My Dream House!

As a stay at home/work at home mum, I literally have to take what little time I have to do my blogging.

Our house is a pretty small three bed roomed mid terrace house. Upstairs we have me and Andy in one room, James in the next biggest room and then Freddie is in the box room. Then downstairs we have our kitchen/utility room and then our lounge so there is no spare room for an office for me or a man cave for Andy.

I generally feel as though I get distracted working downstairs in the lounge as I can only really work when the boys are at school or playgroup or if Freddie is at home then he is having a nap. I always have the television on when I am in the lounge so there is another distraction.  I would love to have a small room where I could go and sit with either the radio on or music and just sit and write. When I was a student I could have either the TV on or I could have music on as the music interfered with the TV picture.

My desk is in one corner of the lounge with Andy’s in the opposite corner behind me. Andy has the corner where the plug sockets are so my laptop has to slide down the side of one of our units to charge as there is no socket by my desk. It also gets turned into a dumping ground for James and all his school stuff!

This is the current layout of our house upstairs and downstairs. As you can see we do not have a lot of space or spare room to have a dedicated working area. We currently have a separate toilet and bathroom with our boiler being in a cupboard in the bathroom. I would love to have our bathroom all in one and that little bit bigger!

Now if I had my dream we would have a double story extension built onto the back of the house so we could extend Freddie’s bedroom and also make the bathroom a bit bigger and add on an extra room upstairs to make either an office or a man cave.

Downstairs we could create a playroom for the boys, add in a downstairs toilet as being the only female in a house of boys it is not too fun having to prise a five year old off the toilet when he takes up residents i.e. he takes his tablet up and sits there to get some peace away from his little brother. Then we would have another room which could be either the man cave or the office.

I feel that having an extra toilet would definitely benefit us along with having a dedicated area for me to do my work as I feel it would certainly motivate me and stop me being distracted as much by the television!

I think that the things I would add to our house would certainly add on value as to get a property with everything I would add on in our area would be close to £250,000 which is money we definitely do not have and would probably not get a mortgage for. I would want to stay in the area we are currently in as it is close to the primary school that James attends and that Freddie will attend from nursery in 2019, also the secondary school is a short walk away too so when James moves schools he will be walking distance rather than a bus ride away.

**This post is just all my ideas about what I would love to do to our house!**

My Perfect Holiday #MarkWarnerMums

For me going on holiday is not just about spending time with your family and friends, it's about exploring new surroundings and photography. They say a photograph tells a thousand words. And these photographs definitely tell more than a thousand words. When I look at them, hundreds of thousands of memories come back to me about the wonderful time we had

Photography has been a massive part of my life from the age of sixteen, so whenever I go away with family or friends my camera was always the first thing packed. When I first developed my interest in photography it was long before digital cameras & smart phones were invented, so I was one of those geeks who took many rolls of film away with me.

This photography holds so many happy memories for me. It was when Cinderella's castle first came into view from the monorail at Magic Kingdom. This was no ordinary holiday though, this was our honeymoon. We had saved long and hard to be able to afford our dream holiday for our honeymoon. It most definitely was our dream holiday as I came home with 1400 photographs from ten days! 

Walking up Main Street and seeing the castle at the top is one of the sights I will never forget. It's something I had always dreamed of seeing and to be there with my husband was just so special.

Disney has a reputation for its spectacular fireworks displays and they really do not disappoint! This was taken after the electrical parade where all the floats are lit up! The images projected onto the castle were amazing and this was just a snap that came out so well. I really want to get this print on canvas for our wall.

I have always been a lover of animals so to have the chance to visit Sea World & Animal Kingdom was just a dream come true. Spending time at the dolphin pool at Sea World was just amazing. The Dolphins would swim right up to the wall and you were encouraged to stroke them. There was also a viewing area to see them swimming under water. 

The most magical day of our ten day stay in Orlando was 13th September -my husband Andy turned 29 that day and we had chosen to spend it at Discovery Cove swimming with the Dolphins!  

The park takes all your photographs during the Dolphin encounter which are available to purchase is different photo packages, including the copyright to the photographs so you can print out as many copies as you like when you get home.

Andy and Yoshi

Me and Yoshi. This was a dream come true for me as I have always wanted to kiss a dolphin.

Andy swimming with Dexter 

Me swimming with Dexter.

I really hope that one day, in the future we will be able to take our boys to visit Disney World and of course Discovery Cove to swim with the Dolphins. You have to be six to swim with the dolphins, so it's going to be at least six years before we attempt to visit again as Freddie is not even a year old yet.

James is now three and still has not been abroad yet. Orlando was actually the last holiday that Andy and myself actually went on as James arrived the following year. We have still not had a family holiday even before Freddie arrived due to buying our first family home together. Hopefully 2016 will be our year!

**This is our entry for the 2016 Mark Warner Family Ambassadors Programme**