A Holiday Retreat

February 20, 2012 in General | 7 comments

I've always been the type of person who likes to go on holiday for a short amount of time, the thought of a fortnight anywhere makes me feel a little bit anxious. The longest holiday that we've been on was for two and a half weeks to America, and even though we stayed in four different cities in that time, I was incredibly tetchy from day 13 onwards and just wanted to come home. Mr. TBaM and I sat in Central Park listing all the things that we missed from home; proper chocolate, butter, coke (it tastes funny in the US), decent toilet paper, sleep, our home. We were both quite homesick and were so pleased to return to our beloved semi.

Since having The Boy, I've also realised that when it comes to holidays it's not just the length of the stay which is important to us; I also find it difficult staying in a hotel. By and large, being confined to only one living area that is yours is incredibly restrictive, especially when you have a toddler. Therefore we've taken to having self-catering holidays, and because I don't want to put up with other people's noise, detached properties are the way forward for us.

The United Kingdom has such amazing locations to visit, all within a few hours drive, that I can't understand why anyone would want to deal with the trauma of a plane journey and not being in control of the travel. Last week, mum and I settled down to try and work out where we were going to go on our annual family holiday, perusing many websites about English country cottages, farms, holiday resorts etc. We managed to find somewhere in the end, and after last year's disasterous week-long holiday, we decided on four nights in June half-term down in Devon. Usually we go for August, but the weather has been so bad the past couple of years that we decided to go earlier in the 'Summer' instead.

Tradition dictates that I go on holiday down to the south coast of England, something which my in-laws can't fathom. But then they live near the south coast, so for them it's not a holiday. My husband had holidays in the north of England as a child, mainly because his paternal family are from there. I've been up to the Lake District for a weekend to see a friend in Kendal, been to a wedding in Derbyshire and seen a small part of the Peak District, and have visited Sunderland as a young teen to see relatives. The area of northern England that I really want to go to though is Yorkshire. There are so many beautiful beaches and with the contrasting rugged moors, that I look forward to the time when The Boy is old enough to tolerate the car journey and we can investigate cottages in Yorkshire enabling me to live out a little Wuthering Heights moment!

So, which area of Britain do you most want to visit, and why?

This is a sponsored post

Tags: ,

Flip!

February 20, 2012 in General | 9 comments

In February of last year I had a discussion with the impish @InceyWinceyMum on twitter about pancakes. We both adore pancake day and were discombobulated to discover that it wasn't until the March. We decided to hold an unofficial one in the February instead, and tried to get others to join in; they didn't! However, we both enjoyed pancakes with ice-cream and a variety of toppings.

This year we had a discussion about pancakes and decided to go for a trial run last week. Only I forgot. So, yesterday we had a practise of pancakes for tomorrow. Mr. TheBoyandMe wanted to know why, I told him 'because' which as far as I'm concerned is a good enough reason. I didn't think 'because I promised @InceyWinceyMum' would work as well.

Spinach and Goat's Cheese Pancake

I added wilted, chopped spinach, seasoning and a small amount of parmesan to half the batter mix. I fried it in unsalted butter as normal, flipped and then added goat's cheese while cooking the underside. Definitely scrummy as it melted into the pancake.

Tomorrow I intend to add a butternut squash and tomato filling to the goat's cheese.

Black Forest Pancakes

To the other half the batter mix, I added Galaxy drinking chocolate and whisked it in. Normal cooking, but served with vanilla ice-cream and cherry-pie filling.

Whatever you have tomorrow, get flipping and enjoy!

Tags: ,

#7:52

February 19, 2012 in General | 5 comments

He'd just performed surgery on daddy!

Tags: , ,

Wedding Arrangements

February 19, 2012 in General | 3 comments

When Mr. TheBoyandMe and I got married, it was 2001. Legislation had only come into effect within the previous few years allowing couples to marry in anywhere other than a church or a registry office, and therefore it was still quite a new thing. Not many venues offered the opportunity to wed in their beauty, but one of them was Castell Coch in Cardiff, and this is where we 'got hitched'.

For anyone growing up in Cardiff, Castell Coch (or the 'red castle' as it's translation indicates) is also known as 'the fairy castle'. My father used to tell me that it's where Father Christmas set off from on Christmas Eve with the aid of the fairies that lived there, and every little girl grew up dreaming of it! Are you surprised?

Getting married in a castle though is no mean feat, and we were lucky to have one of the few dates available in November and booked it without question. However, they didn't close the castle for our wedding, it was business as usual! We booked the use of one room for an hour and a half and paid £450 for the privilige; half an hour to prepare, half an hour for the service (it took fifteen minutes) and half an hour for the photos afterwards. An attendant stood on the door and prevented anyone from entering during that time, and believe me when I say people did try and enter during our wedding, and couldn't believe that they weren't allowed to when they'd paid £3.50 to see the castle!

