Walking in memphis #countrykids

Okay so its not really memphis..and being honest with you i wouldnt know what that is like because i have never been and i just really love the song…..

but…

this hill near where we live around this time of year backs onto loads and loads of crop fields and we like to go walking over there and it always reminds me of that line in the song ‘walking with my feet ten feet of the Beale’ which until recently i thought was ‘off a field’ ( you can see my connection here) but apparently it is  a road and not a field… HAH!  So my comparison falls down in so many ways but in my imagination it works!

So okaaaayyyyy…

The hill is one of the high points around here and so you can get a decent view of the landscape, which it is, to be fair, slightly blotted by a motorway and lots of plyons but it is a peaceful place and i love the sound of the wind moving through the crops. It isnt that far away so its not really a day trip but we took a lunch and sat for a while. Well some of us did! 😉

Generally the kids eat and run when we are picnicking. I have never had a child that hasn’t come complete with ants in their pants and they seem to be unable to sit still for very long. Fortunately there was a large rock to play on and some little sisters to give piggy back races to. Im amazed there were no injuries and it actually had the added benefit of my toddler asking someone else for a carry!

The rock here on this hill also gave me an idea for an image i want to get with a friend’s older daughter who is currently doing ‘en pointe’ ballet. I have been searching for a possible location and i think i may have found it. I was getting one of my girls to pretend to be a ballerina to see if it would work and she went for a classic ‘first’ position! 🙂

We walked back through the wheat fields. Once they stopped moaning about having to walk..(is it only my kids that do that?) They really got into looking and noticing the different flowers and how the wheat is planted in lines and how much ‘crop’ a farmer might get out of these many fields..oh and how much actual wheat it takes to make one loaf of bread. Something to google i think as OH and i had no idea whatsoever!

A nice little afternoon. All in all

🙂


Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

Follow:

That scowl aint big enough for the both of us! #satcap #funee

We went to a safari park this week and the kids were really excited about going through the lion enclosure. We were reading on the way to the enclosure that the lions had recently been getting pretty aggressive with smart cars as they looked similar to their natural prey?!

Now i dont know about you but ive never seen a lion chasing a small, somewhat useless idea of a car across the plains of Africa. 😉

But nevertheless that was not going to be a problem for us as we will not be getting anywhere a two seater car for a least a few decades!

So we felt assured in our 7 seater tank that none of the lions would fancy a bite. However this one guy in particular looked pretty ticked off and we stopped by him for a while as i was trying to get a half decent shot through my window..all the signs say keep your windows up and doors locked. I had never known that a lion can open a car door until today. 😉

As we sat there one of my daughters perked up. ‘Maybe he looks so annoyed because he is fed up of all the lady lions telling him what to do!’

*cue wry look from my husband!*

So what do you think he is thinking?

Dont forget to bob on over to Mammasaurus for some more satcap and check out the delectable Actuallymummy for some more funee!

 

Wot So Funee?
Mammasaurus - Saturday is Caption Day!
Follow:

Photo Challenge with Prizes!

Showcase your shooting skills for your chance to win in the Six Week Photo Challenge from Currys

I was contacted about this challenge the other day. I am all for photo challenges. I love them. Sometimes the ones that go on for a month or a year even find me lagging behind but i do love how it stretches me creatively. Which is why i am promoting this challenge that is being run by Currys. If you like the Curry’s facebook page you can go and check out some of the entrants. This week it is night time photography which can be so dramatic. What i do really like about this challenge, all the images below are ones from their facebook page. Is that there are shots on there from an iphone to a professional level camera. Go on try and tell the difference.

This is SO in line with my belief…you dont need a fancy pants camera to take a beautiful shot AND that the amazingness of these images is not because of the camera or phone used but because of the eye and the skill of the operator.

So anyway…the details are below. If you fancy joining in…go and give it a shot. Its a pretty good prize!

Electronics brand Currys is offering all photography enthusiasts the chance to win a Nikon Coolpix S6500 Red Compact Camera, worth £149.99 and a one Day Photography Course with an expert, worth £99.99 with their six week Photography challenge.

