I Heart Bedtime is a book in the Martha and the Bunny Brothers series and is a fun book for both children and adults (I do love it when a children’s book manages to connect with the parents reading, as well as the children). In it, Martha has to cajole her younger brothers into getting to bed and to sleep so that she can spend a bit of special time with her favourite babysitter. Martha uses lots of tricks that will be familiar to parents everywhere and her little brothers use tricks that will be familiar to most small children (going up and down stairs again and again to get thing after thing after thing, for example).

The pictures are simple, yet also full of new details to discover on each reading. And children are naturally drawn to Martha and her brothers and want to know more about them.

We did attempt to do one of our videos for this, though it may take a fair bit of patience to sit through the whole thing (fitting, perhaps, for the subject matter). LaLa was keen to act it out, and RoRo a little reluctant, though she did decide to join in further into the story! There were a couple of interruptions, too, so it is a disjointed (to say the least) video.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy some, if not all of our video contribution to the blog tour and we highly recommend I Heart Bedtime by Clara Vulliamy. And you should absolutely follow Clara on Twitter – she always has something fabulous to say!

We’re taking part in another blog tour this week. This time it’s for this rather lovely crafty book by Donna Wilson. It’s called Creative Creatures and it’s full of crafty creature making projects, with varying degrees of difficulty – some are OK for pre-schoolers to have a go at, others will require good sewing skills, for example.

We got to pick one of the crafts to have a go at. The girls have bookmarked quite a few they’d like to try, but we settled on the Mitten Kitten’s finger puppets, which is a pretty good one for young children to have a go at.

I think RoRo (6) would have been able to measure and cut the templates out, but she chose for me to do this, so that she and LaLa (3) could just get on with decorating the puppets and devising a puppet show. Before we started, the girls decided they wanted to do Goldilocks and the Three Bears and so they would need three bears, one goldilocks and some woodland creatures.

I was a little concerned that the measurements must be wrong, but we did a test one and it turns out they are absolutely perfect for little fingers. I made some bigger ones to fit my fingers, too, though. I cut out a whole bunch of rectangles in different coloured card, so that they could pick and choose which they wanted to use.

LaLa made three blue bears and RoRo made Goldilocks (including adding hair made from post-it notes). I made an owl, a cat and a tree.

The girls then got a little bored and went off to play, so I thought I’d make some furniture. While I was doing this, they wandered back and got really into making furniture, too, so we ended up with four scenes – the woods, the kitchen, the living room and the bedroom. RoRo made a wardrobe and a television and LaLa made pillows for the bed and a picture for the bedroom wall. I loved how they really got into it and started having their own ideas for what to do – I think the best crafts are one that inspire children’s imaginations.

And then, when we were done, we made a video of the puppet show. OK, we made two videos. The girls had to swap characters and do it all again. LaLa did a whole version by herself this morning, too and then continued playing with the finger puppets for ages (another sign of a good craft – if the results of it last and are not consigned to the recycling box within a day).

Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Version 1

RoRo plays Goldilocks and the woodland creatures; LaLa plays the three bears.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Version 2

LaLa plays Goldilocks and RoRo plays the three bears.

I hope you enjoyed our little show. And do go and visit the rest of the blogs in the tour this week. Zoe, at Playing by the Book kicked off the week with her and her girls trying out the Mitten Kitten. And Maggie at Red Ted Art tried out Olive Owl’s Kite. I’m excited to see what everyone else has tried.

Last month I did a fairly big reorganise and sort of the toy area in the living room. There were some immediate benefits, which included the girls playing with toys they’d forgotten about, and broken toys being thrown away rather than causing upset.

