Tales of the unexpected with The Boy, my pride and joy.
I've had the pleasure of reviewing the Ping and Pong series of books before and it really is a pleasure. They are the most lovingly written and illustrated books by Amy Trevaskus (and Alison Heath) with genuinely innocent stories to tell. Amy has come up trumps with another winning title for this festive time of year:
This morning I decided that The Boy and I would get creative and make the Christmas cards that I'd been intending to make with him for the past month. With Christmas being only a week and a half away I decided that it was time to get a move on!
A while ago I bought two tubs of foam stickers from Hobbycraft. They were £4.99 each and contained glittery foam letters, Father Christmas heads, reindeers, Christmas trees, gingerbread figures, stockings etc. So using these, some white card, blue paper, snowflake sequins, gold stars and glue we set to work.
First I cut the white card to A5 size, folded it in half and then cut a piece of blue paper to the same size. Then I cut a wavy line down the centre of this to make two skylines for two cards. Sticking these to the top half of the card I had an instant Winter snowscene. The Boy then created his cards really quickly and easily using the foam shapes. We decided on Christmas trees and he peeled the backing off and stuck them down. A gold star on the top of each tree, some dots of glue and then snowflake shapes and the card was finished!
Following this The Boy decided he wanted to try and use the gingerbread figures, one of which is a mummy and one a daddy. He was very annoyed that there wasn't a baby figure so he dumped the idea of it being a daddy and decided it was mummy and baby! (Ha!)
In total we made eight cards, just for immediate family members and I think they look rather fab personally. And in total it took an hour with minimal mess (something I'm not adverse to) and maximum enjoyment.
If you've got a quick and easy craft activity with minimal effort and maximum glitz factor then please link up to the pretty linky thingy below and let's share our ideas!
I intended to write just one post about the TOTS100 Christmas Party but I got carried away talking about the Butlins resort at Bognor Regis so decided to split them into two posts.
When I heard about the event, I immediately checked with a couple of others to see if they were going and signed up. I was nervous as hell about going to the event because I felt like I was surrendering my anonymity, however at the same time I was desperate to meet some other bloggers (I rarely get invited to events) and meet up with Jenny and Helen who I'd previously met. The three of us were pretty much desperate for a break away from it all and we willingly jumped in the car on Friday evening to drive the three and half hours down to the South coast.
We were quite lazy on Saturday morning but eventually got ready to leave our cocoon of a hotel room and venture over to find out what Butlins had in store for us. In the foyer I noticed a couple of other mummies and deduced that they were Mummy and The Beastie and Mummy, Daddy and Me Makes Three. We chatted briefly to them, admired the decorations and Christmas tree and played jumping while waiting for Mummy Mishaps to come and rescue my poor, neglected son (I'd forgotten to bring a coat for him, that's what comes of leaving the house with him in his pyjamas and sleeping bag!). Thanks Burton for lending him a coat for the weekend!
We headed over to the Skyline Pavillion for lunch, had a mooch around and had a good run around on the chaotic soft-play. We enjoyed a puppet show which had some fabulous puppetry and dancing courtesy of the Red Coats, those ladies earn their bobby-socks and blazers!
In the afternoon, while The Boy had his sleep and Mr. TheBoyandMe rested his eyelids, I met up with the other 34 bloggers for the afternoon reception that Sally had arranged for us. Having already seen a tweet from her a few days before about boxes from Hallmark, I suspected that something was on the cards for us and she didn't disappoint. We were split into four groups for the purpose of socialisation and given an hour to decorate an empty Christmas tree using the contents of the middle table.
A few of our team raced for a tree, while a couple of others grabbed baubles. Unfortunately, one of the other groups doubled up on the lights, sellotape and scissors leaving us without any and we managed to wrap a large selection of objects without either sellotape or scissors. What Mellow Mummy, All About The Boys and I can't do with ribbons isn't worth mentioning!
Ably assisted by one of the lovely twins from Here Come The Girls 'helping' with the baubles, and Bloggomy doing her twirly things with ribbons (and a kind Butlins staff member who found us some lights), we managed to get a very sophisticated tree done with time to spare. Just enough time to steal borrow some additional decor from the Butlins reception to boost the silver and red theme before judging. Unfortunately we didn't win the hampers from Aldi but it was the perfect activity to get everyone chatting and mixing together.
After this, I popped back to the hotel and picked up Mr. TheBoyandMe and The Boy so that we could go and get them something to eat before our evening meal. We nipped into Papa Johns for the pizza buffet and managed to join the table already occupied by fifteen other people: Multiple Mummy, The Crazy Kitchen and MummyMummyMum and their gorgeous children. After we had our fill, we went back to prepare for our big night out. All the lovely, glamorous ladies met in the foyer of the hotel and we all froze our arses bottoms off as we nipped over to Bar Rosso for complimentary cocktails: cranberry and vodka = fruity and strong and yummy!
Turner's is a very nice restaurant that was designed by Brian Turner and the chef there used to be the head-chef of The Ivy. That's the closest I'm going to get to posh London dining, and to be honest if that's the best they can do for a vegetarian at Christmas time, then I'll stick to Pizza Express in Cardiff Bay! Wild mushroom risotto is great for a Summer evening meal, not for a warming Winter and Christmas meal when the meat alternative was a full Christmas dinner.
