Ten Things to Smile About June

I cannot believe it is the last week of June already. Madness. Every month I like to try to link up with Emmy Mom and her fabulous linky 10 Things to Smile About...Here are my offerings for June:


1) Our new kitten is settling in really well. We've had a few accidents but nothing truly awful. Little A is learning to be more gentle (he has never had a pet like this before) and although a normal scratchy thing, she seems to be a happy, playful kitten.


2. Midge came home this month with her second reading award, a silver one. I'm so proud. It's sports day this Friday and she's really nervous about not winning. Trying to tell her about all these awards and how great they are but at the same time are not the be all and end all of everything is hard!

3. My sister is back from university which is always nice. She's seeing some friends, earning some money and stayed over last week. She'll be visiting again this week which we're all really looking forward to.

4. We had a lovely, impromptu dinner out last weekend. it was the nicest dinner we have had out in ages. We went to our local Wetherspoons. The children were really well behaved and the food was so good! Little A tried Daddy's Cornish burger. I had to get a shot of that!


 5. June saw us take a break to Cambridge which was just wonderful. I've written about here if you want to take a look (you should!) It was so nice to get away from it all and was very relaxing (most of the time!) More importantly, it was wonderful to spend time with family I don't get to see very often.

6. I've found dairy free whipped cream and dairy free condensed milk! This pleases me so very, very much- you have no idea! I shall bake millionaires shortbread and eat strawberry's with meringue and cream (oh yes, and SQUIRT THE CREAM IN MY MOUTH like the good old days!!)

7. I've been really into my reading this month and have been enjoying it so much mostly thanks to a pen pal of mine. Speaking of pen pals, I'm having so much fun sending out snail mail to some lovely people on a regular basis. I need to find an American pen pal though so I can add to my postcard collection!



8. We've got a weekend away planned in July which I'm really looking forward to. More on that next month I'm sure!

9. I've had some great second hand buys this month. From children's clothes to adding to my stationary and care bear collection, it's been great. I love buying second hand items and going 'scavenger hunting.' I've even bought new books for £2!

10. I've been babysitting my niece with Hubby every once and a while throughout June and it has been so wonderful to spend time with her. We also pick up Midge and all her cousins from school so the house is a bit nuts for half hour or so. It's kind of nice though!


So there are my 10 Good Things for this month. I'm also linking up with Michelle's Reasons to be Cheerful which I love taking part in.

Reasons to be Cheerful at Mummy from the Heart

CupcakeMumma

Happing Birthday Paddington Bear!

A few weeks ago we had a visitor in the Cupcake House. He was a very, very important visitor. He was none other than Paddington Bear.

Paddington came all the way from his more permanent home at Lucy's to stay here in Cornwall with Midge, Little A and myself. He had a great time and was sad to leave. I thought I'd share this today, on his birthday.

When Paddington arrived he was all wrapped up in his little blue coat and most excited to be shown around (which Midge saw to straight away) He came on the school runs with us for 3 days and hung out with Little A when Midge wasn't around. (He wasn't too keen to hang out with the pupils at primary and I can't say I blame him)



Paddington proved pretty useful during his stay by entertaining the children, helping with the baking and even with my blogging! Here he is helping with the Walkers Crisps review:

 He said they were okay, but not his favourite...He also met other members of the Cupcake Family too. Namely our adorable pet hamster Crunchie. Paddington wasn't too fond of Crunchie because his nose may have been sought after for nibbling..

 Of course when the children went to bed it was just Paddington and myself. What did we do? We indulged in marmalade sandwiches *Yum Yum*

Greedy Old Bear

We were sad to see Paddington go home but he had a very important job to do in keeping an eye on the mug I was sending to Lucy. I'm told he didn't eat too much of the Cornish fudge and had a pleasant trip. Thank-you Lucy and Harry for letting Paddington stay with us for a week. If you'd like to look after Paddington,

Cupcake Mumma 

Crafty Creatives: A Favourite so Far!

