A Mother's Ramblings

If there is one thing that the children could teach me to be better at, it is saving money. From where I am currently sitting on the sofa, I can see Big Boy's Milkman's wallet. I don't need to get up to tell you how much is in it because Big Boy is sitting next to me and he can tell me that he has exactly £25 of pocket moneys savings, after having spent £30 of his savings in the Boxing Day Sale. He also has £25 that he got for Christmas that he put in his money box and I mustn't forget that I owe him £2 because he lent me £10 and I've only paid back £8 so far... Top Ender is just the same. Her money is kept hidden away and neither Daddy or I are quite sure how much she has, apart from when we have in the past asked to borrow some cash because we couldn't get to a cashpoint and we've needed a few quid to pay for a School trip or similar!

Occasionally, Daddy will announce we have no food in the house and that he is heading off to the Supermarket to buy some. What this really means is that we have nothing he wants to eat in the house and he is off to buy some indulgent chocolate or similar type desserts. Then Daddy asks me, if there is anything I want and I always answer a Gü Hot Chocolate Melting Middle Pudding please. And then when he gets back I take my time eating what has to be the most glorious pudding of all time. Sigh. Sorry. I was thinking about puddings. Anyway. Gü asked if I'd like to take part in a little creative experiment in the kitchen and create some edible cups to enjoy their new Hot Chocolate in. So I said No. Only joking, Gü Hot Chocolate in edible cups? It's like a dream come true, or a real Charlie and the Chocolate Factory moment. The problem came with trying to decide what kind of cups to make. My first thought was to involve the children, so as we walked around a supermarket doing...

Whilst I was languishing in bed with the horrid bug that came upon my house last week, a delivery came for me. I was rather excited, until Daddy told me it was food from Asda. The mere thought of food had me back in bed watching Christmas movies and sipping on ice water (thank you lovely fridge freezer) thanking my lucky stars that I had a caring husband who would occasionally refill my water and top up my ice and generally check I wasn't on his side of the bed and spreading my germs any more than I had to. Daddy has been well taught however and knew that all deliveries to this house must be photographed before being put away, because there will more than likely be a blog post or at the very least an instagram update and so he took some pictures and emailed them to me. Which I could just about handle... You do have to admit it looks good right? The problem was that with the foods needing to be eaten and the children, Daddy and I all staying on ...

Every year the children want to participate in a Secret Santa. I'm sure that like most people they have the assumption that they are going to be able to find the perfect gift for the person they are drawn. Of course this only ever happens once in a life time and even then only if you are really lucky. I have witnessed it once, when a work colleague purchased a box full of malt loaf for another colleague. The recipient was over the moon, as he was always seen with a piece of toasted malt loaf in hand. Anyway. My Mum, the Children, Daddy and I were entered our names into the family Secret Santa. A budget of £5 was given and we drew names. It was fairly easy for me to work out who had drawn who, seeing as I knew who I had (Daddy), Big Boy asked Daddy for help (he had me) and Top Ender (My Mum) and my Mum (Top Ender) asked me for help. Everything was going well. Big Boy got the gifts he wanted to choose (and almost told me in the process). Top Ender got the gifts she w...

I love decorating the house for Christmas, you already know that if you've read this blog before or seen me on Twitter or Facebook or just passed my house! I have always thought that this time of year is magical and so decorating for me just means I get to make a little more magic inside the house. As in years past the only room in our house that hasn't really seen any decoration is mine and Daddy's bedroom as it just has this little bauble Christmas Tree thingy. So Poundland asked if I'd like to create a poundland wonderland in one of the rooms of my home and the children and I decided that the only room that wasn't decorated was my bedroom and so therefore the one room that needed to be decorated was of course my bedroom!

I hate getting sick, but it seems at this time of year and with children bringing home all sorts of germs from School it's inevitable that they'll get sick and then of course me as chief nursemaid will get sick too. I thought that this last time I'd been lucky. Daddy had looked after a poorly Big Boy whilst Top Ender and I had been running around doing things we'd agreed to that weekend. However as the week went on and Big Boy continued to be sick and Top Ender came down with it too, I knew my luck was going to change. And it did in a rather violent fashion. So now I'm poorly and I'm not really a very good patient, especially when it's so close to Christmas and I have so much to do. Well, actually I don't have anything to do. I'm unusually organised this year. I've wrapped all the gifts to our family, I've wrapped all the gifts Santa asked me to help with for the children's stockings. I've made my shopping list for all the food ...

With Big Boy and Top Ender both being off school this week due to illness (BB will be going back to School tomorrow he's fine even if his blood sugars are all over the place!) it would have been easy to resort to letting them both just sit in bed, watch cartoons and play on their tablets. And to be fair, both the children did a fair bit of that because when you feel as lousy as they did/do it's just about as much as you can manage to not fall asleep mid sentence. However, I'm a mean and evil Mum. The sort that doesn't care if you're off School sick and still makes you practice your times tables, spellings and handwriting and so when they were feeling a little better (late afternoon) I got them doing some Mummy home school. Big Boy had been learning about symmetry at School before he was ill, so I set him up with a bunch of paper circles and got him designing baubles and snowflakes. We're going to attach all his snowflake designs to some invisible thread I...

In childhood pictures of me at Christmas time, I was the quintessential ruddy cheeked smiley child. With my blond hair and almost permanent grin, I was just like those little cherubs you see hanging around the manger of the Baby Jesus. What you didn't see, just out of shot is the bottles of cough medicine and baby paracetamol and various other items that my Parents, Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles would buy for me in order to get me through the day. For every year, without fail I was ill at Christmas. Somehow, the children have skipped most of my cold at Christmas genes, well Top Ender does have a cough and BB is currently laying on the sofa feeling incredibly sorry for himself... According to decongestant experts Olbas and some research they and others have done today, Monday 15th December is the most cold ridden day of the year. Great.

