Cupcake Carousel My 5-year-old daughter is a very creative little girl and her little sister who is 3-years-old loves dough and cake so when we were sent cupcake carousel to review I was thrilled because…
View PostLosing weight does not have to be expensive, we are a family of 5 and have a budget each week for our food shop which is between £70-80 so to keep costs down and get more for our money we shop at good old Aldi’s.
Another way to keep the cost down is to make a shopping list and STICK to it, you can see my post on saving money whilst shopping HERE.
I also get asked for Idea’s on cheap affordable meal Idea’s for lunch and dinner times so here we go:
All ingredients are from Aldi
Of course the more speed food you add the better loss you get.
All ingredients are from Aldi
5% Beef mince (free)Ingredients are from Aldi and Iceland
Boiled egg (free )
All ingredients are from Aldi
(This is more a couples meal as it would be quite expensive to feed families with steak)
All ingredients are from Aldi
All ingredients are from Aldi
Jo was young in more than years when she got pregnant with Leo. , She loved going out and being around her friends as time went past and the bump grew bigger, She loved the fact she could buy baby stuff and all the gadgets associated with having a baby. The house she shared with Leos dad was soon taken over by just about everything the baby books said she should have. The pregnancy went pretty smoothly until 29 weeks when she came round to mine and told me she was bleeding, Together we went to the hospital to check things out. At the hospital, they were concerned that she could go into labour early and gave her steroid injections to ripen the baby’s lungs. Luckily that didn’t happen and Leo hung on in there until 42 weeks when a sweep started the labour, Joannes labour was funny she was mainly worried about them running out of gas and air, Towards the end of the labour the midwife noted that joannes heart rate was rising rapidly and Leos was dropping just as dramatically. She pressed the bell and nurses and doctors came running, Jo was told she had to deliver and they gave her five minutes. Watching her push Leo out into the world hearing the machines alarms going off, again and again, As Leo was born l looked down (Jo didn’t know at this point what she was having) and I watched Leo take his very first breath. taking him from a deep purple to a lovely pink colour, Leo was checked over and handed to Joanne for her first ever cuddle with the baby that made her a mummy.
Unfortunately, because Joannes blood passed through to Leo when she had the bleed they were unable to leave the hospital for almost two weeks. Finally, they got to take Leo home and begin being a family. Joannes sister also had a baby 9 days after Jo had Leo. Over the next few months, everything was fine until Joanne began to notice that Leo wasn’t doing the things his cousin Ellie could do, When you picked Leo up he didn’t mould around you but stayed rigid. Jo mentioned this to the health visitor but was told time and again nothing was wrong and babies develop at different speeds. This went on until Leo was 14 months old and her GP finally listened and sent us off to the child development unit to get him checked out. We spent almost the whole day there with Leo having test after test after test. Around 3 pm the doctor called us into his room and announced that the next step would be a whole team meeting where Leos Physio Speech Therapist GP Health visitor and the Social worker would be invited to attend. Joanne responded with ‘Leo doesn’t have a social worker’ to which the doctor responded with ‘it’s not unusual for a child with Cerebral Palsy to have a Social worker. Joanne looked straight at the doctor and said ‘ He doesn’t have Cerebral Palsy’ and the doctor replied ‘Oh yes he does’. That’s how Leo was diagnosed! He couldn’t answer any of the questions that immediately came out. The only advice he gave was ‘Don’t look on the internet it will scare you’
I went with Joanne to her house after the hospital visit and of course the first thing we did was go online and googled Cerebral Palsy and the doctor was right it did scare us. Joanne was in bits. We called her health visitor and she promised to get all the information she could and would come over the next morning. With that l left Jo and Leos dad to digest the news they had been given.
That night all l can remember is crying my eyes out. The lack of knowledge about Cerebral Palsy just made the whole thing scarier. One thing l was so certain was unfair was that out of all my children Joanne was the least able to deal with raising a child with special needs. She just didn’t have the forceful personality l knew she would need. She would never call out a professional if she thought they were wrong or ill-informed (or so l thought),
Over the next few years I saw my daughter mature gain confidence and fight for her son like the lioness she is now, She made doctors repeat themselves until she understood why they were doing what they were doing to Leo. She questioned everything and took nothing at face value. As Leo grew bigger and the relationship with Leos dad ended she did more and more for Leo who at the age of four was still unable to walk and had to be carried everywhere – Joanne weighed 8 stone soaking wet and Leo was by no means a small child, I saw her in tears with frustration and pain, Lugging a four-year-old up and down stairs and in and out of baths and cars was not easy for her. Inside Leo could get around by high knee crawling but outside of the house had no mobility at all until he got a mini zimmer frame which he had a few months before it fell apart and was taken off him, The next frame he was given was huge and he couldn’t use it as easily.
