Six Toys My Six Year Old Loves

Welcome back to our fortnightly series on Things my child loves! This fortnight we are back to James who is Six Years Old and This week its all about Toys!!

So here we have six toys my six year old loves!

First off we have CB or Cranberry Bear giving his full name! This is the bear that James literally cannot sleep without! like Freddie's Moo, he came all the way to Majorca with us! When James was alot younger he would take CB literally everywhere with him. He actually went with James to nursery everyday for the full year! He started off being cuddled and then he moved into James draw and by the end of the year he was just staying in his school bag! I really think having CB with him got him through nursery!

Second we have his Dragon. Mummy actually bought this a couple of years ago in a charity shop for £3 and James has had hours of entertainment out of it! Especially as it makes noises! It was such a bargain as normally theses are at least £25

Next we have the T-Rex. James got this for his birthday last year as he is absolutely crazy about Dinosaurs and especially the T-Rex!

Now we have the Lego! Every parents worst nightmare! I literally find this all over our house!! But James loves to build things and Lego is is number one choice for building!

Next we have the Mega blocks. James adores building and currently he is using the Mega Blocks! I can remember at one point having about six or seven sculptures on my back window ledge that James had built out of mega blocks

and finally we have the Crate Creature! James saw these advertised on the tv last summer and he was desperate for one, but at £40 we were not going to just go and buy it for him, we did try and get James to earn the money for it, but that failed, so when we saw they were on offer before Christmas for just over £30 we decided to get him one and boy was he thrilled! He plays with it all the time!

AD: A Childhood Favourite Beef Stew #meatmatters

AD: A Childhood Favourite Beef Stew

This meal was one of my favourites as I was growing up! My Nannie (my mums mum), would cook big batches of this up and put into her freezer to give to me after school, especially in the middle of winter!

This was actually the first time I tried to recreate it for us as a family meal and yes there was two extra portions for our freezer!

With Freddie having food intolerance's, I tend to cook most things from scratch and I actually really enjoy cooking!

The best thing about this dish was it actually cost me under £10 for all the ingredients! The diced beef was £2.59 and the root vegetable pack which contained swede, carrots, parsnips and an onion was only £1! The stock pots I used were gluten free and were Tesco own brand. I chose to use gluten free stock as Freddie has a suspected Wheat intolerance and has been wheat free since the start of January!

When my Nannie used to make this she would brown the meat and then put everything into a pan with the stock and leave it for a few hours, however I chose to steam my vegetables for half an hour to save me some time, so it literally only took me about half an hour to actually put together into the pan after browning the onions and the meat. 

So once the meat and onions are browned add them to a sauce pan with 500ml stock and add in the steamed vegetables. I left mine on a low heat for 30 minutes to simmer. It was all ready for Andy coming home from work and all we needed to do was heat it through and serve with some bread and butter!


This post is an entry for the #MeatMatters Challenge, sponsored by Simply Beef and Lamb. Learn more about the benefits of cooking and eating beef and lamb along with recipe ideas and inspiration here: https://www.simplybeefandlamb.co.uk. We haven’t been paid for this post; however we were provided with a £10 Tesco voucher in order to buy the necessary ingredients for this recipe.

Living Arrows 2019 12/52

Welcome to Living Arrows post 2019! If you haven't heard of the linky before, This was set up by Donna at What the Redhead Said and the name comes from the poem by Kahlil Gibran "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth" Each week I post one photo of James and one photo of Freddie and share what they have been up to that week!

So it wasn't too busy last week for James and Freddie. We had our normal school and playgroup sessions, but daddy did have three days off so he could do some of the school drop offs and pick ups for James!

Freddie has been doing quite well with the start of potty training. He has been asking more and more to use the toilet, so the next step is get playgroup to start asking him more often!

James had his normal Beavers group on Thursday, but instead of meeting at the scout hut, we went to a local nature reserve to complete some tasks for a badge! He also has some home work to complete for another badge he is doing at the meetings! James also went and had his hair cut on Saturday morning! Where has my little baby gone!

Mother's Day Gift Guide

Mothers day is fast approaching and what better way to start the countdown than a gift guide as to what you could get for your mum or what your partner could get for you!

Last year James dictated what mummy got and he told daddy something pretty and some chocolate so I got a lovely box of posh truffles and a Swarovski rose. 

This year I have no idea what James is going to suggest! Hopefully this post will give people a few ideas!!

First up we have the awesome "Motherhoodie" from Ada & Alfred. This sweatshirt is available in three colours of dusky pink, slate grey and nude. 

For me I would chose the slate grey as I'm not much of a pink wearer! 

It also has some brilliant features such as a Hidden earphone cord feed, a Kangaroo pouch pocket, Ribbed cuffs and hem and made from 80% cotton. This is priced at £35.00. You could always twin with your child and buy them the "Childhoodie"



Also from Ada & Alfred we have this brilliant "Lioness" sweatshirt. 

