Comments (15)

By Little Mummy, March 4, 2010 11:45 pm

This is a guest post for ‘Guest Post Day’ by Babyrambles, a blog I didn’t read before guest post day but one that has found it’s way into my google reader already!

I’ve decided to travel 400 miles to sit at Erica’s desk. And some desk it is too. You should see this study I’m sitting in, it’s bigger than my living room at home. Erica came up with this brilliant idea of Guest Post Swap Day. But I’m not content with just swapping posts on each other’s blogs, I actually wanted to see what it would be like to be Erica. So I’m in her house. I’m lucky to be here, I almost didn’t get through the security on her gates. Oh and look, the butler’s just brought me some coffee. This Little Mummy lifestyle is a nice one.

How often do you put yourself in someone else’s shoes? I feel like I’m doing it today. It’s quite difficult because I don’t know Erica very well. That first paragraph was a bit of fiction by the way. I don’t think it does any harm to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, no matter how well you know them.

There’s an old saying, “Never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” I like that saying (and it applies to women too funnily enough). Billy Connolly added, “After that, who cares? He’s a mile away and you’ve got his shoes.” I like that as well.

My sister put herself in my shoes this week. She got married on Wednesday but I wasn’t at her wedding. I was so sad to miss it. Her wedding was in South Africa. We thought long and hard about going, but taking three little ones on a journey like that would have been too much for us. Phoning my sister and telling her we wouldn’t be going to her wedding was one of the hardest things I’ve done. She doesn’t have children and probably doesn’t appreciate what hard work they can be.

I worried my sister would be offended and hold a grudge against me. Missing her wedding was a tough and difficult decision to make. She was disappointed, but after some thought she understood. I spoke to her on her wedding day, she sounded so happy and I felt sad not to be sharing that with her. But she told me again that she understood why we couldn’t have gone. And that made me feel so much better. Our lifestyles are very different, but she was able to empathise with me. I appreciate that. It’s not a skill everyone has.

So today I’m in Erica’s shoes. I hope I’ve managed to do a reasonable job of filling them. And if I haven’t… well Erica will be back very shortly! Pretending to be Erica has made me think a bit differently. I’ve written a post here which I don’t think I’d have written for my own blog. I don’t know why, but I think I’ve enjoyed being a bit different for a day.

Comments (34)

By Little Mummy, March 2, 2010 11:05 am

The first video below is just a wee bit of Guest Post Day info, please excuse my puffy eyes, I’ve not been too well!

