A Matter of Choice

Following on from my recent 80's toy flashback post I wanted to elaborate,  while I had been writing the first post I had been browsing on pinterest and of course now it keeps showing me more of the same type of pins assuming that is what I am now interested in.  Well of course it is right, I love memories! Last time I mentioned my favourites - Care Bears and My Little Pony, plus a couple of less popular toys but now it's all about the dolls. Surely every girl growing up in any decade has to have a doll at one point, whether it's a baby, Barbie or Bratz, or whatever the latest is (I don't know, I have boys!) I had a Tiny Tears (or similar) doll, you know the one - feed it and change it, ahh the aspirations we all had!   I wasn't a fan though,  I remember it annoying me that it didn't really look like a young baby and so it seemed silly. This changed when I received Gemma (not sure why I wanted to call it something so close to my own name)   S...

My favourite thing about my blog is the chance it has given me to write about some of my old photos and share the stories in flashback posts.   I love the fact it is creating a record for my boys and maybe their children for years to come and giving them the opportunity to get a glimpse into what my childhood and life was like before they came along.  Last year I introduced Leo to the BBC  'Back in Time' series'.  The first series 'Back in Time for the Weekend', took the participating family from the 1950s to the 1990s examining how Britain spent it's leisure time, and was followed up with 'Back in Time for Dinner'  which focused more on how eating habits changed over the years.  We are now watching 'Back in Time for School' and it's making Leo very glad to be at school now and not 100 years ago!   I am pleased he enjoys them as it's showing him more than just history,  to see 'real life' England is a rarity for him too havin...

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...

Way back in the days before I discovered boys, popstar crushes and even Care bears I had my very first love..... Let me introduce you to Dumbo. Dumbo was my first love, he was my first toy and was certainly could not have been more loved!  He's still with us albeit a little worn and aged now, the photo above was taken only today. As a young child I slept with him under my arm every night, always the same arm which is why his trunk bends to the side, he has been around the world to Spain, and Malta on his holidays with us.  Over the years he has had a little bit of surgery at the very careful hands of my Mum and was always carefully hand washed (the washing machine would have made him feel sick!) and then given pride of place in the airing cupboard to dry, always sitting up and never squashed in between some random drying underwear. Although he spent many years relaxing as I stopped playing with toys he always had pride of place in my bedroom and came with me each ...

Everyone is talking toys at the moment as we approach Christmas and it got me thinking about the toys I loved as a child. Jenny from Mummy Mishaps looked back at some toys from her toddler hood (and I had a couple of those like many of us did in the early 80's, Fisher Price phone anyone?) so thought I'd look at my childhood toys. I had a Cabbage Patch Baby all dressed in pink which I think was called Norma, not a name I really liked for my little doll but that's what it said on her birth certificate so I stuck with it!  I had a bigger 'real life baby' doll which I had for years and probably got played with more but I did love this one - do you remember they used to smell like Talculm powder! Image credit Care bears....the love of my childhood life!  I was their biggest fan, I had 3 years of 'Care Bear parties - so 3 birthday cakes (that was must have been quite easy - same cake, different colour, different picture but I didn't think of that!), ...