Magpie Monday - Tutti Fruiti

Last week I spotted this cute little vintage kids dress hanging forlornly amongst the slogan emblazoned children's T shirts and Dora the Explorer pyjamas.

The bold retro fruity print really struck me, but as a size 18months dress, it was never going to fit my 4 year old!  Nevertheless, I handed over my £2 and brought it home.

Quick-unpick at the ready, I took the dress apart, whizzed up a simple channel at the waist, popped some elastic in and hey-presto Ruby has a new twirly whirly skirt.

She also commandeered the vintage green shades I'd bought for myself for a quid.  What do you reckon, does she look cool or what?  She certainly thinks so - little poser!

What second-hand items have you rescued lately?  Grab the badge and link up.

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Matalan's Yummy Mummys

So, I agreed to take part in Matalan's monthly style challenge.  If I'm totally honest, I didn't really know what I was getting myself into, but it sounded fun - find yourself a outfit for £50 or less.

The chance to shop for myself, without looking at kid's clothes is a luxury in itself, and it was glorious just mooching about the aisles of grown up clothes, unhindered by demands for Hello Kitty drinking bottles or hair slides.

I did find it a bit tricky to compile a whole outfit.  I'm not sure if it's just my local branch, but there didn't seem to be anything in my size.  There were some really, really beautiful clothes, but not for me.  I think next time I'll shop online.

At Britmums Live I had been coveting Eliza Do Lots shoes, so was keen to find a pair of them.  They do them in a beautiful blue but sadly the only on in my size was...the left one!  We hunted high and low for the right one and I even got an assistant to help, but to no avail.  It remains a mystery.

Anyhow, I am pretty happy with the outfit I came up with.  The brief was for a 'summer day out'.  As they don't do flippers and wetsuits, I went for trousers.  To me a summer day out is a BBQ at friends, a lazy sunday pub lunch or a trip to the park (although admittedly I might ditch the towering shoes for that).

I've not worn coloured denim before, but I LOVE these skinny jeans.  So much so that I've since logged on and bought two more pairs in their sale - in on-trend sorbet colours, one lilac and one pink. Check them out - from £8 in their sale!!

I found that the sizes do come up on the small size - it doesn't do much for the ego to find you have to buy a size bigger, but just so-as you know if you're ordering online.

My challenge was further hindered by discovering most of what I bought wasn't in their online shop, so I can't show you - I swear, my local store must exist in it's own parallel universe. One complete with one-legged shoplifters.

Anyhow, what do you think?  Whole outfit including shoes, scarf and necklace for less than £50.  Not bad eh?  I'll try to show you what I bought, or close as I can to it in their online store.

Yellow striped T cost me £4 in store, similar available online for £2 (the same design as mine but in green is here for £3).

The blue skinny jeans cost me £16.  They no longer seem to be available online, but you can get them in other colours currently at half price of £8.

Again, the scarf isn't on the site, but this cost me £5 and the necklace £5.

Finally, the shoes. LOVE the shoes, even though they weren't my first choice.  These cost me £18 but you can grab em at only £9.

If you like my choice, please pop over and vote for me - just write 'Me and My Shadow' in the comment section on the Matalan blog. 

Ta very muchly, and good luck to the other gorgeous bloggers who are taking part - I think we all rock!

What do Parents Worry about?

A couple of weeks back, I attended a market research group with some other bloggers ahead of the BritMums Live conference.

It was a really interesting experience and I really enjoyed hearing other people's opinions on some meaty issues.

The main focus of the group was around the question 'as a parent, what do you worry about?'

Well.  Where to start?  I mean, once that little bundle comes into your life it seems you worry about everything.  I spend my life worrying.

I worry about the little things - did I lock the door, have I remembered to put suncream in my bag, can we cross this busy road safely...

I worry about the massive, depressing, head-hurty stuff - war; famine and disease.

And I worry about stuff in between.

Many of the mums in the group felt the main issues for them were financial.  In the current economic climate we're all fretting about making ends meet more so than ever before.

For me, it was hard to narrow down, so I picked one issue that does play on my mind a lot.  We were asked to bring an item or photo to illustrate our choice, and I brought a trashy, glossy celebrity magazine.

Why?  Well, having a daughter I fear for her being influenced by the media about body image and looks.  As a society we bombard our youngsters with impossibly airbrushed images of models and actresses and rather than give them something meaningful to aspire to, we are merely impressing on their minds that this unobtainable ideal of beauty is the key to success.

It makes me so angry that young girls feel they need to compete with these porcelain-skinned, hair-free, blemish-free, surgically enhanced celebrities.

I saw a tweet the other day from a mother of a 10 year old, horrified as she'd been contacted by her daughter's school and asked to shave her child's armpits because the other pupils were laughing at her. 