Many years ago, when Top Ender was small, Daddy and I had a chat about Santa. We decided between us that Santa wasn't going to be responsible for the main gifts in our home. In our home, there would of course be gifts from Santa, but the main gifts, the ones that cost a lot of money? They'd come from us. Upstairs gifts, from Santa, downstairs gifts from us. We knew that Top Ender's friends wouldn't have the same rules in their home, so we casually dropped into conversation with Top Ender about how Santa asked us to pay for half the presents he gave to us. Top Ender accepted this, she was small and it didn't seem unreasonable to her, especially as I'm pretty sure we also explained that this was something he or his Chief Elf spoke about to all parents who were in certain tax brackets. A couple of years later, Top Ender accidentally found some stocking gifts I'd carefully selected for her. I knew that she wouldn't believe me if I told her that they w...

It's no secret that here at A Mother's Ramblings, we love a computer game. Be it on the Wii, the Wii U, the Playstation (3, because I'm not made of money) or the Xbox (360 because again I'm not made of money!) or even on the PC if it's something that interests us then we save up for it. In fact BB currently has £60 saved in anticipation of a game coming out soon that he'll want. He isn't sure what it will be, but he knows that if he saves he'll be ready. There were two games on the early drafts of the children's Christmas lists this year. Top Ender was very interested in The Sims 4 (It seems a love of The Sims is passed down genetically) and Big Boy was after Skylands Trap Team, for any platform. Big Boy was making sure that he would get the game, as well as requesting it from Santa he was also saving up to buy Trap Team. As luck would have it we were invited to a launch party, along with some celebs (one of them was Danny Dyer and boy was my sis...

Top Ender and Big Boy love the occasional ready meal treat. For them, it's a chance to go to the Supermarket and pick something that they really fancy and then of course let me cook it before they get to eat it. The problem that they normally have is that their favourite ready meals are the Little Dish ones, which are a little too small for them, so as well as cooking the ready meal, I need to cook a couple of side dishes too. No, problem there really but if they are in a hurry (as they often are!) then the extra time it takes me to boil some potatoes or steam some vegetables they get driven to madness... not that anyone would notice the difference. Little Dish must have read my mind however, as they have magically come up with a new range Little Dish For Bigger Kids. How fantastic right? These meals are the right size for Top Ender and Big Boy, and more importantly for me I trust the Little Dish meals to be good quality. Little Dish asked if we'd like to try their meals and...

This week, a delivery for me arrived. Inside the package was this. That's right, a slightly sleeping looking owl. Isn't he adorable? He was sent by a very lovely lady who I think has the best job in the world, as she gets to hug these cuddly giant soft toys all the time. As soon as I got him out of the box, Big Boy pounced. HE'S SO CUTE I WANT TO HUG HIM! And then Big Boy hugged him and wouldn't let go. My new owl wasn't mine any more. The owl was immediately named Rolo by Big Boy and has gone with Big Boy EVERYWHERE, including Church! When Rolo was at Church, everyone wanted to give him a hug or a squeeze, or wanted to buy one for themselves because it's true the first thing you do when you see one of the Squishable family is just hug them! The large 15" Squishable's are priced at £34.99, and they have smaller ones that measure 7" and 3", that cost £17.99 and £6.99 respectively and postage is £4.95 for those of us ...

When I posted about the frame I wanted to hang above the Fireplace, I wanted an idea from someone of something that I could do that would look great, something that would fit in with our other decorations, something that was pulled from my head without me realising it. All the ideas, that everyone gave were fantastic, and I put them all to the family and they were all very excited about them all, but there was one idea that caught my imagination more than the others and that one was from Sally at Who's The Mummy , and if ever there was someone that could pull something from my brain without me realising it, it's her. So I present to you the Christmas frame all completed. We went with Sally's idea of each family member holding up a letter to spell the word "Merry". When I read that, I knew that I wanted something to go underneath, that would finish the sentiment so I picked a font that I liked, found my printable acetate and printed out the word Christmas...

I've described myself in the past as a bit of a Christmas Magpie, as in if I see something I like I borrow it and use it with my family. I did it with Jen's Five Gift Idea (and if you're looking for an adorable Christmas Memories Book take at look at hers, it's fab and if I hadn't spent a fortune printing mine out a couple of years back I'd so want this one!), I did it with Elf on the Shelf, I have started putting Marshmallows on Sweet Potatoes after some Missionaries told me it was the only way (it's not the only way, but it is pretty darn great) and I did it with Sinterklaas by borrowing it from a Nursery Worker who used to look after Top Ender. Sinterklass, comes to our house around the 5th/6th December depending on what else I'm doing and how prepared I am. When he comes, we have to make sure our shoes are clean and neat and this year despite us not leaving them out, but in the shoe box at the bottom of the stairs when we woke up on the 5th he had...

Tonight saw Top Ender, Big Boy and I racing to the train station to pick up Daddy, who'd come back from Birmingham for a few hours in order to join us in one of our much loved Christmas Traditions, going to see the Panto at Milton Keynes Theatre . This year, the panto is Peter Pan, (which is a much loved story in our home) and the star of the show was no doubt Bradley Walsh, who (I may be alone in saying this, but I don't care) looks jolly handsome. Really handsome.