Monday 26 August 2019

Living Arrows 2019 34/52

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! 

Today is actually James 7th Birthday!!

Last week was so much fun! We started the week off by going to watch our family friends son compete in the World Transplant Games in Newcastle! We were so proud to cheer on Luke!! James went running off ahead with Luke's dad to get a spot on the bridge while I came up at the rear with Freddie in the stroller! We also went to Build a Bear so James could do count my candles for his birthday bear!

Freddie has done so well with his potty training! He now asks to go when he needs to go and we have successfully been out and about with him for days and he has been dry when we got home! He was so good when we were in town to watch the cycling. He did have his moments of being grumpy, but he had a great time!

We had so much fun at nana and gaga's including a trip to the beach to look in the rock pools, building sandcastles, a trip to Warkworth Castle, a trip to the dairy farm for ice cream or sorbet in Freddie's case! 

Hard to believe its the last week of the holidays and James goes back to school next week!







Living Arrows

James You Are Seven!

Happy 7th birthday our darling boy. 

It really only feels like yesterday that you were born yet here we are celebrating your seventh birthday! 

You have grown up so much this last year, and I'm putting it down to all the confidence that you have gained since you joined our local Beavers colony. In the last year you have learned so much and done so many exciting things including an over night sleepover and an eight mile hike! You get so excited for your weekly meetings and the only one you missed was when we were on holiday! You have really been missing all your Beaver friends this summer and you cannot wait to go back next week once school starts back up!

You have such a lovely group of friends at school, but on a whole your class is basically one large friendship group. You all have such a strong bond with each other and most of you have been together since nursery, but you all pull newcomers in and befriend them. 

You are so tall compared to your short mummy and it won't be long before you are taller than me! You have had such a massive growth spurt lately that you have outgrown your school trousers! 

You absolutely adore your little brother now that he's older and the pair of you play so well together. This year he joins you at your school with him joining the foundation unit.

Happy birthday again my darling
Love always
Mummy
xxx


Thursday 22 August 2019

(AD) Review of Who hides here? Footprints in the Farm

Back in 2017, we reviewed a lovely book called Who hides here? Footprints in the garden by Rachel Coverdale, so imagine how excited we were to get an email from Rachel the other week asking if the boys would like to review her new book, Who hides here? Footprints in the Farm!


Mummy didn't tell James the book was coming as I wanted to surprise him! When we reviewed the first book, James was a very reluctant reader, but in the last few months he has suddenly come on so much and most nights you can hear him reading aloud to himself in his bed! 

The book has beautiful illustrations by Shelly Oyston, James absolutley loves the book and I have heard him reading it aloud to himself on many nights.

James still loves being outdoors and looking at nature and he has done so much in the last few months especially since he started at Beavers! He has really enjoyed his forest school sessions this year in year two and is already looking forward to them starting again in year three!!


When I asked James his favourite part in the book he said "The hairy cow" and his favourite animal in the book was "The hairy cow"

We have also been reading this book with Freddie who is almost 4 and he loves it just as much as James!

**We were sent this book free of charge in exchange for this review. All pictures are our own!**


Tuesday 20 August 2019

How I Use Mockups?

**Collaborative Post**

Being a blogger, I know to get attention the site needs to have brilliant graphics. I admit 
first hand I am not the best graphic designer, in fact I have never been very good at art, 
but I do love to mess around in Photoshop or other design software that I have on my 
laptop to make graphics for my blog posts or to use on my blog Facebook page.

One of the ways I to this is to do mock-ups of my header. I normally will do a redesign 
at least once a year, but quite often I will mess around in my graphic software to see if
I can create something better than what I had done previously. 

This is the latest design that I did for my blog header, but I think I will be changing it again 
pretty soon as the photograph I used was taken at the end of June before the boys finished 
school and playgroup for the summer and already, they have both grown up so much! 
James is so much taller!









When I look back at the old cover designs, I have used I can see exactly how basic the 
design was when I first started blogging. Especially once I set up the Facebook page. 
The first graphic I used on there was very basic and cartoon like. Now I prefer to add 
in photographs of us or the kids.









Bloggers are not the old people who use mock-ups, designers also do mock-ups for their 
products. My parents actually have a sublimation set up, so I have seen how mock-ups 
work first-hand. In the past they have made mugs, t shirts and hats, all with their business 
information on. This is such a good idea as it means when they go to networking events such 
as north east expo, they can hand out things like magnets with their information on and 
not just business cards. I think this is a brilliant idea!

I would love to do a sweatshirt mockup for the boys as I find it so hard to find sweatshirts 
and hoody’s I like for them. Especially as most places do not do matching in their sizes! 
James is about to turn 7 and he is starting to go into age eight to nine tops and Freddie is 
3 and he is starting to wear four to five. Plus, most of the things on the sweatshirts in 
James size are not things that interest him. The same with Freddie, he loves dinosaurs 
but trying to find sweatshirts or hoody’s for him with them on in his size is near on impossible!

Normally I do not dress the boys in matching clothes, but if we are traveling or on a big day 
out, I do like them to be wearing either the same t shirts or the same sweatshirts so I can 
spot them easily!

For example when we flew to Majorca last year both boys were wearing the same style of
camouflage tracksuit trousers and the same colour t shirts, but the only difference was the 
colour of their hoody’s as I couldn’t get one in Freddie’s size that was black like the one 
James had and I couldn’t get a blue one in James size like the one Freddie ended up wearing!

This is a recent idea I came up with for the boys! I think the design would go down really 
well with both of them! They are both crazy about the Diplodocus since we went to 
see Dippy at Great North Museum!


















I hope they will like it!




Monday 19 August 2019

Living Arrows 2019 33/52

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!

This week was another quiet week at home, with a couple off trips to the supermarket annd of course James had two days of play scheme at the sports centre which he has loved!

Freddie has been so great with his potty training. Four weeks in and we can confidently take him out for a couple of hours with his potty!







Living Arrows

Thursday 15 August 2019

Siblings August

And so it is August and time for our Siblings post! The school summer holidays are now over half way done and we are on the count down to returning to school and Freddie starting the school foundation unit!

This month our photos were again taken on a visit to Dippy the diplodocus at Great North Museum in Newcastle. 




Monday 12 August 2019

Living Arrows 2019 32/52

Welcome to Living Arrows 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!

The boys had a great week staying with nana and gaga, just a shame the weather was pretty bad.

We ended the week with another visit to see Dippy the diplodocus at Great North Museum, where James got to try on a Dippy replica head! 








Living Arrows

Monday 5 August 2019

Living Arrows 2019 31/52

Welcome to Living Arrows 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!

This week started with a chilled day at home. Freddie has been doing so well with potty training that we ventured out twice in the first week, so mummy decided the furthest we would go would be aldi.

Tuesday saw us going to the library so James could get some new books on his summer reading challenge. 

Once the weekend came mummy and James went into town to collect his new glasses and also so mummy could go for her eye test. Then we checked out the local community fun day.






Living Arrows