cup of tea acts of kindness

Why we should all chose kindness and love.

by with No Comment Uncategorized

If you read or watch the news at all, you’d be forgiven for believing that this world is a harsh, scary place, full of evil people and dangers around every corner.  It’s easy to worry about what kind of world we’re bringing our children up in, and to think that we need to teach them to be tough and closed-off to keep them safe.  But I believe the opposite is true.  We need to teach our children to be strong, yes, but above all else we need to teach them kindness and love.

There’s a quote by L.R. Knost that I love that says:

“It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world.  It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless”

and I believe this with all my heart.  My son in particular is a sensitive child, and I don’t want him to have to change that about himself, I want him to use that part of him to reach out and make a difference to those around him.

 

There’s a movement that’s been gaining momentum over the last few years that’s all about carrying out random acts of kindness that I think is wonderful.  The beauty of it is that these acts don’t have to be huge, they don’t have to cost you anything, they don’t have to take up much of your time (although they can if you want to do it that way!), but they can have a big impact on someone else.

And that one random act of kindness, more often that not, leads to more, as that person is inspired to pay it forward and do something nice for someone else.

 

I read a lovely quote from Amelia Earhart that explains it beautifully:

“A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.”

cup of tea acts of kindness

As parents we can really make a difference by modelling kindness for our children.  When they see us chosing love and kindness over indifference and selfishness then they will be much more likely to do the same.

So if you’re out and about with your children, look for opportunities to chose kindness.

It can be as simple as picking up another child’s dropped toy, or holding the door open for the Mum with the buggy struggling to get out of the shop.  It’s all about teaching our children to look at the world around them, and to think about other people.

 

You could then start to think up ideas together for random acts of kindess you can carry out.  You could plan to buy a few extra bags of duck food next time you’re at the park and hand them out to other children.  Or get your kids involved in sorting through their toys and seeing which ones they could donate to someone in need.  If you need inspiration then this list of 101 easy ideas for random acts of kindness should get you going!

Another campaign that’s been started this year is the #BeSelfless campaign, which asked people at the start of the year to abandon their usual new year resolutions in favour of choosing to carry out small acts of kindness throughout the year, which is a great idea because it’s win-win.

 

When we are kind towards others, they get a real happiness boost, and in turn so do we.  Doing nice things for other people gives us a great serotonin hit, which makes us feel happier and gives us an overall sense of general well-being.  Who wouldn’t want more of that in their lives?

And I know that making someone a cup of tea, or surprising them with a bunch of flowers won’t magically make this world perfect; but step by step, person by person, I’m certain we can make it better for our children.

We just need to keep chosing kindness and love.

 “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted” – Aesop

pink tulips

This is a collaborative post.

 

 

 

Ted wears organic

Ted Wears Organic

by with 4 Comments PersonalReviewsUncategorized

I’m really excited to announce that Nerys and I have been given the opportunity to be brand reps for a lovely children’s clothing company – Ted Wears Organic.

Ted Wears Organic is a practical and funky new independent children’s clothing line, created by a lovely Mum called Vicky and named for her son Ted.  Vicky uses high quality organic cotton in several designs and patterns that you can mix and match to create your own unique outfit.  And I just love this idea!  The range starts from just £6 and includes t-shirts, leggings, harem pants, dresses, shorts, skirts and maxaloones, which grow with your child.

It works like this, you visit the Ted Wears Organic store and choose an item, then comes the really fun part as you get to choose what fabrics you want to use!  Say you’re ordering a t-shirt, well then you chose the fabric you want for the body and then you can get creative and chose a coordinating or contrasting fabric for the arms, such fun!

All of the fabrics have been specifically chosen by Vicky to co-ordinate, but if you’re not sure that what you want will ‘work’, then get in touch with her and she’ll talk you through it and make sure you’re completely happy with your choices.

Ted wears organic

Nerys was so excited when her outfit arrived in the post – she walked round the house hugging it!  Her outfit consists of a long sleeve t-shirt and leggings in a gorgeous ‘over the sea’ design with co-ordinating pink dotty fabric.  It really is lovely, so well made and beautifully soft.  I can see us getting a lot of wear out of this outfit!

