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Feb 09 2013

Happy New New Year

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Happy New… err… *cough* It’s been ages since I’ve been able to post anything, our house has been full of germs since well before christmas and I didn’t want to pass any of them on to you. Yes, I think we really were that infectious. Just as one of us started to get better, someone else would take ill. Now, I don’t want to jinx it by saying so, but I think we’re all ok at the moment.

So, as of now, I’m restarting the new year and I have plans. Lots of plans. It’s the start of the Chinese New Year and this is the year of the Snake. As I am a Snake, I hope it means this will be a good year for me. I’m feeling really positive so far, well, my new new year is only a matter of hours old so there hasn’t been much time for things to go wrong yet.

For about the last four years, my life has been centred around my son. It has left little time for me to do anything for myself and I guess I haven’t even really thought much about myself in that time either. I think it’s about time I gave myself a swift kick up the backside and remember that I need to look after myself too. Son will (hopefully) be starting nursery for a few afternoons a week, so that should give me a bit of time to work on my goals. I already have my Day Zero list which has specific things to complete before the end of September (eek!), but there are a few more general things I would like to get started on.

1. Get fit. Well, fitter than I am now, anyway. I started swimming once a week but that has turned into an excuse to chat to adults with no children around. There is much more talking and much less swimming, possibly because it is my only child-free time out of the house. I aim to count my lengths, then do two extra each week until I am swimming all lesson. Then I will work on swimming faster. I should probably add something else in here like walking to nursery instead of taking the car. Exercise does not come naturally to me though, I think I might need some help here.

2. Lose the baby-belly. I have put on nearly two stone and gone up two to three dress sizes since having my son. While I am pleased that I can now fit into adult clothes and no longer have to shop in the kids department, I could really do with toning up a bit. No idea where to start with this one as I’ve never really done any specific workouts or diets before.

3. Have fun. I would love to have a regular night out. Once a month would be great, nothing fancy, just to catch up and have a laugh without having to worry about what mischief the kids are getting up to. This would also help with the swimming as I wouldn’t have to do all my talking there. *makes a good case for night out with the girls*

4. Plan for work. I know I have just over a year before I have to start work, so now would be a good time to try and figure out what I want to do. I had to go for a ‘work-focused interview’ at the job centre and had a really good chat with the man there – not what I was expecting at all! He made me realise I have many options and gave me lots to think about, but I need to gain more confidence in myself.

So there you have it. Not exactly new years resolutions as I don’t do those very well. More like new new years vague goals for the time being.

Wish me luck, I think I’m going to need it.

 

I am entering this post into the MoneySupermarket.com Get Fit Feel Epic competition hosted by Yummy Mummy In Training

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Dec 03 2012

First Winter Snow

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One good thing about not being able to get to sleep, is that you see things you would otherwise miss. Like the first winter snow falling silently from an orange sky.

Son had heard on the weather forecast that there was snow coming and had been checking the window all day, but when he went to bed there was still no sign of it. Shortly after 2am, he woke himself up coughing. Instead of letting him fall back to sleep, I whispered to him that it was snowing and asked if he wanted to see. He sleepily lifted his arms to me so I carried him to the window. Squinting through tired eyes, he nodded and croaked ‘good’ then I tucked him back into bed. He fell asleep with the biggest smile on his face.

By the time he woke again, there was barely a hint of snow and he couldn’t remember me showing him during the night. I hope there will be plenty more to come, he has his heart set on building a huge snowman. A little treat in Elf’s pocket soon cheered him up though; a chocolate, a small bag of sequins and a note asking if he could make some decorations to brighten up Great Gran’s flat.

We were going to make four of these triangles, stick them together into a pyramid then hang it over a bottle. However, son’s attention span was particularly short today and barely covered making this one, so it will probably just be made into a picture. Not to worry, I’m sure Elf will have a few more suggestions for him over the next couple of weeks.

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Dec 02 2012

Christmas Hot Chocolate

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I’m not a big fan of hot chocolate out of a packet. I haven’t tried it since I was a child because the memory of that chalky feeling in my mouth just puts me off. But the idea of hot chocolate is one that appeals. I love chocolate, I want to love hot chocolate. So I thought I’d better have a go at making my own. I had to anyway, the Elf told me to.

I’ve never made hot chocolate before so, rather than follow a recipe, I thought I’d do the sensible thing and just chuck some chocolate and milk in a pan, heat it up, and see how it goes. Quantities were based on ‘what was left in the bottle’, so about three quarters of a pint of whole milk and half a small tub of single cream. I had two 100g bars of chocolate in the cupboard, one dark and one milk, so I tried 60g dark and 40g milk. I know this because, rather conveniently, each bar of chocolate had ten squares.