I didn't take a photo of the pudding: figs and apricots do not inspire me, although the cinnamon ice-cream and poached pear was nice. No replacement for a sumptuous cheesecake or the traditional Christmas pudding though.
However, a meal like this is all about the company and the presence of Mummy, Daddy and Me, Multiple Mummy, Dear Beautiful Boy made the evening fly by! I forgot to take a photo of them but did manage one of Jenny and Helen!
We dutifully meandered over to the resort's club afterwards, but decided we just wanted a quite chat in the hotel bar instead, leaving the more hardcore MammaSaurus and TiredMummy of Two to party with NewMumOnline and the glamorous Actually Mummy.
After a tipple or two and having the lights turned out on us in the bar, we retired to bed!
To cut a long story short (too late I hear you cry!), the Sunday saw us have lunch with Mummy Mishaps and her lovely family (in Papa John's), playing with some more rides in the Skyline Pavillion, all of us falling asleep for an afternoon nap, seeing Bjorn's snowstorm and then having an evening meal with Mummy Mishaps again (this time in the Sun and Moon pub). The Boy and Burton started to have a good old natter about this and that, until Burton fell asleep following his mammoth two hours in the swimming pool! Just before we had to do, The Crazy Kitchen turned up to join us, and the littlies set about making a bus to drive us home.
Unfortunately we had to leave on the Sunday night as The Boy had developed croup and I wanted to get him to a doctor, but I shall leave you with some images of the Sunday.
I thoroughly enjoyed our weekend there and found that Multiple Mummy is just as funny and friendly as I suspected and I wish we lived closer because we got on well! It was brilliant to meet up with the others and find that they are just as lovely (and glamorous) as I'd imagined. I wish I'd had more time to speak to others including Kate from I Am Wit Woo and Jen from Mum In The Madhouse, amongst others.
Never mind, there's always next time!
On Sunday morning, we got up at a reasonable time and headed off to a garden centre on the other side of Cardiff. I'd been informed by a work colleague that it had a brilliant grotto with Santa and his missus, so that was good enough for me. Out of the three of us, I was the most excited as Mr. TheBoyandMe is a man and it takes more than that to get his enthusiasm enthused on a Sunday morning, and The Boy has not a clue who Father Christmas is.
With enough inner mistletoe for the three of us, we plodded off and found that yes indeed it had a fab grotto with Saint Nick and every-fink! Including a two hour queue!
With Mr. TBAM promising me that he didn't mind if I returned the next morning with The Boy, we had a good gander at the decorations and the pretty lights, played with some expensive carousels that we shouldn't have and explored the multitude of Christmas trees ready to be lovingly picked.
Upon arriving home and wolfing down our lunch, Mr. TBAM went into the loft and got our bargain Christmas tree (£100 reduced to £20 in a January sale five years ago), put The Boy to bed and I got busy 'growing' our tree, took me an hour to do what nature takes decades to do. (Plus no needles, no sap and no rash! Hurrah!)
When The Boy woke up and came downstairs, he walked into the dining room to see the six-footer twinkling away with over 160 white lights on it. A very different reaction to last year, as he paused, took a little step back and burst into the biggest grin ever. We then spent the next hour decorating the tree together, and his skills have definitely improved since last year as he put one decoration onto one 'branch' and didn't take them back off again; always a bonus!
And so to the title of this post:
Christmas 2009: Jingle Bells
Christmas 2010: Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus
Christmas 2011: A Smelly Stocking
This is the star I bought for our first Christmas together as husband and wife ten years ago. Fitting that it's placed on the top now by our child.
You see we buy The Boy a decoration each year to go on the tree, and write on it to commemorate the year it was given. This way when he moves out (at the age of 59, certainly not a day before!) and decorates his own family tree he will already have a good collection of quality decorations to start him off.
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I'm linking these up to three great Christmas linkies
Mummy Mishaps' Christmas Tree linky
Right so in I traipsed to the capital city of Wales with its plethora of shops. I found a parking space really easily and we were in our first shop within twenty minutes of leaving home. Shopping in Cardiff at Christmas had never been so easy!
But the first shop didn't have what I wanted. And bearing in mind this was Waterstones and a fairly popular title, I wasn't impressed. They wouldn't have any back in until January.
The next few shops were entered with the soul aim of trying to find a nice top for Saturday night (Tots 100 Christmas Party) and I failed.
The following shop was Next in an effort to buy some Christmas tops, new trousers and a pair of boots for The Boy.
So having struggled down twenty steps to one of the only places that has food suitable for children (not every restaurant has to be sushi or fast food trash you know town-planners) and then had a kindly assistant help me back up, frozen our little fingers, toes and bottoms off (mine not so little), and become generally hacked off with trying to find a toilet suitable to use with The Boy, we came home.
And this is why I am now sat on the sofa with Amazon, Next and Simply Be open in separate tabs, with the television on, central heating and a cherry liquor chocolate warming the cockles of my heart and stomach! Because shopping in real-life shops sucks and the Internet is as popular as it is for a reason!