They’re still enjoying playing with toys and games they’ve forgotten about and their latest thing is playing with all the ponies and dinosaurs and creating some rather complex-sounding (I don’t listen intently, I have to admit, just catch the odd part of a conversation) live stories with them. Sometimes it seems that they are just playing out normal family life with them (“It’s time to go to bed now. Let’s read a story.” “Breakfast time!” “OK. Now it’s time to go to school”), but at other times they have adventures (“Today we’re going to go to the South Pole.” “Don’t move! I’ll come and rescue you!”). This is lovely to witness and there seem to be a few less arguments (mostly because I think RoRo has all the ponies and LaLa has all the dinosaurs, and they can play separately and come together now and then, rather than get all tied in knots about who is making the decisions). But it’s been rather annoying to have to negotiate a floor covered in (often intricately organised) small animals and try very hard not to tread on and break any of them.

This morning, however, I popped my head round the living room door to tell the girls that they had five minutes before they would have to put their shoes on and discovered them tidying up. All the blankets and cushions on the floor were put away (the blankets not terribly neatly, but that’s hard for me, even), as were the tents. The desk and chair were put back where they go. And then, the best bit of all for me… LaLa put all the animals back in their basket (and the dinosaurs back in their bucket). But not only did she do that; she also put the basket back on the shelf in the right place. Sadly, it was a little spoiled by RoRo putting her animals in a messy pile on the sofa (to her, if the floor is clear, then the room must be tidy) and then having a minor meltdown about LaLa putting the animals away, because they were her ‘collection’. I did manage to explain to her that she shouldn’t tell LaLa off for doing something good like that, but she could express that she was upset about it and why. Hopefully that sunk in!

The point of this rambling post, however, is that one of the benefits of having very organised toys is that the children are more likely to tidy up – because they know where everything goes and it’s easy to access. Yay! (Now, I really should do the rest of the house some time this year.)

Lunchtime by Rebecca Cobb, which we reviewed a while ago, is coming out in paperback. To celebrate this launch we’re taking part in a blog tour.

We decided to make a video dramatisation of the story. We printed some pictures from the book and cut them out – a table mat (like the tablecloth in the book), the lunch and dinner, and the Crocodile, Bear and Wolf (which we stuck onto straws to make them into puppets). We had lots of fun doing this and ended up with four different versions. We couldn’t really choose one overall, so we’re showing you them all. The girls have taken turns being the little girl in the story and we have two versions that follow the text of the story (more or less) and then two versions that are free interpretative dramatisations (otherwise known as ‘making it up’). As always, the videos aren’t brilliant quality and have lots of wobble and rubbish sound, but hopefully you’ll enjoy them anyway! If you look at our You Tube channel, we have quite a lot of picture book videos of one kind of another – reading the story, acting the story out or just talking about what we like about the story.

Lunchtime dramatisation: Version 1: LaLa as little girl; RoRo as animals

Lunchtime dramatisation: Version 2: RoRo as little girl; LaLa as animals

Lunchtime dramatisation: Version 3: Improvised dramatisation: LaLa as little girl; RoRo as mum

Lunchtime dramatisation: Version 4: Improvised dramatisation: RoRo as little girl; LaLa as mum

We love this book and would thoroughly recommend it!

Please visit the other blogs in the blog tour for the rest of the week:

Tuesday 5 February: Slummy Single Mummy

Wednesday 6 February: Rhoda Reviews

Thursday 7 February: Really Missing Sleep

Friday 8 February: Monsters Fun House

Saturday 9 February: Jennifer’s Little World

Disclaimer: We have received a copy of the hardback and the paperback of this book from the publisher, but we only present our honest opinions about books – and join in with fun events like blog tours, if we love the book. We hope you love this and other picture books as much as we do.

We don’t do puddings every day – for health reasons mostly, though I do know a lot of people incorporate desserts into their healthy eating (fruit crumbles and fruit and yoghurt can be very healthy and there are lots of other fairly simple fruit-based desserts that can be a real treat). But we do have puddings at the weekends (Friday and Saturday, and sometimes Sunday, as well). Sometimes we’ll pick up something fancy (or semi fancy) if we go to the shop (trifle is a big favourite, as are various tarts, especially chocolate ones for me and the girls), but often it’s just a bowlful of ice cream.

