tips – Mediocre Mum

My Top 7 Tips for a Successful Birthday Party!

How to organise a stress-free birthday party

I’ve always been adamant that I wasn’t going to get caught up in the whole Birthday party thing; inviting the entire class and spending a fortune. However, I don’t mind paying a bit more for a small group to do something special.

Last year we didn’t have a party when our daughter turned 5. It was her first year at the school, her birthday is in September and we didn’t know enough people to invite. So, we had a quiet family party and spent the day with one of her closest friends. However, after attending a plethora of parties this year there was no way we were going to get away with it this year.

I’ve had a party at the house once and if I’m honest it cost nearly as much, was stressful and I was left to clear up the mess at the end. Plus our house is tiny.

1.) Find the right venue!

This year we decided to go sledging at the Hemel Snow Centre near St Albans. It’s not cheap at £19.95 per child, but after I booked I had a nosy at other venues, mostly soft play and it was only about £3 cheaper a head and you didn’t get a warm buffet.

However, the sledging party included:

45 minutes sledging
2 party hosts
Hot Buffet
Visit from the Snow Cat
Party room for an hour
Invitations
4 Adults can join in

Plus, for an additional £30 you can have waterproof clothing for all the kids, which I think the parents appreciated. All we really needed was a pair of wellies or snow boots.

2.) Get down and boogie

I was a bit nervous about what we were going to do in the party room with 10 hyper kids for an hour. However, the time flew by, by the time they ate we only had about 30 minutes to fill. You can bring your own music as they have a docking station but do bare in mind the new Iphone 5s don’t work.

Prior to the party I put a little birthday party playlist together of songs that I thought would get them dancing. I did check out a few kids party albums, but they really did make my ears bleed.

Top 10 songs for Children’s Party

Get the Party Started – Spacer
Firework – Katy Perry
Dancing Queen – Abba
What Makes you Beautiful – One Direction
I like to Move It – Madagascar
Dance With Me Tonight – Olly Murs
Gangnam Style – PSY
Mama Mia – Abba
Call My Name – Cheryl
YMCA – Village People

3.) Kids Musical Party Games

As an ex-teacher the thought of children running riot with no structure terrified me. However, I didn’t want to go down the road of bringing loads of equipment to play games, wanting to keep it as simple as possible. As I had the Ipod with us I decided on musical games. As soon as I thought they were going a bit ‘doolally’ we gathered them together and played a quick game of Musical Bumps.

However, I’d also planned:

Musical Chairs
Musical Statues
Limbo

Don’t forget to bring prizes for the winner. I opted for little bags of gold coins that cost .45p each.

4.) Don’t forget the cake!

I know some parents are hell bent on baking their own cakes for their kid’s birthday parties, I applaud them and I’m sure the look on their faces is worth it. However, as I’m domestically challenged, if I baked a cake for my daughter I’d definitely remember the look of sheer disappointment on her face. I’m a strong believer of paying the professionals and knowing ones limitations.

In St Albans, we are blessed as we have the lovely Lucy from Heavens a Cupcake who is incredibly talented. All I said to her was that it was a sledging party and I needed 12 cupcakes. Aren’t they gorgeous! She makes all the toppings by hand and they not only look amazing they taste amazing as well.

5.) Say no to Party Bags!

As I’ve mentioned before I’m not a huge fan of party bags. I hate seeing parents waste money on bags full of plastic tat that ends up in the recycling bin when the kids aren’t looking. I originally was going to just give out books. I bought a 10 pack of Horrid Henry Books for Early Readers from the Book People for £9.99 but then had a wobble as I thought the kids may be disappointed as they would be expecting a party bag.

So, I popped to the Mr. Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe in St Albans and bought little bags of traditional sweets (£1 each) for the kids. In the end each party bag cost just under £2 which I think is reasonable. Do consider buying an extra one just in case.

6.) Phone a friend

I was absolutely blessed that the parents that came to help out, were not only friends but they’re also the type of people to jump in and help at any point. They could tell I was a little befuddled so jumped right in setting up the room whilst the rest of us were traipsing up and down the hill. Thanks ladies!

