December 2011

Archive | December, 2011

The Humanistic Approach? – An Alternative Christmas Post

By Mum's the Word on December 24, 2011 in Christmas, Personal

If you’ve read this blog or know me in real life, you’ll know that I’m a worrier and an innate over-thinker. The slightest thing can set off a tangent in my brain and I’ll be going over it for days. Hey, I’m sitting here awake while the rest of the family sleeps because my brain just won’t switch off.

This year, we lost my step mum to cancer. I’ve blogged about my anger, sadness, grief etc, but just lately I’ve had another prevailing emotion: fear. You see, Lorraine had a Humanist minister speak at her service and while it was a very nice funeral (I fucking hate saying that…what the hell is a ‘nice’ funeral? Sadly, my vocabulary fails me on this one as I don’t know how else to describe it) it’s left me feeling adrift.

I don’t know if you’re aware, so please forgive my explanation if you are, but Humanism works on the principal that we should focus on human action rather than that of a deity and has no mention of an afterlife. We all just cease to be.

I suppose until this point, I’ve never been able to come up with an explanation for my own spirituality. The majority of my brain is science-driven, believing in evolution, the big bang, impact events and since becoming a huge Fringe fan, I even like to ponder the whole multiverse theory with Husband every now and again. But mixed in with all of this is still a belief in the afterlife and something a big bigger and badder than us, floating around in the ever after.

Maybe it’s a comfort thing, I’ve told you all before that I’m terrified of my own mortality, I always have been, I remember being scared of it as a small child as I’d have to be away from my Mum and Nan, which was the worst thing in the world to me back then. All I know is, I want to believe in Heaven. I want to believe that my Nan is up there in her pinny, having a good old chat with Lorraine and looking after her. That I’ll get to see all of the people I miss. A minute logical part of my mind tells me that this is just the human way of dealing with grief, but I can ignore that.

I suppose it’s Christmas that’s made me think of all of this, I’ve always felt like a hypocrite for celebrating when I don’t go to church, but as I’ve got older and started to formulate some firm ideas of my faith, I think it’s okay for me to celebrate because a) I think if there is a God, he’s in everything, not just in very expensive, man-made buildings and b) even if I don’t believe that Jesus was the son of God, I still think he was a lovely man who tried to teach people to be nice to each other, and I can still celebrate his birth.

I suspect I’ve got to the rambling stage now, this is probably one of those posts where I just needed to get everything out of my brain and let it sit in the ‘Drafts’ section forevermore. But I’m going to publish it, mainly in the vain hope that someone else can organise my thoughts for me. All I know is this: I miss Lorraine terribly and I hate the thought that we won’t get to see her at Christmas. I am, and will continue to be, gutted.

My thoughts are with anyone who lost someone this year and I hope you’re able to have as fantastic a Christmas as the ones we’ve lost would want us to have.

Oh, and Happy Birthday Jesus. You had some nice ideas.

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Slow Cooker Challenge – A Recipe Linky

By Mum's the Word on December 23, 2011 in Christmas, Cooking and Recipes

Being a grown-up at Christmas is tough. People ask you what you want and you have to trawl through your tinsel-addled brain to think of something that’s not too expensive or that you haven’t already gone out and bought for yourself. This year, my aunt must have had her genius hat on, because she bought Husband and I a slow cooker, which is something I’ve wanted for yonks but just haven’t got around to buying yet.

: Ooh, ahh, shiny slow-cookery goodness. (That reminds me, I must clean my hob…)

But, herein lies the rub; I have no frigging idea of what to cook in a slow cooker. I’ll probably try my Lamb Stew in it at some point, but I have it on good authority that there’s whole world of slow-cooked goodness that can be executed in one of these babies and I want to broaden our culinary horizons. Sure, I can look recipes up on the ‘net, but I want tried-and-tested, home cooked concoctions so I thought I’d turn to my readers.