The room we were married in held thirty people, and for health and safety reasons that's all they would allow in. That included us, the registrar, her assistant, the photographer and the harpist. It left spaces for 24 guests which was problematic as we had to ask eight people if they could wait outside! Awkward or what? One of the other problems that arises when hiring a public building to get married in, and something that people might not know is that you have to have public liability insurance! We had to have insurance for £2 million worth of damage to the building and for any accidents. We ended up really searching high and low for a public liability insurance quote as they weren't common at the time!

At the time, my sister was incredibly jealous as she had always wanted to get married there, but it was a registry office jobby for her five years previously. Now you can get married just about anywhere!

One of the jobs I'd really love to do, it regular income wasn't an issue, would to be a wedding planner. How fun to organise a wedding in a castle or a barn, on a boat, or even a beach. Arranging the perfect flowers, transport, entertainment, decorations, invitations would be so much fun. And all with someone else's money! There are so many businesses out there catering for 'off-the-cuff' parties, you see them on Dragons' Den all the time. Huge ideas for human statues, robots, balloon craft, etc. And then the Dragons present them with the harsh reality of running a business, including finding business insurance quotes and supply vs. demand.

Thinking about it all, maybe teaching about subordinate clauses and changes within the 20th century isn't quite so bad. Now where was that marking?

This is a sponsored post.

The World Around Us

February 16, 2012 in General | 12 comments

The day started looking like this when I opened The Boy's curtains…

… which was just as well as I had to take the car to the garage and then walk home again, and I could really do with it not raining.

In the end, I decided to take him on the train into Cardiff instead of walking home. He's only been on the train once before, and loved it so much that I thought we'd nip in and kill a few hours. I had the foresight to put a couple of Pizza Express/Tesco Clubcard vouchers in my purse a few days ago, just in case!

The Boy adored going in on the train, but I had forgotten how short a journey it is in; six minutes and we were there! We walked over to my hairdresser's salon so I could book an appointment for Saturday for my normal cut and blow dry, but I also begged him to rectify the horrendous balls up my mother made a few months ago with highlights. If you saw me at the Tots100 Christmas Party then you'll know what I mean. I've never had highlights done professionally before; I'm looking forward to it! He'll also be cutting The Boy's hair for me as I can't find a barber or children's hairdresser who can cope with it yet.

After a quick stroll through Cardiff shopping centre, we had lunch in Pizza Express and then sauntered down St. Mary's Street to the train station. And this is when I realised what a vibrant and interesting street it is for photo-taking. So out came the iPod and Instagram and I got snapping.

What I found most interesting on our walk around, was the amount of questions that The Boy was asking about his environment and it made me realise how little he knows of the world, and how often he gets bundled into the car and driven somewhere. If Spring is actually on its way now, we need to get out more!

Tags: , ,

Listography: Top Five Mugs

February 16, 2012 in General | 14 comments

I like Kate a lot. I think she's a little bit bananas and that's something I like in a mum and blogger. Sometimes her Listography themes are a little out there, but generally they work for me. My only problem is that I don't always have time to post before she shuts the linky. This week though, she's excelled herself:

Mugs

By anyone's benchmark, that's a little bizarre. However, as I read her post and scoffed to myself, I found myself visualising my favourite mugs in the cupboard and realising that she's right: I have favourite mugs that I used for specific things. And so, because I haven't done it in a while, I'm joining in with the Listography, but I will have you know that I consider this as ludicrous as when I posted a photo of the inside of my fridge.

Bought for me by my dad when I started teaching. To me, this is the only time he has ever indicated that he is proud of the job that I do. This is used for my cold coffees, normally in the afternoon when I need an extra strong and cold frappucino. I was furious with my husband when he chipped it.

Also an excellent mug for cold coffees, especially if I'm putting whipped cream and caramel drizzle on the top. Given to me by an ex-pupil, I was cross when Mr. TheBoyandMe chipped this one too!

My sister gave me this, nearly twenty years ago, so heaven help Mr. TBaM if he chips this one! Excellent for cold milk first thing in the morning.

Quite frankly, he chips this one, then he can move out now! Handwash only due to the gold edging, this was a present from the private school I went to, on their big 110 year anniversary.

This is the original twitter mug, anyone else who has made one since is merely in NameArt's shadow. I love my twitter addict mug, had it for a year but can't use it very often as I don't want my family to know my twitter name!

Now pop over to see the other entries:

Photobucket

Tags: ,

Shades of Green

February 16, 2012 in General | 2 comments

Lately The Boy has become a little obsessive about putting things in the recycling bin. That's ok when it comes to things like scrap paper or plastic packaging, I have had to intervene when he was putting the post in there straight away. Let me at least open it first child!