7.) Thank you cards

I’m a big stickler for thank you cards, but we all know that it can be incredibly stressful and frustrating to get an early writer to write 10 thank you cards. I tend to cheat, I use services like Photobox, where I can upload my own photo and create our own thank you card using the post card option. Each child then ends up with a photo to remember the day by.

Did I miss anything? If so, please do leave a comment below.

Disclosure: The Wellies were courtesy of Start Rite Shoes for review purposes but aren’t they gorgeous. I want a pair for myself.

Slow Cooker Sunday: Special Edition – Food Styling with Ren Behan

I find it very difficult to make brown gloop look appetizing! The lovely Ren Behan, a friend and local food blogger, kindly invited me around her house for a session on Food Styling. I had no idea there was actually such a thing. Apparently, there are people who do this for a living! They travel around to different food shoots with a van full of props. I’ve still got a long way to go but I learned a few things.

Tips for Food Bloggers

Get a decent camera! Everyone had digital SLRs and there was me with my iPhone. I got a bit lost when they started talking decimal points and aperture. However, after the session I came home and found a couple of apps that can help make your photos look like they were taken with an SLR camera. The first which I’ve been using for awhile is Camera Plus and the new one I down loaded is called Afterfocus. It allows you to choose the area you would like to focus on then blur the background also known as Bokeh.
Natural light is a must. This is difficult as we often eat late and it being winter in the UK there isn’t a lot of natural light. The trick is to set aside a portion and take a photo in the morning.
When presenting food, apparently, less is more. I’ve had a bad habit of taking photos of it in the slow cooker, which didn’t result in appetizing photos.
Props! Don’t go out and buy 6 full dinner sets but buy the odd plate, bowls, and cutlery. Charity shops and places like Matalan are brilliant for this. Also, start collecting pieces of fabric that you can use to add interest/colour to your photos.
Get a collection of wooden boards. Look for offcuts at your local DIY store.
When presenting food use odd numbers. (E.g. 1, 3, 5, 7)

I’ve only been applying these tricks for a week but I’ve already seen a big improvement in the quality of my photos.

Thanks Ren

Now it’s your turn to share your Slow Cooker recipes using the Linky below. We’re also on Pinterest if you want to see the recipes from past weeks. The hashtag for Instagram and Twitter is #scsunday

Refuelling Tip

Have you ever pulled up at the pump to refuel and then realise the tank is on the other side? Or is it just me?

Look what I found….

Genius!

I bet you’re shaking your head but do remember that this comes from a woman, who has been in the UK for 12 years but still, usually when it’s dark, jumps into the passenger seat by mistake to find the steering wheel is missing!

10 Blogging Tips to Break the 30 Seconds Barrier

I’ve asked the lovely Andrew of Design Credo, who I think looks like Sean Connery, to do a guest post for me. Being fairly new to blogging I often find myself on his blog looking for hints and tips on the more technical stuff. He’s not only knowledgeable but explains it clearly unlike many of the technical blogs that I come across. I hope you find this post as useful as I did. Thanks Andrew

I don’t want to spoil your day but there’s a lot of evidence suggesting that people spend less than a minute on a web page, perhaps as little as 30 seconds. So you really are going to need to make things easy for people if you want them to read your blog posts.

Now, I have a bit of a guilty admission, I don’t read terribly well. I’m not stoopid or owt, but reading has never come overly naturally to me. Nowadays this isn’t helped by my already very long arms refusing to get any longer and, hard as I try, the printed page always seems a tad too close.

I know I am not alone with the oldies and I know too that there are many school children out there who have more difficult learning experiences than others because they don’t find reading easy: frequently young boys, often rubbing their teachers up the wrong way as they get more and more marginalised.

I’m off on one again aren’t I?

Anyway, it may seem a bit of a paradox that I am investing so much of my time writing at the moment, this writing being principally for blogs. I do write, I don’t think I’m an expert but do I know people are reading what I write and post. For the record I also ghost write for other peoples’ blogs. (sssh, you ain’t heard that). But, perhaps most importantly, given what I have just told you, I am aware of what makes reading less onerous.