Speechless.

So, I'm curious.  What worries you as a parent?  What keeps you awake at night?  What niggles away at you?

Share your worries below in the comments section, and I will pick one of you at random to win a £25 amazon e-voucher.  The closing date is 5pm on Sunday 29th July 2012.  UK entries only please.

Disclosure: I received a financial payment for attending the market research focus group and for this follow up post.  All views expressed are my own.

EDIT:  This competition is now closed.  Thanks for all your entries - some of them broke my heart :0(

The winner picked at random was @clairelouise82 - please let me have your email address for the voucher.  

Kids Get Arty - Exploring William Morris

If you haven't heard, Maggy over at Red Ted Art has started up the most fantastically inspiring project called 'Kids Get Arty'.

I just knew we'd have to join in. Ruby loves anything creative and will spend a considerable length of time at a craft table, so it seemed the ideal time to start a slightly more structured approach, and introduce her to some of our well known artists.

I say 'structured', but I don't mean a rigid lesson. There are some great hints and tips over at Red Ted which, coming from a non-teaching background, I found really helpful.

As I happened to have a really beautiful big book of William Morris prints that I'd picked up in a charity shop (surprise, surprise!), I thought we'd start there. Not at all because he's one of my favourite authors/artists/historical figures, and I was imposing my will...

We began by flicking through the book, stopping to look in more detail at the designs that caught Ruby's eye.  We used Maggy's idea of a simple view-finder cut from card to hone in on parts of the design, and concentrate on the fine details.

We spoke about pattern, repetition and symmetry and I showed Ruby how to use a small hand mirror to highlight the strong symmetry in the designs.

I explained that William Morris had been a famous designer, and most of his patterns were used originally in textiles for curtains and for wallpaper.  In fact, I even have a roll of paper upstairs that we had up in a previous house.

I asked her to choose her favourite design, and without hesitation, she picked this one.

The Strawberry Thief.  The girl's got my taste!  It's my favourite too.

We talked about Morris' inspiration for the print - he'd watched Thrushes stealing fruit from his strawberry patch at his home, Kelmscott Manor, and that's what he based the design on.  We talked about our strawberries in the garden and how we'd have to watch out for sneaky birds.

Ruby wanted to see a picture of his house, so we found one online. She said it looked very old, so I explained that William Morris lived a long time ago - the Strawberry Thief pattern is 130 years old now.  It really sparked a conversation, with her wanting to know if he had a wife (yes, Jane) any children (yes, 2 daughters Jenny and May) did anyone else live there (well, there was that rapscallion Rossetti but let's not go there..) did he have a cat, or a dog (errr, not sure...)

Kelmscott Manor, Gloucestershire - photo credit

William Morris (24 March 1834 - 3 October 1896) Photo credit

We discovered that the house is hosting a family arts and craft day next month, and she's already asking if we can go.

So after looking at pictures of Morris and his family, we got back to the Strawberry Thief.  I asked if she could try and draw a bird for me.  She totally blew me away though, with this...

Her drawing has come on SO well, even in just the past few weeks.  From bringing home artwork from nursery that even I, her mum, can't figure out, she's drawing things that I'd defy anyone to be confused by. LOOK!!

We decided that we should print her design, like Morris did.  However, I didn't have the time/skill/patience for the authentic indigo-discharge method of printing onto fabric, so we opted for the much underrated poster-paint-on-a-pizza-polystyrene-base method.

Ruby carried on drawing strawberries, while I transferred and reversed her image on the polystyrene, then we loaded it up with paint (she was most insistent at using green), and printed it onto brown wrapping paper.

I think it's come out quite well, and we are going to use the paper for gift wrapping.  But best of all it's sparked an interest with Ruby, and made me realise that with a little bit of preparation we can very easily and happily spend a good hour or more talking and learning about a subject.

I'm so glad we've done this.  Why don't you join in too - all the details are here.

Scream if you wanna go faster - new water ride coming soon at Center Parcs

Elveden Forest is currently our nearest Center Parcs - I say 'currently' because there's a new one being built five minutes up the road from us, due to open next year. Whooo hooo!

In the meantime, we're happy to drive to Suffolk, and have visited the holiday village several times.  The latest news surely means we'll have to go again later this year.

They will be unveiling their £4 million ride the 'Tropical Cyclone' at Elveden to celebrate 25 years of Center Parcs.

A unique water ride, designed to emulate the experience of white water rafting on the Zambezi, plummet down the Iguazu Falls and spin around the Naruto whirlpools.

With 25,000 litres of water per minute, families riding the unique clover-shaped inflatable will reach speeds of up to 24mph and achieve zero gravity as it twists and turns on the 200m long ride.