This month the lovely people at Crafty Creatives have put together a rather sweet treat for us..Almost literally! I adore this box (CCBox 12) and have already been busy making things with the contents. Shall I show you what wonderful items we were treated to this month? Oh okay then!



How could I, Cupcake Mumma, not Oh and Ah and practically squeal with delight upon opening this latest box? We have this splendid art card which is just wonderful. I love the illustrations of the gummy bears, sweet jars and lollies. Also in the box is a recipe card from that lovely Cathryn Dresser of British Bake Off fame (I love that show), a mini cookie cutter (I received a heart shaped one) and some little embellishments for use on card, gift tags, fabric- anything really! 
In the final picture you can see ice cream buttons, cupcake ribbon in blue, tags to decorate and have fun with designing and some brightly coloured ring beads.

 Here is a close up of the full set of ice cream buttons. You can really jazz up an item of clothing, stick the ice cream firmly in place to the cone and loop through some chain for a unique necklace, or even snip the back off (carefully) to use as embellishments. The possibilities are endless!

Finally, the kit this month is a cross stitch kit with a variety of patterns to choose from. The kit comes with everything you need, as usual, even down to the little needle placed carefully in the fabric. Talking of fabric, included is a wonderful piece which I have forgotten to photograph! I'm sure someone will have a photo somewhere! The last treat in my box were 3 cakes which I have already turned into necklaces.



























I think you'll agree that this is quite a fabulous box for June. Next month Crafty Creatives turn One! Look out for a truly great box I'm sure! As usual, I'm not sent these boxes to review. I pay for them and enjoy them as part of my crafting hobby and love to blog about them. I have inspired many a crafty mind to sign up so it's working!!

Have fun,
Cupcake Mumma x

Our Cambridge Holiday

Now I've had a couple of days sleep, I thought I'd share some of the highlights from our family holiday to Cambridge. For the most part we had wonderful sunshine but sadly did get caught in one rather heavy rain storm when we adventured into Cambridge. This happened to be one of the best days for me though because I got to meet my pen pal and social media buddy of six years Kerrie! It was ace and the children all got on too which was lovely. 



For 2 days we enjoyed a small music festival listening and dancing to local bands to the small hours. We camped in a caravan, had outdoor camp stove dinners and breakfast with the birds early in the morning. In the photo above you can see one of the very cool camper vans that turned up for the weekend. Hubby and I always get jealous when we see these! Midge playing with one of lawn games. My cousin selling her homemade items and supper of cereals in a mug: yum.






One of the acts was a Samba Band local to Cambridge. They were my favourite act and had everyone dancing.



When almost everyone had gone we took over a second caravan and joined in coffee mornings outside and visiting more family who have recently moved near by. Midge and Little A went exploring and we all had fun going on some countryside walks. We were pretty sad to leave but had a wonderful time.
I took some photos as we arrived at the train station in London and the view from the Taxi. I'm such a tourist, I love it! Midge fell asleep on the way to London on Daddy and the only photo of me on holiday was this one of Little A and I on the way to Kings Cross!

I want to thank my Aunt and Uncle for once again opening their home to us all. We had a lovely time and miss them very much already. Ice House 2015 here we come!

Cupcake Mumma

Back From Holiday and Cheerful!

Hello! I am back from our 5 day break to Cambridge with family and feeling very good indeed! I'm missing the countryside a little but am grateful for the town today as I have had some success with my charity shop scavenger hunting. There is such a thing as being too far out in the sticks after all!

I thought I'd ease myself back into blogging with a lovely Reasons To Be Cheerful post. You can check out the rest of this weeks happy blogging community, by heading over to Mummy From The Heart.

1) We had a fabulous holiday, so it seems fitting to have this as my number one reason to be cheerful this week. We got back in the early evening of Wednesday and have been all go today. It was so wonderful to see my family,who I miss so very much already. I loved being surrounded by green, green and more green! There were birds to listen to in the morning, owls to hear at night. The caravan was comfy after day 3 (when my parents vacated the larger one!) and the children had an absolute wonder of a time!

