An Enderman Costume for World Book Day!

This post was originally published for World Book Day, but I thought it might make a cool last minute Halloween costume for a Minecraft lover. Minecraft continues to be very popular with children of all ages and is equally appreciated by boys and girls, so this easy costume could be the answer to your costume concerns. All you need is a good size cardboard box, some black binliners and black clothes for them to wear. You will also need the head, but if you can't buy an official Enderman head, you can always paint a cardboard box. Also, before you say it, yes Minecraft does count as a book! Ok, maybe not in the traditional sense, but L is happy and it's meant to be fun, so there!

Win £50 Cash

Does anyone else find that, after the summer holidays, it's a slippery slope towards Christmas? Don't get me wrong, I'm not being a Scroogey old Grinch, or a Grinchey old Scrooge, whichever is grammatically correct. It just seems to get more expensive every year and it's such a worry for a lot of parents, when ends aren't always meeting anyway. So after, the children go back to school, it's a time to start stockpiling, bargain hunting and trying to squirrel away some pennies! However, Christmas shouldn't be all about money, or material things, it's important to try to make time to appreciate what you do have. Like friends and family. I am lucky enough to have made some amazing friends since I started blogging and they have all been a big support to me one way or another.

Mueller Spiral-Pro Review

The Husband loves playing with his food, namely making it look pretty, or funny, or different. So when the people at Mueller offered me a Spiral-Pro to review, I was keen to take part, as I knew he would gleefully put it through its paces. He was initially a bit concerned by the lack of instructions, but it turns out it is so straightforward to use, even he didn't need too many directions to put it together or start spiralling. The box tells you what each different attachment does and it's very easy to put together. Not to be played with by children, it's strictly adults-only, due to the extremely (but necessary!) sharp attachments. 

Win a Blocktech Pit Stop Transporter Set

If I was more organised, this would have been a 'keeping children amused over halfterm' giveaway but I'm not, so it will have to be a 'Christmas is coming' giveaway. Or, maybe, a 'building sets aren't just for kids' giveaway. Whatever you like, just make sure you enter using the Rafflecopter thingy below.

Win me!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Blogs I am Loving Right Now

You know when you have a job, and all of a sudden you become really interested in that profession and other people who do a similar job? Or when you get a new car, and you start noticing the same cars everywhere you go? It's a bit like that with blogging. Since I started, I have collected an assortment of friends who blog, as well as discovering some brilliant blogs that I read myself. So, I thought I would share with you some of my favourites, as I figured; if you like my blog... What? You don't?! You were googling parent blame and you fell in accidentally?! Oh, ok then, as you were. Moving on...

Making Halloween Fun for Everyone

Like a lot of parents, I'm a bit unsure about Halloween. There are aspects of it that just feel a bit... wrong. Like Trick or Treating, it can easily turn into begging with menaces, really, if not properly organised. When Jade was small, I managed to avoid it completely, because we lived in an upstairs flat. We just turned the door buzzer off and no one was any the wiser! She never even learned about Halloween until she was quite a bit older. So, fast forward ten years or so and things have changed a bit. We live in a house now, on a development with a lot of similar aged children, so it's impossible to avoid. Perhaps because she had a somewhat deprived childhood, Jade embraces L's Halloween adventures, especially dressing up.

My Sunday Photo: Finding Fun up a Tree