Mami To Five - Life: The good, the bad and the ugly bits!

You know, that elephant dinosaur!

November 27, 2017

The one thing that definitely can’t be said about my youngest is that he has a lack of imagination! When his older siblings talk about dreams they have had, he will join in with some wild and wonderful tales about his own dreams. He talks in his sleep so I am well aware of the fact that he does actually have some fantastic dreams, but I often wonder how much he makes up as he goes along.

Being a typical four year old little boy he’s never really been one to sit and read, write or colour. He’s far appier bouncing around being a Power Ranger Transformer, making ships out of pillows, or staring goggle eyed at a TV screen. So every time he shows any interest in sitting and actually drawing I try and take full advantage of it. One of the ways he’s always happy to draw pictures is when we get the chalks out and he goes to town on our living room floor. It’s painted concrete so ideal for using chalks on, and him drawing on it means I then have to actually clean the floor, which is a chore I tend to put off far longer than I should!

Dinosaurs have been a big thing with O this year and when he wanted to get the chalks out this week I wasn’t surprised that they played a big part in his drawings. His story to go around them made me giggle though so I thought I would share them with you!

I would like you all to meet O’s Elephant Dinosaur and before you ask no it isn’t a mammoth silly, can’t you see her spines on her back!?

O says that this Elephant Dinosaur is called “Inmhinw” and she doesn’t live in our world. She lives in a world with lots of other dinosaurs like spinosauruses and T-Rex’s. But she doesn’t fight with them. She has a baby inside her belly (She has quite a few legs herself but her baby seems to be a mutant jellyfish baby dinosaur because it has LOADS of legs!) But the baby has now come out of the Elephant Dinosaur’s Fairy (yes that’s what our family calls it, don’t judge!) and is going away to live on it’s own because baby Elephant Dinosaurs don’t need their Mamis. I made the mistake of saying that there were TWO baby Elephant Dinosaurs, the one inside the tummy and the one on the right hand side, it seems I was very much mistaken and this is a picture that takes us through time all in one image!

I thought that would be all from this little world of his, he disappeared for a bit, but then came back announcing that he’d forgotten someone!

This is ‘human with a snake’ seriously, this kid couldn’t even say Mami until he was two and a half and now he’s calling us Humans!

The snake, which I first mistook for a balloon, is going to be turned into a spoon so Human can eat cereal. I didn’t dare ask what Human was going to put his cereal in. Maybe he was planning to eat it right out of the box?

Human and his spoon snake live in the same world as the elephant dinosaur but they don’t hurt each other. Human can control the elephant dinosaur with the two buttons on his spines. The one makes him go fast and run around, the other does something else.

At this point he got bored and left. I have no idea whether Human managed to turn his snake into a spoon, what that second button does, or what happened to the baby elephant dinosaur. Will it go and find it’s own human? Talk about being left on a cliffhanger!!!

I love listening to the stories he makes up, even ones without pictures to back them up. It makes me wonder if I have a future writer (and illustrator) in the house!

Do your kids have wild imaginations too?

Choosing Christmas gifts for men from Uncommon goods

November 2, 2017

Everyone loves a bit of shopping. I actually hate physically going to the shops but I can quite happily window shop on the internet for hours at a time, especially when I am looking to buy gifts for family and friends. One of the wonderful things about the internet is that you are now able to easily see what is available to buy, all across the globe. In theory this is fantastic, but quite often you are faced with a ‘we only ship to the continental united states’ Or ‘international shipping not available at this time’ which means you either a)need to find a similar product available in the UK, or b) need to know someone who lives in that country to borrow their address. But then you are effectively paying double the shipping costs and also putting someone else out.

I am always quite excited when I find a website that are happy to deliver goods to the UK so imagine how pleased I was when I was approached by the website Uncommon Goods to take a look at their website and not only was international shipping available but they also had the option to view prices in your own currency. So much easier than trying to figure out exchange rates!

I’m not sure if it’s just me but I usually find it particularly difficult choosing gifts for the men in my life. However whilst I was browsing I kept coming across things I thought Lee, or my dad, would love. In fact the entire selection of men’s gifts was quite broad and I expect you’d easily find something for even the fussiest of men.

Here’s a small selection of items I thought Lee would love this Christmas. He usually ends up with smellies, funny socks and a new video game or gadget. These things are all just a little bit different from the usual run of the mill gifts and vary in price from under £10 for the mug to £136 for the handmade, driftwood pen.

Having read into Uncommon Goods a little bit more I was quite impressed by the way they run their business. Not only do they strive to offer unique gifts for men, women and children (let’s just say they certainly live up to their name!) They also seem very ethically minded on the whole, with about one third of their products incorporating recycled or upcycled products. They also seem to appreciate the environment. They endeavour to supply products that are created in harmony with the envirnment without harming people, plants or animals, which in the plastic, throwaway age that we are currently in, is quite hard to come by.

I loved the fact that the artists of the handmade items have their photo right there next to the items they make, you can read a bit about them and the other items they make. This makes everything so much more personal for me and makes me feel that UncommonGoods actually care about their creators and employees. They don’t just mass import cheap products from China just so they can sell them for huge profit!

If you are looking for something that’s just a little bit different this Christmas I really do recommend you give Uncommon Goods a browse. You might just be pleasantly surprised!

This post was made in collaboration with Uncommon Goods, however all thoughts about the website and the products are honest and purely my own.

Migraine or meningitis. Would you always know the difference?

October 16, 2017

Did you know that migraines and viral meningitis share a lot of the same symptoms? Until last week, neither did I!

We had a bit of a scare last week, which I will tell you about below, and I thought it only right to share the information I learnt with you all. Just in case the same thing happened to someone else.

As you can see from this infographic that I threw together the symptoms of both migraine and meningitis, although there are differences, are actually very similar. If they are happening to you, and you are a migraine sufferer, then you are highly likely to pass them off as just another migraine.

Please, if you have a temperature, stiff neck, rash or just that your head hurts more than it ever has before, GO TO THE DOCTOR, it is better to get it checked out and be nothing serious, than leaving it until it’s too late!

Here is our story.

On Monday morning LM was woken up, before the alarm, with an excruciating headache. It was so painful she was in tears. I gave her painkillers and packed her back off to bed. I did note that she felt a little warm, but she’d been bundled up under her blankets and was crying, so I didn’t think anything of it.

A few hours later her head was still agony and the light was hurting her eyes. My first thought was migraine. She’s never had migraines before but there is a strong family history on both mine and Lee’s sides of the family. I gave her migraleave and told her to go back to bed as sleep was about the only thing that would help her.

At 3.30 her headache was a lot worse. Again she felt a little warm but again I didn’t think too much of it. It wasn’t a raging temperatur. But being as neither the Ibuprofen or the migraleave touched the pain and she seemed to be getting worse I rang and spoke to the emergency doctor. We were asked to go down straight away and were seen within 10 minutes.

The doctor barely looked at her. She took her temp, asked of she had a cold, sore throat, bad ears etc and then turned to me. All the while LM was getting paler and paler.

‘You need to take her straight to hospital, I think she might have meningitis’

She then backtracked saying not to worry too much and that if it was it would more than likely be viral meningitis, which is quite common, and that she didn’t think it would be bacterial meningitis. I always knew there was a difference but in all honesty? Even after 16 years of being a parent I had never really thought about it. Just that meningitis was a bad thing. A REALLY bad thing!

We were only there because of a migraine!

We got half way back down the corridor to the waiting room when LM announced that she was going to be sick. I had visions of her vomiting everywhere but I managed to grab one of the receptionists and she put her hands straight on a cardboard sick bowl that just happened to be laying around. Once she was feeling a little better we went off armed with a stack of sick bowls to get us to the hospital.

They were fantastic in the Paediatric Assessment Unit. She was given a bed and the curtains were drawn to block the light a bit as soon as we walked through the door. She fell back asleep straight away.

Her temp was 38.4c so she was stripped down to her tshirt and given paracetamol in the hopes to get it down. Both the junior doctor and the consultant were hopeful that it was just a migraine but agreed Meningitis was a possibility and the consultant explained the similarities between the two.

She spent the next 6 hours either sleeping or crying when nurses taking her temperature would tut, take her blanket away and aimed the fan on her. Occasionally the doctors would come in turn the fan off and put the blanket back on because she was upset and said she was cold. Her temp still didn’t go down, she kept being sick and her head was still not getting any better. So finally she was given IV paracetamol, put on a drip and admitted to the ward.

Her infection markers were slightly elevated but, as with her temperature, not overly worrying for the doctors. We just had to wait and see how she went over night. She had a lot better nights sleep than I did. I woke every time she moved and every hour when the nurses did her obs.

By 5am her temperature finally dipped back into the 37s.