I’ve hooked this post up with a little linky, so if you want to blog a recipe and link up, that would be super awesome, or if you don’t blog you can leave a comment below. There’s no prize, no weekly entry, just a one-off, good ol’ fashioned recipe swap to help me and my family take full advantage of our new kitchen gadget. I’ll be blogging my own attempts at your recipes and giving lots of link-love, so get involved and I’ll make sure you get all the credit! It’s a nice, chilled out, food related chance to blog – who doesn’t love that at Christmas?

I hope everyone is prepared, relaxed and looking forward to a great Christmas. Lots of love to you all from me, Husband, Sausage, Chuck and Happy.

LINK UP BELOW – GO ON, CLICK ON THE FROG!

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A Christmas Extravaganza – The Winners

By Mum's the Word on December 18, 2011 in Competitions

You know when something seems like a good idea, but then turns out to be a massive pain in the bum? Well, offering people the options to have extra entries seemed fantastic at first, until the actual logistics of it all sunk in. I couldn’t think of any better way to do it than to write all of the names onto little pieces of paper and draw them out of a hat, so with the help of Sausage, my beautiful assistant, we chose two winners:

The winner of the toy bundle is Polly and the winner of the Cake Pop maker is Carol! I’ve emailed you both and await your addresses so that I can get the parcels sent out to you. Well done both of you and thanks to everyone who entered.

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Doggy Disaster…

By Mum's the Word on December 13, 2011 in Sponsored Posts

Last year, Husband and I decided that we needed a new three piece suite in our lounge. The ones we had we’d bought nearly-new when we moved in but they turned out to be terrible quality and near enough fell apart in the two years since we bought them, which was a huge disappointment as they were leather recliners and weren’t cheap, even second hand. We started putting some money away here and there and had managed to save a decent wedge to put towards a new suite.

One Saturday afternoon around this time, I noticed that Chuck, our dog, was dancing around the back door, a sure sign that he needed to go out and *ahem*, well, we all know what he needed to go out and do…

A few minutes later and he was back in the house, but he was acting odd. He seemed jittery and on edge and was kind of pacing around the lounge. Husband and I gave him a check over and he seemed to be in pain but we couldn’t tell where the pain was coming from. He’s had problems with his joints in the past, which is quite common with bull-breeds and we thought he may have hurt himself while charging around the garden.

He was clearly in pain and wouldn’t settle down, so we made the decision to take him to the vet. Unfortunately, finding a vet on a Saturday evening isn’t an easy task so we ended up taking him to an emergency surgery. Chuck’s a very anxious patient, having lived part of his life with abusive owners and another part in and out of pounds and rescue centres, so he had to be partially sedated for the vet to even be able to get near him.

The vet gave him a thorough once over, drained his anal glands and came to the conclusion that it was something gastric that was causing the problems, although she couldn’t feel any obstructions in his abdomen. We had two choices; take him home and see how he goes or send him to their overnight clinic for x-rays and monitoring. At this point, we had started to become anxious about what sort of bill we’d be looking at so we asked her to tot up the treatment that he’d had so far.

£250. So far.

If we’d sent him to the overnight centre, our bill would have been nearer to £1000 and as much as we adore our dog, we simply did not have the kind of cash. We opted to take him home and keep an eye on him, knowing that in 24 hours we could take him to our normal vet and the emergency vet didn’t think it was anything life threatening anyway. If we’d had pet insurance, we wouldn’t have needed to agonise over the decision, but we didn’t so we had no choice.

We got him home and Husband and I took it in turns to spoon-feed him rooibos tea, which is known to be helpful with gastric complaints, and generally made a fuss of him. A short while later, he was laying in his bed and we heard him let out a HUGE amount of gas and like a flash he was on his feet, trotting around like a puppy and asking to be fed. Obviously we were thrilled that Chuck was feeling better and that he wouldn’t need any more treatment as he finds it so traumatic, but we did feel a little bit miffed that it had just been trapped wind causing the problems!