Ted wears organic clothing

You can check out the whole range at the Ted Wears Organic Etsy store, and as one of my lovely readers you can get 15% off your first order by using the code ‘GLORIOUS15’ when you check out.

If you want to keep up to date with the latest news from Ted Wears Organic you can also find them on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

 

I am a brand rep and was gifted this outfit, but all opinions are my own.

 

-Blessed are the curious, for they shall have adventures-

My curious children

by with 6 Comments ParentingQuotesUncategorized

In case there’s any confusion caused by the title of this post, I mean to say that my children are curious about life and the world around them, not that they themselves are a bit curious.  Although, they do have their moments!

Both my children are naturally curious, asking “what’s this?” and “why is that?”, and while there are days when the constant questions get a bit draining, I want them to always question the world around them.

I’ve written before about how I want my children to stay curious, and as they get older and start to explore more and more of the world around them I feel this even more.

Blessed are the curious quote

 

How boring would their lives be if they weren’t curious?  If they just accepted the status quo, and blindly followed the crowd without querying anything, would they ever have any adventures, or would they just drift along the safe path created by so many others before them?

Here’s hoping my children always remain curious, and have many, many adventures!

 

Cuddle Fairy
The dinosaur that pooped daddy

The dinosaur that pooped Daddy – book review

by with No Comment ParentingReviewsUncategorized

Both my children love books, and we read a couple every night at bedtime as part of our nightly routine, so we were really excited when we were offered the chance to review a couple of books from Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter – The dinosaur that pooped Daddy and The dinosaur that pooped a rainbow.

I have to admit I hadn’t heard of this series of books until a few months ago, when Rhys was given a copy of The dinosaur that pooped a planet for his birthday and he really enjoyed it.  Well, he is a 5 year old boy after all, anything to do with poo is funny!

So he was very happy to see two new ‘the dinosaur that pooped’ books arrive in the post the other day.

The dinosaur that pooped Daddy is an eye-catching little board book, much shorter than the dinosaur that pooped a planet, and was written with younger children in mind.  Even so, Rhys really enjoyed it and I loved the fact that it had an educational element to it for Nerys.

The book counts down items around the house from 10 to 1, as Danny and Dino search for Daddy which is great for Nerys who is learning to count at the moment (we’re still at the 1, 2, 5, 6, 2, 10! stage at the moment), but the fun rhymes and the poo-related ending kept it entertaining for Rhys too.

The Dinosaur that pooped a rainbow, as you might have guessed, is all about the different colours of the rainbow, with the addition, of course, of the colour brown.  It’s silly, it really is, but that’s a big part of it’s appeal.  It’s just a fun way to help young children learn colours.  And the simple, rhyming text makes it nice to read, as it has a good rhythm to it.  I don’t know about you, but when I’m reading books out loud to my children it’s much nicer when the text has a good rhythm to it!

The dinosaur that pooped daddy

To celebrate the release of the book, The dinosaur that pooped Daddy, there are some really fun printable activites available to download.  We printed out two copies of the Father’s day card so that Rhys and Nerys could each do one, and then they got stuck in to the other activities and had great fun with it.

The sheets are lovely and colourful, and there was a fab mix of things for my 2 year old and my 5 year old to do, so no one got left out which I thought was great!

dinosaur activities sheets

I will say this, if you don’t really find poo funny and are trying to steer your kids away from toilet humour, then these books probably aren’t for you.

But, if you have a young child who finds all that stuff hilarious then these books will be a big hit.  They’re a bright, colourful, fun way to introduce kids to numbers and colours, and to make reading books fun if you’ve got a bit of a reluctant reader on our hands.

If you want a fun Father’s day activity for your children then you can click on these links for the Father’s day card and activity sheets and print them at home.

 

Disclosure – I was sent these books in exchange for an honest review.  All words and opinions are my own.
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Moving my blog from Weebly to WordPress

by with 29 Comments PersonalUncategorized

Crack open the champagne – I’ve done it!