The other week I decided to try glitzing up the vanilla ice cream a little and thought I’d have a go at making a cheat’s chocolate sauce. It went down so well, we’re now having it every time and even won over a playdate who was not at all keen on the idea.

Recipe: Really easy chocolate sauce

If you have a microwavable small jug, this works best.

Ingredients

• 2 heaped teaspoonfuls of chocolate spread (we have used Tesco Chocolate and Hazelnut Spread and also one called Duo, which we got from Home Bargains for 80p – I think the inclusion of hazelnut is really noticeable in the flavour, but I imagine it would work with plain chocolate spread too)
• 2 teaspoonfuls of water

Method

1. Zap in the microwave for 20 seconds (on high power)
2. Stir vigorously until fully melted and mixed together
3. Pour over ice cream (or pancakes, or whatever requires some chocolate sauce)
4. Eat. Probably very quickly.

We now have fancy ice cream whenever we’re having an easy dessert – vanilla ice cream, really easy chocolate sauce and a dollop of squirty cream. Yum, yum, yum.

There were a couple of pieces on the BBC News site (20 of your tales of vegetarian woe and Where vegetarianism is an exotic illness) about what it’s like to be a vegetarian when you’re travelling around. It got me thinking about my own experiences of vegetarianism over the years.

I’m a third-generation vegetarian and have never willingly (well, apart from a decision to try a fish finger and mouthful of fish as a young child) eaten meat or fish. (I am very lax about leather and also don’t worry as much as other vegetarians about rennet and gelatin.) I have travelled a fair bit in and lived in Europe (never further afield, though hopefully one day we will) and come across a variety of attitudes and abilities to cope with vegetarians.

When I was growing up, the UK wasn’t especially good at coping with vegetarians – it’s much, much better now. I have a very strong recollection of being really excited at school one day because dinner was going to be spaghetti bolognese. The spaghetti bolognese I was used to was made with a TVP mince and lots of tomato puree and I honestly had no idea that there was any other kind. When I held my plate out with glee at the lunch hatch, instead of steaming pile of tomatoey pasta I got a dry lump of congealed spaghetti and handful of grated cheese. I was so very disappointed I think I even cried. Another childhood memory is of visiting my Gran in Wales and her always telling my dad ‘There’s a tin of spam. Does she want some spam?’ And there were others from her generation who didn’t understand that ham and spam were not vegetarian (as anyone who’s watched the Royle Family will recognise). Secondary school meals were a bit better, with one veggie option, a salad and a pizza. I tended to go for chips and pizza, or in the later years of school, I wouldn’t have anything and saved my lunch money to buy long socks, hot chocolate and… well… cigarettes.

When I was about eight, my mum and I went to an Esperanto congress in a castle in France (fabulous location). They seemed to be under the impression that we were vegan (better, I suppose than accidentally serving us meat), as our meals consisted of huge bowls of grated carrot and green beans. That was it. One day we had an excursion to a local cheese-maker and we bought a large block of cheese and kept it in our room (gradually growing smellier as the week went on) to provide us with protein.

When I went on the German exchange, I was put with a family who owned a healthfood shop as it was thought that they would be best able to cater to a vegetarian. They were very nice and tried very hard. They were especially proud of the cauliflower cheese they had made – which had chopped up (meat) frankfurters in the sauce.

When we lived in Spain, we couldn’t really afford to go out for lots of meals, but we always had lovely food when we dined at friends house – I especially remember a lovely rice salad that we had at our friends Theo and Sylvie’s. The one meal I do remember going out for was to a pizzaria near the beach – and we had a margharita (Italian restaurants are a staple for the vegetarian abroad as there is always at the very least a margharita) and a lovely dessert of sorbet inside a scooped out orange. And, of course, we had loads of tortilla and churros from cafes and street vendors. Other than that my dad cooked wonderful meals with lovely fresh ingredients that he got from the local market. If you can cook yourself, then you can usually do pretty well in most places (at least in that I have found in Europe, elsewhere may well be different). My favourites were fried egg sarnies made with lovely fresh white bread and a spaghetti (pasta was always spaghetti or macaroni until the late 80s it seems) with tomato and chick pea sauce.