So; the moral of this story? Get pet insurance, or you could find yourself paying for a £250 bodily function and emptying your new-sofa fund!

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Needing a Break

By Mum's the Word on December 12, 2011 in Family

I think it’s safe to say that the last 12 months have been rather up and down for everyone in the Mum’s the Word house. This time last year we were still reeling from losing a family member and trying to work out how life could ever feel ‘normal’ again. Then, in March I was made redundant, without a word of warning. I walked into work one morning, was allowed to switch on my computer, take off my coat and get settled down before I was told “we won’t be needing you any more, you can go straight home again”.

Around this time, I started to fixate on the idea of us getting away as a family, even just somewhere that would be perfect for Weekend breaks.

Summer was nice, but Sausage starting school was possibly one of the most stressful things to ever happen to us as she hated it so much at the beginning. Thankfully for her, and if I’m honest a little bit for me and my aching heart, once her anxiety wore off she took to it like a duck to water and has been excelling ever since, but September and some of October was an emotional car-wreck for all of us.

Then, the ills started. I was poorly for so long that my GP suspected glandular fever, but it turned out that I was just having my butt handed to me by these horrid viruses that are doing the rounds and in fact none of us seem to have fully recovered, Sausage having been off school for almost a week with high temperatures.

What I’m getting at is this: I need a break. We all do. I adore my daughter more than anything else in existence, but if I have to spend another night being woken up twice an hour to have her nose wiped (she’s extremely snot-averse and wiping for her is preferable to the episodes of vomiting that her doing it would induce!), I’ll lose my mind.

I’d dearly love to take a break in February half term with my little family, providing we could find someone to look after Chuck. A change of scenery would be such great tonic for all of us and having seen reviews of the Wave Hotel on other blogs, I reckon we’d love it there! Husband and I are always saying we’d like to explore more of the British Isles and aside from going through the North to get to St. Andrews in Scotland, I’ve never visited anywhere north of Nottingham, so a weekend in Skeggy would satisfy two of my wants!

Do you have any plans for post-Christmas relaxation?

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A Christmas Extravaganza – Two Competitions!

By Mum's the Word on December 10, 2011 in Christmas, Competitions, Review

Every so often, I get asked to review something or do a giveaway on my blog and just recently I was offered the chance to give away a whole bundle of things, which should make Christmas a whole lot easier for one lucky Mum’s the Word reader.

Courtesy of UKMums.tv, I’ve been given 12, yes TWELVE toys to give away to one reader and the haul of goodies is as follows:

1. A Zhu Zhu Pet – These little critters are super popular at the moment and make a brilliant stocking filler for a little Zhu Zhu fan!

2. Mould and Paint Christmas – Perfect for your budding crafters, this set comes with everything you need to make and paint your own Christmas decorations.

3. Klutzy the Crab from Disney’s Club Penguin

A six-inch plush of Klutzy, from Disney’s ever-popular Club Penguin.

4. Childrens World Map Puzzleball

This one’s brilliant, not only is it a 3D puzzle, at the end of it, you end up with a fully functional rotating globe, so it’s fun, educational and stimulating all at once. (I quite want one of these for myself…!)

5. Rastamouse Talking Plush

If you’ve read this, you’ll know that we reviewed one of these a month or so ago, and Sausage loves hers! Full of songs and sayings from the show, this plush is a brilliant addition to the toy box.

6. Sylvanian Families Squirrel Family

We’ve bought Sausage a whole bunch of Sylvanian Families stuff this year because we just love it all, but the Squirrel Family is especially cute, even by Sylvanian standards!

7. Mission Earth

Not only is this family board game a great way to teach your kids how to be eco-friendly, it’s all made from recycled cardboard, contains no plastic and was invented by a group of school girls for the Young Enterprise Scheme.

8. Wild Science Face Mask Laboratory

I absolutely love this one, it’s essentially a good ol’ fashioned chemistry set, but it’s aimed at young girls and the end result of your experiments is that you’ve made some lush face masks. A brilliant way to get girls into science.