Currys are working in collaboration with six online photo takers, writers and experts and each week, for 6 weeks, there will be a new challenge for you to join set for you to show off your skills and creativity with a lens! Challenges include taking on motion capture, geometry, smoke, & night time photography – some tricky areas subjects.

 The winner of each challenge will be judged by the photographer that has set that challenge. There will be six overall winners; one per challenge and each winner will receive their fantastic prizes – including a new compact camera and attendance to a photography course to which they will be able to choose their own date and destination. The prize will include entry to the selected venue and tuition throughout the day

  • Challenge 1 – “Smoking Scenes” by David Nightingale, Chromasia –Closed
  • Challenge 2: “Geometry”, by Quintin Lake –  Closed
  • Challenge 3: “Movement & Motion” by Chris Gurton –Closed
  • Challenge 4: “Night Time Photography” by Ed Graham  –Closes 11th August 2013 (23:59)
  • Challenge 5: To be revealed – 12/08/2013
  • Challenge 6: To be revealed – 19/08/2013

 

Not only are the photographers setting the challenges but giving you some great hints and tips for getting the perfect picture from panning techniques and shutter speed to using a slow sync flash and Photoshop tricks.

 

To enter:

To join in the challenges with your own pictures visit the photo challenge page which has further information.

Good Luck!

This is a guest post

Follow:

The big prepare. Stuck on You..a review. #schooldays

This September is the start of a big adventure for one member of our house. My 4th little one is starting on the big road to school and she is raring to go. Really. She was devastated that she didnt get to go back after her little ‘taster’ session in June and as she goes every day anyway to collect her brother and sisters it made no sense to her why she just couldn’t have a packed lunch and stay all day. S

She is really really ready for school..and she is the youngest child i will ever send to school. Her birthday is the only one that isnt in the first term of the school year. Okay so its in January which, lets face it is little more than a hop skip and a jump from that term but nevertheless. 😉

So in getting her ready for school I jumped at the opportunity to review some products made by the company Stuck on you. They make lovely personalised products, which as all good parents know you have to label EVERYTHING  that goes into school. Our kids go to a school where they have to wear a shirt and tie and you cannot imagine how many times I have regretted not labelling a tie when it has disappeared into a slightly musty sea of lost property!

We also ordered a lunchbag and bottle from Stuck on you and my little girl could choose her own design, she went for ‘Oui Oui’ and it is a really pretty design and i think it was chosen perhaps because of all the talk of France in this house as we are going away on holiday there later this month. There really are so many designs to choose from. Such a variety that I can’t see how your little one’s favourite thing wont be there!

 

You can tell that the lunchbag and bottle are really good quality. I am really impressed with the sturdiness of it. It has firm sides which give it much more of a ‘box’ feel than a squashy lunchbag. Very useful in making sure that lunch doesn’t end up pancake shaped by lunchtime! Both the bottle and the lunchbox are insulated which is especially useful when we are dealing with warm temperatures. We all know how important it is to keep little people cool. Okay so it isnt crazy hot right now but what about an indian summer? eh? Both have the identical designs and name printed clearly on them…and you get to choose the font, which I really appreciated.

Its already had a few outings and a few picnics in the garden.:)

We chose the  0-5 value pack for the name bands, which includes sheets of stickers than can be applied to shoes, neatly into the heel and another set of stickers that can go onto books, pencils and pen cases anything you can think of, and you need to label it all! She chose the strawberry for the labels. We spent a little time deciding which one she was going to choose. Having had 3 other kids do reception i realised pretty quickly how much the kids rely on the picture to identify their stuff. Especially when their reading and recognising their letters is not as quick as yet and so being able to see the symbol and know that it is something belonging to them is really really useful.

The sticker set included a lovely bag tag. Which is already on her school bag and awaiting use. She chose a fairy for this tag.

The stickers overall are lovely quality and easy to use. We have had some stickers on some of her doodles since we got them and they havent come off through lots of use! It is so worth naming everything at school especially i find for the younger kids as they are very quick to ‘forget’ where they put something down in the excitement of their first couple of weeks of school.

