My 4 year old daughter is really into dressing up at the moment.
So, I bought her a basket to store all her costumes in.
However, every time she wanted something this is what happened.
So in the end, I had one of these made. What do you think?
I originally came across it on Ana White’s Homemaker blog via Pinterest, with all of the instructions and dimensions. So, if you or someone you know is handy with tools you could knock one up easily with a bit of MDF. However, I am not, so I had a local carpenter make it for me. It was very reasonable, I had it in a day and he gave me a discount as I offered to paint it myself. He is interested in doing more.
Ours is a bit girlie, but you could have an under the sea theme, pirates or whatever strikes your fancy.
We gave it a coat of MDF primer and then two coats of satin. I found the letters (£1.50 each) and mirrors (.99p) at Hobbycraft. I hung the mirrors with those No Nails strips. Fingers crossed they don’t fall off.
If you’re local to St Albans and would like one, drop him an email at christophe.laget@hotmail.fr. Do tell him I sent you!
With Halloween around the corner I thought this may be of interest to you (there’s a discount code at the bottom of this post). I was sent a selection of Fancy Dress outfits for my 4-year-old from Angel Fancy Dress to review. However, they also do costumes for adults if you have any parties coming up or if you’re into that sort of thing? ;-)
Madame is at that cute stage of dressing up and we do have quite a selection of outfits, everything from Princesses to Pirates, but it’s nice to have a few new ones in the dressing up box. We received Jasmine, Two Goldilocks outfits and a Mermaid outfit. Personally, I think the Jasmine and the Mermaid are a bit racy but that’s probably me just being an old woman!
However, Madame’s favourite is the Goldilocks outfit. She goes everywhere in it including Sainsbury’s, Nursery and even the pub. Sadly, though we don’t have 3 bears so she’s been dressing up as Goldilocks and the three squirrels! Bless!
The customer service has been excellent and the delivery was very quick so you still have time for Halloween.
Angel are offering my readers 15% off their website up until the 31st Oct at Midnight, they also have a special offer on shipping at the moment so you get the discount and also standard shipping for only £2.50.
I never appreciated how lucky I was growing up in Canada, until I had my daughter. It now hits home whenever I roll up the rug in the front room, so she can ride her tricycle around the lounge and spend endless hours suffering germ infested soft play centres.
When I was a kid (god, I must be getting old) we lived in a small rural community with approximately 10,000 people. We moved there when I was 2, there was a sawmill nearby and both my father and grandfather worked at it. We lived in a secluded development set back from the highway and surrounded by forest. In the morning, my sister and I’d head out the front door, with barely a goodbye to my mum and not return until dinner time. We spent the whole day cycling, exploring and getting into healthy mischief. If we got hungry during the day we all descended on the nearest house and helped ourselves to the fridge. It was one big happy community.
This was my playground:
I’d give my right arm for that space and freedom again! However, saying that, you make the most with what you have. I’ve been in the UK for almost 12 years and I’m incredibly happy here and consider it home. However, I still struggle with the lack of space. I’m learning how to make up for it and have gotten over my urge of knocking down internal walls to make more space.
Nevertheless, in reality this is my garden:
It measures, approximately 5 x 9 metres.
However, thanks to ingenious toy manufacturers we have managed to create a scale model of my childhood playground. We now have Outdoor toys, Little Tikes slide and a Little Tikes Playhouse. It’s not Canada, but we’re enjoying the great outdoors!
To make a long story short, I recently found a FATAL error in my CSS on my blog, I’d accidentally wondered in there by mistake. However, before I could have a go at fixing it I had to take a back up of my blog, as there was a very good chance I’d ruin something, as I have very limited knowledge of HTML.
We all know we should back up our blogs regularly but most of us don’t. I think I’d been putting it off because I didn’t know how to do it. However, the thought of losing everything ranks up there with child abduction.
Well, I spent Saturday night learning how and thought I’d share with you what I did. I’m Self-Hosted using WordPress.org. Do bear in mind I’m not technical in the least, so if you are I would suggest looking away now.
There are two steps to backing up your blog.
Backing up WordPress Database (post text, page text and users)
Backing up Site Files (core installation, plug ins, themes, images and files)
Step 1
If you are using WordPress.org there is a plugin, WP DB Backup, that you can use to backup up your database and you can set it up to take regular back ups and email them to you. It’s really easy to use. Some people stop at this stage and don’t back up the rest.
Step 2
Is a little more complicated, but all you really need to do is take a copy of your content folder on the host server and place it on your machine. It’s just a matter of locating the file and dragging and dropping it onto your desktop. To do this you will need FTP access. I had to ring my mate. He suggested using Filezilla it’s a free downloadable FTP client. You will also need your host address, username and password. If you don’t have these I’m sure you can get them from your host.
First, install and configure Filezilla
Now locate, your WP Content folder on the server side (the right hand pane), then simply drag and drop it onto your desktop or you can select a folder on the left side and then drag it in there. Note: Mine took atleast 20 minutes copy.
Whilst I was writing this, I came across this site purporting Backing Up in 60s, which looks dead easy but once I read the comments on the post I wasn’t convinced that it was taking a full back up. I’d be grateful if you would tell me otherwise.