The bottom field where the 'Beyond The IceHouse' music festival was held






















2) We have a new addition to the Cupcake House! Meet Missy, our lovely kitten. She's very playful and
always up to no good so her original name 'Petal' was quickly thrown out in favour of a more fitting name for her! I am in love already...she doesn't know her jabs are due next week and that she's on the list to be 'done' as soon as she's ready and I'm sure once she finds out she won't be loving me so much for a while!


3) My Little A is talking more and more since he has come back from holiday and Midge has gained confidence with animals since being surrounded by them for days on end. She used to be really frightened of dogs, but since the holiday she has been a lot calmer around them and so have I come to think of it.

So, short but sweet (I like to think!) I've come back wanting to get started on my garden, to sort the children's bedroom so it is finally a perfect place for them to relax and rest. I also have plans to freshen up the rest of the house, start some homemade gifts to maybe sell in the future and get started on at least 2 Holistic Therapy courses. Phew!

Hope you all have a wonderful Friday.

CupcakeMumma

Be Back Soon.

I'll be off on my holidays tomorrow and as I've been too ill to schedule any posts I just wanted to say, stay and well and you'll hear from me in a week.

CupcakeMumma x

Happy Days with my Niece

I have 2 nieces. For the purpose of my blog they are known as 'G' and 'Little T'. They are two scrummy, lovely little girls. G is now in reception at the same school as her twin brother and Midge, so spending time with her is difficult. Spending time with all of them is pretty difficult to be honest! When we do see each other though it is precious and exciting.

On Thursday I woke up feeling really happy about 2 things. One, Midge was being dropped into school by one of her Aunties so I didn't have to get my lazy butt into gear as much as usual, and two, Little T was coming to stay for the whole day!

As her Mum drove off to get ready for a wedding, Little T was left with Husband and I for the first time in a long while. She sized us up a bit and then walked about the house to get an idea of her surroundings for the next 7 hours or so....the day started with this face:


But a bit of lunch, a shopping trip for groceries, some playtime with Little A and a bit of Max and Ruby later she was perfectly happy in our company: yey! She started to babble a bit, laughed when I played about with her and I just felt so happy to be with a little baby again! Later on we went out together (looking very pink!) leaving Little A asleep and Husband on the PlayStation.


We went for a scavenger hunt in the charity shops where I found a pretty sunhat for her and bought a new dress (may have handed over a biscuit teddy with chocolate feet to a one year old in some serious heat!) so it that was a nessecity. We then walked about town for a little while just enjoying the sunshine. It was nice to not force a child into a buggy for once!


We had such a lovely day together despite not really doing anything exciting. Once Little A had woken up we all went out to get the rest of the clan from school...six children and 2 adults! We sure got some odd looks on the walk home! All the children came back to ours, had a biscuit each and played until Nanny came to collect them.

I love watching all of them play together, it's so nice. I hope it's like this for a long time to come!

Do you want to see how the day ended?

With Smiles!!

CupcakeMumma

Hairdressing Hell

I partially blame myself for this grouchy mood I'm in. You see, it started off well, then one awful haircut and one miserable husband (totally unrelated) later, I'm just not in the mood for Friday.
We ventured out into town with a very specific task: get Little A's hair cut. It's quite long these days and has started to get easily matted. He also has a terrible habit of rubbing his hands in his hair, especially to rid them of sticky sweets or crisp crumbs!

We turned up at 9am, the opening time of the salon.Except it was closed. After 20 minutes, Little A being only 2 started to get a bit grouchy. We went home, collected his buggy and browsed the shops. At half ten we went back to the hair dressers and were promptly seen.It goes down hill from here. The hair dresser was teasey. I don't know if she disliked my child's response to being sat in the chair or if she had no children of her own, either way my hackles were already raised.