The iron-on labels come with a great easy to follow instructions and go on super fast and easy. I did all of her shirts in a few minutes! We have resorted to using marker pens in the past and they always fade and again with new school starter if they know to look for their name and symbol on their clothes then there may just be a slim chance that you will get through the whole of reception without having to dig into lost property *shudder*

Overall i really liked the quality, the colour and the options available through Stuck on you especially the lunch box and bottle. We have been through many lunch boxes..they take a real bashing at school and i think it being so much more robust can be no bad thing. Bring on September.

WE ARE READY! 🙂

We were sent products from Stuck on you for purpose of review. All opinions are my own.

Follow:

Where they are. right now. #motivationalmonday #themondayclub #whatsthestory

This months theme on motivational monday is children. Hey..guess what…

I have a few of those 😉

So i thought i would give a little run down of each of the little folk who dwell here in this dwelling.

So first up. My guy. My only one.

Yes..thats right he is the only boy..

yes he is surrounded by women, yes he has lots of sisters, no he isn’t henpecked…

blah blah blah…

you can tell i have heard those sort of comments LOTS before right?!

We all know a baby doesn’t come with a ‘tick the box’ option don’t we. *stares*

A-n-y-w-a-y  (thats a whole other blog post) 😉

My pioneering child. Breaking all those first boundaries of parenthood. He is the one that we have had to scale that steep learning curve with and i reckon that fact that him and us are still all alive and vaguely sane is the sign of a success!

Yes?

Anyway our not so little boy is now staring down the barrels of 11.

Sweet. mary. jo.

We are so close to teenager it could spin my head clear off my shoulders!

But right now he is 10.

and right now he is:

 

  • Very very much into Minecraft, which is a game that i cannot understand the attraction in. He is asking me to download all sorts of guides to it on the Kindle and then spending hours working out how to make houses. The graphics remind me of something that was around in the days of the ZX-81 😉
  • Finished year 5 this year and waved goodbye to one of his favourite teachers. The teacher is leaving the school as well so there is no chance that my girls will have him which is a shame. We liked him a lot

  • He loves formula one. You could talk to him for ages about cars. He knows so much about cars, their makes, models and how fast they can go. Largely fuelled by his father’s interest in formula one and all things a bit petrol head ish. 
  • He currently wants to work for Nintendo and has taken it quite personally that the Wii U has bombed slightly! 🙂
  • He is a great big brother to his sisters and is pretty balanced about being a big brother to a bunch of girls. He is especially close to our youngest girlie.
  • He loves movies, and scripts. He remembers dialogue and quotes it often! Currently we are all about dispicable me 2 and Monsters U.
  • He is after a phone…we are resisting..we might meet middle ground with some walkie talkies 😉
  • He still likes trains
  • He has no love for girlie pop groups such as one direction and the like. Usually a point of conflict in our house!!
  • He has never ever tasted tomato Ketchup, he used to tell people he was allergic to it. He now develops a big kinship with anyone who comes to our house who feels the same. 😉
  • He is a natural musician and plays by ear, which sometimes frustrates his music teacher. He isnt, however, a natural practicer (is that a word?) so we have to use increasingly inventive ways to get him to practice!
  • He can be a bit ‘chickin lickin’ Which we laugh about but we sometimes have to have very serious conversations about how the wind outside is not going to turn into a tornedo!
  • He is, to date, the only one of my children who has had to endure a general anesthestic. (thank God). He fell onto a coffee table when he was 2 and has to have surgery as it had gone across the line of his lip. He now has a cute Indiana Jones type scar.

He is also turning into a little bit of a photographer and this weekend asked me to help him take this sort of shot. I think he did a pretty good job.

cthemondayclubMotivational Monday

Giveaway this month is for a fabulous luxury box of cosmetics from LUSH, that shop you can smell from all the way down the street. Just follow the rafflecopter instructions. Good LUCK

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
Follow: