Legs ahoy!

As well as helping my mum move house, I've recently been on a bit of a healthy kick and in the last two and a half months I've managed to lose 2 stone and trim up quite nicely. I've not gone on a crazy diet (I enjoy cake and in particular chocolate cheesecake far too much to do so) and have simply stuck to the old adage "eat less, move more" by taking up some dance exercise DVDs (an urban workout and some Pussy Cat Doll ones) and making an effort to walk more/for longer.

As such I've gradually started bringing out the sort of clothes I wore when I was in uni (nearly five years ago now!) mainly skirts and play suits. After Bubbah was born I kind of covered up in jeans and loose tops or tunics and leggings however now my confidence is back (although I still wear leggings with shorter things but now more for modesty rather than lack of confidence) I'm playing about with prints(!) and various lengths. So, without further ado; legs ahoy!


 

From left to right; floral maxi dress (New Look), daisy print mini skirt (Tesco), apple print play suit (H! by Henry Holland for Debenhams)

Picture this; helping nana move

We've been crazy busy recently helping my mum get ready to move in the next few weeks or so. Having been made redundant just before Christmas she had to face up to the idea, and then reality, that she would have to downsize. Fast forward several months and everything is all lined up sans moving date so, given she's downsizing from a three bed with a big garden and an extension to a one bed flat with a small strip of grass just big enough for her sandpit, we (my brother and I as well as her friends) have been helping her sort through everything.

Three skips, numerous charity shop runs and countless dump trips later and she's nearly ready. There's the few odd bits left to do of packing things to go into storage, and things to be moved into the flat. There's also been lots of memories as she's lived there nearly thirty years and it was my childhood home...

Bubble wrap for the fragile things

Or for unravelling!

Ditto for my old ELC till
(still working nearly twenty years later)

We found Raphael and Bubbah had to have him

My mum's hair band from her wedding (in 1985) which I promptly snapped up for myself

An oversized jumper Bubbah insisted on wearing before we threw it away

Keeping himself amused while we cleared out the kitchen

Stealing nana's slipper boots

Budget busting; batch cooking

Something I regularly (freezer space allowing of course) do is batch cook the families favourite meals both to keep shopping costs down and make sure we use up the surplus of tins etc languishing in the cupboard/freezer. So when my mum (who is moving house) handed over a 500g pack of mince from her freezer I combined it with one of mine and made up a mega load of bolognaise sauce, turning half of it into two lasagnes and the other half portioned up into Tuppaware and shoved in the freezer for later lasagne/cottage pie/spag bol.

Other meals I batch cook include fish pie, veg curry (recipe to come) soups, and various pasta bakes. However the possibilities are endless. Again, this depends on the space you have in your freezer and if you're happy to eat fairly similar meals for a few weeks. However it can come in handy when you know time is going to be tight in the near future; I filled an entire chest freezer with batch cooked meals in preparation before Bubbah was born and I had three weeks where dinner could simply be picked out by me or hubby and thrown in the microwave while the other held a screaming baby suffering from the dreaded colic. It also helps out when money is tight and you do have odds and ends to use up in the cupboards.

What meals do you like to batch cook?

What we did this fortnight

It's been a busy few weeks packed with quite a bit of activity and lovely things. We've taken advantage of sunny days, ebay, friends off work and unexpected extra family time to...

Get crafty; as the holidays loomed the term of Creation Station came to an end so Bubbah and I got crafty at home. We made dinosaur fridge magnets (courtesy of a birthday present) and did our hand prints, which somehow ended up with Bubbah having a massive smudge of paint on his foot!

Socialise; (l-r) playing with cousins during their Easter holiday break, Bubbah stealing my cake during a drinks and cake catch up with a friend who had a rare day off, driving Peppa Pig's car during a morning with nana (which again involved nice drinks and cake)

Chill out at home; (l-r) finally managed to track down a cheap Fireman Sam figure for Bubbah's engine (good old ebay), building a tower with his many, many (over 100) Megabloks, making calls to grandma with "oo ogs" (two dogs)

enjoy daddy being home; (l-r) being amazed by Babe, helping daddy wash grandad's car, Easter eggs, building (and destroying) a den

BUT FIRST...

Let me take a selfie!

Auntie time; pizza making

As per yesterday's post, today I made pizzas with my niece and nephew (and brother). I made up the bases the night before and just brought them over to my mum's house with a load of toppings already prepared. Upon being told what my plans were my niece and nephew immediately started up a chant of "PIZZA, PIZZA, PIZZA!" Here's how they got on...

My nephew also insisted my brother sit with him and make his own pizza as well exactly like his! Unfortunately my brother ate his pizza too quickly to get a picture of it.

Auntie Time

As part of my extended family I'm very lucky to a) have a niece and nephew and b) be able to see them plenty. My brother sees them every other weekend and comes to stay at my mum's house, meaning that I am able to see them at the same time and Bubbah gets to spend time with his cousins, which he adores. They're all within a good age range of each other (Bubbah is two, my nephew is 3 and my niece is 6 next month) which means they can play together nicely and Bubbah loves following them about trying to join in their games. My niece has fallen quite easily into the eldest cousin role of keeping the peace and making sure they play nicely in that tongue in cheek bossy way young children can do so well.





I absolutely love seeing my niece and nephew so much, having been very involved with them and seeing them on a regular basis since they were little. As such we have a close bond and I get greeted with an excited running hug and cry of "AUNTY TASH" every time they see me.




Something I like to keep up is spending proper time with them, taking interest in what they say even if it's putting together every puzzle they own and laying them out on display for the rest of the day (they have a lot of puzzles) and coming up with fun (even if a bit silly) games and activities to do. For their birthday/Christmas presents I tend to get them at least one "craft" thing as they love making stuff (and getting messy) and sometimes said then made/painted item finds it way back to me, proudly presented by a beaming child.


This Easter my brother is taking advantage of them being off school and having them for a few days before all the bank holiday madness. I'll be seeing them in this time and already have a few ideas, my main one being: pizza making! As previously said they love making things and getting messy in the process (mess always make it more fun) so I made up a couple of pizza bases for them, Bubbah and my brother (who wanted to join in too) and tomorrow I'll be lugging them and a load of topping choices over to my mum's house. They have fun, we spend time together and they get dinner out of it; everyone's a winner!

How to boost your toddler's brain function (apparently)

I was browsing Mother and Baby's website the other day and came across this article which reports on a study claiming taking your toddler shopping can help improve their brain function.

The study says that activities such as...

• shopping
• painting
• arts/crafts
• being read to
• being encouraged to tell stories

all increase different areas of brain function (movement, social skills and talking ability) and can even increase children's happiness levels. Passive things such as looking at picture books and watching TV don't.

Professor Paul Anand of the Open University explained that watching the process of mum and dad choosing items and paying for them is ‘particularly significant in relation to child happiness’.

He continued, ‘Children are getting visual stimulation, they’re getting out of the house and into a new environment, they’re bumping into other families where social skills come into play and they may get the chance to do something physical in a shop like run around.’

Prof Anand added, ‘There does seem to be a connection between the kinds of activities that are taking place and the skills that are being developed.

Source

I'm all for stimulating Bubbah's brain but I must admit I never viewed shopping in that way! Recently, he's taken to grabbing random items and dropping them into the trolley. My best example of this is when I'd put a bag of bananas in the trolley, turned around to grab some tins of soup, turned back and found Bubbah had added six bags of bananas into the trolley. So, not quite there with supply and demand as we would never get through seven bags of bananas in a week. That's a lot of banana bread!

So what do you think, does accompanying you food shopping make your toddler smarter?

Crafty times and the Creation Station

Since the beginning of this year Raphael and I have been bit by the craft bug. This has been in part from a course I did just before Christmas where we looked at doing craft with recycled things (card, bottle tops etc) and more recently because of The Creation Station running sessions at my local children's centre. Nicole, the woman who runs these sessions, has been absolutely lovely and so patient with Bubbah when he decides to run off and, say, wash his hands mid-craft!

 As with any most things involving toddlers The Creation Station provides jumpsuits to cover their clothes (which comes in handy, especially when Bubbah decided to potato print his jumpsuit) and incorporates music, interaction and different craft techniques to keep things interesting and fun for them. Previous examples include; ice cube painting, comb painting, potato/veg printing/painting and rolling pin painting.

 Each week we come away with something different, even if it's just a picture Bubbah has scribbled over. My favourite home pieces have been the broccoli monster and stained glass kite below as I would never have thought to make something like that.

These have pushed me at home and after a quick supply gathering (aka stealing paints etc. from Nana's house and eventually buying my own paint) we now have frequent craft/painting sessions which Bubbah loves. We've also bought a craft kit from Nicole and made our very own spoon puppet!

 And generally Bubbah is always please to show off his work (after some cajoling and flashing the camera at him) as seen here with his teddy bear's picnic picture (complete with Paddington gripped in hand).