Cheltenham


#ColourMeMarch with Cheltenham racecourse 13

I have never been to Cheltenham races, even though I live so close to Racecourse. We’ve all heard of Ladies day (which is  on the 11th of March this year), crazy dresses and wild hats. This year though Cheltenham are doing things differently.  The best dressed fillies will be chosen solely via social media.  They are calling this contest #ColourMeMarch and I’ve entered.


Accidentally Homeless 9

After reading Rachel’s blog post entitled Homelessness on the rise I really felt I should write my experiences. As a young adult I wasn’t in a good place, often I had no income, rent to pay, and no food in the cupboards. I would often go “scrumping” and take fruit from trees I could climb or knock fruit down from. Sometimes I would take the out of date stock from behind Sainsburys and Safeways. I was very skint and was threatened with eviction many times. So skint I accepted a job at £40 per week for 38 hours work. Unbelievably this was not where or when I became homeless. Instead of renting flats I had to rent rooms, be a lodger in the homes of others. Only eating my “free food allowance” at work some days, no breakfast or lunch. It’s not ideal, but it could be much worse hey? […]


Retail Royalty Challenge – Helping Charity for Free 4

When I read that MoneySuperMarket wanted to give bloggers £30 to spend on a local charity, I jumped at the chance. The idea is us bloggers get a budget of £30 (given to us by MoneySuperMarket for this challenge) but we have to try to buy more than £30’s worth of gifts or items that your local charity would like. Maximum benefit of the cash if you like! They’ve called this the #RetailRoyaltyChallenge and the winner gets a massive Harrods hamper, which I wouldn’t mind but to help a charity for free, I already feel like a winner. I decided that I wanted to help Cheltenham Animal Shelter (I’m abbreviating to CAS), you might have noticed I do love my pets, all six of them! I had a look around the Cheltenham Animal Shelter website : gawa.org.uk and discovered they had an Amazon Wishlist so had a look through at what I […]


Making Up Memories 2

I recently won a £100 Groupon voucher, which I’m so grateful for. Thanks again to Luci at mother.wife.me blog. A few months back the school photographers came in to class and the pictures they took were awful. Jen was dressed all wonky, shirt hanging out and disinterest all over his face. D was cross eyed and bored.   This will be the only year my boys are at the same school as D is top year juniors and Jen started at infants this year.We were upset the photos were so poor. It was like having a memory stolen from us. We had been looking at professional photo studios, and partner said “the boys Will need a good haircut first?” so we were looking at a three figure sum to fix this. Then I saw this on my Groupon app: “Family Photoshoot With Two Children’s Haircuts, Canvas Print and Additional Prints […]


Groupon

Having known about Groupon for years now I’ve finally jumped in and joined. People at work kept taking about it…. for example the lady on Virgin was on about having teeth whitening and those fish pedicures where they chew your toes off. Hehe. She’s still alive though, so I think its ok. Anyone the point is its a group buying website, so you buy as an individual but get “group” discounts as Groupon bulk buy then pass those prices to the individuals…. like me. There was an amazing wedding package available but I didn’t have a spare £3K! Below is an example of thier deals, if anyone would like to join I would love that. You can get £6 for refering new members… hence this post! 60% Off at The Hotel on the Park, Cheltenham – http://t.co/iwq4r4fE


Playing outdoors in the cold. 1

Last week Jen and I went to the park for a picnic… thing is I had promised him a trip to the big park (pittville park in Cheltenham) and as luck would have it it was freezing, about minus 4 degrees on my day off. Still, a promise had been made, it took 2 buses and over an hour but he had fun. We had ourselves a picnic in the park, sitting in the drivers cab of the toy train we had sausage rolls, frubes, fruit muffins and some fresh mushrooms (he eats those instead of fruit). Then we had a bit of a play, pushing on the swings and the usual sort of stuff. At the top of the park are a few large animal cages. We went to say hello to the bunnies, peacocks, chickens, budgies and chipmunks. Jen was keen on those “stripey squirrels”, then we went […]