Wedding Planning Can Be Child's Play When The Kids Help Out

When there is a big family event coming up, the kids seem so enthusiastic to help and get involved. But when it’s a wedding that is fast approaching, chances are the bride is quite keen for things to go her way. Still, there are plenty of opportunities for the kids to get involved. After all, a wedding is a huge event, and it takes a lot of planning to get it right. Children are pretty creative, so maybe it’s worth hearing a few of their ideas!

Whether it’s your sister, cousin, or even your own wedding coming up, the kids are going to be excited. Many brides love the idea of the little ones in the family dressing up and playing a part in the ceremony. Page boys, flower girls, ring bearers, and bridesmaids are all ideal roles for the children to play. It’s a huge responsibility for them too. They will have to practice and make sure they know where to go and what to do. Some children are more than willing to toss in their own ideas. Others may need a little encouragement.

Thanks to Flickr.com for the image

Kids can also make things for your wedding that will delight the bride and all the guests. Token sweets or biscuits can be the perfect way to thank the guests for attending. They may even make some of the dishes for the reception banquet! Perhaps they would like to get involved in selecting or designing the wedding invitations? You can look online or visit Pure Invitation for personalised wedding invitations, you may find some ideas to work with.

Older children may relish the chance to design the layout of the room or even some of the decorations. There are so many tasks to complete for a wedding, it makes sense to accept help wherever it may come from. Many DIY or uniquely designed weddings require a lot of creativity. And kids are very good at the little details too. Why not ask them to colour in some paper petals for the happy couple? Garlands, curled ribbons, and table decorations can all be made simply and easily if you would like your children involved.

Older kids can also be quite good at putting together track or playlists for your reception! And some are very keen performers. If you would like your children involved in the wedding, why not encourage them to dance, sing or play a musical instrument? If it’s your wedding, it can become a very special day when your children are so involved. Of course, some kids are shy, and others aren’t keen to get too involved.

Can your kids plan your whole wedding? It’s not easy for anyone to plan a wedding on their own. But your children may be able to come up with some great ideas and easy ways to help you manage the day. Who knows, they may have found an app or two that can help you get everything organised more easily. Would you leave your entire wedding planning to them? Probably not, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to see what they came up with!

**Collaborative Post**

Pumkin Baby

Rupert spotted a mini pumpkin whilst we were doing a quick shop in Morrison's the other day and automatically started calling it his baby!

In the past few days this pumpkin has sat at the dinner table with us,

slept on the floor next to his bed,

had bed time cuddles on the sofa with us.

After his full 10 hours at nursery yesterday Rupert was more pleased to see his 'baby' than me.

He gave it a zillion kisses and sat down to watch the iPad with it.

Oscar lovingly threw it on the floor and it started leaking juice so today I have to find a fake replacement or another pumpkin before Rupert realises that his baby is no more.

As for pumpkin baby no 1, I may turn into pumpkin chips!

PenPals And Smiggle

Over the summer holidays I teamed up with the guys from Smiggle for the campaign

#backtosmiggle.

Noah was teamed up with www.crummymummy.co.uk daughter Bluebell.

When I was younger I loved writing to different pen-pals,

I had one in France, one in Germany and one in England.

The excitement of waiting for their letters to arrive after I had posted mine was great.

Something you don't get from an email.

I wanted Noah to understand how exciting snail mail can be.

Smiggle sent him everything he could possibly need to write his very first letter,

a notepad,

colouring pencils,

coloured gel pens,

a prepaid envelope,

a rubber and a snap bracelet that is also a ruler!

Having all the letter writing gear from Smiggle help make it more exciting, as Noah has been after some Smiggle goodies for a while.

Noah's not the best writer and would rather draw than write a sentence, so I though doing his letter would be great for him, as he'd see writing isn't always boring and its not just something you have to do at school.

I'm sure its a boy thing, as soon as I could write I was writing lists and letters and anything.

Boys I don't think get the joy that comes from putting pen to paper.

With a bit of encouragement Noah got stuck into writing his letter to Bluebell.

Noah didn't just want to send a letter he was more excited about sending Bluebell a drawing.

Noah is really amazing when it comes to drawing, and if I was him I would want to send my pictures to everyone!

Once all was done, he was more than happy to run along to the post office and push his letter through the big red post box!

Noah waiting rather impatiently for his letter from Bluebell and when it arrived he ripped it open with a massive smile on his face.

Bluebell had used her secret spy pen, so once I told Noah this he ran upstairs to find his and to uncover her secret message!

Since receiving his letter Noah is now wanting to find more pen pals.