I think this will be a popular slogan this year with the women's world cup and the England ladies team aka the lionesses there! What better way to support our national ladies team than to wear a top with their name on!

This is priced at £30

A personalised phone case is always a good choice for a mum. Sadly since I am using Andy's old phone, nowhere actually makes cases for it! In fact even when it was a brand new phone you still could not get personalised phone cases for it!

Another good present for a mum is the Tesalate towel. I've been using mine for a few weeks now and I adore it. We also have a fantastic discount code for you: vickih15 to get you 15% off the towel.

These are so lightweight and dry so fast! Plus it folds up so small and has its own travel bag, so if you are taking it away with you it won't take up too much room in your bag!

Wireless headphones are another good gift for a mum! Andy actually bought me some as a wedding anniversary present as my big headphones that fold are a bit bulky for taking out and about with me, the ones he got me are perfect so I can also use them in bed if I want to watch Netflix or something on my tablet!

I hope these have given you a few ideas on what you can buy the mum in your life for Mothers Day!

3 Quick Ways To Introduce Luxury Into Your Home

**Collaborative Post**

3 Quick Ways To Introduce Luxury Into Your Home

Pic Source

Who doesn’t want to live in a home which is as luxurious as possible? If this is something you have been focusing on, then you will probably be keen to try and make it come true as soon as you can, but for that to happen you need to be aware of what is actually going to be involved. The truth is that there are plenty of ways in which you might be able to introduce some extra luxury into your home, and you will want to make sure that you are focused on a few of them if you want to make this kind of difference. In this article, we will look in particular at a few of the quick and easy ways to make your home feel more luxurious. Follow these tips, and you will be living in a feeling of luxury in no time at all.

Create A Spa

Before you go thinking that this is too difficult or expensive, it’s worth thinking about what is actually involved in creating a spa. Actually, you don’t need to do all that much. You just need to start with the bathroom you already have, and consider replacing the bath with one which is more like a hot tub. With that, you will already have gone most of the way, and then it is just a matter of changing around a few key things in the bathroom in order to make it more luxurious. This can be as simple as buying for yourself some hotel quality bath robes from Richard Haworth and having those in the bathroom, or you might just want to change the lighting to something softer. However you do it, it should be relatively easy to make your bathroom more like a spa, and so much more luxurious.

Upgrade Your Bedding

Bedding is one thing that many people find they want to replace very often, as old bedding quickly becomes uncomfortable or starchy. To avoid that, you will absolutely want to make sure that you are thinking about treating yourself to some high quality bedding, as this is likely to last much longer and will therefore retain a feeling of comfort for longer too. That will make you feel more like you are staying in a luxury hotel than your own home, and you will find it really does make all the difference in the world to your feeling of luxury. Consider this if you want to only make a small change which could change your whole experience of the bedroom and the home as a whole.

Get Creative With Colours

It’s funny what a difference colours can make. If you are trying to create a more luxurious space in your home, you will be amazed at how much you can do so just by thinking about the colours and how they might be altered. Generally, you can create more luxury in the home by focusing on darker colours, often reds and greens - but it’s all down to your personal taste ultimately. As long as you are aware of the effect colours are having on the sense of luxury, you should be able to make it as luxurious as you would hope.

Living Arrows 2019 11/52

Welcome to Living Arrows post 2019! If you haven't heard of the linky before, This was set up by Donna at What the Redhead Said and the name comes from the poem by Kahlil Gibran "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth" Each week I post one photo of James and one photo of Freddie and share what they have been up to that week!

It was a pretty busy week last week at school for James. On Wednesday afternoon parents were invited in to join in with the last session of forest school! James had a brilliant time making a parachute and playing with his friends! He had also paid £1 to take part in splat the teacher for Comic Relief and he had a brilliant time lobbing wet sponges at some of the staff including the deputy head! All while the parents were watching from the forest school area having a right laugh!!

Then on Thursday afternoon again parents were invited in to join the class in the school library to read some books together. This time we had Freddie with us and we had a lovely time. James has started to get into the Harry Potter books and we had a lovely time reading some of the first book together!

Freddie had a lovely week at playgroup with his little friends. The big news this week is Freddie has started to use the toilet! He is actually asking to go which is a big step! He has been wearing big boy pants when we are in the house and a pull up when we had had to go out, but nine times out of ten when we have got back into the house the pull up has only been damp and Freddie has asked to go to the toilet where he has done a wee! I'm really looking forward to the day I don't need to buy any more nappies!!

Siblings Project 2019 - March

Welcome to  the 2019 Siblings Project! How is it March! It literally only feels like five minutes since I wrote the February Siblings post! 

This Month James has been loving

* Beavers - he had his first sleepover at the start of the month!

*Doing Forest School as part of his school day!

*Building Robots out of the Mega Bloks

Freddie has been loving

* Playgroup! He has really started to settle into his new 15 hours

* The Kindle Fire Tablet. He is obsessed with the hide and seek peppa game!

*Building towers out of the Mega Bloks

It is literally impossible to get a nice photograph of these two monkeys at the moment!