May 8 2013

Disgracing Myself in the Garden (Thanks Dexter) #Country Kids

Posted on May 8, 2013 by admin

In between the rain showers today I managed to get out in the garden and crack on with re-planting my Dahlia and Lupin to grown-up beds (and more importantly liberating my kitchen windowsill from a mountain of unsightly plastic pots). As always, I had a very curious little helper!

In fact, so desperate was Dexter to copy mummy that I had to give him his own flower-pot to play with to distract him from plucking my other babies from their beds.

I’m sure gardening with kids is great fun; showing them how to care for seedlings, giving them the responsibility of watering them, letting them sink their fingers into the soil… but gardening with babies is an altogether different story. All Dexter wanted to do was eat my flowers and fling around my trowel. He even found perhaps the only spiderweb in my garden to stick his face into, prompting me to face the ultimate parenting dilemma of whether to shake down my baby.

Despite taking out a huge rug and dozens of toys, he only had eyes for the garden tools - and the most dangerous ones at that. He seemed to enjoy commando crawling over to me and having me continually plop him back down on the rug. It turned into a huge game for him.

The last straw was when he found the garden tap, turned it on, and watched the water meander its way toward my bum. As I was focusing on my plants with all the concentration of a neurosurgeon, I only realised when my jeans were saturated. The things that go through your mind in the split second you see water emanating from your undercarriage… Have I wee’ed myself? Am I bleeding? Am I one of those women you read about in Take a Break that don’t realise they’re pregnant until their waters break? Then you realise your child is giggling, equally wet and on his hands and knees face down drinking from an ever-increasing puddle on the decking.

Needless to say I aborted my replanting pretty swiftly and reminded myself I’m a mother. You simply can’t turn your back on a baby for one second! I scooped him up, stripped him down and popped him in his Jumperoo.

On my way up the stairs to change out of my sopping wet jeans, my incredibly hot postman picked that exact moment to knock on the door with a parcel. Craning my neck around the door in a bid to hang on to my dignity, I practically snatched the little machine thing they make you scribble on out of his hands. Unfortunately any hope I had of keeping the dark patch surrounding my crotch secret, was crushed when he glanced over my shoulder and informed me that my child had managed to extricate most of himself from Jumpy, and was only saved from thumping his head on the floor by one foot caught in the caught in the seat.

With the theme tune from Chariots of Fire stuck in my head, I ran to rescue Dexie (in what felt like extreme slow motion) and turned my back on the postman. Thinking I had disgraced myself he pushed the parcel through my doorway with his toe and practically ran down my drive.

I wasn’t embarrassed. I was mortified.

And there concludes my #CountryKids post for this week. You guys must wonder who on earth I am! One week I’m flashing at kids in a park, the next I’m freaking out the postman. Oh well, at least I get to use the tag Wardrobe Malfunctions again - if this carries on I should beat Judy Finnigan to the top of Google’s search ranking. Hopefully next week will be an altogether more serene affair.

Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

May 8 2013

BLOGGY HOW TO: Add a Pinterest Mouseover Button to Blog Images

Posted on May 8, 2013 by admin

I’ve been meaning to write something bloggy for a while now. I’m by no means a technical genius but I’m constantly looking for easy ways to make my blog that little bit better - you have to move with the times and all that. Well I’ve stumbled upon a neat little trick I thought I’d share with you.

You might have noticed that if you hover over any of my blog post images, a Pin It button appears. It’s discreet, easy to do, and probably completely useless but I like it. I’m constantly reading about crafty ideas to do with Dexter when he’s a little bit older, or seeing gorgeous photos that I’d like to recall at some point - this is an easy way of gathering them all in one place.

Want one? Well here’s how get it!

If you’ve got a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can use the Pinterest Pin It Button For Images plugin.

Simply download the zip file, head to your WordPress Dashboard, click Plugins > Add New > Upload and upload the zip file!
Activate the plugin, then from your WordPress Dashboard, go to Settings > Pinterest Pin It.
Under the heading Show “Pin It” button on following pages, click All Pages. Click Save.

That’s it! Just like mine, every time you hover over one of your images, the little icon appears. Clicking on it will automatically bring up the ‘create a pin’ box so you can upload to your Pinterest profile.

Want to know more? Well here’s a rundown of some of the key features:

It autofills the description of the pin using your blog post title

Utter genius! Furthermore, when you actually pin the image to a board it automatically adds your post URL to the pin. This means if you pin your own content frequently, there’s a greater chance of people clicking through to read the associated post.

You can customise it!

I’m currently displaying the default button so you can see what the hell I’m going on about! Customising it is relatively easy however and there’s a whole host of pretty buttons to choose from.

Not only that, you can play with the size of the button and specify where exactly you’d like for it to appear when you hover over the image. This is slightly more tricky but the best tutorial I’ve come across is here.

You can opt out for certain photos

If you’re posting a less than flattering image of yourself, something a little bit sensitive (hopefully NOT uncensored pics of your children in the bath) or sharing an image you don’t have permission to Pin, you can opt out.

To do so, simply head to your WordPress Dashboard, click Settings > Pinterest Pin It > Tick the Opt Out on Single Pages Box

The box you’ll need to tick to exempt a post or page from being pinned is located from WordPress editing screen.

From WordPress Dashboard, click Posts > find the relevant post and click edit > You’ll find your opt out box on the bottom righthand side of your screen

It doesn’t interfere with badge code

We often include badges on our blogs. In a recent post regarding Matilda Mae’s Memorial Auction I included a badge that links to another blog with further information. Similarly, for most blogger comps I’ll add a badge and link it directly back to the host site. This plugin doesn’t affect this in any way - you can only pin the image if you click on the actual Pinterest button in the corner of the image. Clicking anywhere else on the image will take you through to the link you’ve specified.