So I'm now on a hunt for letter writing buddies for No.

If you have a child around his age and they wanted a pen pal let me know in either the comments below or by email me and we can hopefully sort something out.

:)

A big thanks to Smiggle UK for sending us the goodies!

Book Round Up

We read a lot as a family most months, but this month saw me return to the book world.

I love reading but I don't ever seem to have the time these days.

With the boys back at school and Rupert spending a whole day at nursery I have been able to switch off and curl up with a book.

I finally read The Girl On The Train, and I loved it. I read it in a couple of day and was ridiculously upset once it was over!

The boys were also sent some lovely books last month, the first one was

Little Adventures - Leafy the pet leaf.*

From the award-winning Philip Ardagh, and rising illustration talent Elissa Elwick, comes a brand-new picture book series! Meet the Little Adventurers – Finnegan, Sprat, Floss and Peanut. Each week they meet in their top-secret shed HQ, ready to share their fun with you! This week, Sprat can’t seem to find his cat, Shadow, anywhere. And he absolutely has to have a pet – it’s bring in a pet day! So, instead, he finds a leaf, draws a little face on it and… Ta-Da! Sprat has a pet: Leafy! But can you really have a leaf as a pet? With an activity idea and an information page with every story in the series, the Little Adventurers four will encourage hours of immersive play, and will ignite the imagination of curious adventurers everywhere.

The twins loved this book, they love anything outdoorsy and Ru loved the pictures.

The twins have made pets out of pretty much anything since reading this book,

We've had a couple of pet leaves,

pet rocks,

pet sticks,

pet sweets!

It's a wonderful read and the illustrations are great. they really engaging.

The twins favourite adventurer was Finnegan as he reminded them of Rupert!

If you're brave, helpful, honest, good to your planet and kind to animals (even ones that don't do much ... like boring worms) then you, too, can be a LITTLE ADVENTURER.

You can find Little Adventurers over on amazon for £6.99

Noah was sent 'Night Zoo Keeper and The Spying Giraffes'* and he also was signed up to the summer writing club that went along with this book, but after a couple of goes he decided his ps4 was much more exciting!

A complete mum fail, as I should have made him do it more as when he was doing to activities online he was loving it.

The book follows Tom on a journey into the world of night!

Tom was told when he was younger all about the world of night from his grandma, but I don't think he truly believed it was real until he was there and was told he was the new night zookeeper and he had a mission to help save the world of night from the dark evil of Nulth.

I loved this book just as much as Noah did, we both laughed and we eager to find out what happens on the next page.

This is a great book to help keep the magic of the imagination strong!

If you want to find out more about the writing course why not pop over too www.nightzookeeper.com

You can also find the book on amazon for £6.99

The next book Noah has been reading is The Hundred-Mile An - Hour Dog Master of Disguise* by Jeremy Strong.

A brand new adventure for the Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Dog gives us more laugh-out-loud capers for Trevor and his ridiculously speedy dog, Streaker. With mysterious pet-kidnappings going on all around and Dad threatening to send Streaker to behaviour boot camp, Trevor needs to come up with a way to keep Streaker safe. Enter best friend Tina and her mum's hair extensions and dye . .

Noah loved this book, as he laughed most of the way through it, and Streaker reminded him of Ray.

Ray and Streaker could be sole mates!

Before we got to the end of the book Noah was already guessing who the pet-nappers were.

He's already given the book to his best friend to read.

You can buy this book from amazon for only £5.99

The last book I want to share with you, is one I was sent.

Mindful Mama Happy Baby.*

This book has over 60 calming techniques and creative activities for babies and toddlers.

The activities are easy and very do-able, and don't cost the earth.

From homemade play dough to water marking.

After doing some Mindful exercises when I went to therapy last year, when I heard of this book I really wanted to give it a read.

I would have loved this book as a new mummy.

I highly recommend it as a new baby gift or a gift for a pregnant friend.

Ru and I have done some of the activities together and homemade play dough is on our to do list.

Ru is play dough mad so I know he'll love making him own!

Mindful Mama: Happy Baby introduces mindfulness concepts to help busy parents counter the new stresses parenthood brings, find space to enjoy a little peace amid the chaos of daily life and bond with their child through mindful play.

You can get this from amazon for £12.99

A couple of our other monthly favourites have been;

Oi Frog

We're Going On A Bear Hunt

10 Little Dinosaurs

One Ted Falls Out Of Bed

*Books marked with a star, were books that were sent to me for free, in return for an honest review.

All thoughts are my own.

