A Matter of Choice

There are many things that I imagined I would do (or not do) when I had children and in most cases it turns out that I was completely wrong - providing fresh home cooked meals every day, no junk food, limited tv and technology time, educational arts and crafts etc but one thing I was right about was the fact I would read to my children and try and encourage a love of books in them. As a child I absolutely loved visiting the local library, and spent many hours there choosing hundreds of books over the years. I remember the excitement of becoming old enough to get an adult card and suddenly being able to take out 9 books at a time.  I think they actually let me get one early as I used to go through the books so fast! When Leo was just a couple of months old I took him to a Baby Bounce and Rhyme time at the library, and although he was way to young to appreciate it I know it is something I would have continued, and I'm sure we would have been regular borrowers of children...

As far back as I can remember I've been a fan of magazines, starting with 'Twinkle' which I believe came out on a Wednesday - I used to go to the shop with my Mum and she would get her magazine too and we'd go home and read them together with a treat to eat as well, In my school days it was 'Just 17', closely followed by 'More' magazine which we used to all fight over at school to read with the funny problem pages and 'position of the fortnight' When I lived on my own every time I went shopping I would buy a cake and 'Heat' magazine and when I worked in the worlds most boring office we survived by swapping issues of every celebrity / woman's mag going! I also loved the slighty more geeky 'Web user' and 'Computer Active' Big fat glossy mags were reserved for holidays and plane journeys as an extra special treat. And my favourite bit of planning my wedding was the tons of back issue Wedding Mags I use...

I have declared that this weekend will be 'Decorating Day' in our household, this is purely my decision as Aaron was over ruled for the last time last Christmas when  he tried one last time to get me to put them up on Christmas Eve .  Instead this year we have been having a debate about swapping Christmas trees with my parents, we have a Christmas tree brought years ago before we left England from Notcutts Garden Centre which has been nicknamed 'the biggest Christmas tree in the world',  it's a great tree but unfortunately we don't have the biggest apartment in the world to match! For the last few years we've just put half of it up (so it sat flat against the wall) but now we've gained an extra child and a whole load of associated stuff, our small apartment seems to have shrunk even more!  The solution seems to be to temporary swap as I love our tree and can't bear to sell it! One thing which will stay the same from previous years here in...

As you may know Aaron and I are HUGE fancy dress fans, we've annoyed many of our friends in the past by instigating fancy dress parties (often for no reason at all!)  or convincing everyone to go out dressed in random outfits.  From getting engaged in costume to some fantastic parties  and weekends away   we never like to pass up a chance to dress up! Back in the UK we had amassed a huge collection of costumes but unfortunately decided get rid of them all before moving out to Cyprus. To be fair we've not has much of an opportunity to wear any of them but it's much harder to get hold of things to make outfits here.    So I was really excited when I was offered an outfit from All Fancy Dress.com, I eagerly surfed my way through my favourite types of costumes - (Fairytale, Burlesque, Greek Goddess etc)  and then realised I no longer had anywhere to wear it! So, instead I headed to the children's section (after convincin...