It tasted quite nice but I thought it could do with something extra to make it a bit different. I considered a pinch of chilli powder but didn’t have any, curry powder sounded yucky, so I went with the only other thing in the cupboard – mixed spice. I used a measuring spoon (so that I didn’t accidentally tip half a jar in) and added a bit less than a quarter teaspoon, then gave it a good whisk for frothiness.

It made four small cups of some rather good hot chocolate. A small cup was enough as it was really quite rich, but I was pleasantly surprised with how nice it was and the mixed spice made it taste all christmassy. Granny and Grandad both approved but son was not keen. I think if I make it for him I would have to use more milk chocolate and maybe less cream so it’s not as rich.

I’d like to try it again but, as I am generally rubbish at cooking, I’ve no idea how it can be improved. Should I boil the milk or just warm it? Would more spice be too much? If any of you can tweak my recipe a bit to make it even better, I’d love to hear your suggestions.

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Dec 01 2012

The Magic Of Christmas

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I know I say this every year, but I can’t believe it’s December already! As son has not been having a good time of late, I plan to make this the best, most magical christmas ever, but despite scribbling ideas in a notebook for the last couple of weeks, I am still totally unprepared. Last year, Elf came to visit. Son remembered and asked about him so was pleased to hear that he would be returning this year, but I haven’t told him anything else about my plans.

Last week, we borrowed Polar Express on DVD from a friend. Son had never seen it before and sat captivated all the way through. He even cheered when they made it across the ice! He loved it. Which is why I was sat up until silly o’clock this morning preparing this:

The first gift of christmas, brought by his Elf. Son was over the moon. His face lit up before he even got the box open as he realised what it was, and it was so good to see him so happy and excited. He kept ringing the bell and telling us all that he could hear it because he believed Santa was coming, and checking that I could hear it, and granny could hear it, then had a whole conversation with the Elf about it. It was magic.

I’m sure, as parents, there are many of us who do things like this to make christmas a truly magical time for our little ones. I bet there’s a good chance that while the little ones are busy staring, full of wonder, that a few knowing looks are exchanged between the adults. How many of us secretly wish that it really was magic, that these things just happened and didn’t have to be set up by us? That Santa really had just flown over on his sleigh and dropped an elf off at your house?

What if, when you looked out of the window that morning, there was a huge chunk of ice on the road outside your house? Or is it compacted snow? What if you knew that there had been no snow falling at all, anywhere near where you lived and a quick scout of the area found…nothing? What if that groove in the top of the ice was just wide enough for the runner of a sleigh…

 

I believe.

Do you?

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Nov 30 2012

Review – Garden Draughts

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Review

I’m loving the fact that my son has reached the age where he’s becoming more interested in board games. He’s doing quite well with ones that involve rolling a dice, moving around the board and then following an instruction on the square you land on. We have a few different ones in this style, and I thought it might be good to try a game that required a completely different way of thinking. So we got some draughts. Not just any old draughts though, thanks to Big Game Hunters we have Garden Draughts!

Although they are designed to be used outdoors, I don’t think we’d get away with playing draughts in the swimming pool that is currently our garden, so we had to give it a try in the house instead. The board is actually a large mat measuring 1.2m x 1.2m and the counters are chunky but light, making them perfect for little hands and impossible to lose down the back of the sofa. I think that when we do get to use it outdoors, the mat will probably need weighting down to keep it flat while playing on it.

With a little help from nephew and granny, we started off with a simplified version of the game; just one row of counters each, so that the boys could learn how to move them. They picked it up in no time at all and so I added another row, just making it a race to get all your counters to the other side. The games went really well until I tried to add jumping and capturing each others counters. Or, as they saw it, stealing. I don’t think they are quite ready for that bit yet!

Considering the size of the game when playing, it all packs away quite neatly back into the box (which is no bigger than some of my handbags!) making it easy to store away or take with you on trips to the park.

It seems the Garden Draughts will be used for much more than just draughts. As they are quite chunky, they roll easily and so the first new game involves rolling the counters and trying to get them to land on a square of the same colour. They have also been wheels on the side of a cardboard box fire engine and runway lights. My son has such an imagination, I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

 

All opinions are honest and our own. We were sent the Garden Draughts free of charge for this review.

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Nov 25 2012

Review – Open And Play: Recorder Pirate Pack

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Review

I am a big lover of music, so you may be surprised to hear that I thought it would be a good idea to give a three year old a recorder. A bit ouchy on the ears, yes, but it will get better (I hope). Let me explain. A while ago, my son got a ‘wizzle’ free on the front of a magazine. It’s impossible to play a tune on it, but he has shown a lot of interest in trying and so I thought it would be better to have an instrument that actually works. This pirate themed Open and Play Recorder Pack seemed like a good choice.

