A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away........................

WAAAAAY back more years than I care to recall I started to do a 101 in 1001 list. The idea was that you listed 101 activities that you would like to achieve within 1001 days, they could be deep and meaningful or they could just be fun htings you wanted to try out. Well obviously mine has been a few more days than 1001 but I remembered the list the other day and wanted to check back on what I had achieved and if not why!
Here is my list revisited!


101 in 1001 list

1. Tell my son and my partner I love them every day
2. Try for another baby - Zoe was born in 2012!
3. Move house - Financially not possible
4. Send a care parcel to a soldier serving our country abroad.
5. Grow my own veggies
6. Make at least 5 new friends (5/5)
7. Bake a cake at least once a month
8. Make/sew at least 6 material bags to give as presents (2/6)
9. Read the BBC 100 greatest books (18/100) - 2 small children meant no time!
10. Entertain friends once a month
11. Make someone laugh everyday
12. Complete a Diploma course
13. Visit Edinburgh
14. Adopt a Donkey from Sidmouth Donkey Sanctuary
15. Clear my debts16. Save £10 a month for my sons future17. Recycle more
18. Write a meal plan every week
19. Give blood as many times as possible
20. Write to my elderly Aunties every month
21. Always remember my bags for life when I go to the shops
22. Condition my hair once a month
23. Have a long relaxing bath ALONE once a month
24. Watch at least 10 films I wouldn’t normally watch (10/10)
25. Dye my hair a different colour
26. Go to Occo, the Moroccan restaurant that I always look at but never go into.
27. Have a no electric night once a month
28. Go to PYO
29. Spend a day “visiting” my town with a tourists eyes and go to places I would normally walk past e.g. – museum
30. Research the American presidents
31. Watch the top 25 musicals (11/25)
32. Knit myself a funky jumper
33. Buy some stripy socks in honour of my friend Fay!!
34. Buy locally more often and support the littler shops
35. Go to see a Shakespeare play
36. Buy a pair of flowery Doc Martens
37. Read the work of the poet Laureate each year (2/3)
38. Make a record or scrapbook of my sons life
39. Hold a corn snake
40. Hold a snake skin (wearing gloves!) Glad that ones done!!
41. Improve my credit score
42. Sell my flat
43. Send random friendship cards to each of the 6 houses in the UK with the same address as me
44. Learn how to set up a blog
45. Sit on a horse
46. Visit Warwick Castle again
47. Go back to Shell Island in North Wales
48. Get my £50 pay out from YouGov!!
49. Book tickets to attend a 2012 Olympics event
50. Visit the Library more often
51. Leave a friendly post it note in all the library books I borrow
52. Make my Best friend a 30th Lucky dip
53. Get a water butt and attach it to the gutter
54. Go and see Priscilla queen of the desert in the west end
55. Visit charity shops more often
56. Cook a Thanksgiving meal for friends
57. Talk to at least 1 stranger a week
58. Take the time to write a letter of thanks when I have received good service in a shop/restaurant/hotel
59. Make a snowman
60. Catch little spiders and take them outside rather than squishing them (cant promise to do the same with biggies!)
61. Buy my mum a present on my Birthday
62. Go to a zoo with my family
63. Talk to my Grandparents more
64. Halve my shoe collection
65. Sort through my bedroom chest of drawers
66. Finish Aidan’s Alphabet cross stitch
67. Watch every episode of The Secret Millionaire
68. Buy myself another piece of jewellery from Tiffany’s
69. Visit a Christmas market
70. Have a PJ day once a month
71. Put up a bird table
72. Try Sushi
73. Get a fourth tattoo
74. Organise a reunion with old school friends
75. Attend reunion with old school friends
76. Make myself go somewhere that I really don’t want to
77. Wash up for my Nan at least once a week
78. Check the oil and water in my car every 2 months
79. Clean my car inside and out every 2 months
80. Visit Bath again
81. Visit Wookey Hole again
82. Go to the mountains in the Rhondda
83. Find out more about my Paternal Grandparents who died before I was born
84. Bake Diabetic cakes for my Dad once a month
85. Cook a “takeaway” dinner for my Mum and Dad so my mum can have a night off once every 6 months
86. Feed the ducks at least 3 times (3/3)
87. Organise the photos on the computer
88. Write to my Aussie pen friend once a month
89. Learn to accept help, people wouldn’t offer if they didn’t want to
90. Return to work Part Time and manage to stay Part Time through effective budgeting
91. Knit some squares to do my share
92. Send 20 people a surprise present just because (9/20)
93. Eat chips from the wrapper at the beach
94. Eat an ice cream at the seaside
95. Collect a pretty pebble or shell every time we visit the seaside.
96. Do at least 1 Race for Life
97. Update my CV
98. Get a family portrait done each year (2/3)
99. Sit by a fire talking with my Partner
100. Start to write a Bucket list
101. Visit the theatre at least 6 times (6/6)



Finish Date Saturday 11th Feb 2012


Red = Completed

Blue = in progress

So I completed over half which is not awful, some where just not financially viable, there is no point putting myself into debt to tick off someting off of a list! I had at least made headway on pretty much all of the ones I wanted to so overall I am classing it as a succes! I'm considering creating another list, some will carry over from this list as they ar still things I want to/could achieve but I am definitely going to give more consideration to ensure that the new list will help me to have a more simple, uncomplicated life.

Watch this space!

Easter Egg Hunt

I hope you have all had a lovely Easter break and lots of fun with your Families.