When I hitched round France before uni, we ate entirely in Italian restaurants – pizza or pasta – and bread, cheese and crisps for lunch. To be fair, I never even dreamt of trying an ordinary French restaurant until a while later. When I lived in France, again, the only times we went out on our own (or with my dad when he came over to visit) we went to one of two Italian restaurants in the town and did fine. I did get taken out for a fondu by one of the teachers I worked with one time, and that was fine at first, because they were just dipping bread, but then they brought out meats to dip and I stopped eating and just ate the bread on its own. I had a mostly successful time when dining with friends and colleagues. I ate a lot of Raclette, a Savoyard dish where you place sliced boiled potatoes under a grill covered in cheese and then eat it alongside cold pickles and cold meats (the latter I forewent) which I loved but have never attempted here, even though I’ve seen the Raclette cheese – because whenever I had it there, everyone used this special Raclette Tefal table-top gadget and I wouldn’t know how to do it without one! One of my students was very kind to invite me round for dinner one night, too. She lived in an HLM (council flat) and she cooked us chicken (which I didn’t eat) and a lovely big bowl of fresh salad which I was able to dissuade from adding anchovies to. She and her boyfriend then took us to a pool bar and we played a few rounds of pool.

More recently I’ve had much more success in Europe – in Copenhagen, Paris, Brittany and Normandie, and even Spain. In Spain there are usually a few tapas that will be fine and there’s also a big plate of warm vegetables which is lovely. In Paris, even the posh restaurants were happy to do ‘une assiette de legumes’ if they had nothing else on the menu – and they were bloody good legumes, too! Brittany and Normandie excel at their crepes and I’d happily eat the gorgeous buckwheat crepes all day long. Leek and blue cheese filling was probably my favourite (if you don’t count the dessert crepes!). Omelettes are usually available, as are chips (though I didn’t quiz anyone on the fat used to fry the chips). In Copenhagen, there were lots of nice fresh vegetable dishes and pickles, as well as some lovely cheeses. And these days our holidays are almost always self-catering, which means copious quantities of lovely cheese, delicious bread and amazingly fresh and succulent vegetables. Salad, bread and cheese will do me fine, thank you, especially if I can wash it down with a few glasses of red wine.

Are you vegetarian? How have you found eating out when abroad or staying with families? Is there anywhere you’ve found it completely impossible?

When you hear the words “home insurance,” you probably associate the term with a boring and aggravating necessity. Most responsible homeowners purchase at least some sort of home insurance coverage – however, they tend to do so simply because someone tells them it’s necessary. The fact is, different levels of home insurance vary in necessity for different people, based on a number of different factors. However, there are several specific reasons that securing a thorough home insurance policy is very important for parents.

As a parent, one of your main tasks is to keep your children safe and comfortable in their own home. And, particularly with younger children, this involves constructing a sense of security that your children will ultimately associate quite naturally with their home environment. This doesn’t happen by accident, however, and one step you can take toward providing that sort of comfortable home is to talk to an insurance company like Aviva to make sure you’re getting the most out of your home policy. Here are just a few ways in which home insurance can contribute to your children’s sense of security and comfort.

Damage Repair

Home damage of any kind can be relatively traumatic to children. Whether it’s damage sustained during a storm, a broken window attributed to vandalism, or even damage caused by a home fire, these sorts of events can significantly detract from your children’s sense of safety within their home. While home insurance policies cannot prevent such events, they can help you, as a parent, to have the financial flexibility to quickly repair such damages. When your children see how quickly their homes can get back to normal after a scary or dangerous misfortune, their senses of comfort may actually be enhanced.

