All posts filed under: Reviews

#Better With Cake

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As you know, we left for France for our holidays shortly after Easter. Unfortunately, the Easter bunny(to read, our mailman) wasn’t on time bringing our lovely Mr. Kipling review cakes before we left. The good news was that upon arrival we had a lovely parcel full of yummies waiting to be devoured sampled. Since Emma has loved France and the whole travelling experience and is now very interested in anything French, I decided to play up with the theme a bit this morning. I included one of our Mr Kipling French fancies in her lunch box today, alongside the French flag and a Ratatouille water bottle we got in France. Because lunch boxes don’t have to be boring, even if they contain more or less the same thing every day. Because we don’t have to wait for the extraordinarily to happen to teach our children something new and exciting. And because, at the end of the day, life is always better with cake! This post is an entry for #BetterWithCake Linky Challenge, sponsored by Mr …

A weekend in Bray, county Wicklow

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We are definitely enjoying our weekends together at the moment! To the point that we plan the following before the present is over, sort of thing :-). We enjoyed our Armagh trip so much so that as soon as we got home, we had to book through our next one straight away, through Lidl breaks! This time, it had to be the south of Ireland and Bray. Alex has particularly enjoyed the challenge of putting together fun things we could do and this time, he had a whole list, bullet points and all! Very organised and much appreciated, as the homework saved us a lot of legwork and stress upon arrival and pointed us in the right directions. According to his well-documented research, Bray’s Saturday farm market was worth a visit so that is where we started. Alex’s research was spot on accurate, loads of organic and sensibly priced local produce and lovely treats to be had! We loved the brand new, homemade hot chocolate stall: the Madagascar cocoa, the organic local milk and the …

A day out in county Armagh

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We really enjoyed the last weekend. So much so that we couldn’t wait for this one to come around! This time, we decided to head towards Armagh, it has been ages since I was that way and Alex came up with a very well-documented plan of action which we followed loosely 😉 Our first stop was Portadown, I hadn’t been before but I was really keen to go as that is where BittyButton has its shop. I had known of BittyButton since it was a one woman operation with a small Facebook page. Emma had a personalised hat made when she was two by the very kind grandma of the owner. I haven’t taken a photo of what I bought as they were mainly gifts but I would highly recommend a visit, especially if you are into stationery, easy crafts and Christian artsy things. Oh, and buttons, of course :-): We continued on to Armagh after our delightful stop and we took the scenery route as we wanted to show Emma the apple orchards. She …

A day out in county Down

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We love travelling as a family. And we love good food. I have meant to do this sort of post forever. But it is only now that I found the time and the energy to do my first travel and food review. Exciting! We live in county Antrim but a couple of years back we lived for a year in Bangor, county Down. It is a beautiful part of the world and we lived in a stunning location but we didn’t find the people very friendly nor genuine nor kind. So in the end, we moved back where we felt we belonged. But now and again, we return for a visit. And a compulsory bite to eat. This is the seafront in Bangor, in all its sunny splendour. Always chilly and windy, due to the open sea and the currents but always beautiful to look at! We decided to go for lunch at The Salty Dog. Emma and I (and Georgie, as a seven month bump) had stayed there in November 2013, when we moved …

Princess Emma’s T-shirt Review

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This week, the lovely people at buytshirtsonline sent Emma a Disney princess kit to review. Emma is 5 and still very much into her princesses and fairy tale endings so as soon as the parcel arrived, she started pestering me relentlessly to assist her in making her own personalised t-shirt. We were out yesterday but this morning we decided it was time to give our creativity a go! The instructions were clear and easy to follow: we cut out the princess shape, leaving a 5 mm edge around the picture. We used the kitchen table as a hard surface to work on and a folded pillowcase to place our t-shirt on. Alex got the iron out and got the t-shirt all wrinkle free. The next step was simply applying our cut out princess, face down, of course, on the t-shirt and passing the hot iron over it for about two minutes. Emma was very pleased with the result but wanted to add her own touch to it, once it cooled off. We were a bit …