and here’s the ‘live’ draw – see, no cheating

1. Craig McGill and Nene

2. Laura ‘Are We Nearly There Yet Mummy @LauraAWNTYM and Sharon

3. Barb ‘diabetic snacker’ and Young Mummy @YoungMummyUk

4. Sandy Calico and Sam ‘mumazing’ @samthewlis

5. Diney ‘Older Mums Are Fun’ and Manda ‘Flying Start Mag’

6. Claire ‘20 Something Mum’ and Lady Who Lunches @theladylunches

7. Mummy Limited @mummylimited and Linda ‘You’ve Got Your Hands Full’ @LindaSJones

8. Rosie Scribble @RosieScribble and Englishmum @englishmum

9. New Mummy @caroljs and Bumbling @BumblingTweets

10. Iain Gilmour @iaingilmour and T-J Hughes

11. Vegemitevix @vegemitevix and Karin ‘Cafebebe’ @cafebebe

12. Victoria ‘It’s a Small World After All‘ and Vic ‘Glowstars’

13. Nickie ‘Typecast’ @Nickie72 and Lisa ‘Deeply Flawed But Trying’ @slummymummy1

14. MrsW ‘Clinically Fed Up’ and Bare Naked Mummy

15. Antonia ‘Family Friendly Working’ and Babies Who Brunch

16. Felyhooton and American Mom in England @silentbeauty

17. Meandering Mother and Kim ‘Four Teens’

18. My Baby Adventure and Becky Willoughby

19. Jo Beaufoix and Magic Mummy ‘Frugal Family’

20. New Day New Lesson and Readily a Parent

21. Prendsletemps and Slummy Single Mummy

22. Sleep is for the weak and Angels and Urchins

23. Dulwich Divorcee @dulwichdivorcee and Ella ‘Most Least’

24. The MadHouse @Mum_TheMadHouse and A Place Of My Own

25. If I Could Escape @ificouldescape and Mari’s World

26. Brighton Mum – Teenage Angst and Sticky Fingers

27. Mummy Do That @cartside and Tattie Tats

28. Insomniac Mummy @insomniacmummy and Child Organics

29. Diary of a First Child and Ordinality

30 Fired4U and Sarahlscott ‘The Fifth Street Palace’

31. LaptopMums and Foodie Mummy

32. The Alice and Evie George

33. Family Affairs and Notes From Lapland

34. Mediocre Mum @mediocre_mum and The Thought Bubble @bubbleboo

35. A Mother’s Ramblings and Baby Budgeting

36. Very Bored in Catalunya and Geriatric Mummy

37. And Then All I Thought About Was You and Super Single Mummy

Comments (3)

By Little Mummy, March 1, 2010 3:41 am

After writing ‘Oh what a perfect day..’ last week there were lots of great comments as always, this one stood out to me as needing further discussion.

Tracey D says…

…perfect days are created when we seek out the best vibes of the day….ignoring the worst. Easy to do? rarely, but when you do, perfect!

I actually quite like this idea, there’s a perfect day out there every day it’s finding it that’s the problem challenge.

“Seeking out the vibes” to me says that you actively need to align yourself with the vibes or even change what you’re doing, it goes beyond ‘finding the good’ in the day, if you want to make it better you have to change something, which harks back to the saying I like;

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”

I talked about it here – Do Something Different Today

So what do you think, is there a perfect day out there everyday?

Comments (105)

By Little Mummy, February 27, 2010 12:29 am

Listen up, 5th March 2010 shall be Guest Post Day.

Guest posting is a great way for you to put your writing in front of a new audience and gain new readers, it’s a tried and tested technique in increasing a blog’s audience – and it’s fun too!

Here’s how it will work;

1. Submit yourself by leaving a comment on this post with your blog name before midday on Monday.

Update: Please use keyword ‘aqua’ in comment so that I can find any entries that go to spam. Ta

2. Return here tuesday and watch the ‘televised draw’ and see who you’ve been matched with.

3. Contact that blogger and arrange for a way to swap posts by email and by what time etc…

4. Write your BEST POST (let’s face it, your dross isn’t gonna gain you any new readers so put your best out there people) and give it to your blog swap partner.

5. Everyone post the guest posts on Friday 5th March.

Easy, yah?

Post suggestions – funny story, recipe, craft activity, ‘how to’

Okay, submit yourself below in the comments (don’t forget to include your blog name! you can leave your twitter @ too if you wish) and then spread the word…. the more the merrier!!

Comments (6)

By Little Mummy, February 26, 2010 12:28 am

The actual name for this dish is ‘Chicken stuffed with mozzarella wrapped in Parma Ham with italian tomato sauce and seared asparagus’ which is a bit of a mouthful and way too long for the title box in wordpress. I made this for lunch on Wednesday and was gloating on twitter so I thought I’d share it with you.

The Sauce

The sauce can be used as a pizza base, pasta sauce or with chicken so my advice is to make a batch like I did.

Ingredients

2 x Cans of chopped tomatoes
Hand ful of Parmesan
2 x spring onion
5 x garlic cloves
Handful of Basil
Handful of Parsley
3 drops tabasco
Black Pepper
Sea Salt

Let’s not get fancy, you pretty much whack everything in a pot cook it for a bit and blend. You can’t really go wrong.

For the Chicken

Slice chicken breasts lengthways, stuff with mozzarella and wrap in parma ham. Bake in oven at 200 celsius for half an hour. Slice chicken before serving making sure chicken is piping hot through.

For the Asparagus

Just sear it on a griddle with olive oil

Serve it

Dollop a ladle of sauce onto plate, slice chicken once across centre (as shown in pic) and let mozzarella ooze. Place asparagus beside and serve it.