Property Replacement

Similarly, home insurance can help you to have the financial compensation needed to replace stolen property. If you experience a theft, there is unfortunately no way to guarantee that your property will ever be returned. However, being able to replace important losses efficiently can fortify your kids’ senses of security in much the same way that repairing damages can.

Injury Coverage

Finally, there are also home insurance policies that offer coverage for personal injury, which can be very important for any family with children. It’s an unfortunate topic to think about, but if your children have friends over, and those friends become injured in some sort of accident on your property, you may be liable for medical expenses and even legal action. With personal injury coverage, however, you can allow your children to play without worrying about these risks. In the unlikely event of an injury, your coverage will help you to address any expenses in the most appropriate and effective manner.

In association with Aviva.

After Christmas, I continued by spending an evening going through the toy corner in the living room. I ended up with a binbag full of broken or unusable toys and little bits from toys that could not be reunited with their owners. I also have two large boxes of toys for the charity shop, though, since they’re still sitting in the basement, I shall take them to playgroup’s jumble sale next month to help with the fundraising efforts (we need to raise around £30,000 to update the building which is almost at the end of its life!). I took out baby/toddler toys like shape sorters and pop up toys and a few other things that the girls don’t tend to play with.

Then I used some small colourful baskets I picked up in Homebase and sorting some of the bigger baskets into smaller categories, so that they could be more easily played with. There are now small baskets for:

• toy food
• cooking utensils and crockery
• other role play toys (e.g. medical equipment and tools), though I would have liked to split that down some more, but run out of baskets
• wild animals
• domestic and farm animals
• Happyland people and animals.

The bigger baskets in the unit contain transport, toy computers and there is a “miscellaneous” basket, which is where children and Chris are supposed to put anything they’re not sure where it goes. The green stool contains barbies and barbie accessories and the orange one contains bags. The bucket has wooden blocks in it, as they do still enjoy building towers and walls out of blocks.

And there’s also the big box of Lego Duplo (we need a small box for normal Lego now, though, as we have various small kits dotted around the house and I’m now frequently finding little bits of Lego under foot!

And I moved all the board games (and card games and puzzles) into the cupboard. And we no longer have big, overflowing baskets on top of the cupboard and blocking the daylight.

This is one of those tasks I’ve been meaning to do for ages and it only took one evening (well, plus the cuddly toy relocation).

One of the best things about doing a toy declutter and sort out is that the girls rediscover toys they’d forgotten about or can more easily play in new ways.

Here, the girls have made a cafe, using two of the boxes (and the various stools).

And LaLa was particularly pleased to have the HappyLand bits and pieces more accessible and easy to find. (Previously, all the HappyLand people and animals were in a big “animals and people” basket, and it took a lot of scrabbling to find them.)

I do, of course, have a bunch of other similar decluttering and sorting projects I’d like to do and it would be nice to try to do at least one a month, if not two a month, if possible, but I’m not going to make any promises. Work is getting busier again now, to the point where I’ve had to work a good few evenings recently, so there might not always be an evening to set aside. I am finding my mental health suffers if I don’t get some drawing and painting done regularly – ideally every day – so I don’t want to devote too many evenings to decluttering and sorting.

At the top of my current list are:

• LaLa’s clothes – box up all the clothes that are genuinely too small for her (she’s still squeezing into leggings and tops that say 18 months!), get down the next box of RoRo’s old clothes for her, build one of the cubey units to go in her room and keep trousers, tops and jumpers in there instead (in the boxes that used to be on top of the cupboard in the living room) and use the small drawers in her wardrobe for underwear and pyjamas
• children’s books – give little tiny books and most board books to charity, highlight some of the great picture books in the The reorganised book corner, um, two years ago! bookcase, sort chapter books and story collections out so that RoRo can find them easily, set aside all the learning to read books for LaLa who is really on the verge of digging in properly to them
• filing – get a filing cabinet and get back on top of business and household filing – and throw out the old stuff that we’re not obliged to keep.