Attacked

When it comes to walking Ray, that's Jon's job, he likes to get his 10,000 steps in and two dog walks a day does this.

On the days that Jon is in too much pain from his back or he's busy with the shop I take over.

Usually I take Noah or Ru along for some company, but last night I wanted to clear my head and have some quiet time.

I didn't expect for our normal peaceful walk to end so abruptly.

Pretty much 5 minutes into our walk and this little brown dog came running at Ray.

Ray is always on the lead as he's a runner and if he catches a scent of a rabbit he is off.

This dog looked as though it was coming to play but in a blink of an eye he/she locked onto Ray and put a hole in him!

My poor baby was screaming in pain and this dog wanted more.

I put myself between this dog and Ray in a hope it would stop, Ray sensing I may get hurt bared his teeth and did what we call his devil growl.

The own ripped the dog away and put it back in their house.

Both the owners came over and we intensely sorry and offered to take us to the vets.
They let me know where they lived as on this one occasion I didn't take my phone out with me so I couldn't take his number.

Ray walked home ok and as soon as he got in doors he went to pieces.
He started shaking, and foaming at the mouth.

We rang the out of hours vets and they said we'd have to go to a vets in Maidstone.
Jon rushed off with Ray whilst I tried to keep it together and get the boys dinner on.
Within 2 minutes of Jon leaving I had an outburst where I had to call my dad.

He managed to calm me down and I was able to get on with sorting the boys out.

Ray was very lucky, the vet said if the bite had been just a cm to the left it would have done some serious damage.
He was happy not to staple the wound,  but we have to make sure its kept uber clean.
He's been given some antibiotics to keep any infection at bay and the cone of shame to wear.
 

The cm hole in his side isn't much, but my poor little baby has had his confidence shattered.

We keep finding him standing in front of walls, with his cone up against it.

His head is hanging so low that he's literally dragging his head along the floor.

He's depressed!

He seems to have lost his trust in us, I took him on that walk and I wonder if he blames me?

:(

We're going to take him to Pets at Home today so we can spoil him and then Jon is going to take a trip round to the other dog owners house to talk vet fees!

Getting Messy In The Kitchen With Vivid Toy's Real Baking Sets

Stained Glassed Biscuits!

I used to bake all the time when it was just me and Noah, but then when the twins came along I thought it was too messy and there was too many of them (children) and not enough of me.

I didn't want the mess.

When I did bake, I always usually end up buying one of the character cake mixes,

1 because I think they appeal to the kids more and

2 because I think its easier and less hassle.

When in fact, the kids don't really care about the character, they just want to have the fun of baking up something yummy with you and the pre done cake mixes really aren't  as fun, as they take next no time at all.
They also always end up tasting rather naff.

Baking should be about having fun and getting messy.
Baking from scratch really isn't that hard and it doesn't take that much effort to do.
You always have 100x more fun too.

We were recently sent the Vivid Toys new baking range

Real Baking

As Noah and the twins are now back at school I thought I'd have some one on one baking fun with Ru.
He loves getting messy so I knew he'd be game.

I picked out the Cookie Kit and searched the web for a recipe.

I came across a Mary Berry one -

What You Need:

175g Softened butter,

100g caster sugar,

225g plain flour,

20 boiled sweets.

How to make the biscuits:

Preheat the over to 160*C

Line two baking sheets with non stick paper,

Mix the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon until smooth,

Add the flour and use your hands to make the dough,

Sprinkle flour on the work surface and using a rolling pin roll out the dough until its around 1cm thick.

Cut out your shapes and place on the baking trays.

Smash the boiled sweets with a rolling pin and sprinkle into the middle of the biscuits.

Place in the oven for 12 - 15 minutes.

Take out the oven and leave to cool!

The Cookie kit, came with pretty much everything we needed minus the ingredients.

We had plenty of cutters to choose from and there's even a handy dough guide, so you can roll out the dough to the perfect thickness.
The rolling pin was easy enough for Ru to use with a little guidance.

It was great fun getting messy with Rupert and our biscuits turned out great!

I love how pretty they looked when I held them up to the window!

Something we will be making again.

They'd make lovely Christmas gifts for the grandparents.

You can buy the Vivid Toy Real Baking Cookie Kit from amazon for £14.99

Coming up - Twin Bake Off

Clearing My Head

I've said before going to the beach always helps clear my head.

Yesterday whilst we had a house viewing we all headed off to the beach.

Jon has just had nose surgery so he wasn't up for doing much walking, so he sat on the wall whilst the twins and Noah ran around trying all the work out machines and I sat on the beach with Ru.

