Penny

Sweets for My Sweet this Valentines Day with Swizzles

January 29, 2020 by Penny Leave a Comment

Disclaimer: We were sent a selection of Swizzles sweets for the purposes of this blog post. Please see full disclaimer at the end of the post.

Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey
Your first sweet kiss thrilled me so
Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey
I’ll never ever let you go

I’m not too sure if The Drifters (or any of the other artists the recored this later) were singing about confectionary, but it’s definitely the song that comes to mind when I think about sweets on Valentines Day. A bit of research suggests that the phrase might have actually comes from a line in Hamlet where “sweets to the sweet” is actually;ly referring to funeral flowers scattered on a grave! They always say not to look into song lyrics too deeply and I guess this is an example as to why.

It can be so hard working out what to buy your loved one for Valentines Day, but sometimes the saying that the way to a (wo)man’s heart is through his stomach couldn’t be truer. Especially if your husband has an incredibly sweet tooth as is my situation!

Swizzles have got all the solutions you could possibly need when it comes to sweets for your Valentine. Their online shop is packed full of ideas for all budgets.

Love Hearts

Love Hearts have to be the most iconic sweet when it comes to declarations of love. I’ve heard of marriage proposals via them as well as small packets of them making perfect wedding favours, especially if you personalise them.

This year they are offering a Love Hearts personalised gift tube which contains 25 mini Love Heart rolls. Now, that’s a lot of Love Hearts! I’ve got one of those names that you never find when searching for names in shops, so it’s lovely to see that all names, no matter how unique, can be catered for.

And if normal Love Hearts aren’t romantic enough for you come 14th February, then there are also pink Limited Edition Valentines Love Hearts this year too.

Valentines Hampers

For those sweet toothed Valentines who love more than just Love Hearts Swizzles have hampers that range in price from £2.99 up to £21.99. We were sent one of the 500g sweet hampers (which cost £7.99) and when you see just how many sweets you get in one of those my mind boggles somewhat when I think how much would be in one of the larger hampers. My kids’ eyes nearly popped out of their heads when they saw everything in there – Parma Violets, Rainbow Drops, Squashies, Drumsticks, Fruity Pops, Refreshers and Fizzers.

It’s not just your significant other who may appreciate a Swizzles Hamper this Valentines Day. Kids are now bought into Valentines like never before and mine have both already mentioned that they are looking forward to what they are going to get. What chid wouldn’t be excited to receive a hamper full of sweets? Valentines Day or not!

Leap Year?

Don’t forget that there’s not only Valentines Day in February this year. Tradition says that women are allowed to propose marriage themselves one a Leap Day. I’ll just leave that option there for any traditionalist reading…

15% off – 1st to 14th February 2020

As if all this isn’t sweet enough, Swizzles are also offering a massive 15% off EVERYTHING in their shop between 1st and 14th February 2020. All you need to do is enter the code V15 at checkout. What are you waiting for?

Disclaimer: We were sent all the Swizzles products featured in the photographs in this post for the purposes of writing it.

Running into 2020

January 8, 2020 by Penny Leave a Comment

A week in, and 2020 actually seems alright. Assuming you ignore Trump’s efforts to start World War 3 with Iran. Let me re-phrase that original sentence. A week in and 2020 in my little world seems to be going ok.

I had big plans for the year, bit to be honest I wasn’t quite as organised going into it as I had hoped to be. My master lists of plans and aspirations are still on pieces of paper on the kitchen table, but they are at least in that form rather than just being in my head.

My eldest two finally returned to school yesterday, and Christmas itself feels like it was ages ago. I’ve started to get back to work and I definitely feel like I’ve started to get things in order. So – what are my achievements so far?

Firstly – I’ve managed to get out for a run. A whole 4.58km under my belt, and although I walked some parts that I’m really pleased with what I’ve achieved. Admittedly I need to get outside for that difficult second run, but I enjoyed the first one so much that I’m determined to do so. Although walking downstairs the next morning was a tad painful.