I tried to calm him down and for a second it seemed he might play along with Mummy's stupid plan. Until the first few chops were made to his gorgeous blond hair! For the next 15 minutes (it felt like an hour) the hair dresser huffed, puffed and was visibly irritated by Little A. I don't ever tend to feel like snapping at a stranger but I could feel the Motherly protection bubbling up inside of me. Instead of making a bad situation even worse though, I just tired to soothe Little A as much as I could, with little success.

The hair cut was supposed to cost £5. Needless to say Husband doubled it and gave a tip to the hairdresser. I understand that all she wanted to do was her job and do it well. She wasn't happy with his hair but to me he looks fine. I suspect there may have been a little sniping once we left the salon but I could be wrong of course. I also understand that as well wanting to do a good job she is in the difficult position of being in charge of scissors and a very upset and eventually tantruming toddler. That's not easy to deal with. (See, I am a reasonable person)

I'm actually really annoyed at myself more than anything or anyone else. I'm annoyed that I put my son through 15 or 20 minutes of hell (for him) when if I had just taken him home for his sodding, effing nap he probably would've been a totally different child.
I'm annoyed that I wasn't more forceful and insisted that I sat with him. It's how Midge had her first hair cuts. I'm annoyed that I didn't bring his 'blankie' so he had no comfort.
I've resolved that never again will I take my boy, at this age, to the salon. He will have a nap, he will have his blanket and he will have his Daddy.

CupcakeMumma


Early Fathers Day Post

My Dad means the world to me. He's full of quick come backs, sarcasm,honesty and lots of good advice. He's more cuddly in his old age (shhhh) and laughs more which is nice. As I've grown up I've become closer to my Dad. I can see how, looking back, we were so, so alike that it made us just fight. We were both so stubborn, we never listened to what each other had to say and as most parents do, it ended with the parent being right and the teenager skulking off to brood angrily in her bedroom!

All that is in the past. We are much closer now. I can't think of being without my Dad, I honestly can't.  He's the man that taught me to read, that laughed when I cried through the fear of telling him I was pregnant (I thought he was going to kill me!) He taught me to whistle one evening when what he really wanted to do was have a long bath after working with horses all day!

Now he's into playing guitars, writing songs, tending to his garden, bike riding and studying with the Open University (he's 52- that's a pretty inspiring list of things to do!) He's sung me songs over Skype and is the only person who can cover a SnowPatrol song I like (seriously, I hate all covers of Chasing Cars I've ever heard) In short, he means the world to me.


CupcakeMumma

Flowers

Today I have crafted something with a flower theme. I've gone for a card to send as part of the Feel The Love Project which is something I love helping out with by sending cards to those going through a hard time. This month we're sending 'thinking of you' cards to the parents and family of little Mason Villegus, who sadly passed away at just 6 months old in September 2012 as a result of a car accident involving a drink driver who left the scene of the devastating crime. This card is in honor of Mason x


June 4th Flower Theme



Blog every day in June

Mug Swap Link Up!

Hey! As it's now June i'm writing this post to show off my lovely mug and goodies I received from my swap partner Lucy from LeopardPrintMommy. At the bottom of this post there is a linky where you can link up your post all about the mugs you received and posted in May.

I was out on Saturday so missed the postie but hubby was kind enough to venture out to the post office yesterday morning and collect my parcel. My mug! Here's what the lovely Lucy sent me:

My beautiful mug!

The perfect card, oven glove and some cupcake wrappers :)

Miss Muffin! I love her!

Here is a quick photo of what I posted off to Lucy. You can see more on her blog shortly! 


Paddington went home from his Cornish holiday with some Cornish fudge, some tasty biscuits and i'm told by Lucy he looked after her mug very well. Look out for a post from Paddington's holiday here on the blog soon!

Thanks to everyone who signed up and sent their mugs. I hope you enjoyed the swap. Depending on how successful this one is, i'll get another one up and running same time next year.

