A matter of choice

It's the time of year when you can't help but reflect over the previous 12 months and wonder what the next 12 will bring. For those who have been following my blog for a while you will know that this year has been a mixed bag for us....

The highlight was my parents moving over to Cyprus in March, and the low point was Aaron losing his job in August.  It's been great to see a couple of old friends from the UK who managed to visit us this year but sad to say goodbye to two friends of mine who had to move back to the UK.  Among the worries though there have been many good points,  various birthday's, days at the beach and meet ups with friends.

I'm linking up to Michelle's Reason's to be Cheerful this week, I haven't joined in for ages due to the fact that I've been really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find some decent reasons each week, but looking back over the photos of my year I realise we've still had a ball!

It was a year full of simp…

We had a lovely Christmas, the first one spent with the three of us and my parents together, on the day Leo woke later than usual at about 6.30am, he came into our room as normal and said all excitedly 'it's got light Mummy!'   (He says this with great joy if he wakes up and it's not pitch black as he has less reason to go back to sleep!)   He asked me to get up and was very surprised when I said 'Ok then' and jumped out of bed.... this is not something that usually happens!  To add to his confusion Daddy was also getting up - this certainly never happens at this time of day when Mummy's up too!

I asked him if he remembered what day it was and despite the excitement of the previous days he didn't know. I reminded him that Santa may have been and he rushed into the hall, looked around and ran back to me saying 'No, he's not here'  I wondered out loud if he may have left something on Leo's bed for him so he ran back to his room, starred a…

Wishing all my readers a very Merry Christmas!

This week brings us the last Gallery of 2011, and the prompt is Christmas of Yesteryear. I was quite excited when I saw this prompt last week as it would give me a great excuse to look at all the old Christmas pics, except then I went and forgot all about it!
It's lucky really that I knew exactly which photo I wanted to use...

This was taken in 1986, of my friend and I caught having a sneaky peak of the presents under the Christmas tree! Unfortunately I'm the one in the rather unpleasant pink trouser suit, I'd like to blame that on my Mum but I have a horrible feeling that I used to love that outfit!

I used to drive my Mum mad by constantly poking and prodding the presents under the tree, I used to spend ages trying to guess what they were but I actually never wanted to find out!  One year I had accidentally come across a present of mine hidden and after a second of being really pleased I was getting what I wanted felt quite disappointed that I knew before the day!

My pre…

Everyone has their own Christmas traditions and favourite things about the season and I've been really enjoying reading all about them on the many different blogs I regularly read. Joining in with the festivities is Kate with this week's Listography as she asks us all What makes Christmas, Christmas for us



1. The Tree - You cannot have Christmas without a tree, it's the first thing you need! Even when I lived on my own and wasn't even indoors for the majority of the Christmas season I still had my own little tree that I decorated with the Christmas CD playing several vodkas and singing my head off to 'Lonely this Christmas' like a festive version of Bridget Jones!

2. The music - I LOVE Christmas music much to Aaron's disgust, it doesn't matter that is not necessarily 'good' music but it's got to be done!  The last two years I have got up and thrown open the balcony doors as wide as they go and played 'Fairytale of New York' at full …

You may already know that craft activities are not something that comes naturally to me, add my complete lack of patience and a wilful toddler into the mix and it's not something that usually fills me with joy! However Leo does get very excited and I thought as it's Christmas it would give me something to blog about it would be a lovely thing to do :)

I really can't remember if I saw this idea on another blog - if I did and you know which one let me know and I'll credit it as it seems unlikely I would have come up with the idea all by myself!

What you need - toilet roll tubes, red paint, card (I used a cereal box), green paper, stickers and glitter glue.

Paint the tubes, and leave to dry.
Cut out Christmas tree shapes and stick to the card.
Stick the trees to the rolls and then decorate with stickers and glitter glue to look like baubles and tinsel - Done!


Leo was a bit bemused at first as the only painting we've done just involved splodging colours randomly on pa…

Have I mentioned that I love Christmas? The blog world is going a bit Christmas crazy so it was only a mater of time before 'The Ultimate Christmas Meme' appeared, and I've been tagged by Jenny from Mummy Mishaps who loves Christmas as much as I do.  I love an excuse to get even more festive so here's my answers...

1.The Christmas song I can listen to even in June is...
As much as I love Christmas I wouldn't want to listen to any Christmas songs in June, it's weird enough often being sunny here in December let alone listening to Christmas songs in 40 odd degree heat!  I like to keep Christmas special so try not to do anything festive until December. That said if I had to choose one it would be the best Christmas song of all time - Fairytale of New York.


2.Hot Chocolate, Egg Nog or Mulled wine?
Seeing as I don't like the others it would have to be Hot Chocolate, preferably with a big slug of baileys in it.

3.When do you put your decorations up?
Not on Christmas…

Last weekend was Leo's first bit of Christmas excitement, as he got to meet Father Christmas twice. I took him to see him last year but he was a little underwhelmed to say the least back then, (I didn't even write a blog post about it!)  and although he didn't cry at all the whole experience pretty much went over his head!  This year he understands who he is meeting, even though he doesn't get the whole 'presents coming at Christmas thing  - I've deliberately not mentioned too much about that as if I tell him Father Christmas will bring him presents he will just want them RIGHT NOW.