The pack contains a blue descant recorder, cleaning rod and carry bag, pirate sticker sheet, fingering chart and a ‘Starting to Play’ tutor book and cd. Son was very excited when he saw the box and couldn’t wait to have a go. He actually left the stickers, which is unheard of, and went straight for the recorder. After a couple of minutes of crazy dancing and trying to deafen me, he handed me the recorder and asked me to play a tune. It’s a long time since I’ve played a recorder, but I gave it a go and it didn’t sound too bad. Son just stared and me and asked, “will you show me how to do that one?”

Using the tutor booklet as a guide, I explained about how to hold the recorder and position your fingers over the holes. The book is easy to follow and starts off with the note B. It starts to introduce basic notation and rhythm by playing the note B to the rhythm of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Old MacDonald. It then tells you how to play the note A and goes through the same tunes using both notes together.

Son is doing really well at learning the first two notes, he seems most impressed about the fact that if you play BABABABA it sounds like a fire engine! He hasn’t tried playing along with the cd yet as he is still mastering the notes, but he tells me that he will try it soon so he can play in a real band.

I think that the Open and Play Recorder Packs are a great way to start a child off playing a musical instrument and at £9.99 they are pretty good value too. The packs are available as either the Blue Recorder Pirate Pack that we have, or a Pink Recorder Princess Pack.

 

All opinions are honest and our own. We were sent the Blue Recorder Pirate Pack free of charge for this review.

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Nov 20 2012

Halloween – Painting And Pumpkins

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Ok, I know Halloween was nearly three weeks ago but that’s how long it’s taken to get this post written. Things have been difficult with my son not being himself and I’ve been too tired to write at night like I usually do. One day, maybe I’ll be able to write about why things are so difficult but, for now, pretending it’s all not happening seems to be working just fine.

I’ve already deleted several draft posts as I thought that they were ‘too late’ to post and now I feel sad, like those times have been lost somehow. Well, not any more. I still want a record of what my son and I have been up to together and if that means writing about things weeks after they happen then so be it.

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I love Halloween. I love dressing up and playing tricks on each other and making spooky food and watching scary movies and carving pumpkins and, oh, you know, everything really. Plans started at the beginning of October and I had some brilliant ideas. As some of the decorations would need time to dry in between different parts, we started making them a week early and my nephew joined in too.

First we made some spiders. These are really easy to make with toddlers as they are just handprints with the palms overlapping. Don’t put paint on the thumb though, or your spiders will have too many legs. When they have dried, add some googly eyes and cut around the edge. We made quite a few of these and son insisted we have a mammy spider too!

Next, we made some spooky tree pictures. I think these would look great stuck onto card as an invitation to a Halloween party. We used some blue paper, cut it to the size we wanted and stuck on a moon cut from white paper. We mixed some black ready-mix paint with about the same amount of water and painted a tree trunk. We put a blob of the watery paint onto the top of the trunk and blew through a straw to spread the paint out for the branches, adding another blob of paint when needed. The boys needed a little help directing the straw, but had fun blowing the paint around. They were to be finished off with sequin bats for an extra spooky touch.

I don’t like to finish decorations completely too long before putting them up. If they have been finished and put away in a box for a week, they seem to lose a bit of their magic. I think it’s much more satisfying to finish it and stick it up straight away, with a definite ‘I made that’. So I left all of the finishing touches for Halloween morning; the googly eyes for the spiders, the bats for the pictures and, of course, the pumpkin carving.

I also made some gingerbread biscuits cut into ghosts and bats, and some fab chocolatey treats with rice krispies. They were a bit of a last minute idea and I had no idea if they would work but I think they turned out brilliantly. I’m so pleased with them that I’m going to make something similar for Christmas but with little trees or snowflakes perhaps.

Unfortunately, that was about it for our Halloween. The weekend before Halloween, son had a rough time; it took him almost a week to get over the worst of it and he’s still not right. It’s a shame because he’d really been looking forward to putting up decorations and getting dressed up, but all he wanted to do was lay on the sofa and watch a bit of tv. As you can see, he didn’t even want to finish off the decorations he’d taken such care making or try on his costume. He did help me choose a picture to carve onto our pumpkin, although it was a day late. He said he wanted ‘pumpkins on a pumpkin’ so this is what we ended up with:

If you’d like to see some more pumpkin creations, have a look at this linky over at The Boy And Me, there are some brilliant pumpkins linked up.

Hope you all had a fabulously spooky Halloween!

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Nov 11 2012

Review – CBeebies: The Album

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As we now have to do a lot of long car journeys, it’s always good to have something on standby to keep my son entertained. He has his own cd wallet that he keeps in the car so he can choose what to listen to, but it’s been full of the same cd’s for months now and he’s starting to lose interest. Luckily for us, CBeebies have just brought out a brand new album.

CBeebies: The Album is a 2 CD set featuring 50 songs from popular shows on the CBeebies channel. Most of them are instantly recognisable as a theme tune, including some of our favourites – Mike the Knight, Timmy Time, Andy’s Wild Adventures and Tree Fu Tom. Surprisingly though, the biggest squeal of excitement from my son came when the Iconicles theme tune came on!