Ru threw stones and ran away from the waves and I sat and let my head clear.
I'm not going to sit around and let myself have a pity party for one, I'm just going to get on with life.
If I sit around in this black hole for much longer, it will be 10x harder to come out.

I made up a list of things that I should do, and told myself just to take one day at a time, yes there will be shit days but that's life, not everything is rosy!

The boys being at school will give me the time to sit back and relax a little and get the stuff I need to get done with out the constant battles going on with them around.

Rupert is at nursery on Tuesday's & Friday's so that will give me time if I wanted to pop out on my own for a coffee and a chill!

I'll be able to put some love back into the blog, as lately its been lacking that and I'm sure it shows.

Yesterday I finally set up my Epson eco tank printer and set about printing off some pintable's that will help me get back on track!

Daily, weekly and monthly sheets that I found from elizaellis.blogspot.co.uk, and from www.welliesandlemonade.com I found 'My life and goals planner' printable.

I've already started putting them to use, I need to get myself a new planner/journal as I packed my other ones away and Jon popped them in the loft so they would be out of the way when we had viewings!

I also printed off my lovely blog header design as I just love it so much and hopefully seeing that every day when I walk down the stairs will rekindle my love affair with my blog!

Coming up soon a monthly round up of the books we've been reading!
x

Date Night || Review

Date nights aren't something Jon and myself do enough off.

Usually our date nights include a take away and a film.

Nothing exciting or original there, so when I found out about www.getdatenight.co.uk a monthly subscription box delivering fun and creative date night boxes right to your door, I was more than willing to give it ago.

Our box was a wine tasting box!

Wine tasting is something that's always interested me and of course I LOVE wine and I'm more than happy to try out new ones!

What came in our box;

A selection of wines,

Instructions on how to taste wine,

2 Wine scoring cards,

2 secret envelopes,

A mini box of chocolate,

A wine & wishes quiz card.

Grow your own wine seed kit.

We switched the TV off and set up the coffee table.

We were planning to dress up but both decided that we were a bit too lazy for that!

Tasting the different wines was great, I'm not a red wine girl so I was dreading the Reds in the selection but to be fair one of them was really nice!

One of the white wines - La Perle d'Arche was gorgeously sweet and I'm now on the hunt to find it in our local supermarket! 

I completely failed on the quiz which meant Jon one with only a couple of correct answers, all of which was guesses but it meant he won the secret prize in envelope 2.

Wish tickets!

I'm sure he'll be cashing in some of those very soon.

We both giggled lots and it was nice to actually do something completely different, even though we were at home it didn't feel like the usual stuck at home dates we normal have.

We both learned new things and both had fun.

It was nice to focus on something other than the children or the rubbish that's on TV these days.

We had fun just being in each others company.

I think as a couple we really need to make the effort to spend one on one time enjoying each other.

We don't want to become two people who share a house and look after the monsters that we both created.

The date night box gave us that opportunity as it isn't as simple as it would be if we didn't have the kids.

We'd be able to go out and about if we wanted.

Having a date night box sent to us, gave us an exciting and fun date night that we could have in the comfort of our own home and with the kids all tucked up safe in their own beds.

No disruptions for them and no stress for us!

Would I buy a date night box myself?

I think I would!

I think its a fab idea, especially for parents like us who find it hard and stressful to leave the kids with babysitters.

A different date every month, it takes the pressure off you for trying to organise something, it give you something you'd probably never have thought about doing and it lands right on your doorstep!

You don't even need to leave the house to plan the date!

AMMMAZING!

The Date Night box is just about to launch and if you sign up on www.getdatenight.co.uk you can get 50% off your first box.

**PR Sample**

Struggling To Get Back To Normal

The kids are back at school and the twins start school full time as of Monday, but I'm still finding myself struggling to get back to "normal".

I'm constantly tired and teary, this summer holiday has truly ruined me.

The twins behaviour over the holidays had me questioning if I was parenting properly or if I was just becoming a complete failure.

I thought it had got better, but this morning they decided throwing unused pull ups out their window onto the roof was a fabulous idea.

Not something people looking to buy our house would approve of.

The stress of moving to a new place has started to creep up on me.

I'm excited of course I am, but its another upheaval for the boys, much bigger than last time as they are all in a school that they are enjoying.

I'm not going to be near to my family and I'm starting to miss them already even though we haven't even moved yet.

I'm not sure if that's even possible!?

Is it?

I have so many fun and interesting reviews to share with you but I just cant bring myself to sit at the computer and write them down.

The thought just drains me.

Blogging shouldn't be a chore it should be something fun!