9. A Selection of Animals

We discovered Schleich toys a while back as Sausage is mad about animals I wanted her to have something like the ELC animals that my little sister used to collect. Brilliant quality and beautiful toys for girls or boys.

10. Fireman Sam Ambulance

Fireman Sam is one of the programmes that I remember from when I was a kid, it started in 1987 and it’s still going strong! This ambulance comes with a Nurse Flood figure and first aid box.

11. A 50th Anniversary Etch-a-Sketch

Speaking of things that’ve been around for a while, Etch-a-Sketch is celebrating its golden anniversary with a, well, GOLDEN Etch-a-Sketch! Create something amazing with this classic toy.

12. Morbs Ultimate Triple Pack

According to Amazon, these are “sensational ‘Ping Pong’ looking balls that instantly MORPH into fun looking fantasy characters, simply throw, roll, blast, bounce your ball… as they land they transform from small little balls into big-headed small bodied warriors and monsters”. Apparently!

So, here’s the awesome part…I have another thing to give away too!

About a month ago, I was sent one of these sensational and truly pretty Cake Pop Makers, which bakes six cake balls in four minutes. The cakes come out perfectly spherical and perfectly moist, ready for you to decorate as you wish. Sausage and I made about ten batches of these for her nursery’s Christmas fair and we decorated them with white chocolate and edible glitter, to make magical snowball cakes!

My next plan is to make chocolate balls, covered in milk chocolate and topped with a drizzle of white chocolate and fondant holly made with this to make perfect bite-sized Christmas pudding pops!

All in all, the toy bundle is worth almost £200 and the Cake Pop Maker is worth £20, so you could win yourself a seriously good haul to make the festive season that much easier.

If you want to enter, leave me a comment below telling me whether you want to win the toys, the cake pop maker or both, along with a way to contact you (email address, Twitter ID etc.).

Also, if you’d like to pop over to the Mum’s the Word Facebook page and give me a like, follow me on Twitter or subscribe by email (in the right sidebar of this page—–>), each of these will earn you a super-dooper-extra-free entry into the competition, just let me know in the comment you leave which you’ve done, if any.

Good luck, the winner or winners will be drawn next Saturday 17th December 2011 at 8pm so that I have time to post the goodies out before Christmas.

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Sausage-ism of the Day.

By Mum's the Word on December 10, 2011 in Humour, Parenting

“Mummy, I think I love you. I think I’ll keep you. I definitely won’t throw you in the bin”

Er, thanks…I think?!

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Tesco Compare Car Insurance

By Mum's the Word on December 9, 2011 in Sponsored Posts

It may surprise you to know, given that I sometimes seem rather…scattered…that I can actually drive. I passed my test FIRST TIME when I was just 18 and my first car was a little metallic red Fiat Cinquecento who I called Ruby. I loved that car, she was £795 and 7 years old when I bought her and I paid another £700 to be insured on her on a provisional licence, which back then was megabucks to me!

I’ve had various cars over the years and I adore driving, but we haven’t actually had a car at all for the past two years after our last one gave up the ghost. We recently saved up some money and are looking to buy a little second hand motor, choosing to opt for a Mercedes A-Class for the safety and quality build that those Germans always seem to offer. Then comes the issue of car insurance. I spent a while looking into how much our insurance would cost and found the process so laborious, going from one site to the next and entering all of my details.

Then I remembered all of those TV adverts about websites that compare car insurance and because they’re such a well-known family brand, I opted to use the Tesco Compare website. Any time I shop for car insurance, Tesco Insurance tends to come out as the cheapest, even in comparison to all of those ‘women driver’ insurers, but with their comparing service you can compare quotes from all of the major insurance providers at the same time.