I plan to make more time for me time in 2020 and a couple of ways of doing that are through crafting and reading. The crafting has been a bit slow to start, but I have managed a bit of crochet and I’m also starting a list of all the projects I need to finish before I’m allowed to start any new ones. When it comes to reading, I’m delighted to say that I’m already on my second book of the year. I finished *Still Me just a couple of days into 2020 and I’m now quickly working my way through *Floella Benjamin’s book about her life as a child, first in Trinidad and then here in the UK. Look out for reviews of both over on Penny Reads soon. Also over there is the first Ladybird Tuesday post of the year – Helping at Home. Something I could do with my eldest kids reading up on!

I’ve also been trying to make time to play board games with Bonn and just in general have more downtime with him. We both became addicted to Rummikub over Christmas, but we’re also making great efforts to work our way through the collection of vintage board games that seem to fill the house. We’ve picked up some real gems lately (both to play and to resell) and I’m trying to share as many of them as possible over in our vintage board game Facebook group and also on Penny Plays.

If that wasn’t enough – we’ve also relaunched out Hobbies and Interests podcast. Episode 2 goes out today (Episode 4 corrected) and we’re making a real effort to make it a weekly thing now. Our original plan had been to go out and do episodes on location, but three years later we’ve realised the reality of doing so and most episode will now be (home) studio based with a few excursions when time allows.

Add into the mix some DIY plans for the house and I think 2020 is going to be pretty busy. So far I’ve only got as far as removing bit of wallpaper and choosing a paint colour, but we are only on week 1 after all!

I’m going to leave you though with my charity shop find of the week. I’ve been after a vintage Fisher Price Activity Centre since LMC was a baby. Finally my charity shop luck was in!

Disclaimer: There are a few affiliate links scattered through this post. They are all marked with a *. If you buy anything through them it costs you nothing extra, but a small commission goes into my paint and wallpaper buying fund. Thank you for any purchases you do make. Readers’ support is very much appreciated. x

End of a decade

December 31, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

How do you sum up a decade that involved the birth of three children, the death of my father, divorce, marriage and two house moves?

Ten years ago I was pregnant, had just given up a stressful job and was looking forward to a future of motherhood and then a possible career change. I had no way of knowing that ten years later everything would be so different.

Job applications whilst pregnant weren’t successful (after all who employs someone heavily pregnant?) and then not long after Little Miss C was born my father was diagnosed with cancer. That news, along with what I now see was PND, meant that I never did go back to work in the same way. Instead I tried to make a go of blogging as a new career. It worked – somewhat.

A couple of years later Master C came along, but two weeks later my father died. Dealing with a newborn and grief is not easy. And even harder when your husband is in a new job, working stupid hours and going off to Belgium regularly.

I survived though. Sort of.

The kids grew older and I tried to find myself again, and in doing so made some amazing new friends (mainly thanks to joining the WI), and realised what really made me happy, rather than what others expected me to be happy about.

Once the kids were old enough to start school properly and I was less needed at home in the daytime I realised just how much things had changed. I also realised just how much I hated being belittled and how hard it was to love someone who had such a fundamental difference of opinion with me about the role of women in a family, and also about the role of disabled people in society.

I didn’t plan what happened next, but a chance meeting with what I now realised is the man I was supposed to be have got together with when he worked in my local pub twenty years earlier changed everything.

Very quickly we were heading for divorce and sold our house. Months living in a tiny flat with the kids was tough, but necessary at the time. The whole episode taught me exactly who my real friends are, and which “friends” were happy to hear only one version of events and make a judgement based on it. There are two sides to every story.

In the couple of years since then everything has changed again. We’ve bought a house together, got married and have our adorable daughter, who recently celebrated her first birthday.

This decade has taught me so much about myself. About how strong I can be when required. About how important my kids are to me, and how I will do absolutely anything for them. I’ve also learnt what real love is, and what really makes me happy.

Admittedly not everything is perfect as I go into 2020. I miss my oldest two acutely when they are with their dad and if I could, I’d have them with me full-time in a heartbeat. My house is more of a tip than I’d like it to be, and I really ought to be far more organised, but these are things I plan to work on over the next year. I’ve taken my eye off the ball somewhat when it comes to work, and that’s also something I need to turn around in the next year. However, I think I’ve found what I think I’d like to do long term though – working with SEND children or young adults. It feels a bit like going full circle by realising that when I consider at one of the things that changed everything. Realistically, a full on new career is not going to be until my youngest is of school age, but it gives me a goal for what I hope to be doing at the end of this decade.

