- Sarah 2 Comments

Remembering Childhood // Whimsical Mumblings

It’s that time of week when another blogger is going to be sharing their childhood memories. This week it’s from Sarah from Whimsical Mumblings.

 

Which decade were you born in?
I’m a 90’s baby. The decade of MTV, paper fortune tellers, slap bracelets & The Spice Girls.
Sarah from Whimsical Mumblings as a baby
What is your earliest memory? How old were you?

I remember playing ‘mums and dads’ with all my cousins and siblings. I must have been around 7 or 8. My girl cousin always used to pretend to be my husband, and my brother used to pretend to be our pet dog!
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- Sarah 5 Comments

How to have a wedding on a budget

Next week is our fifth wedding anniversary – we were very lucky in that my parents paid for most of our wedding. But even though we weren’t paying we did our best to keep our budget to a sensible level. I think we spent about £8,000 altogether – which is way less than the UK average of nearly £25,000!

On our wedding day

I don’t mean to ruin it for the romantics, but did you know what one of the biggest causes of divorce is? Debt, and financial problems. And spending a small fortune on your wedding is the quickest way to get yourselves off on the wrong foot financially.

It’s a fine line to tread, but there is a solution: trimming the costs of your big day, without impacting on any of the fun, enjoyment and memories. Here are some of the best ways to do it:

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- Sarah 11 Comments

Living Arrows 13/52 (2017)

Another week done, and not a huge amount achieved. Sometimes it feels like we never really do anything but then maybe we don’t really need to. The boys have both got colds at the moment. They managed their two days at nursery but the rest of the week has mostly been spent at home, and I have been wiping noses every five minutes!

This weekend though it was my dad’s birthday so we went out for a meal. Eating out is a bit tricky at the moment. It has to be early enough for the boys to not be too hungry or too tired…and we don’t always get it quite right. Gabe huge fan of sitting in a highchair unless there’s food in front of him, and even then he’s not always that keen! Read more

- Sarah 4 Comments

Recipe: Extremely Chocolatey White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies

White Chocolate and Cranberry cookie recipe

This is a super easy cookie recipe. It’s adapted from this white chocolate and raspberry cookie recipe on the Carnation website.

White chocolate and cranberry cookie recipe

You will need (makes about 20 medium-sized cookies):

  • 225g unsalted butter or baking spread (Stork)
  • 225g castor sugar
  • 170g tube condensed milk
  • 380g self-raising flour (this is more than in the Carnation recipe – I find it makes better cookies)
  • 300g white chocolate (you can use chocolate chips but I find using large bars is better)
  • 150g dried cranberries

Pre-heat your oven to 170°C and cut grease proof paper to the size of your baking tray(s) Read more

- Sarah 1 Comment

Remembering Childhood // Lyla’s Angels

It’s that time of week when another blogger is going to be sharing their childhood memories. This week it’s from Cara from Lyla’s Angels.

Lyla's Angels

Which decade were you born in?

The very tail end of the 1970s.

What is your earliest memory? How old were you?

I always thought my earliest memory was being nearly three and looking out the window of my gran’s house as my mum left to go to hospital to give birth to my brother. However, I’ve been told that this didn’t happen but I obviously have a wonderful imagination!  Read more

- Sarah 1 Comment

Gabriel is 18 months old

Well, OK, Gabe is actually 19 months old by the time I’m finally getting round to writing this, but hey, who’s counting?

So what can I tell you about Gabe at 18 months old? Well, I could start with his vital statistics, except I only know he’s about 83cm tall, and is wearing size 4 shoes. I have no idea how much he weighs! He is mostly wearing 18-24 month clothes (or 86 in European sizes) so he is definitely smaller than Toby was at this age – he was already moving into 2-3 clothes at 18 months, and had size 6 feet!

Gabe the cheeky chops is 18 months old

There are quite a few similarities between Toby and Gabe at 18 months though. At this age Toby could only say Dada, hiya, see saw, what’s that and shoe. Gabe’s vocabulary so far includes Read more

- Sarah 13 Comments

Living Arrows 12/52 (2017)

After our busy week at Bluestone we’ve had a quiet week at home this last week. We had a few walks to the post office, a visit from my mum and a drive to the supermarket (with a cheeky Costa coffee trip too). And this weekend we made it as far as the garden centre for cake!

Yesterday Toby did some painting with his dad – we’ve had a Clangers solar system mobile kit for ages and after Toby spotted it the other day he was desperate to do it. So I put daddy on crafting duty while Gabe had a nap and I got on with some work. It was lovely to see them working on something together and Toby really enjoyed it.

Toby doing some crafting with his daddy

Unfortunately Gabe’s good sleep of our holiday hasn’t carried on Read more

- Sarah 4 Comments

World Book Day with Milly & Flynn

We’ve reviewed some books and toys from the lovely Milly & Flynn before so when they got in touch again and asked if we would like to join in their 10 minutes book club (#10minsbookclub) for World Book Day I was very happy to agree. (And I know World Book Day was two weeks ago now but bear with me!)

We read to Toby every bedtime (the number of stories he gets sometimes depends on how late it is and how well behaved he’s been though!) and in the last month or so Gabe has really started enjoying books too. He’s not so much one for sitting and listening to a story but we have plenty of books that he likes to look at. He’s started bringing books over to us when he wants us to read to him, or sometimes he’ll even just sit and look at them himself.

The boys weren’t at nursery for World Book Day so we didn’t do any dressing up – I’m sure I won’t get off so easily next year when Toby is a school though! Read more

- Sarah Leave a comment

Remembering Childhood // Raising The Rainbows

It’s that time of week when another blogger is going to be sharing their childhood memories. This week’s Remembering Childhood comes from Mandy at Raising The Rainbows.

Which decade were you born in?

The 80’s  – the best decade!

What is your earliest memory? How old were you?

It has to be my little sister sat in her high chair screaming her head off and then putting her dinner on her head! It was sausage and mash and she squished it all in her hair, I was about 3 and a half I think.

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

I had a blue fluffy soft toy called Chiggles, when you clapped your hands its eyes lit up and it made a laughing sound. I say laughing but it sounded more like a demented robot. At 10 I loved my Poochie, which was a pink and white dog.

Raising the Rainbows

Do you still have any toys from your childhood?

Read more

- Sarah 15 Comments

Living Arrows 11/52 (2017)

Last week we were staying at Bluestone National Park Resort in Wales and we had a fab time. I’ll be writing a proper post all about it soon but we really did have a great week. This was helped enormously by the fact that both boys slept very well – Gabe even made it all the way to 5:30 am before waking up (twice) and even then went back to sleep again until after 7! Barry and I managed to watch all four Hunger Games films while we were away so they must have been sleeping well!

The weather wasn’t great for most of the week but on our last full day there the sun shone and Toby and Gabe got chance to explore the toddler play area. Gabe seems to have come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of weeks both in his physical and mental development. He was loving exploring the park and it was small enough that we could let him loose a little bit…

Gabe exploring the tunnel in the play area at Bluestone

On our way home we went to stay with my friend Claire who lives near Chester and had a day out at The Ice Cream Farm. Read more