Can you help Little Sheffield out??

This is today's press release, fingers crossed someone can help there's just not enough around -free - for kids and parents in Sheffield. RT's and shares very gratefully received.

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CHILDREN'S SHOW TO BE CANCELLED UNLESS SPONSOR STEPS FORWARD

A free show for children in the city centre, is due to be cancelled unless a sponsor can be found.

Holiday time .... part 2... Legoland Windsor (part 1)

**The events on this and the follow post happened over a day and a half, it's just easier to group them together, to this extent they may not be in any particular order**

After leaving our bags at the hotel we hopped aboard the 201 green line bus to Legoland.  Ben noticed the destination and said "oh this bus is going to Legoland" completely unfazed by it, so I asked him if he'd like to go and both said yes.  Letting me know that they loved Legoland Discovery Centre and could they go to the Sealife Centre after.  After explaining we weren't in Manchester (and how the train/ bus route was different) they wondered which Legoland I meant.

taken in 2012

As we pulled along the route we spotted little signs that I thought Ben at least would recognise (he went a couple of years ago in June 2012), Noah would have been too small to remember) but nope, not a flicker.  He has told me since he STILL doesn't remember going so that was obviously a worthwhile experience.

Holiday time .... part 1 ... Sheffeld - Windsor

We really made the most of the last week of our Easter Holidays, even better due to the fact our kids were

off when the southern schools had gone back.

We chose to go to Windsor and make a day (and a half) out of our Merlin Passes at Legoland then onto my mums for a couple of days before she brought us home on Sunday.  Despite living on the high speed rail line to London (2 hours) the connections etc to Legoland make it that little bit too far to do comfortably in a day.... but that's a tale for later in the week.

This holiday was all about budget .... fun and experiences.... but budget and trying not to spend too much on unnecessary items or expenses.

holidays,,,,,

Hi all,

I've been away this week (not that you'd have guessed as I actually scheduled posts) - have been reading your lovely comments but not been able to post reply's so I'll have a catch up (probably tomorrow evening).  Have got some lovely posts to write about Legoland Windsor, Easton Farm Park and a gruffalo trail WITH a gruffalo!!  plus loads more and a potential update on my Snazaroo post.

Must go and break the boys fight up now.... roll on school again tomorrow........

Flashback Friday - Incredible Games

What do you get when you mix The Crystal Maze, David Walliams, Tinky Winky and CBBC??  The Incredible Games of course!!

Incredible Games was a children's game show that lasted only 2 seasons between January 1994 and March 1995.

The show was set in a fictional skyscraper with a talking lift (David Walliams for the first series and Gary Parker in the second).

Frozen (review)

Length: 102 minutes


Features the voices of:  Kristen Bell as Anna
                                        Idina Menzel as Elsa
                                        Jonathan Groff as Kristoff
                                        Josh Gad as Olaf
                                        Santino Fontana as Hans

Released:
November 27th 2013 (in America, after premiering on 19th).

December 6th 2013 (UK)

playing on your phone at the cinema ...... join the bad mums club

For once this weeks Bad Mums post is NOT about me.  I was the model mumy this week.  I took the boys to the cinema on Saturday (Cineworld) to watch their Movies for Juniors showing.



These are a fab price at £1.35 each (bought online an hour before leaving the house, with Mycineworld 10% discount) and means even with the extortionate cost of snacks (£6 for a drink and popcorn)  I can treat the boys once in a while.  The film of choice today was Frozen which is something mummy has secretly been wanting to see for a while, just to find out what the hype was all about.

Tuneful Tuesday - Do You Want to Build a Snowman? from Frozen

Here's a song that really captured me and the boys this week .... I fear we will be singing it for many more weeks to come.

If you've not seen the film this song is about how lonely Anna is and how she wants to spend time and play with her sister, Elsa. It shows her at different ages throughout the song. Just before the last verse of the song, their parents die, so the last verse is sadder than the rest.

Here's the lyrics, and a you tube video so you can enjoy the magic yourself.

Lego cake

Noahs birthday started off much like any other soon to be 3 year old ..... with a request for a Hulk cake.  Sure I could buy some icing picture off ebay (or somewhere) and a sponge cake .... or I could make it myself .... that was where the trouble started!!




With the boys we did a trial run a couple of weeks ago using red food colouring (to make a spiderman cake) - it didn't give quite the colour intensity I was hoping for....




So armed with green gel colour (which my friend advised would work much better) I set about the cake making mission.  The flavour of the Spiderman cake was lovely so we used  the same recipe.

I also bought multicoloured ready rolled icing and dug out the Lego silicone moulds.  Hulk himself was going to prove a challenge ... there was nothing online I felt confident copying so I went with a simple (well ..) marble cake with green icing, Lego man and bricks.

Please don't send 'found' teddies (bunnies, cats, dogs, goldfish) to North Carolina.