For now though I’m concentrating on 2020. There’s lots I want to achieve and I’m determined to keep my eye on the ball and actually do things this year, rather than just talking about what I want to do. Expect lots of online updates – partly because feeling accountable to my followers weirdly motivates me to make things happen. Work is going to be online, in the form of more blogging and social media work, along with a sideline of reselling of vintage board games – something I’ve completely fallen in love with. I’ve a huge list of projects and other aims for the year, as well as planning lots of adventures with my family, now I just need to get organised enough to turn them into a reality.

Happy 2020 everyone!

September – the month that…

October 8, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

… vanished without a trace!

Somehow we’re in October. Worse than that, we’re already a week into October and I only just got round to swapping my calendar over from September this morning!

The last month (and a week) has been utterly crazy in so many ways. It was a month in which I celebrated our first wedding anniversary and Master C’s 7th birthday. Both seem somewhat unbelievable as time is going so fast.

It’s also been a month in which I’ve twice been over to Copenhagen with Bonn whilst he’s been working out there. The first time was mainly so that I didn’t have to spend our first wedding anniversary at home on my own, whilst the second trip was with the aim of gaining enough material to allow me to write several travel posts on both Denmark and Sweden. I certainly gathered everything I needed and visited loads of different places that I want to write about, I just need to find the time to actually do so now we’re back.

In addition to Copenhagen and Malmo I’ve also been up to Liverpool and the Wirral and enjoyed checking out charity shops at various other places around the country. We’ve been on the lookout for vintage board games in particular, but also other toy and game bits that we can use for a bit of a new business venture into the world of re-selling and reducing landfill. More on that over on Penny Plays when I get round to writing about it!

There’s also loads that I haven’t managed to get done in the last month – possibly because we’ve been away so much. The house hasn’t got much further forward over the last month, but at least I can now say that the downstairs loo is finished. Or at least it will be when the very final picture is returned to the wall. Once that is done I can finally take some photos and share the transformation with you.

The other thing that is hanging over me are the Clothkits kits that I bought when Tube Stop Baby was just six months old and that I planned to make for her first birthday which is the middle of November. I’ve now got just a month left and really need to pull my finger out and start working on them. I’ve managed to squeeze in a couple of craft book reviews, but finding time to actually craft is another matter entirely.

I’ve also been putting a lot of effort into my online blogging and social media work over the last month. Not as much as I would have liked to, but as much as I have been able to manage whilst still reserving a few hours every night for sleep. On the travel front I’ve started off my writing on Copenhagen and Malmo with details of how we managed to pop over to Sweden for dinner during our first Copenhagen stay earlier in the year. I’ve also teamed up with Three to write about how I make the most of their App when I’m travelling so that I can always work on the move and stay in touch with my kids.

Over on Penny Plays I’ve been desperately trying to catalogue and play all the vintage board games that came our way during the summer car boot season. Once we’ve played the games we’re looking to either keep them if they are ones that we can see us going back to again, or otherwise selling them over on our new ebay store. It’s early days yet, but we’re hoping this is a way to keep our board game stocks to a reasonable level so they don’t completely take over the house (and garage!). On the blog itself I’ve been writing about everything from a pre-electronics teach yourself chess game, through to Ghettopoly – a version of Monopoly set in a US ghetto. Somewhere in the middle I also wrote about a vintage Spears Game in which you are supposed to name things that begin with a certain letter of the alphabet – Tell Me. It’s certainly been varied.

In addition to all this I’ve also been trying to put some work into the Vintage Board Games Facebook group that we set up earlier in the year. It’s slow work, but with Facebook you need to really put the effort in to get the results out. I just need a bit more time for the effort part!

And lastly, but not at all least. Over on Penny Reads I’ve relaunched Ladybird Tuesday! This is probably one of the achievements I’m most proud of this last month or so. I’ve really missed my regular delves into my vintage Ladybird book collection and after losing various physical possessions during my divorce and subsequent house moves they are one thing that I am so glad to still have in my possession. There’s a huge body of work ahead of me to try and move all the original posts over from Being Mrs C, but I’m sure it will give me something to keep me out of trouble whilst the winter weather keeps us at home. The posts I’ve included this month vary from an original Uncle Mac book that I received for my birthday, through to a Learn to write workbook from the 1980s and the recent Climate Change book that was partly written by Prince Charles. Also in there was the Ladybird book about Denmark. It seemed somewhat appropriate seeing as I’ve spent so much time there lately.