There are a few songs from within the programmes too, such as Momo’s Song from Show Me Show Me and I’m A Shape from Mister Maker. We’re also really pleased to see the presenter songs on there as we’ve always liked the seasons songs in particular.

The album has proved to be a huge hit with my son; he currently has one disc in the car and the other in the house and tells me he will change them around next year. The only slight problem I have, is that I now have Raa Raa The Noisy Lion stuck in my head and keep catching myself humming it while out shopping.

CBeebies: The Album is a great compilation and I would happily recommend it as a nice little Christmas gift for any CBeebies fan.

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CBeebies: The Album is available to buy now in stores nationwide and through online music retailers.

All opinions are honest and our own. We were sent CBeebies: The Album free of charge for this review.

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Oct 22 2012

Hama Beads – Horse Mobile Kit

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Review

I’m always on the lookout for new crafts to try with my son and recently I have seen a lot of positive comments about Hama beads. They look similar to a kit I had tried many years ago, which used some funky melty beads to make a picture. I don’t know what went wrong, but the beads wouldn’t stay on the board and the ironing, well, the less said about that the better. After my failed attempts, I was reluctant to try anything like it again. However, with so many people saying good things about Hama beads, I had to give them a go and so we got a lovely set sent out to us.

After a quick explanation of what to do, son was keen to get started. I started him off with a couple of beads and was pleased to find that they sat nicely on the board provided. Clearly, the kit I had tried before was not genuine Hama beads, as the quality of this kit was fantastic. Son had no trouble at all adding the beads to the board, even though he is only three and this kit is aimed at ages five and over.

It did take him a long time to complete, but that’s a good thing! I think it really pushed him to concentrate, which is not something he is good at for long periods of time, so he would leave it for a while to play with something else but always came back to it of his own accord.

Next came the tricky bit. Ironing! Now, er, I don’t actually have an iron so we had to borrow Granny’s. Of course, there was much tutting and head shaking from her, but it was worth it to see the finished project. The ironing turned out to be very simple. You just cover the beads with the special paper included in the kit and iron gently. The heat starts to melt the top surface of the beads and they fuse together.

I had to make sure that the beads had melted enough, so that they were all connected. There were a couple of places where the gaps between the beads were slightly larger, and extra care needed to be taken to make sure the tail was securely attached, but I just put the paper back on and ironed a little more if needed. The beads were quite hot when I finished ironing, so were left to cool for a few minutes before handling.

We haven’t finished making the kit up yet. We have completed three horses and an apple, but not had chance to fix them all together into a mobile. I’ll post a photo when it’s all finished, I think it’s going to look great.

I have been really impressed with this kit and only wish we had tried Hama beads sooner. It has provided lots of learning opportunities for my son including sorting colours, counting and following a pattern. There were quite a lot of beads left over so he has been threading, making bracelets, a necklace for granny and he will be using the square board to make something of his own design. I don’t know what that will be yet, he tells me it’s a secret.

The horse mobile kit is currently priced at £6.95 which I think is really good value for money considering how long my son has been playing with it and there are still plenty of beads left. I will definitely be buying more Hama beads, perhaps just some separate beads and boards so I can try out some of these brilliant ideas on Pinterest.

 

All opinions are honest and our own. We were sent the Hama beads kit free of charge for this review.

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Oct 10 2012

Green Tomatoes

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Day Zero

I received an email the other day asking if I’d given up on my Day Zero project. The short answer to that is, “no!”

It’s true that I could be doing better at it and I may have lost some of the enthusiasm I had when I first started the project, but I have completed some more tasks and a few others are ticking along nicely. I have had to give up on a couple of tasks due to them being unachievable either financially or practically, and a couple have had to be modified, but overall I’m pretty pleased with how the challenge is progressing. I am now just over a week into the final year of this project so I’ll have to make time to have a look at what needs doing and make some plans.

But first, an update.

I’m very proud to say I’ve ticked off two huge tasks this last couple of weeks. The rocking horse (#26) is finished (more about that later though), and I have paid off one of my credit cards (#97)! I did not then use that card to buy a rather lovely Mia Tui bag. *cough*

I have also finished task number 45 – grow and eat three different vegetables or fruit.

The carrots were tiny (but deliciously sweet), and we only got a handful of strawberries and tomatoes. I blame the weather. We cut the remaining tomato plants down yesterday as it’s just too cold for them now. There were easily a hundred tiny tomatoes that just didn’t grow in time, and I picked a bowl full of green ones.

It would be a shame to waste them, but I have no idea at all what to do with them. Will they turn red if I leave them on the window sill? Can I cook them up as they are? I’d really appreciate any suggestions you have.

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