CupcakeMumma

Sunny, Lovely Weekend!

On Saturday morning we all woke up with sun shining through our windows. The children came bounding in with smiles on their faces and Hubby and I sat up knowing it was going to be a good day. I like it when you just know it's going to be a nice day. We made a rather spontaneous decision to go to the boating lake a couple of towns over to feed the ducks and swans. It was beautiful over there and despite the seagulls doing their best to ruin the moment, we enjoyed it a lot!


My sister was back from university for the weekend and I was keen to spend some time with her before she headed off to her boyfriend's up country. We met up at the lake with her and my Mum, ate some chips and decided, once again very spontaneously, that it would be rude not to have a BBQ on such a lovely day!

Hubby and I headed to the shops with the children, Little Man was so tired from the heat and excitement he promptly passed out as we went around the shop hunting for food and various other BBQ goodies. After an hour (we had to draw it out because of the bus times!) we headed to Mums and started preparing the food and fixing the BBQ together. Mum went and got Dad from work early, the children had their paddling pool out and we spent a lovely evening together chatting and eating scrummy food.


To continue with our spontaneous theme we decided to stop over and have a sleep over in the front room of my parents house. Little A slept better than he ever has in the travel cot, he woke twice and Midge was the same. A couple of wake ups I can deal with so it was all in all a great day from start to finish!

On Sunday we all phoned my Gran to wish her a happy birthday. She didn't know we were all planning to take her out somewhere nice to eat for lunch. My Aunt and Uncle from Devon came down and stayed the weekend with her and my other Aunt, so she was pretty spoiled by the time we arrived at the restaurant.

Little A was extremely tired and hot and after one too many melt downs hubby decided it was best for everyone if he took him away in the buggy. The restaurant was lovely but it wasn't child friendly at all. I know you can't please everyone but there are several places which are lovely, dietary friendly and child friendly. This place wasn't 'us' at all. This was a posh hotel and restaurant, we were definitely under dressed in my opinion my children were certainly not their idea of a normal lunch service. No one else came here with younger children, that tells you everything! Needless to say, it may have looked wonderful and I enjoyed catching up with my family, I didn't enjoy myself that much at all!



My main meal. The veg was really tasty, I think I'll add some of these herbs to my planned herb garden! The fish was great too. Dessert was the best. Coconut sorbet is delicious! Midge whinged through most of the meal, she couldn't have pudding because they weren't suitable for her but was just being silly with her main meal because it was perfectly fine (I ate it for my starter in the end!) I think the lure of an outdoor swimming pool and the hotel's cat was too much of a temptation for her!

We had birthday cake though! My Gran seemed to really enjoy her day which is the most important thing. She was happy with us all there for her, she loved the restaurant and had a lovely meal. We bought her some flowers and she liked the card I made for her. Here's the vegan cake my Aunt made:


My poor Gran couldn't blow out the candles! We thought my Aunt had accidentally bought her those trick candles for a minute! I had a few cake helpings, I must admit and I'm feeling it all today! I'm curled on my sofa letting the children run wild and watch as much TV as they like. I feel awful! Back to school tomorrow and some homework to do tonight!

Hope you all enjoyed your sunny weekend. What a great start to June!

CupcakeMumma

June Craft a Day: Summer

Here in Cornwall today it was beautifully sunny and rather warm, definite summer weather in my book! When I think of summer there a few things I think of: sun, heat and...ice cream! I was browsing the chairty store a little while ago and came across a cute pendant for a necklace in a little basket of 50p bits and bobs. I remembered my sister had something identical as a youngster so I recreated it.

Using an old necklace chain, I simply popped the newly loved pendant onto it and admired the summery feel it oozed! I hope you like?

June 2nd Summer Theme




I'll be getting the ice cream put on a slightly longer chain, but for today it's fine!

CupcakeMumma

Blog every day in June