Mum-e Blog

It’s LP2’s birthday coming up and as usual I am not quite on top of the situation. Last year I made her a cake I am still very proud of – it’s Peppa Pig in case you don’t recognise her.

This year I am not sure I am going to have time for that though. So I am thinking of using www.caketoppers.co.uk who can make and send you edible cake decorations, which means I can have a birthday cake and matching cupcakes from a photo – I am thinking of using one of Rufus, our labradoodle. The cake decoration is less than £10 which is a hell of a lot less than the cost of all the icing I used (and had to throw away when it went wrong the first 24 times) on Peppa.
The other site I like to use is www.vistaprint.co.uk which I used last year to print invitations with the girls’ photos on and thank you cards with pictures from the party, which my kids (or I) can personalise by writing on the back. They cost £11.99 for 20 cards which I thought was pretty good and they look really professional. I use them for business cards too.

Obviously, however much I say I am going to do all this, I probably won’t get round to it in time. In fact, I bet I’ll still be up at 3am the night before the party re-rolling the icing for a cake in the shape of the Little Princess and cursing my total lack of organisational skills…

Goodness, Monday again, that happened quickly…
The weekend was fun. I had a dinner party for ten which I had been a bit nervous about – most of the people hadn’t met before and I hadn’t entertained in ages. But it went really well – the last guests left at 2.30am. We ended up playing a great game called Tunes with Spoons which basically involves everyone having a spoon, picking some cheesy songs on the iPhone, sticking it in the docking station and turning it up really loudly and then pretending to be a pop star, singing along. Kind of like a rubbish version of karaoke.

Anyway, it was a good giggle until LP1 came downstairs and asked us to keep it down, did we know what time it was…
Then yesterday after dinner she asked if she could play a game, like we did. I really didn’t have the head for loud music again, so I looked on familyfun.go.com and found some games the kids could play in the garden. So, that’s my top choice for this week.
Another good one is http://www.picnicrecipesandgames.com/ – great ideas for picnics and what to do when you’ve finished eating.
Now we just need a few more sunny days.

My two favourite websites of the day….

1. www.woolworths.co.uk
Hurrah, Woolworths is back – albeit only online – selling clothes, toys and party stuff, really cheaply. And they are offering free cinema tickets – you just have to sign up as a VIF (Very Important Family) first.

2. allrecipes.com
I love this site because it has recipes from real people, given ratings by other real people, so they do actually work. You can search under any ingredient or occasion and the recipes tend to be really straightforward. There is now also allrecipes.co.uk, but there aren’t so many rated recipes as yet. I tried these Maple Walnut Muffins (I am a bit of a muffin freak) and they were YUMMY.

PS You have got to go see this really funny post on a fellow mum-blogger’s blog. She is known as Womanatwork and her blog is here: http://ravingmarysragepage.blogspot.com. Have a look at the Michael Jackson You Tube post from Friday.