The first meeting was at the school on the army base's Christmas Fayre. The excitement started when Father Christmas arrived waving to everyone from the top of a fire engine with sirens blaring, We then queued with his friend (who's five) and he saw him go first so that would have encouraged Leo to do the same.

Leo was a little unsure but walked in holding my hand and then ra…

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!




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!), I even had a surprise on …

I've been on a bit of a domestic goddess fad lately, making enough Mince pies to feed the village and Onion Marmalde but I took it to another level last week and made my own Lemon Curd, I'd even been saving jars to put it in! It was actually really easy to make, and a damn sight cheaper than buying it as I've not seen a jar for less than 4 euros here. I just need to find someone with a lemon tree and it would be cheaper still!

You will need...
Grated zest and juice of 4 large lemons
4 large eggs
350g golden castor sugar ( I didn't have any so used normal granulated, seem to still work!)
225g unsalted butter cut into small chunks
1 level desert spoon cornflour

Lightly whisk eggs in a medium size saucepan then add the rest of the ingredients over a medium heat. Whisk continuously until mixture thickens, should be about 7 - 8 minutes.
Then turn the heat to the lowest setting and continue to whisk for about another minute.
Remove from the heat and pour into hot sterilised …

One of the things I always enjoyed as a child in the run up to Christmas was doing the pre-Christmas baking with my Mum. Mince Pies, and Cheese Straws are the ones that stick in my mind, along with decorating the Christmas Cake with the ancient plastic Santa, holly and robins.

It's only in recent years that I've decided that I like mince pies but apart from a couple of years when I left home I've always made them, it just doesn't feel like Christmas until I've made them now. Fortunately now I like them too I can actually eat my own cooking!

Although I enjoy cooking, it's taking a while for me to enjoy cooking with Leo but he enjoys it and I want to involve him so I split my baking into two parts. He helped me make the pastry in the morning and I left it to chill until he had gone to bed before I made the pies.

You can tell I'm getting old as I had actually planned to go to the pub with Aaron the night I made these but turned down my parents babysitting off…

As the year draws to a close it's natural to reflect on the year that has passed, and look back over the previous 12 months. This week BritMums are asking us bloggers to share the best of our blogs, favourite posts or most popular so I've been trawling through the archives to remind myself of what I've been up to.

This has been a great year in blogging terms, I've really enjoyed both writing mine and reading others, I've 'met' some great people who although I've not met...yet - I'm still keeping my fingers crossed and hoping I'll get to go to BritMums Live) I would consider to be good friends. I've had a chance to review my first products and I've really enjoyed joining in with  lots of link ups with other blogs.

I can hardly believe that I've written 243 posts so far this year and I've enjoyed every minute, it makes up for the fact that we have nothing to watch on TV!  I'd like to share the top 5 favourites with you in case…

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 no que…

Every family has their own traditions and habits over Christmas and every year it makes a popular topic of conversation in the run up to Christmas, what you eat, where you go and what time you open presents are just a few of the many things discussed. I have been with Aaron many years now and mostly our Christmases were similar and they kind of merged into one but the Christmas after we got married we discovered a bit of a compatibility issue!

Just to set the scene (Sorry Aaron, you knew this blog post was coming didn't you!) Aaron hates Christmas.... well, he likes Christmas Day but he says that Christmas should be just that, one day. I on the other hand think of Christmas as a season!  I love the run up to Christmas as much, if not more than the day itself, I love shopping, cooking, wrapping presents, writing cards, carols... the whole thing and it drives him nuts. 
That year we had been having our annual conversation where I try and convert him and get annoyed when he doesn…

As I'm sure you have gathered from reading my blog I LOVE photos, I can easy spend hours looking at old photos or faffing about with them. Over the years I've taken hundreds and have rarely been at an event (or non-event!) with having taken any, because of this its very unusual to suddenly see a photo some time after it was taken (or in this case uploaded to Facebook - I'm on there so much it's very unlikely that I would miss something!)

I came across this unimportant looking photo the other day posted on the facebook page of my old 'local' - the pool club we used to spend most of our time in.  It was a totally ordinary Thursday evening and we taking part in the monthly quiz night - hence the serious 'thinking' faces.


Apart from the fact I didn't know it had been taken and I've only just seen it 3 years later it jumped out at me for another couple of reasons....

It was weird to see my old pool club - I spent ages looking at the photo, imagining …

Several weeks ago I completed a fitness assessment with MG Health and Fitness, I enjoyed finding out that apparently I'm fitter than I think I am, and survived the run up the hill, I was advised on the areas I need to focus on and how best to move forward not just for short term solutions but to work towards a long term fitness goal.

A few days later I was back for another class and I was all committed to my new plan, then the following day I picked up Leo awkwardly and put my back out - you may have seen me moaning about it on twitter / facebook! Although Claire from MG helped me out it meant I had to miss classes, I could hardly stand up let alone get to the studio!

It doesn't take much to get me out of an exercise routine, so I really had to force myself back there this week but I know that if I don't get stronger / fitter then the problems will continue.  As Claire is out the country Mike was taking the Legs Bums & Tums class. It's a good job I can't blog …