend at the time - and back then fancy stationery was THE thing to have. I clearly remember Lucie showing me her new pencil case and the new pens, pencils, ruler, rubber and pencil sharpener that she had inside. Ever since that day I have just loved stationery. There's part of me ... read more
Save the Children Bloggers Conference
Last Saturday saw me once again leave the children with Mr C and head into London on the train for another blogging event. This time I was headed to the Save the Children bloggers conference at their offices near Farringdon station. Save the Children have held these conferences for a few years now, and are a worldwide charity that I'm sure pretty much everyone has heard of, but if I'm totally honest I only really became aware of the work that they were doing with bloggers when I got to know DorkyMum during her time living in Harpenden. Chats with Ruth really opened my eyes ... read more
Marmaduke the Very Different Dragon – Rachel Valentine and Ed Eaves
Teaching our children that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being different is one of those lessons that many children's books have tried to cover and it's the main theme in Marmaduke the Very Different Dragon. Marmaduke is different from the other dragons. His ears are too big and he's noticed that his wings aren't the same as the ones on the other dragons so he's too scared to try to fly with them. He just wants to be like the others and protect a princess like they do and he feels so very very lonely. Princess Meg also isn't like the other ... read more
Aldi Demystified
As part of my year of thrift one of the most obvious outgoings to look at was how much I'm spending every week on supermarket shopping. Loads of people have told me that they'd saved quite a lot by swapping to either Aldi or Lidl instead of one of the main supermarkets so I thought it was worth a go myself. There is no Lidl close by so instead I headed to Hatfield and our local branch of Aldi. Before going I asked some of my blogger friends for their hints and tips and was fascinated to hear what they had to say - so much so that I hope to demystify the whole experience of shopping at ... read more