Author Archive

Travel

Travel: Travel is the movement of people between relatively distant geographical locations, and can involve travel by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, airplane, or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip.

In the car,
A long way to go.
Are we nearly there yet?
For the millionth time ‘no!’

Turning left,
Then straight on.
Missed our turning,
Gone very wrong.

Children are bored,
Whinging and grumpy.
Bum is numb,
Road is bumpy.

Chocolate, treats,
Keep them happy.
Music on,
Oh no! Smelly nappy!

Play eye spy,
read or sleep.
Distracted for seconds,
Attention must keep.

Kilometres, miles,
Long way to go.
Sometimes drive fast,
Roadworks, drive slow.

Pins and needles,
Sat for too long.
Packed full of bags,
Room for us…none.

Destination, arrival!
French bread and wine!
Holiday begins now,
Stinky cheese is all mine. 😉

This poem was written with the help of my 12 year old daughter during our long journey to our gite in France!

Prose for Thought

Travel

Travel: Travel is the movement of people between relatively distant geographical locations, and can involve travel by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, airplane, or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip.

In the car,
A long way to go.
Are we nearly there yet?
For the millionth time ‘no!’

Turning left,
Then straight on.
Missed our turning,
Gone very wrong.

Children are bored,
Whinging and grumpy.
Bum is numb,
Road is bumpy.

Chocolate, treats,
Keep them happy.
Music on,
Oh no! Smelly nappy!

Play eye spy,
read or sleep.
Distracted for seconds,
Attention must keep.

Kilometres, miles,
Long way to go.
Sometimes drive fast,
Roadworks, drive slow.

Pins and needles,
Sat for too long.
Packed full of bags,
Room for us…none.

Destination, arrival!
French bread and wine!
Holiday begins now,
Stinky cheese is all mine. 😉

This poem was written with the help of my 12 year old daughter during our long journey to our gite in France!

Prose for Thought

Guest Post: Dinner Parties

Holiday: A holiday is a day set aside by custom or by law in which normal activities, especially business or work, are to be suspended or reduced. Generally holidays are intended to allow individuals to celebrate or commemorate something of cultural or religious significance. Holidays may be designated by governments, religious institutions, or other groups or organizations.

So lovely readers, as many of you who follow me may know, I am currently on holiday in France for two glorious weeks! During that time I have asked some lovely bloggers to guest post on my blog as I will obviously be eating too much cheese and drinking too much wine to blog myself! The first one is from the lovely @APluckyHeroine who I had the pleasure of meeting this year at Britmums live. If you don’t already follow her on Twitter do it, especially on a Sunday morning when she does her Sunday Shuffle and re-introduces me to wonderful songs I had forgotten about! You can find her brilliant blog here. Here is her fab first guest post!

I was on a seminar at work recently and as an icebreaker we had to tell other delegates who we would like to be stuck in a lift with and why.
I love things like this. I like the “who would you invite to a dinner party and why” question too.
The answers people give to questions like these are quite revealing, especially if you don’t give them much time to think about it and their answers are more instinctive.
One girl instantly said she would like to be stuck with a lift engineer so she could get out as soon as possible. (Practical. This idea never even crossed my mind)
Another girl said she’d like to be stuck with Gary Barlow, but then admitted it would only be so she could look at him, she wasn’t that bothered about talking to him! (stalker…)

So, because I’m in charge and it’s my game, you get to be stuck in a lift with THREE people, alive or dead (er, but not dead in the lift, obviously). It’s a big lift ok? So no claustrophobia. And there would be chocolate and wine for the duration, naturally (my rules remember).

