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Remembering Childhood // Captain Bobcat

It’s that time of week when another blogger is going to be sharing their childhood memories. This week’s Remembering Childhood comes from Eva from Captain Bobcat.

Which decade were you born in?

The ’70s. I’m nearing 40, which is the new 30.  Am I right?

What is your earliest memory? How old were you?

I’m not sure if it’s a real memory or I’ve been told this story so many times by my parents (and also have photos about it) that I think this is my earliest memory: my 4th birthday party, summer afternoon, wearing a pink and white checkered summer dress, barefoot, eating the chocolate cake (still my favourite) my mum made for my birthday and I have my friends from kindergarten over at our house. This was my first real birthday party.

What was your favourite toy at 5 years old? At 10?

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- Sarah 17 Comments

How to make a Numberblocks cake // A step by step guide

Toby seeing his Numberblocks birthday cake for the first time

A few weeks ago it was Toby’s fourth birthday. He absolutely loves the CBeebies show Numberblocks and had asked if he could have a Numberblocks cake for his birthday. ‘Sure’ I said, that can’t be too hard! To be fair the cakes themselves weren’t too tricky, it was the decoration that was the hard part. But if you’re here then I guess you’re up for the challenge of making a Numberblocks cake of your own so I’m going to share a step by step guide as to how we did it.

We made numbers one to six at Toby’s request – I was only planning on doing up to five but we had to make six as well because purple is Toby’s favourite colour. My first top tip if you are going to make a Numberblocks cake is to just make one number – if I’d have thought about it I would just have made number four for Toby’s fourth birthday!

However if you want to make more numbers like we did then you need to start with the cake. Read more

- Sarah 1 Comment

Me & Mine // A Family Portrait (July 2017)

Me & Mine family cuddles

July has been another fairly quiet month for us. At the start of the month we had a trip up to the Lakes to see Barry’s mum and dad, and we went on the Lakeside & Haverthwaite railway (I’ve still got a vlog to edit about it that I’ll get round to doing one of these days).

We had Toby’s birthday this month too of course, but the celebrations were quiet ones at home. It’s Gabe’s birthday in a few weeks too and we’re planning a little family party for bot of them then.

Other than that we’ve had a few trips to the park and not much else really. Toby is slowly getting used to the idea of starting school soon, we’ve even started a countdown wall chart so it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise when it happens, and I managed to get him to try on his uniform the other day, after a bit of a protest! Read more

- Sarah 5 Comments

Living Arrows 31/52 (2017)

Gabe playing with the choo choo trains

I don’t know what the weather has been like with you the last week but it’s been pretty awful here. We’ve managed to get out of the house a little bit but we’ve had plenty of quiet times at home too. On Friday the boys stayed in their pyjamas all day and we brought the train set down from where it had been living upstairs.

My brother and sister-in-law bought Toby a massive wooden train set for Christmas but it’s been in our spare bedroom since then. Toby has been going up to play with it sometimes but when we first got it Gabe was a bit too young to appreciate it and we could just see it causing arguments when he destroyed the track or took the trains. Read more

- Sarah 8 Comments

Comparison is the thief of joy // Being good enough

Comparison is the thief of joy

I apologise now that this is going to be a bit of a brain dump post – it’s been bubbling away in the back of mind for a while now and I think that writing about it might make me feel better and be able to move on from it…

I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t use social media in some way or another (except perhaps my dad) and I am no exception. Don’t get me wrong, I love social media – I remember when I first got Facebook, over 10 years ago now, and I was so excited to find people I went to school with and see what they were up to (although I’d already been doing that a bit with Friends Reunited, remember that?), it also meant I could connect with people I’d worked with overseas, people I hadn’t spoken to for years. Of course I also became Facebook friends with people I knew in real life and saw regularly anyway too. Read more

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Fit by 40 // The weight loss diaries (Day 47-59)

Fit by 40 weight loss diaries

It’s time for another update in my weight loss and fitness story – you can read my last up date here. I’m still plodding on – a total of 16lb lost now (and 3 inches off my waist) and although it’s coming off quite slowly I have lost weight every single week. I can only call that a success I reckon.

15th July 2017 (Day 47)

Cake. I ate all the cake. Well not quite all the cake but a lot of it anyway. I’m trying not to beat myself up about it but it’s hard not to. And we’ll see what effect it has on the scales on Tuesday. I’ve been back at my yoga the last couple of days though and that’s a start. So I’m just treating this as a bit of a break week and I’ll properly get back on it from now. Today was pretty good actually so I’m going to be positive and take it from there. The trouble I always find with losing weight is that I lose a stone or so and then think ‘oh, I look/ feel so much better than before, that’ll do’ when really I need to keep on going if I’m ever going to get to my pre-baby (and pre-3 week honeymoon in America) weight. Onwards and upwards (or should that be downwards?)

18th July 2017 (Day 50)

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- Sarah 18 Comments

Getting ready to start primary school

Toby looking super smart in his school uniform

Schools have now broken up for the summer holidays and that means it’s only six weeks until Toby will be starting in Reception. And that means just six weeks to get Toby ready to start primary school. I know lots of children are super excited about starting school – they can’t wait to get their uniform on and go off every day to learn and play and make new friends. Toby though is going to take a little more convincing!

Although he says he is looking forward to starting school, and will be joined by a few of his friends from nursery, he is still quite apprehensive about the whole thing. This seems to be manifesting itself in some pretty out of character behaviour, and this week a couple of bed-wetting incidents too. He was only four a couple of weeks ago so he’s still quite young really and I think it’s going to take quite a lot of adjusting to get ready for school. Read more

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Remembering Childhood // Mummy to Dex

Nicola from Mummy to Dex as a child

It’s that time of week when another blogger is going to be sharing their childhood memories. This week’s Remembering Childhood comes from Nicola at Mummy to Dex.

Which decade were you born in?

The 1980s

What is your earliest memory? How old were you?

My earliest memory is of my Grandad taking me to a café on the industrial estate in Denbigh and my Grandma doing the ironing in my house. My mum had been taken to hospital and I was around two years old. I can remember my Grandad had a plaster on his hand and my Dad came home from work in the afternoon. It was probably the first time I had been away from my parents for an extended period of time which is why I can remember it so vividly.

What was your favourite toy at 5 years old? At 10?

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- Sarah 1 Comment

Bedroom makeover inspiration

*This is a collaborative post

When we moved house we decided that although the master bedroom was upstairs, we would take one of the other bedrooms downstairs so we could be next to the boys’ room. You can see our rather unusual house layout in my house tour video so you can see what I mean.

At the moment we are living in a mismatched room with our old bed and bedding, a wardrobe full of the boys’ clothes, not enough storage for our own things and the curtains from the living room at our old house! I can’t wait until we have a lovely bedroom with matching bedding and curtains again – I think they can really make a difference to a room don’t you? Read more

- Sarah 5 Comments

Living Arrows 30/52 (2017)

Toby looking like a dude in his sunglasses

After a reasonably quiet week at home, yesterday we made an effort to get out of the house. We went to Stanley Park in Blackpool, for ice cream, scooting and feeding the ducks.

We had a lovely morning really but as always for us in public places we had to cope with Toby’s massive fear of dogs. He did get a bit better for a while but in the last few weeks we have gone back to proper tears and panic whenever he sees a dog, and if one happens to bark near him we’re on for a full meltdown.

We do our best to reassure him that he’s safe, that the dogs are on leads or being controlled by their owners but he is genuinely terrified. Read more