My girls are mad about Fairy Tales: the kind where the Princess and Prince fall in love and live happily ever after. LBG spent our entire three week trip to Arizona planning her wedding in intense detail: she will be wearing my white pool dress, her sister will carry her flowers, DH must wear his black jacket and I, I will drive the pink unicorns. Magical, right? The thing is, when you talk to her properly about weddings, much as she … [Read more...]
Back to School Games and Land’s End #roughandtumbleplay campaign
A couple of weeks ago The Girls and I were invited by Land's End to spend the afternoon at Freightliner's Farm in Islington. It's a City Farm that I am familiar with, as Islington was one of my old stomping grounds in my past life as a nanny. But it didn't feature the touchable Ben Shephard then. … [Read more...]
Things to do in Phoenix with children
Did I mention we are in Arizona? On a House Exchange? Did I also mention the pool? The Monster Truck? Don't get me started on the supermarket baking aisles will you? Travelling with children is always challenging, particularly when they are quite young. I try not to think about the last time we travelled to America. With a baby and a two-year-old. By the end of the flight I wanted to gouge my eyes out, especially when someone, as … [Read more...]
If I were editing 50 Shades of Grey
Yes, I've read it. I've read all three books in the much-talked-about trilogy. Nothing appeals to me more than Mummy Porn. Not that I knew there was Mummy Porn until I started reading 50 Shades of Grey. Who thought that up? It's an annoying categorisation because it does a disservice to those of us who have children. Are we so special, so cotton-wool-brained, that we need our very own brand of porn? Are we not the right readership for real … [Read more...]
Five easy ways to get more traffic from Pinterest
1. Advertise yourself: show people that you are on Pinterest. Add follow buttons and pin it buttons to your blog. 2. Rename the pictures you use. The picture title is also grabbed by Pinterest when people pin your images, so make sure that pinners don't need to edit it. 3. On which note, add text to your photos, so that people can see at a glance what the pin relates to. This helps with repins. 4. Take the time to take clear usable … [Read more...]
We have reached the #tippingpoint. Stop the Killing.
I'll be brief, because time is of the essence. There are people dying. More specifically, there are children dying. Children. My children are 2 and 4. If someone killed them you can bet your ass I would make it my life's work to hunt down the person who did it and revisit their crime upon them in as slow and fascinatingly painful a way as possible. The parents of the Syrian children murdered in Houla last Friday can't do this because they … [Read more...]
Perfect Picnik Alternative
Everyone who is a fan of Picnik will know that its days are numbered: from 19th April it will disappear, assimilated into the great Google black hole. This is the 'Biggest Disaster Ever' for me asd I came fairly late to the Picnik party in the first place. I've been wishing and hoping that the ideal alternative picture editing site will present itself, and it did. There are whispers around the interweb that Pic Monkey is the new Picnik. It … [Read more...]