After a few months of deliberations and a week of Google searches and fiddling about I have moved my blog from Weebly to WordPress.

And I have to say it went much more smoothly than I thought it would.  I still have a bit of rejigging to do with the way everything looks now, and I have a lot to learn about WordPress, but the main thing is, I’m here, my blog is here and all my comments are here too which I’m so pleased about!

I started my blog with Weebly back in February 2015 as it just seemed like the easiest way to get up and running.  And I actually don’t regret that decision.  Weebly was good for me.  It was so straightforward to use that it allowed me to just get on with writing posts, finding my voice, learning about blogging in general.

But, over a year later, I felt that it was time to move on.  I was feeling a bit restricted by Weebly, and really didn’t like the fact that they were basically in control of all my content (and they don’t have an option for backing up your blog posts with them).

The thing is, Weebly really don’t make it easy for you to move your content away from them.  And a lot of the results of my googling were out of date, as they talked about using google reader which doesn’t exist anymore.

So, in the hope of helping someone else who might be wanting to move from Weebly to WordPress, here’s how I did it and the steps you can take to make the move yourself:

moving blog weebly wordpress

 

The first thing I should mention is that I had a bit of an issue in that I  already had my domain name with GoDaddy and it was pointing to my Weebly site.  I wanted to move the domain name with me over to WordPress, so I went into Weebly and changed my domain name there back to the basic .weebly.com option.  This meant that anyone looking for my blog might be a bit confused for a few days as it either wouldn’t be there or would look a bit ‘off’, but it freed up the domain name so I could crack on with setting it up with a new host and with WordPress.

I should also mention that one of the most time consuming parts of migrating for me was backing up my blog posts.  Now, as Weebly don’t have a way of doing this for you, what I mean by this is that I manually went into each post and copied and pasted all my text into word documents, and made a note of the date they were written and the url of the post.  I wanted to be absolutely certain that I wouldn’t lose all my hard work in the move, and for the most part this turned out to be unnecessary as all my posts were fine in the end.  The one issue I did have was with the dates of the posts, as they were all wonky in WordPress so it was useful to have a record of when the posts actually went live so I could go in and edit them in WordPress.

 

Get hosting.

The first big step in making the move from Weebly to a self-hosted WordPress blog is to get hosting for the new site.

After asking around other UK bloggers I decided to go with TSOhost, and they’ve been great so far.  You simply go to their site, and sign up for hosting.  I selected the lite option as you can always upgrade later if you need to.

Once I’d signed up for hosting TSOhost sent me a welcome email with some important information and details in it.  When you get your email, click on the control panel URL link and log in using the details they give you.  Click on the ‘add a site’ option and add the domain name that you want to use.  If like me your domain is already pointing at your Weebly site you’ll have to change this, so go to your domain provider and change the nameservers to the ones listed in your welcome email.

This willl mean that your blog will go down for a bit, but this whole process didn’t actually take too long so this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

 

Install WordPress.

Install WordPress through the TSOhost control panel.  Again this was a pretty simple process, just follow the instructions on the screen.

Once WordPress is installed you can log in to wordpress and choose a theme.  There are loads of free ones to chose from, but I went for a premium theme from Pipdig as I had an idea of what I wanted and really loved the look and feel of this particular theme.

 

Migrate your blog posts from Weebly to WordPress.

The next big step is to get your blog posts, categories and comments over from Weebly.  This is where I got confused as most of the tutorials I could find were out of date, and involved using Google reader which doesn’t exist anymore.  But there is a way to do it, and for me at least it was really easy and worked perfectly.

I went to shifttowp.com, and followed the instructions there to get the rss feed from my weebly blog.  This file gets sent to you in an email, which also includes instructions to get the full wxr file.  This does cost about £15 but it’s well worth it if you want to take all your hard-earned comments with you!

Once you get the wxr file you need to import it into WordPress.  You do this by going into your wordpress dashboard and going to tools, import, wordpress and then uploading the file you were sent in the second email.

All of your blog posts should now be with you in wordpress – hurray!