By 9am she had managed to stay awake for an hour, longer than any point in the previous 36 hours. Her head still hurt and she still looked unwell but she ate breakfast without being sick. Around 11am, when the doctor said she could go home, that heavy feeling of worry that had been weighing me down since we were sat in the doctors surgery the day before finally lifted.

It turns out LM had a virus AND a migraine. The temperature made her migraine worse and just confused matters for the doctors. But they all said she was definitely in the right place because she was so badly affected. At home she was still being sick, her temperature still fluctuated and her head still hurt but after a good couple of days she was mostly better. Just tired.

I am so grateful for the doctors and nurses, and the receptionist who can magic up sick bowls, for being there for us. We might complain about waiting lists (I know I do) and rubbish service, but when it really matters, in an emergency, we can definitely say the NHS step up to the mark!

Review and Giveaway ~ Win one of two Mokuru Fidget Toys!

September 28, 2017

Fidget toys really are the ‘in thing’ this year and if your house is anything like mine you have spinners of all shapes and sizes, and with lots of broken bits, coming out of your ears! But move over fidget spinner, there’s a new kid on the block!

When I was first offered to review the Mokuru fidget toy I was a bit dubious it would be a hit with my kids. After all, it is basically just a big colourful piece of wood! But then we looked at some videos on YouTube and learnt about all the tricks you can do, they were all very excited and couldn’t wait to try it out!

What I love about the Mokuru fidget toy is that it is a very simple design, so no possibility of bits breaking off or fingers getting stuck in holes etc. And after watching the videos and seeing the kids play with it there are obviously endless possibilities in its use. The kids love trying out new tricks, like getting it to rollend ways between each other, or getting it to bounce and land on it’s tip. Personally I find it quite relaxing just spinning it in circles when I’m on the phone.

Mokuru is currently available in the following colours:

We are still learning to do even the simplest of tricks here, but this video shows you plenty of tricks from beginners level right through to games you can play with friends! But there are no rules to Mokuru, you can play with it in as a simple or creative way as you wish!

Mokuru is available in Smyths stores as well as on Amazon but am really pleased to say that not one, but two of you will have the chance to try out a Mokuru fidget toy for yourselves just by entering the giveaway below. Here are the rules for entering:

This giveaway is open to residents of the UK only
Two winners will be chosen at random via rafflecopter and announced on this page
Winners will be contacted via the e-mail address provided within 3 days of the giveaway ending, if they do not respond within 28 days another winner may be chosen
Your details will not be passed onto any third parties by Mami To Five
The winner will be sent ONE MOKURU fidget stick, colours cannot be specified and will be random
Mami To Five is not responsible for delivery and they may take some time to arrive
Mami To Five is not responsible for any damage or problems with the prize, although we will try to help if issues do arise
Entries made using software or automated process to make bulk entries will be disqualified
There is no cash alternative

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This giveaway appears on Offer Oasis.

Newborn Essentials List ~ Just the things you REALLY need!

September 13, 2017

When it comes to having a baby, the first time parent can be forgiven for getting completely overwhelmed by the array of items that are classed as ‘essentials’. Honestly though babies need very few things for the first few months and the real essentials can be as cheap or as expensive as you are willing to pay.

If you are preparing for baby on a budget remember, not only can most items be picked up second hand for far less money than new, but you can also sell them on again when you have finished with them. Meaning you can then go on to fund even more things you need. After all it’s not as if newborns are running around ruining their clothes!

Review ~ Stikbot Pirate Movie set

September 3, 2017

Being a typical 11 year old boy, LV loves anything to do with computers, movies and video games. So when he was given the chance to review the Stikbot Pirate Movie set he was over the moon!

We had one lonely little stikbot already that LV hadn’t really known what to do with yet, but as soon as the Movie set arrived, and he saw the costume stickers, he started planning his epic battle between the pirates and the continental soldiers!

The set comes with everything you need to create a stage for your movie, we just added a big blue background with the help of an old sleeping bag.

The instructions are very simple to follow. You just pop the numbered pieces out of the page and slot them altogether. Everything is numbered, even the holes! Apart from a couple of fiddly bits LV managed to assemble everything by himself, although younger children will probably need a fair bit of help. The pieces are made from what looks like laminated foam, they are pretty sturdy, but longer, thinner pieces like the flagpoles might easily get bent if you are a bit heavy handed with them.