What is nice though at the end of a busy month is sitting down like this and looking at everything that I have managed to achieve and not focussing on the things I failed to do. I’ve been pushing myself a lot lately with daily to do lists and sharing them on Instagram stories with the #KatyKicker hashtag to help make me accountable a bit for how much I get done in a day. It doesn’t always work, but what I have loved is reading Katy’s own monthly aims on her blog. One of the reasons I started blogging in the first place was as a way of making myself actually do things. Time to get back to using my blog like that and set myself some (achievable aims) for the month ahead.

Back to school…

September 2, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

September. How the heck did that happen? I’m pretty sure that it was only last week that I was bringing the kids and their PE kits home from school and asking them what they wanted to do in the summer holidays. Where on earth has the summer gone?

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only parent who has grand plans to be organised for September and yet when it rolls around you suddenly find yourself wondering just how you have failed to get done everything on your to do list. There are reports that need writing, name tapes that need sewing, skirts that need altering and a whole house full of mess that needs sorting out. This summer has been a bit of a whirlwind, even if the eldest two kids haven’t been with me for all of it.

The time we have had together has been fantastic. We managed a day trip up to Edinburgh, a long weekend in Norfolk and various days out. It’s also been lovely to watch the bond grow between Little Miss C and her baby sister. The two of them are so fond of each other and it’s given LMC a real confidence boost to have a little sister looking at her so adoringly.

Both kids seem to have shot up in height over the summer too and LMC just looks older in general – especially with her new haircut that she was very excited to go and have last week. I’m still struggling somewhat with the whole idea of her going into Year 5 on Wednesday. Master C starts his final year at his Infant school too. I’m sure he only just started there.

It also seems strange to be starting a new school year again with a little one who will be at home with me during the school day. Tube Stop Baby is now approaching 10 months old and is more adorable by the day. First words are coming already and there is nothing cuter than hearing her say “teddy” over and over again to her favourite cuddly toy. She’s also on the verge of walking. She is already cruising around the furniture and climbing everything she can. It’s not going to be long before my level of baby proofing the house needs to go up another level. She is the calmest baby I know and happily seems to go along with everything we had planned for her older brother and sister this summer. Quite how she’s going to cope with the school run and all the term-time running around I’m not sure.

So all this just leaves me and my plans for the new school year. Last year at this time I was busy planning a wedding and a new baby. This year everything’s a tad more settled and I’m starting to look more to the future.

This academic year is the one that I need to get organised in. I don’t just mean to make sure all three children are in the right place at the right time with homework done and all of them fed, but being more organised for the future. The house is a bomb site and whilst sorting out the usual end of summer carnage I’m determined to get it all into shape once and for all. I’m still waiting for the downstairs loo to be finished (surely it can’t be far off now?!?) and then I need to start on other parts of the house. There’s peeling wallpaper and 80s carpets everywhere and I’m dreaming of making the bathroom and kitchen more modern and rooms that are more than just functional.

This is also the year that I need to get my work in order. I rebranded my online presence nearly two years ago now, but with moving house and a new baby I still don’t feel that I’ve really made the impact online that I wanted to and I’m no where near back to where I was before. That’s therefore got to be my focus next year – partly so that I can actually afford to do the work on the house that is needed. I’ve grand plans for all the blogs I run and lots of exciting plans that I’m looking forward to putting into effect. Time is going to be my biggest challenge – hence the determination to be more organised with the little time I have. Striking that balance between work, rest and play is a hard one. I’ve failed to get it right in the past, but this time around I need to make it work. Any tips from working mums as to how to do so very gratefully received!

So – as the kids head back to school, what are your plans for the academic year ahead?

You were only supposed to change the bl**dy taps! Downstairs toilet DIY project

August 18, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

A couple of days back I wrote about what we had, or hadn’t, achieved since moving into our new home about 17 month ago. As someone who has blogged for years I’ve learnt that one of the most valuable things about blogging is being able to look back and see what you have achieved over time, and how you did it. It’s a lovely thing to do when you write about your kids but also when you write about projects in the home too.