We had a little indoors Easter Egg Treasure Hunt, that turned into an outside one too!
We cheated massively and used a cute Gotrovo Treasure Hunt game that we got for Christmas. It has little cards with riddles or pictures on that you can then lay out for the Children to follow, easy peasy! We used both sets of cards as biggest read the riddles and then check his answer was correct with little Sister recognising the picture.
They had so much fun and really worked together which is lovely to see, it also got them up and about and moving which again was great for them.

Children in Need

It was Children in Need last week and Zoe has loved seeing "Teddy!" all around so I thought we could do some activities involving him. I found some great printables just by googling Children in need, including this cute bear mask on the Scholastic website. Zoe has fun making spots using stamp pads, whilst Aidan chose to colour his. 

Cutting the mask out also provided him with some good fine motor skills too.

Zoe also gave her fine motor skills a work out with these pretty pom poms! 

Aidan stayed up until quite late watching the programmes and some of the videos about the poorly Children reduced him to tears. It may seem harsh to have let him watch upsetting things like this but it I think it was good for him to appreciate that he is lucky, despite his own medical problems (he was recently diagnosed with Hirschsprungs disease)  there are children much worse than him.

Bonfire Night - Remember, Remember the 5th of November!

Happy Bonfire Night!

Today Zo and I have been looking at Fireworks and Bonfire Night based activities.

I printed off some Bonfire night related pictures from Here and we set about colouring them in, as we coloured I told Zo the colour of crayon she was using so she could get used to the words.

Then I gave her a piece of black card and some beautiful, sparkly firework stickers that I got from Baker Ross, at first I didn't remove the backing so she could move them around freely and create as she wanted to, this was also great movement for her little Fingers. After a while I began peeling the labels for her so she could actually stick them and make a permanent picture

 

 

 

We watched a video of the London New Year Fireworks on Youtube and later tonight we will go to an organised Firework display as a Family.

For Older Children there are some great resources over at Activity Village

I hope your Bonfire night goes with a BANG and you all stay safe

Playing with Purpose

Little Zoe is now 2 (when did that happen right?) so I have started to explore "Playing with Purpose" with her. It's not deep thinking or Learning, it's not sitting down for hours teaching her, it's just giving her play a little more thought. For example: Giving play a theme, Halloween, Easter, Bonfire night, this makes the play relevant to the world around her or thinking of Textures, crunchy, soft, noisy, shiny.

I did similar with my oldest child Aidan, you can see lot's of posts on what I did with him if you scroll back through the blog or by clicking on the Label "Learning the Alphabet" to the right of screen (just one example here)  and I REALLY, REALLY think it helped him as now he is at School he is doing Fantastically. His Teachers have all said he has a love of learning and is keen to try things, his reading is excellent and he is reading at a level well above his keystage, as a Mum this of course thrills me.

 

 I am planning on updating this blog as often as I can with the different play ideas I come up with for Little Zo. The ideas won't be difficult, excessively time consuming or expensive, after all I am just an ordinary Mum, but hopefully it might help set her on the road to a life of Leaning as well as give others ideas for playing with their little ones.

 

 

Mexican for 5.5 for just over a fiver!

We had Friends round for tea last night and I cooked them Mexican, on a budget of course!

I got 2 packs of Value Tortilla chips (92p) which I grated some cheese (50p) onto and then grilled, once the cheese had gone melted and gooey I put some reduced Sour cream (30p) and some Salsa I had from Approved Foods (33p) on the top and voila we had a nice starter of Nachos.

For main course we had Chilli which I made in the slow cooker with 1 pack of Aldi mince (£2.00), 1 tin of Kidney Beans (30p), 1 onion (8p!) and a chilli mix (38p). Served with some Value Rice (40p)



Meal for 4 Adults, 5 year old and a toddler = £5.21

Saving for your Sanity!

It's been Half Term here this week and Aidan has been off school, that means only one thing amusement or mischief. Aidan definitely needs to be kept occupied or mayhem and much shouting from me ensues, the trouble is this half term fell  a week before both of our paydays, yikes! Luckily for us we had a few tricks up our sleeve to enable us some great Family days out at no cost.

Thanks to the Tesco Clubcard Boost scheme we managed to visit Woburn Safari Park for FREE! I had been saving up all my Tesco Clubcard points and gathering extras where possible as I knew they would really come in handy for trips and days out. For £18 in Clubcard Points we received entry for 3 of us (under 3s are free anyway) a saving of almost £54! We took a packed Lunch and avoided the gift shop so the only cost to us was about quarter of a Tank of Petrol. We had a brilliant Family day out for next to nothing. Now I know that I had to spend in Tesco to get the Clubcard points in the first place but I have only purchased items I would have purchased anyway, eg the week food shop so I do class the things I exchange the points for as being free after all I could have spent the same money at another Supermarket and received nothing in return.

Enjoying seeing the Zebra's from the comfort of the car!

 A second trip we managed to achieve for no on day out of pocket expenses was a trip to the cinema to see The Lego Movie. Aidan like most 5 year olds LOVES his Lego so as a treat for getting a great report at Parents Evening we promised him he could go and see the movie. Now the Movies is not a cheap place to go (at least £15 for 1 adult & 1 child to go) so again we thought "Yikes!" we promised this trip now how are we going to pay for it? Luckily I had purchased a £20 cinema gift card as a present over a year ago and never actually gave it to the recipient so I packed them off on their way with some store bought sweets, popcorn and juice and they had a fantastic time.

Here we have a School Summer Holiday of 6 weeks, usually starting at the end of July, so that means 6 weeks of entertainment will be needed! That's approximately 20 weeks away from now which sounds like forever but I guarantee will pass by quicker than a blink so my plan (and suggestion for any of you good people reading!) is to start now by saving Loyalty Card points, buy a giftcard a week for the cinema or the indoor play place, pop money into a savings pot.

Your Children and your Sanity will thank you!!