My first person would be Queen Elizabeth I. The Virgin Queen. I remember being fascinated by the Ladybird book about her when I was a child. When we were allowed to pick a ‘free reading’ book to read at junior school I would invariable end up with that. I would look for ages at the iconic reproduction of that full length portrait of her and the Ladybird imagining of Rayleigh laying down his cloak for her to walk over a puddle.
From the age of just 25 she led a great nation, governed wisely and was respected worldwide. I would want to know how she felt about her life. Were her personal sacrifices worth it for the country she loved (arguably) more than any man, even Robert Dudley? How did she feel about her father, Henry VIII and mother, Anne Boleyn? Possibly the two most famous parents in history, one responsible for the death (murder) of the other…

My second person would be Chris Evans. He’s a bit “marmite” isn’t he? I know lots of you will be completely anti-him. I went off him a bit for a while too, but then when he started working on Radio 2’s Drivetime programme I grew to love him again. I’ve read both his autobiographies and they are fascinating. He holds his hands up to all the mistakes he’s made in his life with good humour, self deprecation and a very humble attitude. The section of the book where he writes about his split with Billie Piper had me in tears, and I hardly ever cry when reading books. (Notable exceptions include Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” and the more contemporary novel ‘Me Before You’ by Jojo Moyes at which I sobbed)
I would love to chat to him about how he turned his life around. And how he realised he even needed to. His enthusiasm and lust for life is contagious. He seems to have the greatest capacity for love and is generous to a fault (he discusses this in his books too). Did you know he has recently paid half towards the expenses of Paul Gascoigne’s rehabilitation in Arizona?

My third person would be Nelson Mandela. History is littered with these amazing people, the lone (at the start) men and women who have quietly started/caused and won revolutions. Ghandi said “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. Nelson Mandela did just that. I would like to know how he survived those long years in prison, how he kept his faith – in his cause and his God. How do people like him keep on going even in their darkest times? I would ask him how he felt on being released and how it felt to discover he was the author of such great change.

Other people on my (secret reserve) list would include Tom Hanks and David Tennant (both such great contemporary actors). Emeline Pankhurst (no need for explanation I hope). My paternal grandmother (she died when I was very young and my memories of her involve nursing homes and dementia only). Marilyn Monroe (I’m positive she had a lot more about her than people give her credit for). Jane Austen (I’d like to talk to her about how much women’s lives have changed since she wrote her books). Oscar Wilde (simply to listen to his stories). Georgiana Cavendish (Duchess of Devonshire who surrendered one of her children and stayed in a loveless, cuckolded marriage for the sake of her others). And George Clooney (well, just to look at really, you know?)

I canvassed a few friends whilst writing this too. Michael Palin, Margaret Thatcher, Ian Fleming, Florence Nightingale, Jessica Ennis, Audrey Hepburn, Ghandi and Sir Edmund Hilary all came up.

Which 3 people would you like to get stuck in a lift with ? Let me know, here or on twitter @APluckyHeroine x

Photographs

Photographs: A photograph or photo is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene’s visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see

A few weeks ago I received an email which genuinely excited me. It was from a company called PhotoBox offering me the chance to review their website and products and I just couldn’t resist.

I take photos all of the time. Not a day goes by when I haven’t got my iPhone out and am snapping away (a fancy camera is on my Christmas list, thank you Father Christmas in advance!) but although I take a lot of photos with my phone that’s generally where they tend to stay. Over a thousand of them, all either in my photo album or uploaded onto Instagram. I am rubbish at printing them out even though I have ink in my printer and proper posh photo paper. I’m not entirely sure why I’m this way, but the email from Photobox gave me just the push I was needing to actually do something with the photos I’ve taken.

I registered with their website, which was quick and easy, and began to browse. You can access the website from your phone or tablet and now they even have an app! The choice you will find is amazing!

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There are so many different products to choose from and always some amazing offers. You can buy prints, canvases, photo mugs, perfect for that someone who is difficult to buy for (we all know someone like that!) iPhone and iPad cases, blocks and many different albums. I knew that I wanted to make a photo album of my third child’s first year and so began to look at the many different designs of photo books I could choose from. I eventually chose a bright and colourful A4 book which I am thrilled with. Once you have uploaded your photos, which doesn’t take long you can either choose for PhotoBox to arrange the photos in the album for you (which I did!) or you an arrange them yourself, adding as much or as little text as you like. I absolutely love my album and it is a wonderful reminder of Baby E’s first year.

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Now, I am also always someone who changes their iPhone case as often as I change mood swings and so next on my list was one of them! Using the photos I had already uploaded I quickly designed my case…again the options are endless and I enjoyed taking my time to make the perfect case using all of my absolute favourite photos (my OH was most put out and jealous after he saw mine…so I bought him one for his birthday too!)