The Pirate Movie Set comes with one Stikbot, who is already dressed as a pirate captain, and there is also a page full of other costumes to choose from. These can be a bit fiddly to get off the page, LV couldn’t do it as he has no nails, I have nails but still struggled getting the plastic sticker off the paper! Not sure where I was going wrong but I got there eventually and the pieces were all shaped perfectly to go on to the stikbots body parts. The bodies are articulated which makes it very easy to pose your characters as you like and when they are on a flat surface they are very good at staying stood up, even when they are holding themselves in odd positions.

The set also contains a full array of weapons that the stikbots hold with the help of these little white clips that slip over their ‘hands’ which are actually suction cups. The suction cups are also on the feet too and they are great for getting your Stikbot to climb up or down anywhere!

We had a few practice runs so we could figure out how much to move the figures to stop them looking like they were bouncing around the set. We also learnt how important it was not to move the camera AT ALL, or the scenery looks like it’s all swaying in the wind! We don’t have a tripod for my phone but a shoebox and some blu tack to hold the phone still worked great for us.

We used the Stikbot app to create the actual movie. It was very simple to do, it is just a case of taking the pictures and the app does the rest of the work for you! Once you’ve finished taking your pictures you can then either add sound effects or music that are already available, or record your own voices over your video.

Here is LV’s finished Stikbot Pirate Movie:

What do you think? I think he did a fantastic job! It may only be 7 seconds long, but those 7 seconds took pretty much an hour and a lot of patience to create!

LV gives the Stikbot Pirate Movie set a big thumbs up and can’t wait to get creating more movies soon!

The Stikbot Pirate Movie set is available to buy from many stores including Amazon. The following link is an affiliate link meaning if you purchase the set after clicking through I will get a small percentage from the sale. This won’t cost you anything extra though!

Going Gluten Free on a Budget

July 27, 2017

Going gluten free, whether it be for medical reasons or purely as a lifestyle choice, can be daunting. But once you get the hang of reading ingredients labels, you will soon realise it is actually relatively straight forward. You will also realise that a gluten free diet is far from cheap. Food manufacturers have caught on to the fact that gluten free foods are a big thing nowadays, which on one hand is a good thing because the choices are far more varied than they were even 5 years ago. But on the other hand they also know they can charge a lot of money because people have no option but to pay it.

But fear not, there are ways to go gluten free without costing the earth!

Handy Hints for Going Gluten Free on a Budget

Frugal tips for feeding a family on a budget

February 26, 2017

Feeding a family can be expensive. When that family is larger than average costs can quickly escalate! Because we have teenagers it means that I am now basically feeding five adults and two children at every single meal. I also try and make extra so there are leftovers for lunches etc too.

We have been trying to make our finances look a bit healthier this year and I am trying to be a bit more frugal. For the last month I have also been keeping a closer eye on our weekly budget.

At the moment, our weekly shop averages around £120. Which at first glance sounds a lot, but when you break it down it only equates to just over £17 per person for the week, so less than £2.50 each a day. I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, but when you take into consideration that our youngest has to have the more expensive gluten/wheat, dairy and soya free foods I’m actually quite impressed with myself!

From what I’ve seen online, lot’s of people seem to want to be trying to be frugal and save some money this year so I thought I would share some tips on how I shop to try and help save you some pennies too!

Frugal Tips for Feeding a Family on a Budget

My thoughts on America’s gun laws and Army Cadets

January 18, 2017

Did you know, that in 2016 alone there were 385 mass shootings in America? There are only 365 days in a year!!! Just in case you didn’t know (I didn’t until google informed me) that a mass shooting is where four or more people are killed or injured. Did you also know that in total, there were over 15,000 gun related deaths in America in 2016? I know America is a huge country, but those numbers are just so scary to me! I just don’t understand how a country with so many gun related deaths can still try and claim they should keep their right to bear arms?

‘It’s in the constitution!’ they wail.

Now without going off on a tangent about how this constitution was written over 200 years ago, in a completely different time. I would like to direct those that claim the constitution is a god given right, and cannot be changed, to the dictionary and ask them to find the definition of the word amendment just a hint it means a change, an alteration. Do I really need to say more!?! I’m sorry America, but unless you tighten up those laws and stop giving every Tom, Dick and Harry a gun ‘just because’. Then those statistics are just going to get worse year upon year. How many children and innocent people have to die before you wake up?

BUT…

After saying all that.

I’m currently writing this sat outside an Army Reserve Camp watching two of my teenage daughters clean weapons. They have just spent the weekend sleeping in a field keeping these weapons by their sides at all times. They fired blank ammo, learnt offensive and defensive manoeuvres. They basically played war for two days and had a thoroughly great time doing it.

Photo Credit: Army Cadet Force, C Company