 

If you are fans of Teddy Bear Lost and Found or the regional Lostbox pages I help to manage on facebook/ twitter you may have seen the heartache felt last night when it came to light that a scammer was hitting the victims of Lost Bears and claiming them as her own.

Snazaroo and PlayPennies disappoint many fans

Like many many other Snazaroo/ PlayPennies fans 2,482 to be exact I was duped by the Playpennies/ Snazaroo marketing scam.

After seeing an advert on the PlayPennies facebook page for a free Snazaroo face paint kit on 13th April I jumped at the chance to get one.  My boys love having their faces done and have had a professional do it (using Snazaroo) at the last 2 parties they have been too so I thought this set would be a nice treat for them.

Easter Egg Hunting

I thought it may be nice this year for the boys to have an Easter Egg hunt.  so after scouring website after website and not finding quite what I wanted, either too challenging or too easy or too American I made my own.

I used some clipart eggs and a text box to write the clues.....

  

Silent Sunday 20th April 2014

A bit of toilet humour from East Midlands trains

I've been on quite a few East Midland Train journeys this year, but never has my husband come back down the train and demanded I go to the toilet....  my potty training 3 years old maybe but I'm 32 I'm pretty sure I know when I need a wee.
   But no he was adamant I HAD to go for a wee telling me to read the sign on the toilet lid while I was there ..... thinking perhaps he'd banged his head I humoured him.....


Sadly I didn't take my camera (that would have been weird right?) ... fortunately a chap called Tim Garratt,did in January and here it is for you.........

by Tim Garratt, posted on Twitter, taken from The Mirror's web site.

Some boys took a stroll through the deep dark wood..........

With it being little mans 3rd Birthday on Thursday we wanted to find something really fun and different to do.  After reading fantastic reviews of Gruffalo Trails (see links at the bottom) we thought we'd make the lengthy to go to Sherwood Pines* and carry out their Gruffalo trail.

What we were greeted with was some lovely woodland (but we could get that in Sheffield without the associated travel costs) and a couple of play areas (again nothing we don't have) but ........... well read on and find out..........

online companies and security

I'm holding my hands up ...  I am not just a bad mummy I'm a typical useless on line user too.  I will admit I cannot remember 500+ passwords to have a different one for every site..... heck i can't even remember which 10 sites I signed up to in the last week let alone forever.

So imagine my anger when I receive email such as this "On Thursday 10 April we at **** became aware of the bug [heartbleed] and immediately ran tests to see if the ***** servers were vulnerable. As soon as it became apparent that we were, we applied the fix to close the OpenSSL security hole (known as the Heartbleed patch).  However, it seems that users’ data was accessed prior to our applying this fix".  Now aside from the fact they KNEW on Thursday of the issue but didn't tell users until 5.45 on Monday 14th is bad enough in itself but for companies not to have effective virus software to stop this happening is appalling.  These are companies we trust to keep data safe who simply can't due to their own lax security.

Silent Sunday 13.4.14

Flashback Friday - Booty

Booty was a great game for the Commodore 64 (C64). Ok so my definition of great may not be completely accurate.... it was painfully annoying but it is one of the games that I remember playing (so it must have had some greatness) .... I've downloaded the ROMS and played it a few times since just to get the nostalgia bug back, but never managed to complete it.

It was released in 1984 and was a single player game..... the music was terrible but fortunately you could switch it off.

The aim of the game was to guide Jim, the cabin boy, through the ships various decks collecting items of booty . To collect these you simply walked past it). You had to be careful tho as some of the items were secret bombs and if you didn't move away fast enough it was life over.

How to be a #badmummy ....... do your child's homework/ project for them......

My #badmummy post for this week.......

Here's the shocker ....... sit down and reach for social services phone number but  ........... I let my child do his own homework.    I know how appalling, what an awful mummy I must be.

I don't understand it ..... perhaps I am living in a parallel universe?  I have spoken to soooo many parents (especially recently with the school Easter challenges) who have told their child how their model will look or what design their car should be.  I've spoken to almost as many who have sat up the night before it needs to be handed in fretting over whether the colours are correct or if they have written enough (well typed, the teacher would know they wrote it).

Lush - Fizzbanger

What pops, spins, smells of apple pie and sounds like something out of a Roald Dahl classic?  The Lush Fizzbanger of course.

With pressure on the purse strings Lush is a little slice of luxury for me for birthdays, mothers day, Christmas or anniversary presents.  This year I asked hubby for a Fizzbanger, thinking all his Christmases had come at once I quickly had to explain that it wasn't what he was thinking and was in fact a lovely bright yellow bath bomb from Lush.

Like most of Lush's products the smell is the first distinct thing to hit you, it has amazing citrussy apple, Cinnamon and a hint of ylang ylang.