When I first set up Penny Blogs that was my aim. I wanted to record what we did with our new home and show how far we’d come. Then a week before completing I found out I was pregnant, and unsurprisingly there have been more posts on here about pregnancy than anything else!

That’s going to change though.

I know I needed a kick start, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen in the way it did. I’d taken Tube Stop Baby out for lunch with a friend (never too young for her to start life as a lady who lunches!) and left Bonn at home where he’d promised to finally change a couple of taps that were so old they’d seized up. Later on in the day we exchanged a few text messages and I asked how things were going at home. He mentioned that the upstairs bathroom taps had been changed. Then he said: “Well, I’ve broken the downstair sink, but that’s a different story”.

It turns out that in trying to get one of the old taps off the sink he’d had a bit of a struggle as it simply wouldn’t budge. The tap won that particular struggle though and the result was a nice crack in the sink that wasn’t going to get any smaller.

We’d always said that the downstairs loo needed a bit of a makeover. I just wasn’t expecting to start it so soon.

To me it made no sense at all just changing the sink when it was the perfect opportunity to get rid of the old tiles that were behind it, and also freshen up the whole room and get rid of the smelly carpet that was in there. I didn’t see the point in changing the toilet itself as that seems to work perfectly well, but it’s the only thing in the room that is staying put.

It’s only a small room with the loo and sink at opposite ends and a small window over the sink. It had ended up being a bit of a display space though for the various bits of train memorabilia that we’ve collected, and some well positioned shelves over the loo make a great place for storing board games too!

Design isn’t really my thing. I know what I like and what I don’t like and those are really the two “design principles” that I work from. We both wanted a vanity unit style basin, so that we could make use of the storage below it for things like cleaning products etc that can then be kept out of the children’s way. Trying to replace the old pedestal sink with one of those though means quite a bit of other work first. The project manager in me loves a bit of planning though.

The stages involved are as follows:

Remove old sink
Remove wall paper (easier said than done!)
Sand walls and fill cracks and holes
Put up lining paper on the bits of wall that can’t be saved with filler alone!
Two coats of primer on walls
One/two coats of paint
Tile wall where sink will go and window sill above it (oh how easy that sounds!)
Put down new flooring
Assemble vanity unit
Plumb in new sink (easy I’m sure!)
Put shelves back up, put board games on them and then put pictures up
Think about finally getting some sort of blind for the window

Maybe a weekend project when you look at that list?

Well – as I sit here at 11pm on Sunday night I can proudly tell you that we got as far as two coats of primer on the walls!

Firstly, the old sink didn’t want to budge at all. Everything we read in books or online about how pedestal sinks were attached to the wall was completely wrong in this case. Instead of any screws holding it to the wall the basin was instead attached to the pedestal by a bolt, but one that we could only see if we had a camera at a weird angle and took a photo looking up. In the end it was brute force that helped us get it out off the room.

Getting the old wall paper off also took forever as we basically had to scrape it all off by hand. The top layer separated from the base easily enough, but the latter was held firm to the walls, even after we think about 40 years. When we got it off, there were a couple of bits of wall where there were so many holes that we knew that filler alone wasn’t going to do the trick, so instead we opted for putting up some lining paper which we then planned to paint over. The first coat of primer showed where the walls still had loads of problems and imperfections so we also ended up with a huge amount of filling between the two coats.

Neither of us had hung wallpaper before, so that was another learning curve. My rock n roll Friday evening was basically spent learning all about lining paper, and it’s amazing how excited you can get about a helpful article online. Thanks B&Q.

The actual hanging the paper was no where near as complicated as trying to get the wallpaper paste right when you’re trying to only make a small portion of it rather than a whole bucket’s worth!

There’s no grand reveal in this blog post, simply because there is nothing to reveal as yet. But in terms of achievements for a weekend, I think we should be pretty proud of how much we’ve done. Especially with a 9 month old baby who only naps for about 30 minutes a day to look after! The challenge now is going to be getting it finished though. Finger’s crossed we can keep the momentum going and show you the finished room soon.