However, it's got me thinking about the world in which my son is growing up in. At the tender age of two (and a half) he knows about the recycling bin. Granted, he doesn't know what it means, but he knows that paper, plastic and cardboard go in there and not the normal bin. When I'm still having to train my parents about this (and some of the teachers in school), it makes me happy that it is innate in my son. He sees me using the food waste bin in the kitchen, and knows that the counter-top compost bin gets transferred into the garden one in order to make soil. I think he's doing pretty well with his environmental awareness, something that as a child growing up I never even knew about.

So much has changed in the past thirty years (when did I become that old?) that making an effort to help protect the Earth's natural resources has never been easier. I live in an ex-council house on a predominantly working class street. Most of the houses are now owned by hard-working everyday folk with little money to spare for 'extravagances', however within the ten houses surrounding mine two of them have had solar panels put onto their roofs. We have south-facing gardens and therefore it makes sense to harness the sun's power and make energy (and money) from it.

When we drove to west Wales a few weekends ago, we pass alongside some magnificent mountain ranges. Two of these said mountains have wind farms at the top of them. To me they are a thing of beauty. I love the huge, rotating blades on top of an empty expanse of countryside; a magnificent fusion of green energy between man and nature.

Before I had The Boy, I was a full-time Year Six teacher and one of our schemes of work for Geography was Renewable Energy and the Environment. The topic involved the children conducting surveys in school and at home about the amount they recycled, researching how other countries around the world recycled (often out of financial necessary, not for ethical or moral reasons) and investigating renewable energy sources to be used in Britain. One of their favourite activities was a formal debate about off-shore wind-farms on the Welsh coastline. It was interesting to see the different opinions coming out, and a few children surprised me in their opinions, which had been clearly honed by their parents.

If we want our children's generation, and our grandchildren's generation, to not struggle in the future with the resources of the Earth, I truly believe that it's our responsibility to teach them how to be green from a young age. I've recently found this site about renewable energy companies and am intrigued by their analogy of the national grid being like a dirty pond of mixed energy. By using green energy companies, more 'clean water' is poured into the dirty pond and dilutes the contaminates.We may just be small fish in that dirty pond, but we all count.

How do you teach your child to be environmentally friendly?

This is a sponsored post.

Tags: ,

Wordless Wednesday: 15th February 2012

February 15, 2012 in General | 13 comments

Tags: , ,

Valentine's Day Treats

February 14, 2012 in General | 8 comments

Mr. TheBoyandMe and I don't do corny, we never have. That's not to say that we don't do romantic things for each other, but we are not the 'expensive meal, red roses, dipping chocolate' type of people that really enjoy Valentine's Day. Or as my cynic of a husband calls it 'Hallmark Day'.

However, we do mark the day with handmade cards, a nice 'dine-in' meal from M&S, a nice bottle of pink fizz and a good movie. This year, we resorted to our usual tradition and set ourselves the task of making our own Valentine's cards. This evening when he got home from work he duly presented me with some beautiful lillies and we exchanged our cards. Combine that with our meal and Valentine's Day in our house looks a little like this so far:

Guess which is the card I made?

Notice the appropriate film and Maltesers in the final photo? Well those are courtesy of Warner Bros who sent me this rather magnificent box full of Valentine's goodies earlier today:

  • Midnight in Paris (never seen, but having read the blurb on the back, I am very much looking forward to enjoying this while The Boy has his afternoon nap tomorrow. Recently released on 6th February)
  • Casablanca (classic! and this is the 70th anniversary celebration copy)
  • Crazy, Stupid Love (not a film I would usually choose due to Steve Carell, but the addition of Marisa Tomei, Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon make this a must-see)
  • The Bodyguard (which, due to the sad death of Whitney on the weekend, I will watch and cry at)
  • Going the Distance (Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, recreating our long-distance relationship between Cardiff and Winchester!)
  • The Lake House (one of my all time favourites with Keanu and Sandy!)

A cracking selection of RomCom classics, both old and new. Check some of them out if you get the chance! I'm off to watch Valentine's Day with my husband and eat Maltesers!

I was sent these products for the purpose of this post. My opinions are honest and unbiased. My card was the one on the left, hubby gets 10/10 for effort on his!

Tags: , ,

How To Go Self-Hosted

February 13, 2012 in General | 16 comments

I have spent the past month nagging Mr. TheBoyandMe to get a move on with this post on how to move from wordpress.com to wordpress.org. Finally last night he gave it and finished it! I've chipped in with some screenshots etc.

1. Choose a domain.

If you're moving from a Blogspot or WordPress.com site, the obvious domain (without losing too many readers) would be your blog name there, followed by one of the various suffixes like .co.uk, .me.uk, .com, etc. If you're starting afresh, then the choice is more free and could reflect the subject of your blog, your name, or a more generic word or short phrase.