I’m reliably informed this works for Blogspot and Typepad too

Here’s a tutorial for Blogspot

And another for Typepad

(I’ll admit my head is a little blown by these tutorials as I have no idea what the back-end of these platforms look like)

You don’t even need a blog!

If you’re a Pinterest addict, don’t blog yourself, but enjoy reading other people’s… then there’s additional plugin’s that will allow you to simply right click on people’s images even if they don’t have this feature installed on their blog.

Yep - in Firefox you can add the Pinterest Right-Click Plugin in seconds. This means that every time you see a piccie you like it’s a simply case of right clicking on the image.

If you use Chrome, there’s also QuickPin which looks more or less the same.

So there you have it - this might be considerably out-of-date (it appears to have been doing the rounds in the New Year) but I’ve spotted a couple of blogs I regularly read without the feature. Indeed this might be because they’ve trialled it and hated it! I think I’ll keep mine though. It’s a handy little gizmo!

Any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

May 3 2013

80′s Nostalgia #SpecialK30

Posted on May 3, 2013 by admin

Thirty years ago I was a few months old. I was a chubby and unattractive baby with a mop of black hair. Nevertheless - I was very much wanted as mum suffered 12 miscarriages in order to add me to the Chamberlain clan.

My brother (then 2-years-old) reacted to my homecoming from the hospital by putting a sofa cushion over my moses basket and jumping on me. My mum wasn’t impressed but I seemed to find it pretty funny and she swears to this day it was the first time she heard me giggle.

Naturally I don’t remember anything from 1983 but I do remember the later 80′s. When not rocking a matching shell-suit with my brother (he started to like me when he realised I made a convenient scapegoat for him), neon leg warmers and crimped hair - you would probably find me in my room playing with extensive collections of these horrific looking bad boys.

Yep - whether it was Cabbage Patch Dolls, Koosh Balls, Glo Worm and Friends, or My Little Pony - our toys were a tragic mix of rubber, plastic and synthetic hair. We stored them on bookshelves and couldn’t sleep with them as they were sodding uncomfortable if you inadvertently rolled onto them.

When not giving My Little Pony a Mohican I’d be sat way too close to the television that took up approximately 2 square metres of our living room. Sat on carpet that you’re likely to see on exhibit in your local Wetherpoons, I’d be force-fed visual masterpieces such as M.A.S.K, Inspector Gadget or Danger Mouse by my big brother. When he allowed me to change the channels (by pressing up and down on the set itself - no remote controls in those days) I’d whack on Count Duckula, Trapdoor or something equally nightmare-inducing for a 6-year-old.

Equally colourful, the music of the 80′s is so iconic that I can’t get over the fact that some of if was made before I was even born. I remember the hours spent every Sunday laying down in front of my dad’s HUGE Hi-Fi unit taping the Top 40. For 4 hour stretches I lay there poised to press record when Mark Goodier stopped prattling over the intros. I was such a perfectionist that I’d severely compromise my bladder in order to secure the perfect recording.

The videos of the 80′s were just awesome. Glam Rock was immortalised by smoke machines, mullets, leather trousers and half-naked women moving with all the seductiveness of your gran. Believe it or not, this is mine and Craig’s song…

Then you had the New Romantic pin-up boys who appeared to turn to Cyndi Lauper (of all people) for inspiration; side-swept hair, huge fringes, and twelve different shades of eye make-up applied with all the subtlety and restraint of my 11-month-old son. Mix in a bit of Synthpop and you’ve summed up the eclectic nature of the 80′s. We’ll never be able to top it.

Yep in between the haze of Pac-Man, Tetris and Space Invaders - this blogger was born. As I was so young I was fortunate enough to avoid all the real fashion faux pas (I’m ashamed to say that Craig had one of those terrible skinny pony tails that I swear were never in fashion) and grew up in the contrastingly mundane 90′s.

Moving on 30 years - I’m a mummy myself. I’ve changed dramatically from those heady days of excess and abandonment. I now live in an understated home (no G Plan or bulky electronics in sight!) with my son Dexter who will be celebrating his first birthday in a matter of weeks. I seriously hope he gets to experience a decade in his formative years that will have as much impact as the 80′s did on me and his daddy. Even if just so we can wet ourselves laughing as we usher him out the door decked in something tasteless to meet his friends.

Nowadays we have gadgets and apps for everything. I can turn to my iPhone to record One Born Every Minute, capture Dexter’s first words, or even to tell me when I’m ovulating. The world has moved on so much and shows no signs of slowing down. Despite all these modern conveniences I still love a quick game of Trivial Pursuit and can’t wait until the day my children can sit around the dining table and get whooped by their mum and dad. Some things never get old…

This leads me on nicely to Special K which, believe it or not, is now 30 years old! Yes, Kate Bush, Keith Sweat and Freddy Mercury may well have chomped on these in full 80′s regalia in their hey day. For the first time since 1983, Kellogg’s is revamping Special K with a new, more delicious recipe.

The new recipe contains three grains — rice, wheat and barley (previously there were two) — and is made with wholegrain, for a source of fibre as well as 8 vitamins and minerals. As always, you can opt for several varieties including red berries, chocolate clusters (my personal favourite) or hazelnuts and almonds.

It’s slightly sweeter than the original, and the flakes seem crunchier. It’s an ideal popcorn and biscuit replacement to help me on my long overdue way to shedding some pounds. As per yesterdays post, I need to shrink from an optimistic size 14-16, to a toned and significantly perkier size 12 in order to beat PCOS and add another baby to the mix. If this yummy revamp is anything to go by, My Special K could make the job that little bit easier.

This is an entry for the BritMums/Special K “How I’ve changed Linky challenge”