A Matter of Choice

During our seemingly endless summer there have been many times I have wondered what on earth to do to keep a 4 and a 1 year old (and me!) happy.  We've been out a fair amount but with the heat and two high maintenance children it's not always as enjoyable as it could be.  There are few activities though to do at home with both of them that are equally enjoyed, once I'd have built tracks, played games and done puzzles and painting with Leo without a care in the world, now we have a mad climbing baby disrupting it all! Playing on the Wii is one of Leo's favourite things to do, and we often play Just Dance together, I love it as its been a long time since I went out dancing, and Louka loves it too - standing next to us and waving his arms about and laughing. From this Leo has now discovered music and for the first time is 'letting' me play my ipod rather than moaning so much I'd end up turning it off. This somehow led to one of the simple highlights of th...

Once upon a time I listened to music all the time, at home, in the car and in the pub, these days unfortunately I have no idea what's going on in the music world as I don't get to listen to English radio in the car and I tend to mostly lose the "ipod vs Thomas the tank engine on tv" battle. Recently I've got into the habit of making playlists on youtube and listening in the morning when I'm just with Louka as he is still small enough to be amused by Mummy singing and dancing around. So it was well timed to receive a BassBoomz speaker for review. BassBoomz are wireless bluetooth speakers designed for use with smart phones, tablets and laptops, or any device with a bluetooth connection.  They are also compatible with any device with a 3.5m audio jack.   The speakers have a high perfomance Li-ion battery which means you can hear your music at 70% volume for 5 - 6 hours. You can also connect 2 BassBoomz together for stereo sound. I was hugely i...

Like his Mum and his Grandad, Leo is a big fan of puzzles so he was very excited to receive an 'Old McDonald Jingle Puzzle', I was even more pleased as we had just reached the week his school was closed for the big Bank holiday week in Cyprus which coincided with me being 39 weeks pregnant and struggling to find things to occupy him which did not involve me moving much! The puzzle is from Music for Kids and is a great way to introduce children to music as it comes with a CD and sing-a-long song sheet, as well as the music notes printed on the metre long puzzle. It also has a colouring sheet and 20 stickers. Leo loved the puzzle and completed it 'almost' on his own - he is quite capable of doing them when he thinks about it but always prefers to do it together. The colouring sheet was also a winner and he very well to copy the picture on the puzzle to get the colours right!  Stickers always go down very well with him too and he loved the fact that he got to pl...

Love Christmas = Love Christmas music, it's the best way to get you in the festive spirit! Growing up we had an LP (remember those? Big round black vinyl things? No, ok I'll continue) of Christmas Carols which was very nice but as I got a bit older I discovered the joy of the Christmas Song! Every year at the end of the school term there would be charity events, and own clothes days and it would all be topped off with the Sixth Form Christmas show where all the teachers would make prats of themselves for our amusement. The best bit for me was at the end when they used to play all Christmas songs and everyone would be so over excited about the holidays and what was to come. That was the start of my love of the Christmas song, now much to the disgust of my hubby who thinks they should only be played on one day I can't wait to get the Christmas CD out each year. It's a tough call but I've been trying to list my top five favourites... Well, first of all there is...

Once upon a time I listened to music a lot, in the car, at home and even if I had the TV on it would usually be on a music channel during the day. Nowadays due to the protests of a certain little man it's usually restricted to in the car, and even then it has to be 'not big loud Mummy' On the rare occasions I end up indoors on my own, the first thing I do is to turn my ipod on and listen to my favourites. I miss my music and wish I'd not stopped listening to it so Leo was in the habit of hearing it and might not moan about it so much. Music can do so much for your mood and there are so many songs that really mean something, it drives Aaron mad that I have a story for nearly every song in my collection! I've been tagged by Real Housewife Lauren  to take part in   Mammywoo's Music Therapy  which is all about reminding ourselves how much we love our music and sharing the songs which really mean something to us, those whose lyrics could have been written just f...

I've not joined in with Mumra's Playlists for a while but this week it had to be done. The theme is A song from a musical . No prizes for guessing which musical I've chosen :) Regular readers will know that my hubby and I are big fans of The Rocky Horror Show. I'm not however choosing the most obvious song as it is overplayed (although the stage show version is excellent) I love all the songs, I don't think I could pick out one as a favourite but this one always takes me right back to the show we got engaged at . There is a line 'Here's the ring to prove that I'm no joker'  at the show I looked down at my hand and smiled and then up at my friend who was grinning her head off and had tears in her eyes! Every time I hear the song I always (yes even now!) hold my hand out and sing Janet's first verse 'Oh it's nicer than Betty Monroe had,  Now we're engaged and I'm so glad,  That you met Mum and you know Dad.  I...

I love lots of different music, including quite a lot of 'bad music' as I have a 'bad music gene'  I am always messing around with my ipod rearranging playlists as there are too many random songs to put it on shuffle, some of them just do not go together at all! As I said, I love such a range of music I didn't really know where to start..... best dancing songs, sad songs, oldies, cheesy pop?  Well, as I was scrolling through my ipod I realised the best place to start would be my "Most played"playlist, so here are three of my favourites from it. I suppose if I had to pick just one song as a favourite 'Hold on' by Wilson Philips would be it. I loved it at the time and then rediscovered it a few years ago. It is without a doubt the song I have listened to the most over the last year or so (with the possible exception of "The Wheels on The Bus") I sang killed it on karaoke on my birthday  after my friend started singing it and I thou...

Ok, I'm going public... I have a love of really bad music, not just a bit rubbish but really bad. I even know the songs are bad and in the rare event someone agrees with me and says it's good I have to disagree with them an point out that it is actually terrible but for some reason I  still like it. AJ says I have a bad music gene in me! So imagine my delight on seeing this post by Emily O over at Babyrambles I like three of her five, and I'd never heard of one! (to see her five click here Five songs I shouldn't like but do) So I thought I'd share with the world some of the songs I hate to love, what's quite depressing is the fact that I've been thinking about this for a couple of days - there's a lot of terrible music to choose from don'tcha know. In no particular order Buck Fizz, Making your Mind Up I remember dancing around my front room to this at the time, I was only four though so it was cute rather than worrying, whenever I hea...