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Finally I decided to get a block as I thought this was a great way to display photos without needing a frame. If truth be told at the moment this is my most favourite of the three products I chose…the photo is perfect, the quality fantastic and it just looks amazing. I plan on purchasing many more of these!

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Delivery was very quick, quicker than the estimates given on the website and I received emails all through the process which kept me up to date with the status of my order. So…if you have, like me, hundreds of photos sitting on your phone or computer I would highly recommend you pay a visit to http://www.photobox.co.uk/ and do some amazing things with them, so the memories snapped in those photos can last forever.

Slinkiness

Slinkiness: sleek and sinuous in movement or outline; especially : following the lines of the figure in a gracefully flowing manner (a slinky evening gown)

So, as I am writing this post I have returned from a weekend at my mum’s. A weekend that started with a hangover and a Macdonalds for breakfast and continued with a birthday party and family Sunday lunch. Not a weekend for losing weight at all, and as always I exerted absolutely no willpower and stuffed my face so full that by Sunday I felt physically sick. Like a child in a sweet shop my eyes were bigger than my stomach and by the end of the weekend my stomach was bigger than pretty much anything else.

Now I’ve been meaning to link up with the new linky in town for a couple of weeks. The #slinkylinky where two lovely ladies @ladyemsyand @Mrsfinn86have started their baby weight loss adventures and are blogging about them, encouraging others to join in. However…I have been coming up with many excuses, like; I’m going to France (today!!) so there is no point in starting before then or…I’ve had a bad day I deserve a treat or…I’ll just eat all the bad stuff in the house so it’s not here anymore and then I have any temptation, before going out and promptly buying yet more unhealthy food. Food has always been my comfort and ever since I put on over four stone with my first pregnancy, going from 9 stone to 13 stone, I have battled with my weight and regularly yo-yo up and down. I have tried all sorts, intolerance diets (which worked but was bloody hard work) Weightwatchers, South Beach, Slimming World, 5:2 (for about three hours before realising it is ridiculous!) and whilst I am very good at losing weight, I am not very good at keeping it off and it always creeps back on again, usually along with some more! Each time I have had a child I’ve ended up at 13 stone again and now I know I am not having anymore (probably) there is no excuse!

So….this slinky linky has come along when once again I am at my upper limit for being happy with my weight. I am not happy. Whilst I am not ridiculously huge my BMI is 27, which is classed as overweight, and my clothes are all far too tight. I can’t stand to see myself in photos and generally feel very uncomfortable. My tummy still very much looks as though there is a baby still inside it!

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So…today is the day I am finally going to link up and start. I can’t promise I will be any good at this when I am in France, for cheese is my greatest weakness and I cannot ever resist it, even though I am properly lactose intolerant! But I shall try and when I get back I will endeavour to kick some lardy ass!
Starting weight…11st 2 and a 1/4lbs

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Target weight: 9 stone 7lbs (Oh how I hope I get there lol!)

Slinkylinky


Thank you @ladyemsy and @Mrsfinn86 for inspiring me! X

http://tiasmum12.com

Irritability

Irritability: Irritability is an excessive response to stimuli. The term is used for both the physiological reaction to stimuli and for the pathological, abnormal or excessive sensitivity to stimuli; It is usually used to refer to anger or frustration.

Easily irritated,
Wound up, cross.
Can’t help this feeling,
Happiness lost.

Simple things,
Drive me insane.
Frustration bubbling,
Nothing’s the same.

Long days,
Longer nights.
Tiredness kicks in,
Reaching new heights.

Feelings fragile,
Tempers frayed.
Impatience begins,
Rationality swayed.

Fists clench,
Teeth grind.
Deep breathing helps,
To clear troubled mind.

Close the door,
Sink under bubbles.
A nice warm bath,
Soothes all my troubles.

Apologies needed,
Accepted, forgiven.
Positivity needed,
Optimism driven.

All forgotten,
Move on once more.
Irritations gone,
Anger no more.

Prose for Thought

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