parenting Archives - Page 3 of 4

Celebrating Mother’s Day with Truprint

Memories are one of a mother’s most cherished possessions. Looking back at old photos brings all the thoughts and emotions flooding back, just as if you were standing there taking the photo all over again (because lets be honest it usually is us mums behind the camera rather than in front of it!) one grubby little face peering back at you from the screen can elicit giggles and tears all at the same time.

But that is just the problem. Well it is for me anyway. The majority of our photos from the last decade are all safe and sound on CD’s, hard drives, SD Cards, Cloud storage etc. I have minimal photos actually on display, and this is something that needs to change! So this Mother’s Day I’m releasing my photo’s from their digital safe houses and bring them to life with the help of Truprint.

I’d never been on the Truprint website before as I’d always thought getting photo gifts would be really expensive, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that prices actually start as low as £2.99 and there are quite a lot of gifts available for under £10. I had originally planned on buying things for the grandmothers but I have to admit I got a little carried away and bought all my own Mothers Day gifts , well…If you can’t spoil yourself on Mother’s Day, when can you? Sorry Mam!

So what did I treat myself to?

Well, I have had a few technical issues my end, with my laptop suddenly deciding it didn’t like me copying images into a web browser (this is an ongoing problem and I had no issues using the website at all), so I’m still waiting for my goodies to arrive so I don’t have any real life images for you but here is an idea for you.

So why did I choose these? Well, ever since O’s Christening and we were given our first photo canvas I have slightly fallen in love with them and I just adore this picture of O that was taken at a local castle we enjoy playing in during the summer. For £24.99 this 10×8 wraparound canvas was a must in my eyes.

Next up we have the good old notepad, every writer’s must have, and for only £6.99 with lots of personalisable options available I thought this was really good value. This picture was taken the same day as the one on the canvas and is a rare one where they are all facing the camera! Underneath it says ‘My favourite reason to lose sleep’.

Finally, we have the travel mug. I spend many an afternoon sat in the car waiting to pick up various kids from various afterschool activities and a travel mug of coffee truly is my best friend, especially on a cold winters day. I chose the same image as on the notepad for my featured picture and added my favourite close ups of all of the kids too. You can have writing on the mug as well as a coloured border but my images looked better without. This cost £14.99.

Another great option for Mother’s Day is Truprint’s personalised photo cards. There’s a wide variety of designs to choose from and prices start at a mere £1,99 so there really is something for everyone.

This year Truprint want to make a million mums smile and are giving away 1 million free personalised Mother’s Day cards in their ‘Mum in a Million campaign’. You can claim yours by visiting Truprint’s Mothers Day card section to create your card and by using the code: MUMINAMILLION at checkout.

Terms and Conditions

Awards one free 7×5 folded card
Standard P&P charges apply (99p)
Ship to recipient not available
Complete with envelope
Code is One time use only
Strictly one code use per household.

So that’s my Mother’s Day sorted, what are you hoping to get?

***Disclaimer: This post was made in collaboration with Truprint, however, the gifts were of my own choosing and all thoughts and opinions are honest and my own***

Mortgages, Babies and Maude

A few years ago, nine to be precise, we moved our mortgage to a different provider. At the same time as switching to a better deal with Abbey (which is now Santander of course), we were also able to take advantage of the equity we had in our home. Luckily for us we’d bought our house before the boom of the noughties so we actually had a fair amount of equity we could borrow against.

You see we were expecting LV at the time. Our car was a standard 5 seater, a tight but comfortable fit for the three girls’ seats in the back, but completely unsuitable for a family of six! We also had some work that desperately needed doing around the house before the baby arrived so getting it all finalised couldn’t come quickly enough.

We had done a lot of the leg work by post but one morning when I was 22 weeks along we had to go into the nearest branch to actually go through everything and sign all the final paperwork. You wouldn’t think a simple meeting like this would be one to stick in someones mind, but of course things can never go smoothly so this is one meeting I’ll never forget!

We’d arrived in good time and soon enough, we were sat in a nice office and offered cups of tea. The kids were made at home on the floor with the snacks, drinks and colouring in I had brought. Quite why we’d arranged this for during the school holidays I’ll never know, but there must have been a REALLY good reason I’m sure! I think the mortgage adviser (let’s call her Maude for simplicity’s sake **Not her real name of course**) was a little taken aback with our pint sized troop but she was lovely and even gave them extra paper from her printer to colour on.

Now I’d already had problems during the pregnancy (which I swear I will write a full post about soon!) so feeling uncomfortable was the norm, but that particular day I hadn’t felt quite right since I got up. About halfway through the meeting I started feeling regular pains. Not contractions. Not enough to really hurt. But definitely pains none the less.

Now Maude could obviously see I was in discomfort and offered to reorganise the meeting. But that was the last thing I wanted! The chances of getting Lee there again was slim to none (did I mention that he REALLY hates meetings like that?), plus if the baby did arrive early, which we already knew was a possibility, the last thing we would be wanting to do was go to a mortgage meeting. So I opted to stick it out for as long as I could.

Poor Maude, I’ve never seen someone convey so much information quite so quickly, while at the same time remaining completely calm, making sure we understood everything we were being told, were making the right choices for us and giving us bare facts so we weren’t influenced by her opinions.

Before we knew it, everything was signed and we were packing up our brood of girls, who had all behaved perfectly might I add, to drop me at the hospital while Lee went in search of a babysitter!