The next really important thing to do is to install and run the Import external images plugin to transfer all your images from Weebly to WordPress.  It might seem that your photos have already been transferred over with your posts, but they’ll actually still be held over on your weebly site, so if/when you delete that old site all your photos will disappear from wordpress, so do make sure you don’t skip this step!

 

Rejig anything that needs rejigging.

Chances are your blog posts won’t look quite how you want them to look in your new set up.  So take a bit of time to straighten up your images, make sure your posts are in the right date order (mine got really messed up in the move!), and basically get everything looking the way you want it to look.

 

Set up any other pages you want your site to have.

Now all your blog posts have been migrated you can set up any other pages that you want.  There is a way to migrate this information over but I just did it manually, by creating new pages in WordPress and typing in the content I wanted – simple.

 

Sort out your 301 redirects.

One problem you might have is that the way Weebly sets up its urls is different to the way wordpress does it, so anyone trying to find one of your old blog posts using one of your old links will get a 401 error.

There are two schools of thought on how to deal with this, you can either create a custom url in wordpress so that it creates its urls in the same way that weebly does, or you can set up 301 redirects from your old urls to the new ones.  From what I read the second option is best, although I couldn’t quite work out why!

Setting up the redirects was surprisingly easy though.  I installed the simple 301 redirects plugin and found it really simple to use.  Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin you need to go to settings, then 301 redirects then put in the request and destination urls.

Let’s say for example a post on your Weebly blog had the url http://www.yourblogname.co.uk/blog/this-is-a-post. then that means your standard url for all blog posts would be www.yourblogname.co.uk/blog/blog-page/%postname%/ so in the ‘request’ box you would put /blogpost/%postname%

As standard on WordPress, blog posts don’t come under a header of ‘blog’ like they do on Weebly, so the same post would have a url in WordPress of www.yourblogname.co.uk/this-is-a-post, so you want to set the ‘destination’ to /%postname%

This seemed to work for me, as my old links now open up the post in my new wordpress site, so give it a go!

 

Start blogging with wordpress.

That’s the hard bit done, now you have the fun of getting stuck into WordPress, so go and explore this brave new world!

 

I really hope this post is helpful to anyone wanting to make the move from Weebly to a self-hosted WordPress site.  If you think I’ve missed a step please do let me know so I can include it, and if you’re considering doing it, then I urge you to just take a deep breath and go for it, it really wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be!  Good luck!

 

Cuddle Fairy
Keep Calm and Carry On Linking Sunday
Swansea-bay-beach-photo

Camping with the beach on your doorstep

by with No Comment ParentingPersonalUncategorized

I’ve said it before, and no doubt I’ll say it again (and again), but my children love the beach.  Winter or summer, rain or shine, they’ll happily jump in the car for a visit to the beach.

And we really are spoilt here in Swansea, as we have such an amazing selection of beaches to choose from.

From our old faithful Swansea bay, to the award-winning Rhossili bay on the gower and all the gorgeous beaches and bays in between, there really is a beach for everyone here.

We can see Swansea bay from our house, and so it does feel like it’s pretty much on our doorstep.  But we do still have to either jump in the car or walk for 20 minutes to get there.  Now I know that’s not far by any means, but I do sometimes think how amazing it would be to pitch up a tent at one of the campsites on gower and really be right next to the beach.

Swansea-bay-beach-photo

The thing is, I’ve not really done much camping.

When I was growing up we went on holiday to Devon and Cornwall, and then as I got a bit older we started travelling to the south of France every summer.  We would stay on a campsite there, but always went for the caravan option rather than a tent.  So the idea of pitching a tent and piling in with my husband and two kids is a little bit daunting to me.

Luckily for me, Halfords have created the ultimate guide to camping, to help make a potential camping trip go smoothly.  The guide is nice and compact but it’s full of useful information about campsites and attractions around the UK as well as fab tips and tricks on:

  • how to keep the kids entertained while you’re away
  • what you should and shouldn’t do as a newbie camper
  • cooking at a campsite
  • glamping (if you’re not the back-to-basics type of camper!)
  • travelling safely with children

There’s also a really useful checklist on the back so you can be sure you’ve not forgotten any essentials before you head off.

