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!!

Man down!

I was taken out of action completely last week with full blown Flu, I didn't even get  out of bed for 2 solid days.

 "Oh no!" I thought, "the man is going to have to take care of the house!".  But do you know what? He did GREAT thanks to the planner I have mentioned in previous posts. Each day he ticked off his little list, he even managed to dress both children, including our sweet little girl (lets face it, Dads get little girls outfits very wrong sometimes!), with ease as I had decluttered and organised their closets only last weekend as per the plan! 

Normally I would spend a week trying to catch up after being ill but now there's nothing extra to take on!

11 days into 2014 and so far I am feeling much more accomplished and on top of things.

Whilst having a bit of an internet surf I discovered a fantastic site called The Confident Mom which is full of great ideas and tips to help you to be "a calm, cool, confident Family Manager". 

I downloaded her FREE Weekly Household planner and I am so, so glad I did! It is absolutely fantastic. 2 versions are available, a blank one for you to fill in your own schedule or one pre-filled with Daily tasks.

I am a  "tell me what to do" sort of person with these things so downloaded the pre-filled version and have been completing each task daily. So far in 2 weeks I have managed to do lots of little jobs I had been putting off, for example our Kitchen drawers were a nightmare, stuff was everywhere and nothing could be found. Wednesdays task this week was to Organise 3 Kitchen Drawers, perfect! As I had read ahead on the planner I actually did 1 drawer at a time rather than all in one go, this meant I only needed to set a side a few minutes rather than a huge chunk of time, job done!

Amongst other daily tasks here is a list of what I have achieved in 2 weeks using the planner and doing a few tasks each day:

2 cars washed

Coat Cupboard tidied and organised

Disinfected Hair brushes

Organised 3 Kitchen Drawers

Meal Planned weekly

Flipped all mattresses

Finished Thank you notes

Packed away Christmas decorations

Cleaned out freezer

Uploaded and organised Christmas photos

Cleaned Toaster

Cleaned Microwave

Organised pantry shelf

Dusted and hoovered living area x2

Dusted and hoovered Bedrooms x2

Cleaned cooker hood

Cleaned refridgerator shelves

Cleaned Bathroom x 4

Changed all beds x2

Now I don't know about you but I know for a FACT I would not have achieved half of that without this planner.So far I cannot recommend it enough and I actually think I can stick to this schedule as it takes such a little amount of time each day.

And just a reminder the planner is FREE!!

It can be downloaded here

Musings on the end of 2013

So here we are at the end of 2013, 

This has been a hectic year, I have felt overwhelmed for much of it, drowning in day to day life. 

 It's not a nice feeling. 

Christmas even was not particularly enjoyable, rushed and stressful trying to make sure everything was done and pleasing guests ageing from 1 - 86 and everything in between is hard work I tell you! I have felt that I have not pleased anyone this year, not even myself. The children received some lovely gifts but the actual quantities were obscene, they were both overwhelmed by the quantity of presents and in the end it became almost a chore to be opening more gifts. I do realise this sounds awful and ungrateful and of course we are not, in actual fact its quite the opposite as I feel the Children, particularly Aidan, did not get to truly appreciate the gifts that friends and family had worked hard to pay for and spent time choosing for them. 

With all this in mind I have decided to try and give "experience's" rather than STUFF as my gifts for people this year. Hopefully using Groupon and other deal sites I can provide my Family and Friends with an enjoyable day out rather that another item to be put in a cupboard or on a shelf. I have started already by purchasing my Uncle a meal for 2 at a little Italian Restaurant and my cousin a day paint balling with 5 friends. Total for both gifts has been £25 so no more than I would have spent on STUFF.

In 2014 I hope to simplify life a bit, possibly even dare I say it be a little more selfish, by doing things that suit me and my immediate Family of 4 and not always doing what everyone else wants US to do.  I want to try and cut down on our clutter, I want the Children to appreciate things more and probably this will be achieved by things not being so readily available to them. I want treats to be treats and not a given.

To end this post I am going to leave you with an updated photo of the 4 of us, the 4 that matter most to me.

I wish you all a stress free 2014, well OK stress FREE isn't going to happen, so as stress free as possible is probably a better phrase!

 

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

I love Aidan to learn about other Cultures and Traditions and as Chinese New Year fell on a Sunday it gave us the perfect opportunity to some crafts, activities and of course some eating!!

Saturday night we hung lettuce outside for the Dragon to munch on his visit and he managed to leave Aidan a red and Gold pouch of coins under his pillow without even waking him! ;-)

Snake Maze

Making a Year of the Snake Mobile

Year of the Snake Mobiles

Chinese Lanterns

Chinese feast, Spring Rolls, Char Sui Pork, Cashew Chicken and Noodles, Rice, Beef & Broccoli, Prawn Crackers and Tsing Tsao beer!

Tucking in

Noodles are tricky to eat!!!

Yumm!

We watched both Dragon dances and Lion dances on videos on Youtube and used printables from Here: http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/chinese_new_year.htm

3 becomes 4!

 

On October 9th we welcomed our beautiful Baby Girl Zoe into the world. 

Weighing in at 6lb 14oz she is dinky compared to her Brother who was 9lb 4 oz!

Big Brother adores her and loves to help out caring for her.

We are so lucky to have such gorgeous Children :-)

As many dinners as possible for under £30!!

At 32 weeks pregnant my thoughts have turned to how we will manage to function as a household and a Family in the first (sometimes horrific!!) few weeks of life with a Newborn, made extra stressful by the fact we know I will be having a C-Section which will leave me with very limited movements for at least a couple of weeks. 

I have set to as much organisation as possible to ensure everything we need can be found easily and whilst sleep deprived! Products such as loo rolls, cleaning products and toiletries have been stockpiled to prevent running out and mad dashes to the supermarket. Stocks of nappies and wipes have been building up nicely over the past couple of weeks thanks to some good offers and Supermarket baby events. All items are down from the loft and have been washed and aired ready for the new little person to who comes to live with us.

It would be a major oversight to not think of food, I can't imagine either of my boys would be very impressed if I told them they couldn't eat! So I began looking into freezer meals, particularly meals that could be bagged in advance and then popped into the crock pot to cook, Pinterest has become my new best friend and I found tonnes of ideas on there. I made a list of meals I wanted to prepare and compiled my shopping list, trouble was a lot of the items were quite heavy

The other week I received a voucher from Sainsburys giving me £10 off of a £50 home delivery shop and coincidentally they had and excellent offer on Nappies and Wipes (buy a pack of nappies for £10 and get a box of 9 packs of wipes free) so I decided I would place an order. 

I ordered £20 worth of the nappies and wipes which left me £30 to get as many meals as possible sorted for us. I purchased the following:

3 x Valley Foods Chicken Fillets 750g - Total Price GBP 8.98
2 x Richmond Thick Irish Sausages x16 725g - Total Price GBP 2.49
2 x Sainsbury's Carrots, Basics 1.5kg - Total Price GBP 1.50
1 x Sainsbury's Potatoes 7.5kg - Total Price GBP 3.70
1 x Sainsbury's Pork Loin Steaks 630g - Total Price GBP 4.00
2 x Sainsbury's Diced Onions 300g - Total Price GBP 1.20
2 x Sainsbury's Peppers, Basics (Colours May Vary) 600g - Total Price GBP 2.58
2 x Sainsbury's British Pork Mince 500g - Total Price GBP 4.00
5 x Sainsbury's Pineapple Pieces In Juice, Basics 227g - Total Price GBP 1.40
4 x Sainsbury's Long Grain Rice, Basics 1kg - Total Price GBP 1.60
4 x Sainsbury's Pasta Shapes, Basics 500g - Total Price GBP 1.56
10 x Sainsbury's Chopped Tomatoes, Basics 400g - Total Price GBP 3.10

 Total including the wipes and nappies came to £56.07, I received my £10 off making it £46.07. 

Taking off the £20 for nappies and wipes I was left with food total of £26.07 to make as many meals as I could.

Here's what I managed to make with it:

The following are all big enough to feed all 3 of us

2 x Lasagne's

3 x Sausage casseroles

1 x pork casserole

1 x Hawaiian chicken

2 x Chicken cacciatori

1 x BBQ Pork

2 x Chilli

2 x Cottage Pie

And these are just little portions the right size to feed Aidan

 2 x Bolognaise

1 x pork stew

2 x Chilli

3 x Cottage pie

2 x Macaroni cheese

2 x Lasagna

2 x Veg Curry

2 x Fish Pie (I used a tin of tuna I had in the cupboard)

 There's at least 2 weeks worth of meals in there for all of us now, more for Aidan, all for under £30. If I get the chance  energy again I will prepare a couple more.

 I bought 2 packs of foil trays from the £1 shop to store the meals in and the rest are in Ziploc bags. Most of the meat items are raw still but all I will need to do is take a bag out of the Freezer the night before and then pop them into the Slow Cooker in the morning, no thinking what to have or chopping and preparing.

 

 I can rest well knowing that it is all prepared and we can have yummy, cheap, home cooked meals for the absolute minimum of work AND I didn't have to carry it all home from the shops!!

 Just as well as I currently look like this!

Letter of the Week D

Well D week turned out to be a super busy week with loads of activities which is just as well as Chris had to go away for an induction for his new job so it was just Aidan and I.

Doggy's were a recurring theme during the week and we began by making our letter D for Dog, it was a bit basic to make so Aidan coloured him in a bit. Aidan took care of his toy pet dog, he took it for walks, brushed it and also fed it.

When I started to look I saw that we had tonnes of books beginning with D, Dazzle Duckling, Dogs colourful day and lots on the topic of Dinosaurs! We read 2 a night, I think reading is really important and now Aidan will sit and listen whereas when he was smaller he couldn't care less!

Full list of books and Authors at the bottom of post.

Aidan really enjoys Jigsaws so I was happy when I found a set of Dinosaur jigsaws in the £1 shop. I am a bit tragic really as I walk around the store continuously looking for things for the Letter of the week project and forget what I went in originally for!

We made Letter Ds out of paper and Easy Painters from the Early Learning Centre. Easy Painters come in little pots that are easy for little ones to grip, the paint can't flow out as there is a sponge at the tip that limits the flow so painting with less mess EXCELLENT!

 

After he had dotted the shape he decided to join the dots with another colour to really make the D shape.

 Another little project I was pleased to find was some Dragon scratch art, rainbow colours are hidden underneath a black matt covering and when you scratch away at it with a wooden pick the colours are revealed.

 

I scratched some eyes and the flames and then Aidan did the rest, the kit enabled them to be turned into magnets once they were finished so Nanny now has 2 Dragons on her fridge (whether she wanted them there or not!!)

 D has to stand for Doughnuts of course, heres Aidan enjoying a sticky treat!

 I downloaded a really Fab Dinosaurs printable pack from Over the Big Moon  it had tonnes of things for Aidan to do including which one is different, size recognition, sequencing, puzzles, letter D identification and also pre-writing. By popping them into an ordinary clear wallet and using a dry wipe pen we were able to use them again and again during the week.

Another pre-writing activity we did involved Highlighter pens which I used to write words beginning with D, such as Door and dinner, I then drew a basic picture and Aidan coloured it in and wrote over the top of the highlighter.

I think his Door writing is great :-)

Another £1 shop find was a colour your own dinosaur kit which consisted of 2 wooden dinosaurs with stands and also some felt pens, not bad for a quid! I decided to use paints with Aidan rather than the pens just because we hadn't done any painting for a little while.

 He decided he was making them for Daddy to put on his desk at his new work :-)

 

 A final little craft we did was Dragon finger puppets which I got from Baker Ross ( I LOVE their website!) they are just little cardboard cutouts that have holes in for your fingers to be legs, Aidan liked them a lot and after we had coloured them we played and acted out little storys.

 For Sensory play I made Aidan a bit of a primeval swamp using his sand tray and Dinosaurs, to begin with I buried all of his Dinos so he had to be a paleontologist and dig them out. Once he had discovered them all I set it up the next day with some plants cut from the garden, again he loved acting out Dinoland, we also smoothed the sand and made dino prints in it and then compared who had the biggest footprint.

 

A fun D to end the week was Dancing when we went to my Aunties surprise 50th Birthday Party. Aidan loved dancing to the music and as I am now 32 weeks pregnant I was lucky enough that there were plenty of volunteers to dance with him! He did look quite comical dancing in the middle of a circle of about 15 women!

The photos are really blurry but then they are action shots, what should I expect!

We stayed until just gone 10pm when we really thought we should take him home to bed, he had other ideas though as we left the place with him crying out "I just wanna dance!"

Other activities we did:

Fed the ducks

Washed and brushed Nanny and Grandads dog

Played with ducks in the bath

Other activities I planned but didnt get round to:

Visit a Deli or the Dentist

Make and play Drums

Play with Dirt

Make Discovery bottles together

We read:

Dazzle Duckling by Gaby Goldsack

Dogs colourful day by Emma Dodd

How do Dinosaurs say good night by Jane Yolen & Mark teague

Dinosaurs press out and make by Autumn books

Dinosaurs activity book by Priddy books

Harry and his dinosaurs romp in the swamp by Ian Whybrow and Adrian Reynolds

Harry and his dinosaurs say raaah! by Ian Whybrow and Adrian Reynolds

Harry and his dinosaurs go wild  by Ian Whybrow and Adrian Reynolds