Comments (16)

By Little Mummy, February 24, 2010 11:48 pm

Most days are a mixture of busy, hard, fulfilling, quiet, happy, sad, angry, hopeful, but occasionally, very occasionally there is one day that is the perfect day, it does’t happen often and when it does you need to savour it.

On this day you wake up and feel rested, food tastes a little better than usual, and your hair miraculously looks great with minimal effort.

You visit the shops and all the clothes you try on make you look slimmer, younger, funkier and they’re all on offer, you actually leave the shop feeling like you’ve robbed them blind.

On your perfect day you find a lovely little coffee shop that isn’t at all busy, there are no children and you’re able to sit for an age sipping coffee and reading the amazing book that just happened to be poking out of the shelf just by where you where walking. As you sit and ponder this coming together of the universe to create this perfect day your favourite song plays on the radio. With a hop, skip and a jump you return to your perfect little family and have a lovely dinner and go to bed feeling immensely happy.

Monday was a perfect day.

A day to savour and enjoy, because most days are a mixture of busy, hard, fulfilling, quiet, happy, sad, angry, hopeful…

Comments (4)

By Little Mummy, February 24, 2010 1:12 am

In the last part I mentioned that my being made ‘redundant’ (code for; we don’t want some sick person to deal with so we are going to find a get out clause that can’t get us into trouble) was actually a positive turning point in my life.

I reflected on the jobs I’d had, where my real passions lay, and decided to take a 30% wage decrease to work in a nursery. I enjoyed working with the children especially thinking up creative activities for them to do. I worked with the 17 month – 3 year age group which was challenging and rewarding.

Home life was great and Alex and I began to discuss the possibility of starting a family. We were both concerned about my crohns and how it may affect fertility etc.. I was told by doctors that it may take longer to fall pregnant (up to two years) so after six months of intense discussion we decided to go for it. It must have been fate because almost immediately I found out I was pregnant.

The pregnancy went well but I became extremely fatigued toward the end, ten hour days chasing after toddlers took their toll and I decided to finish work early, in December 2005. The last few weeks of pregnancy saw me hospitalized with pre-eclampsia before the doctors decided to deliver my baby via c-section on the first day of the 37th week.

On 4th February 2006, my brother’s 21st birthday, my beautiful daughter Erin was born. Alex and I couldn’t have been happier. I decided at the end of my maternity leave not to return to work preferring to be with Erin as much as possible. I decided to start blogging as an outlet for my creativity, new found knowledge, and as a document of our experiences. I’d never have guessed that blogging would create so many experiences. DisneyWorld, Butlins, Port Aventura, chocolate tasting, Wii reviewer, trip to Inverness, Dyson dancing… It’s certainly been a journey! My blog has documented the highs (see last sentence!) and the lows. In 2009 we also decided to try for another baby, we fell pregnant twice but it wasn’t meant to be, so we bought a puppy instead

In a weird sort of way blogging has helped me to explore who I am and what I like, and what I like (oddly) is marketing and entrepreneurship. In April I’ll complete my HNC in Business Studies and in October I’ll start my marketing management and entrepreneurship degree at a local university.

Life’s very exciting at the moment, and as I said in a recent post I already have everything I need to make me happy so everythingelse is a bonus now, I’m just going to enjoy the journey

Comments (11)

By Little Mummy, February 23, 2010 1:59 am

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying watching the Winter Olympics, I usually watch the figure skating and sometimes the curling but this year I’ve discovered some new events to watch including snowboard cross (a-mazing) and skeleton.

The athletes are truly awesome but on at least three occasions the commentator has referred to a female athlete as a ‘pin up girl’. Apparently Lindsay Vonn is the pin up girl of downhill and Melissa Hollingsworth the Canadian pin up girl of the winter games. Is it only me that thinks this is quite wrong? I’m no feminist but the last time I checked I was watching the Olympics, the greatest sporting contest on earth, a gathering of the world’s finest athletes coming together to compete as ‘athletes’. Shouldn’t we be focusing on their physical strength, their skill, their awesome abilities at what ever event their competing in rather than their aesthetic appeal. Quite frankly I couldn’t care less if a competitor looks likes the back end of a bus, if they can compete and conquer the best athletes the world has to offer then that’s all I really care about.