With The Lagoon also coming to Elveden, a new family-friendly warm water swimming pool, Center Parcs at Elveden looks set to become even better than ever before.



What do you think?  Looks fun, yes?

Magpie Monday - Wombling Free

An entire generation were introduced at an early age to the concepts of thrifting and recycling by a family of burrow-dwelling, pointy nosed, shy creatures who lived on Wimbledon Common.

Extolling the virtues of upcycling way before the term even existed, this ethos of making good use of the things that you find has been ingrained into my psyche.

I blame Tomermory and Tomsk totally for my inability to walk past a skip without checking it out.

Madame Cholet was the archetypal forager, cooking up delights such as daisy buns and grassbread sandwiches.

I truly believed they existed.  I still like to think that they do.

Wouldn't it be great.  Think how much Merton Borough Council could save on their street cleansing budget.

In a bid to teach Ruby the Wombling ways, I picked up this 1976 annual.  Once we've read all the stories, in true Womble fashion, I intent to use it for crafting, making cards and other goodies for like-minded children of the seventies.

In a rummage through a box of sewing patterns in a charity shop, I found this!!!!

Oh my Wombling word.  Make your own Wombles.  Can you imagine?

What have you manage to Womble lately?  Grab the badge and link up your second-hand finds.

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Putting goat's milk to the test - St Helen's Farm Review

As you may have read, we're having a few health issues with Ruby and I've pretty much established that it's down to cow's milk.  Whether it's a lactose intolerance issue or an allergy to cow's milk protein (or something totally different!) we won't know until she's had tests done - she has now been referred by the GP so we are finally getting somewhere.

One thing I do know is that in the past 6 weeks or so that she's not been having cow's milk/products, her symptoms have pretty much totally cleared up - bloated tummy; stomach pains, nightly cough; runny nose; itchy skin and night-time waking.

But it's been trial and error finding alternatives that she likes, that won't flare it up again and that will give her the nutrition she needs.

Now, I don't know if it was pure chance or not but I was contacted by the lovely people at St Helen's Farm and asked if I'd like a hamper of their goat's milk products to review.

Of course!  They arrived at the pre-arranged time, all wrapped and packed with ice, with the saucy little goat on their logo looking alluringly at me.

From our un-scientific testing, we knew that Ruby seemed to be ok eating goat's cheese, but also know that getting them from the deli counter is proving to be an expensive habit.  With St Helen's Farm products available in most major supermarkets now, we were really hoping that this would be a hit.

The butter got instant approval, and I'd barely unpacked the hamper before I was being asked to put toast on.  I have to say, we've all been enjoying this butter, and I have it on my toast now too.  It's rich and creamy and to me tastes no different to any other good quality real butter.  It's great to be able to use butter in family cooking again.

The cheese was also very tasty.  Ruby really struggles with cow's cheese, especially hard cheeses like cheddar.  I use cheese in such a lot of recipes and have simply replaced cheddar with the St Helen's Farm hard cheese now for sauces, pasta dishes, quiches etc. It means she can enjoy some of her favourite meals again.

Unfortunately we found that drinking the milk seemed to aggravate Ruby's tummy again so we are still searching for a suitable alternative drinking milk that she can have.

The yoghurt however went down a treat and I was able to make her something she's been missing out on these past few weeks - ice cream!!  Well, frozen yoghurt to be precise, but she loved it.  St Helen's, if you're listening though an ice cream addition to your range would be most excellent (hint hint).

I simply took a handful of strawberries, popped them in a saucepan with a little water (add sugar if you want) and heated them up until mushy.  Then I sieved the strawberries to get the juice.

I stirred this through about 200g of St Helen's yoghurt, placed in an ice cream tub and froze for 1 hour.  Then I stirred it thoroughly and froze again. Repeat this process 3 times in total.

It's been really great learning about St Helen's products and ethics.  They clearly care a great deal about welfare standards and environmental issues and have just installed a wind turbine to generate their own power on site.

Their consultant dietitian has been most kind and helpful to me personally - thank you Helen! And she provides some really useful information on the site - if you're concerned about dairy allergies, please check it out.

Even if you don't have allergies or intolerances, then there are other benefits to including goat's milk in your diet.  It is nutritionally closest to cows milk, but it contains more vitamin D - needed to help the body's uptake of calcium.  It is also lower in cholesterol than cow's milk.  For more information, see the nutritional page of the website.

Next time you're in the dairy aisle at the supermarket, look out for that saucy little white goat smiling at you, and give goat's a go!

Disclosure: We were sent the hamper pictured above for the purposes of this review.  No financial reward was received and all opinions expressed are my own.