First thing, this is NOT a sponsored post. I am just impressed by them, their service, the cars and mostly the staff. The manager of Young Driver in Bristol, a man called Mark, did something very kind today. Something not in his job description! Rescuing teddy rabbit from a bus stop roof.
Kids bored? Want to bake something easy, but still messy and fun? Well here is the cake my son made this weekend. Step one make normal cake mixture, we went with chocy as it looks like mud. You want the cake raised and cracked on top, like double chocy muffins in shops. While the cake is cooling mix up some icing sugar and water. Split in to two little cups or bowls and add yellow colouring to one, red colouring and vanilla flavouring into the to other.
I read something on T’internet tonight I had to share, Darren of OD3G blog has started an e-petition in response to more graphic images being on the front pages, making them hard to ignore, and lets be honest you can’t unsee the woolwich murders covered in blood once you’ve seen it can you? What’s the problem? Well children actually, I don’t want my child to see decapitated soldiers, or murders or the moment a pressure cooker bomb exploded or piles of bodies covered in cloth after flood/earthquakes. Nor does Darren, and he has a point. The Front Pages petition can be found here.
Hello world, The kind folks at B-Sensible have been in touch, and I’m happy to say are offering Julie’s Notebook readers a chance to win a bed sheet in their choice of size and colour. Size is a boring decision but colour, well, B-Sensible have loads of choices. The best thing about these bed sheets is that it’s waterproof and still breathable. This is awesome for children that wet the bed. The second best thing is the environmentally friendliness.
Today was pretty much the last straw. A child I’ll called Jamie (because it’s the only unisex name I can think of right now) follows my sons and I everywhere. It’s not just following, Jamie bosses us around, *do this, I want to do that, put my on the ride*. Sounds ok, now imagine you’ve waited ten minutes for both swings to be empty because your youngest wants to “race mummy on the swings” and the second we sit down Jamie appears “my turn.” trying my very best to stay calm I say “My son and me are playing, please wait” so Jamie just asks again and again and a-flipping-gain! I have to walk away, we go to a different toy, a climbing wall. Guess what, yup! Jamie tries to push in and tells me “lift me up” so I suggest to my lad we do the zip wire, yes, […]
When I was a kid, TVs were very basic, a few buttons or tuning knobs. It was on-off, channel and volume. No record, save, rewind, pause, I understood the new bits like rewind and fast forwards when they first came in, and it was great. I think now though it has got to a point where TVs are a bit too flipping SMART! It’s like the TV is secretly laughing at me, as I am one of the many parents who get their children to do the set up bits on the goggle box. I’m no technophobe (obviously as I’ve got this blog) but the TV baffles me. So many menus and buttons, and functions I do not understand. In fact the little wall mounted LED TV I bought my partner for Christmas is worse, it has all kinds of functions I can not use, it is almost a pc, […]
For a long time I’ve been saying D is special and I suspect Aspergers or something related to it? I’m no doctor though. But there is definitely something odd, something un-average. He’s charming, super smart and obsessed by maths and Lego but at times he just flips and is like a disruptive hurricane of rage and hate that you can not even communicate with. Today for the first time in months, I think the first time this year actually, I went round someones house for tea. It should have been lunch but I was running late. It was nice for a while. Me and friend were chatting grown up things whilst drinking tea and all our kids were playing nicely on a Kinect doing bowling together, for a short time anyway it was nice! Then D suddenly flipped like he does at home, in front of another grown up. Whilst […]
Yesterday I found out about a site called Stuffster.com from a twitter buddy, I thought to myself “That’s an odd name” and then looked into what the site was about. I headed first to the Twitter Stuffster page, and then had a peek about the main website. Stuffster in a pictorial nutshell.. Its a shopping tool, a bit like a funky hybrid of an auction sites watch list system and a comparison site and an Internet wish-list. You add products, from almost any site to your Stufflists, and set a desired price. So lets say you want something in particular, a certain brand of shoes and you know the style, You pop to your favourite sites as normal (after registering on Stuffster that is, I’ll talk you through that shortly) and look for these shoes in your size then click “+STUFF” button on your browsers links bar et voila, […]
Zoflora have seen me a bottle of their Spring Time fragranced concentrated disinfectant 3 in 1 action.This comes in a small carton with a little bottle in, the thing is you make up the solution with water yourself at home, so this little bottle makes nearly 5 litres of cleaning fluid, its much easier to carry a small package home than a few litres of ready mixed cleaners. Image from Zoflora.co.uk The instructions say you mix it at 1 to 40 ratio in water, so grab yourself a 1 litre spray bottle (my spray bottle below was one I had in the garage, and had only ever been used with plain tap water to water house plants). Add in 25 ml of Zoflora (approx a fifth of the bottle) then top it all the way up to 1 litre with water, if my maths is correct this is 1 […]
After deciding I was playing strict with the boys recently, I found out about a lovely reward chart site, called Personalised Reward Charts.There were a few different background designs but I went with the Pirate one, and had a photo of both boys put on it. It’s well laminated and came with a dry wipe pen and some star stickers. You can have the days of the week pre printed on it too, but I preferred not to then we can start mid week if we like. The charts are a very reasonable £3, and mine arrived in just a few days. There are lots of designs, football, cartoon dinosaurs, the pirates one we chose and girlie ones such as butterflies and princesses.I wrote down the tasks I’m hoping he does more often, and as the bribery I have offered him a Lightening McQueen model car he really wants. The […]
It didn’t start perfect, Jen wet his bed in the night, thankfully his bed has special sheets on and it worked well (a review on that to follow soon). So in the night he came into my bed when I was asleep, the smell of wee woke me, at which point was too late as he’d been lying in my bed for long enough to let his soaked pjs get my bed stinky and wet. Lovely… First task of mothers day, lots of washing including both quilts.Wish he’d stayed in his bed. When I woke this morning I was greeted by an almost naked Jen waving a box of chocolates at me, suggesting I forget breakfast and eat these. I obliged of course. Would be rude not to! Shortly after this partner appears with a mug of coffee and D comes in with this… I love trees. I’ve run out […]
The National Railway Museum is hosting nine days of Big Fun with Little Trains this February half term (not all counties have half term next week, here in Gloucestershire it’s half term this week). Just a few of my boys toy trains…. From 16- 24th February, the National Railway Museum is having a celebration of toys and model trains. Children of all ages (including the grown up kind) will be enthralled by the range of little locos from children’s pedal trains, to rides on indoor and outdoor miniature railways* that the whole family can enjoy. My boys both loved the outdoor trains when they were smaller. Children will be able to get hands-on in the museum play areas and enjoy rides of all shapes and sizes. Meccano and Lego workshops and the G-Wizz garden railway will add to the fun. Family friendly model layouts will be on display and visitors […]