I went away to a spa for the night with my friend Jenny to de-stress and I  had a great time but the moment I returned home I wanted to turn around and head back out of it.

I've had my head stuck in a book for the past few days trying to ignore everything, but now the book is finished I'm brought back to reality with a slap.

I feel like I need someone to give me a shake and tell me to pull it together,

Nothing good comes from sticking your head down a hole!

Not Babies Any More

This week has seen the twins walk into a new life chapter!

Starting School!!

I wasn't 100% sure they were ready, but it turns out they were and I wasn't!

Watching them walk to school in their uniforms was so bizarre, something I didn't think would happen so soon.

I kept thinking back to seeing them in their incubators hours after they were born and surely they were still far too little to be going to school!

The twins have loved this week, they were ready to start last week when Noah did, and found it unfair they weren't allowed to go.

This week they are only going for half days, next week will see them attending school properly, I've even signed them up for an after school club!

I'm not sure what came over me, Lego Club sounds fun and I'm sure they'll love it just as much as they love being in their class.

Their teacher is already smitten with them and their crazy behaviour from the past weeks has since disappeared!

Today I returned home from a mini spa break to find they had been given their FIRST EVER reading books!

They told me they could do work with me and we ever so keen to sit down and have me read their new books with them.

I'm so glad they are loving school, and I can't wait to see they handle a full school day next week!

xx

Adventure Days With Sharky and George

~ Beware this is a heavy picture post ~

The last week of the summer holidays we were invited along to an adventure day in Hyde Park run by the fabulous Sharky and George team.

There were three teams, the team leaders were Sharky, George and Tom.

Noah went off into Sharky's team and the twins went in George's team,

Alex was pretty up for it but Oscar became rather shy and didn't want to join in with out me by his side.

Each team would do a different activity and then swap once it was finished.
There was Rocket building,
Survival training and Circus skills.

As soon as Oscar saw they were building rockets his shyness disappeared and he got stuck in.

George was fantastic with the twins and really made an effort making sure they felt ok and it took no time for them to warm to him.

They loved watching the rocket shoot into the sky and then run around trying to catch it.

I had to jump out the way from falling rockets a few times!

Whilst the twins were busy shooting rockets into the sky, Noah was over with Sharky learning some circus skills.

Noah doesn't have the best hand to eye coordination but he gave it his best shot and once he got the hang of it he loved it. 

Once they had all finished with their first activity they went on to the next.
The twins went over to Sharky and learnt some circus skills and Noah went off with Tom to leave some survival skills.

The twins enjoyed this just as much as building their rockets.
When the time came to switch groups the twins needed the loo, so Jenny took them off to the loo's and I watched Noah's group build their rockets.

By the time the twins came back and ran across the park to Tom, the group had finished and they were on the way back.
I don't think the twins were too gutted as they didn't seem to like the idea of eating bugs.
Unlike Noah who proudly announced he ate a maggot!

To which I replied if you can eat maggots surely you should be able to eat potatoes!

The guys got all the kids to sit down on the mats and decorate there special Sharky & George hats any way they liked!

Alex and Oscar got me to write their names on theirs and then they drew a few scribbles. Noah decided to draw his favourite Pokémon on his!
His Charmander looked as though it was sporting a rather large "trouser snake" to which me and Jenny giggled away at, but then that resulted in Noah hiding his hat as soon as he got home.
So no pictures to share of that.

After they were done decorating their hats, they all had a snack and some ice cold water.
Then George got out his marshmallow gun!
Who knew those existed because I surely didn't!

The kids all lined up in front with their mouths hanging open, ready to catch the marshmallows.
Noah was one of the first to catch one, which I'm not surprised about.
He can open his mouth extremely wide when sweet things are around.



Alex was far too busy sitting on the rug enjoying his snack and water to get involved with the marshmallow catching. He was so into his snack that he didn't even move when kids were jumping over him to get to the marshmallows.

The day the consisted of doing Sock Bubble experiments, big bubble blowing and races.

The only way to end an absolutely awesome day was with a water balloon fight of course!

Seeing the kids all screech with laughter was lovely to see.

The fight to get the wettest was on!

I think Tom won that, as he had a few land right on his head!

Before the guys said goodbye they got all the kids to sign the board with their name.
George helped Alex write his and I think Sharky help Oscar.

The boys had a fantastic time and they loved the guys!
They spoke about them all the way home.

Not only do the guys at Sharky and George do Adventure Days they also host the best kids parties ever!

If you'd like to find out more about Sharky & George why not head to their website

www.sharkyandgeorge.com