This was Joannes life and she couldn’t ever see it getting any better she was terrified of the day that Leo would just be too heavy for her and continued to carry him even when she really shouldn’t have done. The one day she opened the computer to a message she knew would change both their lives forever.
*Emily Perl Kingsley Poem about giving birth to a child with special needs
Our Elves are back at the beginning of December for some new naughty Christmas 2017 antics and this year I can’t wait to see what the naughty little tinkers get up too.
This year will be our 3rd year and even though Milly our youngest daughter enjoyed it last year, this year will be even better for our little family as she is a little bit older to enjoy it more.
Every year we have a North pole breakfast, in 2015 we had it on the 1st day of December to kick-start elf on the shelf antics and it was also a time the children met the Elves for the first time and they had to think of cool names for them.
In 2016 we did it halfway through December and this time the kids had to give their letters they wrote to Santa for the elves to take back and give to the big man himself.
You can buy Elf’s from anywhere to do Elf on the Shelf. Poundland, Qd, eBay, B&m, Small businesses make little kits which include an elf which is really cute.
You can also make or buy a magical elf doors from any of these places names above and other retailers too. You can either have it magically appear before the elf/elves arrive with a sign saying under construction and you can buy Santa camera’s which is a stick on dummy camera with a LED light inside so they can see Santa is watching so hopefully stay good.
Back to Elf on the Shelf, here are some of my photo’s from the previous 2 years for some inspiration to all the newbies starting the tradition or anyone looking for something different.
Please feel free to leave me a comment on here if you feel this has helped you, it would be hugely appreciated 🙂
This was 2015’s North pole breakfast- notice the green elf milk
All aboard the shoe shoe train… SHUU SHUUU
Flour Snow-angels
Oh dear !
They bought the children a gingerbread house to make.
Ernie trapped his sister in the washing machine.
mmmmm delicious treats
Snowball fight!!
Shit break
Knicker and boxer tree
Elf in a bottle
Hide N Seek and Elsa freezing Ernie
I am really looking forward to this year’s antics and I really hope you have enjoyed this post.
Me and my partner decided we were finished having children, we have 3 altogether and a cat called Phoebe so I had this brilliant idea of getting a dog. To be fair I wanted to look in Woodgreen animal shelter where we got Phoebe from but David said If we were to get a dog it would be best getting one from a puppy because of how young the girls are. I found myself online every night looking for puppies for sale, I was looking at Shitzhu’s and Maltese dogs you know the little cute white fluffy ones that DONT supposedly malt.
We travelled to see a cockapoo puppy but I hate to say it, I just didn’t feel like she was the one so off we went home, however, whilst we were driving David was talking about Labrador’s and instantly I said no they’re too big and just no no no until he told me to google them and he was explaining to me how good they are with children and how easy they are to train. So I had a look and I saw some Labrador puppies for sale advertised in the area we were driving through so I quickly called and asked if we could pop over and have a look. Straight away the man said yes sure he was in now and that he would text me his address instantly, that was a good sign for me in the way that he didn’t try and defer it 30 minutes to you know quickly ‘Clean up’
As we arrived I kept my options open and we were taken through to the Kennels and I was passed the most gorgeous beautiful golden puppy she literally melted my heart and at that moment I didn’t care about the chewing and the size or anything else, all I knew was I had to have her and it was love at first sight. We put our deposit down and the hardest part was having to walk away from her until she was ready to leave the following week. Her name is Duchess Rosie May
Fast forward to now (5 months old) and JEEEEZ what have I let myself in for.
The Good
So when it get’s tough just remember that like I have to remember that. I am so used to having a clean home that bringing a dog into the house has really threw me but It is actually really fun and Rosie is so affectionate.
You can also follow her on Instagram: Duchess_rosie for updates