It’s a completely free service and there’s no obligation to buy anything, but for a busy working Mum, the time I saved by using Tesco Compare was invaluable to me and my family. Once we’ve purchased our new car, which will probably be after Christmas, I’ll definitely be using Tesco Compare to find the cheapest quote I can and let’s face it, aren’t we all looking to save a bit of money after the expensive Christmas period?

All I will say is this, even if you’ve been with your insurer for a while, it can’t hurt to get a new quote just to make sure you’re saving as much money as you possibly can and Tesco Compare will make the process as quick and painless as it can possibly be!

This was a sponsored post on behalf of Tesco Compare, but all opinions and examples expressed within are genuine.

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A Hairy Situation…

By Mum's the Word on December 5, 2011 in Parenting, Personal

Sausage and I went to the hairdressers today, me for my usual root touch-up and trim and her for her first ever haircut. Yes, you read that right, aside from the little trim up that I once gave her fringe about 2 years ago, she’s never had a proper haircut. I’ve always been too precious about her beautiful mane to allow anyone to chop any off, but it was getting very long and very unmanageable, especially with all of her wild ringlets, so we decided that it was time.

Last night, I spent all night having Sausage-related nightmares, dreaming that Husband and I were being forced to go on holiday without her, then that I was at work and trying to phone her and couldn’t get through, then that she was a baby again and I couldn’t get her to stop crying. I think we can safely say that I was dreading the haircut. It’s totally irrational, but the thought of someone chopping part of her off and sweeping it into a bin had my stomach in knots.

So, this morning finally arrived and I made a big song and dance about our ‘Girls Day Out’, just in case she was feeling as anxious as me. I mean, of course she wasn’t, that kid beats me hands-down when it comes to nonchalance, she was looking forward to her first big-girl haircut!

We got there, I had my colour put on first, then it was Sausage’s turn. Lou, our hairdresser, explained that most kids have a dry cut, and you should generally always cut curls dry anyway so that you can see how they fall without being weighed down, so Sausage stood up and Lou sat on a chair and within a couple of snips it was all done. I was even a bit ruthless and asked her to get rid of an extra inch!

I won’t pretend that seeing her hair swept away didn’t give me a huge pang of sadness, but I am an overly sentimental sap most of the time, so I did well not to bring it all home in a bag. A few people suggested keeping some, but we have this weird superstition in our family that you shouldn’t keep hair, so we don’t.

As usual, I’m hugely proud of my little lady for showing me how amazing she is and most of all for staying so still while Lou cut her hair. I foresee loads more lovely girly trips to the hairdressers together, yet another thing that I can enjoy with my favourite person in the whole world.

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A Lovely Way to Say ‘Thank You’

By Mum's the Word on December 4, 2011 in Guest Blogger

Anyone who has kids can probably agree that the first few days of their lives are probably the happiest days of yours. Just recently, I saw someone describe having a baby as meeting a stranger and feeling as though you’ve known them your whole life, which I thought was one of the most beautiful and accurate things I’d ever heard!

Those first weeks of baby’s life can be a real whirlwind – you’re getting used to having a baby in the house, learning as you go along about feeds and nappy changes and bathing and all of those things that you have to do every day, whether you like it or not! That’s not to mention the family and friends dropping in with gifts and well wishes, wanting to meet your little darling or all of the regular housework you have to do. When do you get time for a cuppa or to have a bath?!

One of the things you can do to make your life SO much easier is to order yourself some of these thank you cards, which combine a Thank You with a baby announcement as there’s space on there for a picture of your little one. That way you just have to give one each to anyone who’s bought you or the baby and gift and you won’t have to spend hours writing them out by hand!

The cards would actually make a brilliant gift to new parents too; what better way to help a new mum or dad than with the gift of time? The site itself is really easy to use and allows you to customise your message, choose from dozens of designs for a girl or a boy and can cost as little as 49p per card. You’ll be helping out the new Mum and Dad by saving them from having to write cards out by hand when they could be spending time with baby, catching up on some emails, housework or most importantly of all – SLEEP!

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