Best of 2010

These are my favourite posts for the year. They may not contain the best writing or pictures but I feel that they sum up my life during 2010! Some are funny, some sad, some are just pictures or tales from our travels! Fingers crossed that 2011 will be just as awesome!

January - My Best Friends Wedding

February - This is what I need!!

March - House of Pain

April - Excitement

May - Excitement Part 2

June - Trooping the Colour

July - New friends + pubic hair + India Knight = CyberMummy

August - Coventry Cathedral

September - Do your kids walk to school alone?

October - A Town called the Past

November - Advice to my 16 year old Self

December - Funerals, shoes & Christmas cards!

A huge thank you to all of you for your support this year!! Happy New Year wherever you are in the World!

Secret Santa and belated Seasons Greetings

Back in October (or maybe even as early as September) the lovely Leanne from Second Time Mummy had the brilliant idea of doing a bloggy Secret Santa. My parcel arrived the first week of December but I was a very patient girl and waited until Christmas day. My Santa is still keeping their identity a secret but I'd like to say a huge thank you for these lovely candles which will take pride of place on my fireplace once I take down all the Christmas cards:

I also received a lovely and unexpected Christmas surprise from my friend Antonella who blogs over at Living Abroad:

A very shiny and fabulous purse for me and a t-shirt for Chick! How exciting!

I hope that you all had a fabulous Christmas and that you are looking forward to 2011!!! Sending belated Seasons Greetings from my Family to yours!

To bail or not to bail???

We all know the saying ‘if you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all’! Well I guess that’s kinda why I haven’t been blogging much! My life pretty much sucks at the moment and to be honest I haven’t wanted to write about it or to make you all miserable with reading about my train crash life.

Tonight though has been the absolute icing on the cake and if I don’t blog about it I may just explode! I have a tough time generally with Chick’s Dad and I try and refrain from writing about him, firstly because it isn’t fair on Chick and secondly because I don’t like to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he bothers me.

I believe that I’m very patient with him and do everything in my power to make life easy for all of us. The only thing I ask from him is that he turns up for his hour every week or calls Chick if he can’t come and that he buys her birthday and Christmas presents (or gives me cash to buy them). I’m sure that you’ll agree I ask very, very little.

On Chick’s birthday he turned up to see her with no present and I had a quiet word in his ear about how completely crap he was and then threw a complete tantrum when he was out of earshot. I told Chick that her main present was from both of us and then made him give me half the money afterwards. I also had to e-mail on the day to ask him to call her!! So basically he is rubbish and I try and hide it from her.

Today he came to do Christmas stuff with her but came without a present! Now my lovely girl is far too polite to ask for a present so didn’t say anything. He then told me that he couldn’t afford a present and had no money to give me either!  The thing about Chick is that she isn’t really materialistic at all and would be happy as larry with a book and a selection box that would’ve cost about £2 from the pound shop!!!!

You know what I’m done with him being crap. I’m done with bailing him out so that his daughter doesn’t think badly of him but what do I do now? Do I find the money to buy a present from him? Do I pretend that one of the presents is joint again or do I just let her be disappointed at Christmas???  Answers on a postcard whilst I’m drowning my sorrows please!!!!!

Radisson Blu Hotels & Resorts

*Sponsored Post

The very cool people at Radisson are running an awesome competition to win a whole host of fabulous prizes. Weekly until the 3^rd January Radisson Blu are giving away a weekend for two in one of these amazing cities: Milan, Madrid, Berlin, Helsinki or Hamburg.

So how do you enter?  You just need to go to http://www.radissonbluquiz.com/en/ and try and answer three quiz questions. It’s that simple!!! Each time you try and even if you get them wrong you can still enter the weekly draw.Every time you enter you obviously increase your chances of winning this brilliant prize but you do need to be over 18 to enter.

Best of all if you do get all three questions correct then you are in with a good chance of winning a bonus prize of a Radisson gift card worth up to €100! There is even a ‘hints’ button to help you along the way!

If I was lucky enough to be a winner then I would definitely love to win the Berlin prize. In the three years that I lived in Germany I never managed to make it to Berlin. I'd love to see the Berlin wall, Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie. Maybe venture to Schloss Charlottenberg which was pretty much completely rebuilt after the Second World War and is the largest surviving historical palace in Berlin. Of course no trip to Germany would be complete without beer and bratwurst!!! Why not pop over there now and see if you can be a winner??

Radisson Blue Quiz

Share hosted by Wikio

Funerals, Shoes & Christmas Cards i.e. random thoughts!!!

So it seems like I've been a bit of a slacker with blogging just recently but things have been really crazy around here and I never seem to get a minute!! I don't have a coherent post today just lots of random thoughts about what's been happening!!

Work has been absolute crazy Town and we've been super busy but the end is in sight and in just over a week we break up for 10 whole days.....bliss!!! My car has also been a pain in the ass and having spent lots of money on it I now need to spend even more to get it through the MOT...Grrrrrr!!!

Our stint as Toyologists is coming to an end (Booooo) but I still have lots of lovely things to review and am hoping to get most of them up in time for Christmas!!! So if you are a slacker like me and haven't got everything yet then watch out for some fab ideas!

My Great Auntie died suddenly and we held the funeral last week. It was a really nice funeral. The songs were absolutely lovely and then we had a tea party afterwards! A fabulous send off but it had me thinking about what I'd like mine to be like. I would want everyone to wear bright colours and great big hats (like in the movies)!!! Obviously all the women have to wear ridiculous shoes in homage to me and my shoe collection!! The best of my shoes i.e. the Vivienne Westwoods etc need to be donated to a design museum for future generations to look at!!  Song wise I have to have a song to make everyone groan so either......'Knock on Wood' or 'Going Underground'!!! Lol!

I am NOWHERE near ready for the big day. I have lots of presents still to buy and haven't even got the decorations out of the loft. I have faithfully promised Chick that we will put the tree up this weekend and I will find some Christmas spirit from somewhere!!

We are also not sending Christmas cards this year. Instead Chick and I have decided that we will buy a gift of  safe water for 10 people from the Oxfam Unwrapped range. We figure that people need water more than our friends need a piece of card to let them know that we are thinking about them.

Think that's about it from my crazy world at the moment!! How are you my lovely bloggy readers? Are you all ready for the big day? Are you a slacker just like me? What do you think about not sending out Christmas cards?

Silent Sunday........the one with the school choir

My Christmas Wish List

After having talked about nothing but toys since August, I decided today that it was time to spend a little time thinking about what I'd like Santa to leave under the tree for me. Now last year I didn't get anything from my Christmas list so I'd obviously been a naughty girl but this year I can categorically state that I've been extremely well behaved!!!

First of all I would very much like a ticket for this:

Alternatively you could buy a number for £5 and help lots of people get to CyberMummy!!!

Secondly, I would very much like flights to go visit my American family with maybe a side trip to Blog Her '11 and Vegas:

I would give my left arm for one of these beauties:

These lovelies are on my Christmas list EVERY year:

Ooooooooo they are just so gorgeous!!! Lastly because I want to actually get something from the list....my absolute favourite smell in the entire world (after freshly cut grass) is this:

So Santa, I VERY much look forward to seeing what you leave under my tree this year :-)

Silent Sunday............with the Fairy Godmother