Can we please keep talk of pin up girls for Miss World and other beauty pageants, the Olympics is a sporting competition, let’s not dilute it with this kind of commentary.

Would you agree?

Comments (14)

By Little Mummy, February 21, 2010 11:48 am

So my lovely husband offered to make me a meal for my birthday over his long weekend off, but rather than suffer the mess I ‘persuaded’ him that a supermarket dine in option might be worth a shot. Of course he agreed quickly realising that this would merely involve him switching on the oven and removing foil.

Tesco had a deal on that included a main course, a side, a desert and a bottle of wine for £9, however I noticed that at the bottom of the chiller in the ‘dine in’ area beneath the food options were a six pack of glass bottles of coke and ‘fancy’ fresh juice – you know, the type that costs a small fortune. I assumed that these were the non-alcoholic options for the dine in deal, with them being in the right sort of price bracket and in the same cabinet as the meal options, but to be on the safe side (to stop myself from being ripped off!) I decided to double check at the checkout. You know where this is going right? The nice checkout assistant checked with one of the price checker people and sure enough they were not part of the dine in deal. I explained how misleading it was that these drink items were in the same cabinet and a few other customers around me nodded and mumbled in agreement. I also went on to argue the point that it was wrong for the dine in deal to only include wine, after all there are many people who don’t drink alcohol for various reasons and what about under 18’s are they exempt from dining in? To be fair the price checker did let me have the coke as part of the deal but I feel as though my very valid points fell on deaf ears.

I’m pretty sure that Marks & Spencer have non-alcoholic options as part of their deal, so come on Tesco you need to raise your game and start listening to what your customers are telling you!

Number 1 – Stop misleading loyal customers by putting drinks products in with deals where the drinks aren’t included. We aren’t stupid and we know that this is a marketing ploy to get us to spend more.

Number 2 – Don’t discriminate against those who don’t want to drink alcohol. You’re quick enough to haul up under agers and even some parents now if they try and purchase alcohol yet you aren’t offering non alcohol options as part of your dine in deal. Come on, a little bit of respect for those that put you where you are. We can shop elsewhere you know…

Number 3 – Listen to what your customers are saying to you instore, it’ll only allow you to sell more and make more money!

I championed you on twitter when one of your delivery drivers trekked through snow to get to me the day before christmas day you know. I also spend thousands at your stores every year. Admit you’ve got it wrong and get those cabinets sorted, better still get those drinks included in the deal!

Comments (5)

By Little Mummy, February 19, 2010 10:30 am

We’ve lived in our house for over two years now, we were fortunate when we moved in that there were no major jobs needing doing to the interior. Unfortunately the same could not be said for the garden (front and back) though not a jungle they were definitely a little unloved shall we say, and I’m ashamed to say that they remain so.

You see we meant to work on the garden during our first summer in the house but the weather was so poor we barely made a start. Then last year we got fired up, we bought tools and some gravel, I think we may even have cut the grass… and then we decided to go to DisneyWorld, and well, time and money ran away from us. So this year is the year, we’re absolutely determined to start loving the garden and now with Daisy’s arrival we have more incentive than ever. I’m imagining long summer days gardening with dog and child lovingly frolicking, followed by warm summer evening barbecues (do these days exist, or is that just the movies?).

Out the back we need to empty the pond and refill with soil to make a nice vegetable patch. We want to move and paint the fences, replace gravel and provide the grass with some ‘lawn care‘ at the moment it’s merely serving as Daisy’s toilette…poor lawn. We want to re-establish the patio that is cowering under the weeds and maybe even plant something in the borders?

Love the Garden is an online treasure chest of gardening info from lawn care to growing your own, they even have a gardening blog. I may well subscribe, at least it’s a start!

This is a sponsored post