So let’s look at ten tips that might help break the 33 second barrier.

1 Open With A Bang

A nice strong shocking declaration. A statistic, a side splittingly funny joke, the offer of a lifetime. OK well we are wise to the last one but you get the idea.

2 Be Human

Don’t be scared of being human, it’s what blogging is all about. Show your emotions and your passion.

3 Be Focussed

Do try to keep a focus. If you find you have ‘gone off one one’ cut the offending words and maybe save it as a new draft post to be expanded upon.

4 Titles

The post title needs to do two things,

Attract the reader’s attention. Something that is clever, witty, inviting and descriptive

Work for Google and search engines. This means that if you want your post to be picked up by Google your clever, witty, inviting and descriptive will need to be keyword rich too!

5 Headings

Break your post up with relevant subheadings. These aren’t so important for search engines but will make the page a lot easier to scan and navigate through.

6 Use Short Paragraphs

peoplewillnot readgreatblocksoftext thatcannotbeeasily scannedororganisedandfiltered peoplewillnotreadgreat blocksoftextthatcannot beeasilyscannedororganisedand filteredpeoplewillnotreadgreat blocksoftextthatcannotbeeasily scannedororganisedandfiltered peoplewillnotreadgreatblocksoftext thatcannotbeeasily scannedororganised andfiltered peoplewillnotread greatblocksoftext thatcannotbe easilyscannedororganisedandfiltered

When you write it may come out as a stream of consciousness but when it’s on screen you need to make your text easy to look at, to scan, to filter. This puts the reader back in control.

7 Lists

People love lists and they can be very useful tools to,

simplify

order

clarify

the information that’s on a page.

8 Use Bold and Italicize but don’t Underline!

Text styling can help you to communicate more effectively. You can format text easily by making it bold or italic, adding an implied strength or emphasis. At a push you can use capitals and exclamation marks but beware of SHOUTING AT YOUR READERS!!!!! It is my belief that the only places for underlining are in primary school exercise books and to indicate a link on a web page. Don’t do it, bad things will happen to you if you do.

9 Links

Don’t be afraid to use links it’s easy enough to add them in blogs but don’t overdo it. At best links can add depth and value to a post, at worst they can totally overpower the content.

10 Images

Images can really communicate a lot very effectively. Sadly, although Google is considering introducing face recognition technology, images aren’t as yet very searchable. So a good strong hero image probably won’t get people to your site but it may keep people’s interest up long enough for them to start reading.

The bottom line is that you are both helping and empowering your reader, if you put them back in control they will hopefully make the right choice and read your blog.

Andrew Butler

http://designcredo.co.uk/sites/wordpress/

@designcredo

Reset Your Passwords

There were rumours flying around last weekend that possibly a few of us had our usernames and passwords compromised. Before I carry on, I would like to state clearly, that I DO NOT believe in a minute that this was the case. However, it did make me question the security of my usernames and passwords. Mine ‘were’ not all the same but did have similarities and I think many of us do it as it’s a nightmare trying to remember them all.

When I first heard this I quickly rang a mate of mine who runs several very large discussion forums (Craft Juice – All thing Handmade) to see if this was possible and his reply was ‘of course it is, as you are submitting your details to the person’s server!’ I could almost hear him shaking his head. However, he did say for a person to do this they had to be malicious, be technically savvy and really hell bent on doing it.

It may be a no brainer to a lot of you but I thought I’d pass on a couple of tips he shared with me.

1.) Never, ever, ever use the same password twice

2.) Do not use real words – apparently people can run scripts that can work it out

3.) Combinations of letters and numbers are the best

4.) The best passwords are the ones that you get when you first register with people. You know the super long gibberish ones with loads of letters and numbers. Keep it and don’t change it to something easier. You can always ask Windows to remember it for you.

5.) Lastly, for goodness sake make a record of them all. I spent 20 minutes changing all mine last night and it’s taking me a bit to remember them all but at least I feel a helluva lot more secure.

So, off you go and get changing them!

Photo Credit