It really is a fab little guide, and you can check it out for yourself by clicking here and downloading the ultimate guide to camping.

Halfords-camping-guide

I’ve now had a good read of the guide and I have to admit, it’s made the whole idea of camping with the kids sound like a lot of fun!  Maybe this will be the summer our tent makes it’s way out of the cupboard and into the sun.  And if we choose gower as our destination, at least I know we’re not far from home if it doesn’t go to plan!

This is a collaborative post

Picture

My favourite firsts

by with One Comment Uncategorized

One of my favourite things about being a parent is all the ‘firsts’ you get to witness.  

I’ve had 5 years worth of firsts with Rhys, and so many of them are still so clear in my mind.  From the first time he walked (I was out of the room, but I heard it!), to the first time he really laughed (at us saying ‘rusk, rusk’, it was hilarious to him), to his first day at school and, most recently, the first time I watched him swim without armbands.

I feel a bit like some of Nerys’ firsts are a bit more fuzzy in my mind, probably because I was looking after a busy toddler at the same time that she hit those milestones.

But I do have my favourite firsts that are as clear as day.

The first time she smiled.  

Now, you may well claim it was just wind, but I swear she smiled at my Mum when she was about a week and a half old.  It was such a real smile, it reached her eyes and she just twinkled with it.

And that smile has brought so much joy to our lives ever since.  My happy, cheeky girl.

The first time she climbed the stairs.

Oh she was so proud of herself, and so happy!  I spent many an hour going up and down those stairs with her, but I’m pleased I did as she’s been so confident and safe on those stairs for ages now.

The first time she tackled the climbing frame at the park.

This is one of those times when you have to take a deep breath and a step back and trust that they can manage, even if everything in you wants to rush over and hover right behind them to make sure they’re ok.  Daddy did help Nerys across the little bridge to start with, which made me feel a bit better, but with all the rest of it she was just raring to go off on her own!

She’s a little more cautious than Rhys was, but is still pretty bold and confident in her abilities as far as climbing and jumping goes!

The many other firsts.

Some of my other favourite firsts have also been the bittersweet ones, the firsts that mark little steps away from her complete dependence on me and towards her being an independent little girl.

Her first tastes of food, her first pair of shoes and the first shouts of ‘me do it’ that followed in later months when it came to putting them on; all those first, tiny steps towards independence.

One of the big firsts in a baby’s life is definitely the first taste of food after having nothing but milk for the first 6 months, and yoghurt is a great first food in my opinion!

Nerys has always been a big yoghurt fan, and could work her way through a whole pack in a day if we let her, so I was excited when we were sent some vouchers for her to try these yoghurts from Petits Filous.  They’re a great choice if you’re just starting to wean your baby, but are just as good for older children as they’re really low in sugar but contain calcium and protein which is great for growing kids.

I felt I had to be fair when writing this, so I had to try the yoghurts for myself rather than just trust Nerys’ opinion on them, and I have to say they’re really quite nice!  They’re thick and creamy, with a quite subtle vanilla flavour so they’re ideal for younger babies.  I think Nerys maybe found them a bit plain, as she’s now used to sharing flavoured yoghurts with Daddy, but with a bit of fruit added to them they went down very well!

My first Petits Filous are a great choice for parents as they don’t contain any  artificial colours, flavours or sweeteners so you know that what you’re giving your child isn’t full of junk.  And if your child does prefer a bit more flavour then they’re really easy to jazz up with some fruit, fruit puree or even honey for older babies.

I have absolutely loved watching both my children experience so many ‘firsts’ over the last 5 years.  It’s a real privilege, and a joy, to be there and witness those milestones.

And I have to admit that at times I do feel a little bit sad that so many of the big firsts are behind us.

But then, I think about all the wonderful firsts that are still ahead of us.  And you know, I think maybe my favourite first might just be the next one, or the next one, or the next one!

This post is an entry for BritMums #PetitsFilousFirsts Linky Challenge, sponsored by Petits Filous. 
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