Nearly 48,000 women in the UK are affected by breast cancer every year. There are very few of us who don't know someone effected by this awful disease or other types of cancer. All of us want to help find a cure, but for many of us the best we can do is to donate money to the scientist who are working hard to understand the disease better and to develop drugs to fight it. You can help to raise money for Breakthrough Breast Cancer by hosting an Avon Pink Pamper Party and Avon have made it even easier to raise money through a bake sale with their Crusade Baking Set. The set ... read more
Vintage girl guides
Little Miss C pulled open a drawer in the study earlier and in doing so found Mr C's old Scout camp badges (and some swimming awards - I had no idea I'd married a man so talented!) and it got me thinking about my time in the Brownies and Guides. I still have all my old badges from my three years in the Brownies and year in the Guides. I went away to camp a couple of times and was quite jealous of the camp blankets that some of the older members had with their many many badges on them. In my attempt to be like them I started collecting sew on badges from pretty much everywhere I ... read more
Why books?
Someone referred to me the other day as someone who blogs about books and I suppose that had me puzzled. I do blog about books, but hadn't really realised just how much I blog about them until I looked back at my blog myself. You see the thing is that books are a big part of my life and always have been. As a child I used to look forward to bedtime as that was when I could curl up with a book and enter a whole new world. When I started this blog I was commuting into London daily and had loads of time on the train to read and was getting through books at quite a rate. Since Little Miss C ... read more
Supersoft Kids and the Smurfs
My first of the Supersoft Kids range was our postman handing over a very sodden package (inside one of those "Royal Mail are sorry plastic bags") and saying "I've no idea what this is,but it's damaged and smells delicious!" I was kindly sent the Tropical Surge 2in1 shampoo and conditioner and the accompanying detangling spray to try and the postman was right, it smelt delicious - something like the sort of cocktail you might enjoy whilst lying in the sunshine on a sun-kissed beach - not the kind of thing I'd expect to think of when washing Little Miss C's ... read more
Treasures from Trash
With it being holiday season Little Miss C and I are really doing the days out thing at the moment and our adventures this week took us to Luton and more specifically Stockwood Discovery Centre. If you're local and have not been before then it is a lovely free day out. The museum is vast, covering a wide range of exhibits from farming machinery to horse-drawn carriages, and there's also a lovely cafe, playground, grounds and the wider Country Park to explore. The reason that took me to Stockwood this time was having heard about the Treasures from ... read more
Watching the units…
A couple of months ago I had a bit of a winning streak and was lucky enough to win three different blog competitions within the space of about two weeks. It was probably all my good luck for the year used up in that fortnight, but still, at least I got some good luck! One of the prizes that I was most excited about came from the My Zero Waste blog and was an Owl Wireless Electricity Monitor. I've been after an electricity monitor for years (in fact since first starting on Green forums and blogs back in 2006/07) but the cost of one always put me off. When you look at how much ... read more
Gran and her biscuits.
When I started blogging here over three years ago I had no idea if people would actually read my blog or not. I certainly had no idea what would be popular with readers and I'm still amazed when I see what people searched for to come across my blog. There is one post seems to attract more hits than all the others though - Gran's Ginger Biscuits. Now I know that they are completely delicious, but I didn't realise how many people were in search of ginger biscuit recipes! I've had some lovely comments and messages from people saying how much they like them, so if you ... read more
Rainy day drawing
Entertaining an active toddler on a rainy day when you're stuck in the house is not an easy thing. Little Miss C loves nothing more than running about the garden so when it starts raining at breakfast and continues in a monsoon fashion all day it's tricky to know how to keep her occupied. At 14 months she's not really old enough to do any drawing herself yet but that didn't stop me getting out some paper and wax crayons earlier today. Whilst she had a few problems coordinating holding the crayon and making contact with the paper she was completely fascinated to see me drawing ... read more
Animals, water and Pooh
Since receiving a copy of Kiddiwalks we've been enjoying some lovely days out at local places that we hadn't even realised existed until now. This week's adventure took us to Aldenham Country Park on the outskirts of Elstree. Aldenham is council owned and run (at present - I hear rumours that may be to change early in 2012) and as well as there being plenty of green space there is also a large lake with sailing and a small farm. One of the big benefits of a council run place like this is that it doesn't have the steep admission costs that many of the ... read more
With No One as Witness – Elizabeth George
I have been so completely captivated by Elizabeth George's With No One as Witness recently that it's hard to remember reading anything else before it. It's a big book, with over 600 pages, but not once did I feel that it was dragging or anything - in fact, it was the complete opposite. I loved this book and didn't want it to end at all. It is one of the most engaging pieces of crime fiction that I've read in a long time. There is a serial killer on the lose in London and Inspector Lynley and his team at the Metropolitan Police are trying to find him without much success. As ... read more