None of these are huge projects and each should be doable in an evening, with a bit of time during the day to put things back in their room. I’m not going to set a deadline for these, though, because that doesn’t seem to work. I’ll just keep them on my radar and try to them soon.

Have you been doing any sorting and decluttering this month? Do you find the urge to do this kind of thing in January?

Because I’m not a jeans person. I’m a dress (and sometimes skirt) person. I love dresses. I would seriously benefit from a walk-in wardrobe, because I have too many dresses to fit properly in the one we share. Chris’s suits have gradually been squeezed out and out until he has almost no space in there at all, but even so I still need more room.

I love to wear dresses out (on the rare occasion when I get to go out), but I also love to wear dresses all the time – on the school run, at my desk, out to the shops. Dresses are for all the time, not just for special occasions!

I have two lengths of dresses that I like – shorter skater-style dresses and maxi dresses. I can’t and I almost always need to have a scoop or V-neck, otherwise I feel very constrained. (Though I do have one dress with a high top that I love, so it’s not a total deal breaker!)

I found a few dresses I like over at Kandco.com, and they have loads more, as well as lots of other clothes and home furnishings.

Shorter skater-style dresses

I love skating and got some new roller blades recently (thank you, Mama!) and I always have to wear a short dress with leggings or two pair of tights. I love the way a skater dress twirls and flies out when I’m zooming (not that I can zoom as fast as some of the skaters there) round the hall.

These dresses are great for day-to-day wear, too, as it’s easy to sit cross-legged to read to the girls, or sit on my bouncy exercise ball working. And they look great with boots (I just ordered a gorgeous pair of boots which should arrive any day now), as well as the flat shoes I wear most of the time.

Here are a few that I like:

K & Co Skater Dress

K & Co Jo Brown Floral Dress

K & Co Holly Willoughby Floral Dress

Maxi dresses

I have always, always, always loved full-length dresses. Dresses that you risk tripping over when going up stairs (not that I like actually tripping over, of course). Dresses that swish as you walk. They are wonderful for going out and special occasions like weddings and big parties, but I’m not averse to wearing one on the school run, either. (Though they can be problematic going up the hill, and I end up having to hold them up while going up the really steep bits and steps.)

Here are a few that I like:

K & Co Teatro Beaded Maxi Dress

K & Co Teatro Sara Maxi Dress

K & Co Holly Willoughby Maxi Dress

Are you a dress person? Can you wear jeans? What’s your favourite kind of dress?

This is a commissioned article.

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New Year’s Eve (Warner Bros.)

DVD: New Year’s Eve (comes with digital Ultraviolet copy)

Publisher/manufacturer: Warner Bros.

RRP: £19.99

Publisher’s Blurb

“New Year’s Eve” celebrates love, hope, forgiveness, second chances and fresh starts, with intertwining stories told amidst the pulse and promise of New York City on the most dazzling night of the year.

What we thought

This is a feel-good, Christmassy (though it could be watched at any time of the year) chick-flick which has some similarities to Love Actually. It’s nothing to write home about, but good to sit down in front of with a glass of Baileys while you do some Christmas wrapping, or possibly for a girlie night in with a bottle of wine. I didn’t connect hugely with the characters and didn’t feel especially invested in the film, though.

Would we recommend it?

This is a film I’d watch on Netflix or if it was on TV, but I probably wouldn’t buy it. If you’re not a Batman fan, you will probably enjoy it. If you are, you might find it jarring. Amazon has it available for £8.00, which isn’t too much. I might consider buying it at £5.00. They also have a Blu-ray version available for £10.00, which seems a good price for Blu-ray. Both the DVD and Blu-ray versions come with Ultraviolet digital copies.

Disclosure: We were sent a free copy of this DVD by Warner Bros., but the opinions are our own.