I did spend around a week in hospital, over LM’s third birthday I might add, but luckily I didn’t go into full blown labour and within a week of leaving we had a brand new mortgage and the extra cash we so desperately needed.

I do hope Maude got to have a well deserved cuppa after that meeting, and also got someone else to hoover up the crisp crumbs off her office carpet!

Do you have any interesting anecdotes about what should have been a very dull and serious meeting?

***Disclaimer, this post has been sponsored by Santander, but the story is my own and has not been influenced by them in any way***

My Captured Moment ~ Tiny Baby, Huge Nappy

This photo tickles me everytime I come across it. O was three days old and he had finally come to join me on the maternity ward from SCBU. Without the feeding tube which was a surprise to me! Of course in true newborn fashion he needed changing pretty quickly and it was only then did I realise that I hadn’t taken into account just how dinky he was!

Being only 5lb 3oz born he REALLY needed the size 0 ‘micro nappies’. All I had was the size 1 newborns. When pulled up to close some of the gaps around his legs it went right up to under his armpits! Even the midwife had a giggle and got some sent over from SCBU to tide me over until I could get some brought to me.

The silly thing is, he wasn’t my first to need the micro nappies and he was a month early, so I have no idea why I didn’t even think he would be so small!

How much does a school trip cost!?!

You may well have guessed from the title that this post is about school trips. You may also have sensed a tone of disbelief in the pricing of said school trips!

Well, let me just set the scene with a little back story for you first.

LM, Langrannog 2013

My Captured Moment ~ Big Red Tractor

This is one of Lee’s favourite photographs of LM.

She was two years old and we were on a camping holiday in Devon. One of the highlights of our trip was to a hedgehog hospital. For the life of me I can’t remember the name of the place though! There were farm animals, hedgehogs, a trampoline and little ride on tractors and yet LM wanted to spend all her time on this big red tractor.

The one thing that makes me smile the most is the shoes she’s wearing. They are a pair of Clarks Doodles and she wore them for the entire summer, which we were blessed with sunny weather throughout. Her feet bore the half circle tan mark for years and years. I swear even if you look at her feet now, almost a decade later, you would still see the faint outline!

I’d love to find out the name of this hedgehog hospital. Does the red tractor look familiar to you?

Do you suffer from Involuntary oversharing?

Common name: Involuntary Oversharing

Latin name: totalis blabbermouthium

Symptoms: Inability to refrain from expelling a build up of information, every single thought that has entered sufferers head, or anything vaguely exciting that has happened to them. Symptoms usually appear on meeting another adult after extended periods in only the company of children.

Sufferers: Most commonly found in stay at home mothers but, increasingly seen in fathers over the last few years.

Infectius status: Not originally thought to be contagious, but with the advent of baby groups and preschool activities it has been found to infect all mothers who come into contact with each other.

Cure: See bottom of page

Very cute but not much conversation!

The Sunday Night ‘School Uniform Scramble’

Picture the scene. It’s Sunday night. The kids are all bathed and are finally sleeping in their beds. You are just settling down with a cuppa to watch a bit of TV when you get this nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten something.

Homework?

Nope. You have a miniature garden, complete with tiny vegetables and an Anderson shelter drying against the radiator.

Reading book?

No, not that. All done and reading log filled in.

Wait….

The radiator. Hmm, there’s something missing!?!

Oh no!!!

THE SCHOOL UNIFORM!!!!!!!!!

No Christmas stockings on the end of our beds!

Are we really finished with the first week of December already? My how the time seems to be flying! Before we realise it will be Christmas Eve and we will all be sitting around waiting for our kids to finally go to sleep so we can finish wrapping presents and putting them under the tree.

But for now. Let’s get back to this week and my Christmas stocking series. I thought I’d end it with a post about our Christmas Stocking traditions. Just like our Christmas tree tradition I wrote about last year, our Christmas stocking tradition came out of necessity and is all our children’s doing!

Giveaway: A pamper hamper, just for mum!

The run up to Christmas is a wonderfully exciting time for children and parents alike. It’s filled with festive crafts and songs, food and films. Seeing the look of joy on our little ones faces on Christmas morning as the rip open the paper on the coveted toys that managed to not only make it onto their Christmas list but ~~us parents~~ Santa was lucky enough to get a hold of (even if it did involve a scrimmage for the last one on the shelf!)

Luckily for our children they don’t see the stresses that often accompany the fun of Christmas. They don’t see the money worries, the traipsing through town in the rain looking like a windswept, drowned rat. The driving around to 15 different Argos stores across 3 counties because you heard on the school gates grapevine that they have a few of the latest doll/game/remote control thingamajig only to see the last one being carried out just as you arrive. The stress that the most important ‘big gift’ that was ordered mid November still hasn’t arrived 3 days before the big day!

Knowing I’m not the only one who doesn’t even think about themselves from at least October as we are in ‘Mission: Christmas’ mode, I thought I would have a little giveaway to give one of you lovely people the chance to pamper yourself a little. With the help from a few great companies I have put together a little pampering hamper worth over £50! (Apologies, the photo’s really don’t do the products justice!)

Looking after your child’s future

Did you know that just to raise a single child to 21 years old costs on average £218,000? That means by the time all of my children become adults I will have spent over one million pounds! Will that make me sort of a millionaire if they are worth that much!?! That truly is a staggering amount isn’t it, but what price can you put on the love and joy (and grey hairs!) that children bring to your lives?