If course, there’s no guarantee that the domain you’ve chosen will be available, so use a site like www.easyspace.com to check before you set your heart on a specific name; just typing it into a web browser isn't sufficient, as there's no requirement for a domain to have a website. With few exceptions, domain names are first-come, first-served so if someone else has the domain you want it’s unfortunately easier just to choose another.

Hold off buying it until you’ve chosen where to host your blog, though; it’s often easier if one company handles the entire process.

2. Choose a host

There are a million and one companies out there that offer domain names, hosting and support at pretty reasonable prices. Rather than listing the plusses and minuses of each and every one, I'd simply recommend Salt and Light Solutions for no other reason than they are the people who host TheBoyandMe, and have been faultless!

Whoever you do choose will be in the best position to purchase your chosen domain name on your behalf, set up e-mail and somewhere for you to store your website, and give you enough information for you to use this space.

At a minimum, you’ll need to choose a host that allows you to run PHP (it’ll be listed as one of their features) and gives you access to a MySQL database.

3. Set up the blog software

I'd recommend the self-hosted version of WordPress, available from WordPress.org, as this is what this site uses. Installation is relatively simple, although it does involve having to create a MySQL database for your blog (which your host should be able to help you with if you have difficulty).

Simply follow the ‘5 Minute install’ instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress and that's your basic blog set up.

4. Importing Posts and Comments

If you’re moving from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress blog, this couldn’t be simpler; under ‘Tools’ you’ll find an option labeled ‘Export’. Export all content (including comments) from your old blog, and import into your new blog: job done!

For most other blogging sites, the process is slightly more complex: but, only slightly. Once WordPress is installed, go to ‘Tools’ then ‘Import’. Select the type of blog you’re moving away from, and follow the prompts to install a plugin that will guide you through the transfer process. For Blogger users this is reasonably comprehensive as it will even download comments that people have made; however, images may have to be transferred separately and Matthew Morley of Salt and Light recommends the separate Blogger Image Import plugin.

In either case, I’d recommend making the last post an “I have moved”, so any fans of the old site follow you to the new one.

5. Categories and Pages

The main reason that I went self-hosted was because of my photography project: 365. WordPress.com allows a main home page with separate posts on it and with each post, a separate set of comments. I had created a 'page' for my 365 photos, but discovered that it was a static page which didn't allow posts. I could only add to the text, and it would only have one comments box. The very astute Mummy Mishaps highlighted to me a week or so into the project that it was going to get very difficult to comment on the photos after about fifty days, and I wouldn't know which photo the comments related to. This is why I went self-hosted: wordpress.org allows you to have proper pages with individual posts and associated comment boxes.

In its standard installation, WordPress puts all posts on the home page but allows one or more other 'pages' to also appear as links at the top; those pages are single posts though, rather than a set of posts. When Project 365 was started, The Boy’s Mummy didn’t want each photo to appear on the home page and the thought of having 365 photos on the same page was unrealistic, so we put together a solution using two free WordPress plugins:

Simply Exclude simply excludes (see what they did there?) any given category from appearing on the home page. For TheBoyandMe.co.uk, this includes 365, 366, reviews, Toyology and competition posts.

Page Links To alters the link that a link at the top goes to. Individual pages have been created for each link, but with this plugin anyone going to those pages is redirected, in this case to the appropriate category page.

With both of these installed, and a little bit of playing with the configuration, we were able to make the blog work exactly the way she wanted.

Extra bits that he hasn't mentioned but that I would suggest:

  • Install Comment Reply Notification

I found out about this from GeekMummy and it is one of the best moves I've made on my blog. Personally I never remember to revisit blogs that I've commented on to see if the blog owner has replied. Comment Reply Notification is a marvellous system that means the replies you make to the kind souls who comment on your posts, are e-mailed to them, thus opening a dialogue which I've been told is appreciated.

  • Install Link Within

I've pinched this idea from The Moiderer, it's a fabulous little gizmo at the bottom of posts which shows the thumb-nails for three related posts to entice the reader.

  • Sidebar & Badges

I'm including this because Two Point Four Children asked me how to do this, so thought it might be relevant. You might want to put a html badge into your sidebar, you'll need to use the appearance -> widgets tool and insert a textbox into the section on the right. Into this copy the relevant html and it magically turns into a pretty picture! Ta-dah!

  • Inserting images

When you insert an image into a post it brings up a dialogue box with a url option to the image, like this:

I've highlighted the automatically filled url box because you don't want this filled; it takes up too much of your storage space and if you're doing a 366 project then you want every kb for your photos. Click 'none' to empty it. Then if you've got the image-scaler plug-in installed, you can choose the dimension of the image. Generally I go for 300 or 400 wide for my images. Try and keep your images confined to a couple of hundred kb to upload, definitely under 1mb or they'll eat up space!

Hope this is of use to some people!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Tags: , ,

« Older entries