Dear (14 year old) Alice

Yesterday on twitter ‘#dear14yearoldself’ was trending and it got me thinking, what would I say to 14 year old me if I got the chance….

Dear (14 year old) Alice

1. He is not the love of your life and you will not marry him, in fact in about 6 months he will kiss your best friend and break your heart (don’t fret though you end up marrying an amazing man and are blissfully happy, he however gets fat and goes bald by 23)
2. You will grow up to be the driven career woman you are determined to be, and you will be damn good at it! However it will never make you as happy as when you give it all up stay home to bake cakes and raise babies.
3. Hair Mascara is not cool. In fact it makes your hair greasy and the purple one leaves you looking like Cruella De’vil – put it in the bin!
4. Unfortunately a lot of what your mother tells to you turns out to be for the best and you’ll realise she talk a lot of sense.  However she will still annoy you as much at 27 as she does today, you’ll just find a way to live with it.
5. You’ve just met your Dad for the first time, you’re so confused about where you loyalties lie and it’s breaking your heart. Trust me it gets better, so much better. You won’t believe it now but in about 12 years you will all be waking up in the same house on Christmas morning and your Mum and Dad will sit there together playing with your children.  It will make you so happy you will have to leave the room to cry (you still don’t like people seeing you cry, I guess some things do never change).

You are beautiful inside and out, ignore the bullies; you’ll come out on top in the end.  By 2012 it will be proclaimed ‘geek is the new chic’ and you’ll have the last laugh.

Love always

27 year old Alice

Allie Handmade Jewellery

Recently, thanks to Twitter, I have come across the very talented Essex Girl, Allie Howes.

 Allie is a Jewellery Designer based in Essex.  She designs beautiful glamorous luxury jewellery from timeless classics to everyday styles for the fashion conscious amongst us.

Her pieces are regularly worn by celebrities such as Cheryl Cole, Alex Gerrard and Alesha Dixon as well being regularly featured in glossy magazines.

Alongside her handmade jewellery and bespoke bridal (and bridal party) designs Allie also has a wonderful children’s jewellery.  Juicy Fruits, that she designed alongside her daughter Gabriella and Candy Rocks, which are the most beautiful girly pieces. I have fallen in love with the ‘Princess Crown’ piece and know that my little lady would love to wear ir for her Princess themed birthday party next month.

To see more of Allie’s work visit her webpage www.alliehandmadeoriginaljewellery.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @AllieJewellery

Having My Cake….With The The Fabulous Bakin’ Boys

This week the wonderful people at The Fabulous Bakin’ Boys have sent over some of their delicious new mini cupcake range for us to try, how lucky are we?

The cakes were lovely, I am addicted to the strawberry flavoured ones! And I loved how they were bite-size, so didn’t feel too guilty treating myself to one of those after lunch on a cold and rainy Monday.

These individually wrapped cupcakes, sold in packs of 12, are the perfect solution for the guilt free treats I have been in search of this month.  Containing less than 70 calories per cake and with an introductory price of £1 per pack in Tesco, ASDA, Sainsburys and Co Op stores nationwide from January 2012, I can see that we will be treating ourselves to these again.

But wait….the fun does not stop there…..

CAKE FACTORY ANNOUNCES VACANCY FOR DREAM JOB

To celebrate the launch of the fabulous new mini cake range The Fabulous Bakin’ Boys have announced a vacancy for a new Taste Tester to help develop their next line of muffins and cupcakes.  Is this not the best work experience job ever? Certainly beats my two weeks of photocopying at the most boring office in the world!

But now before all you cake lovers get carried away, this job is for the under-12s only. So its time to step aside and lets the kids have a go.

The Oxfordshire based factory, which revels in its “Willy Wonka” style reputation has never allowed a member of the public in the Development Department before, but that is about to change.

After applying online at the company’s dedicated vacancy website (www.minibaker.co.uk) and writing a 50 word entry demonstrating your imagination when it comes to muffin flavours, the successful candidate will have the very hard tasks of sampling dough mixtures, tasting chocolate chips and trailing exotic fruits in the quest to develop the next flavour for the Mini Muffin range.  The chosen candidate will also feature on packs to be sold in leading supermarkets next year.

So if you have a baking star in the making hidden in your kitchen, then you never know, they could be your golden ticket to lots and lots of cake!

Perfect Princess Party Planning

So my little lady is turning 3 in less than two months and, being the diva that she is becoming, a number of requests have been made by the little cherub regarding how she would like her party to be executed.

It is to be a ‘Princesses and Pirates Party’ (she has clearly thought of the boys as well in this choice which I think is kind of her) with dancing games and pink cake. Fancy dress appears to be compulsory and our house will need to be turned into both a Princess Castle and a Pirate Ship.

I’m just glad I’ve been given two months notice on all of this as I feel I have my work cut out! So far I have created this mood board and started to plan the menu.

….but now I’m reaching out to you lovely readers to help me, any ideas/websites/books that could help me in my quest to give my little girls the perfect birthday party?

Thanks in advance x

Are You Cyber Safe?

My little lady may only be two, but she is quite honestly going on 22.  Her favourite pastime is drinking babychinos at the local coffee shop and she has recently taken to asking for CBeebies to be turned off and Friends to be put on.

In March she turns three and when asked what she wants for her birthday she has informed me that a laptop would be nice so she can do her work. She is also a big fan of playing on my IPhone and loves to watch funny videos with Daddy on YouTube.  A true gadget-geek in the making.

Children today are so Media savvy it scares me.  I was in my teens before we had a computer at home and I didn’t have a laptop until I was 22.  Although I am technology savvy now, as a child I didn’t have a clue.  In my teens we didn’t have the internet at home but I can remember spending hours online at my friends house exploring the new world of chat rooms.  We would talk to people from all over the world that wanted to be friends with us, for two geeky girls from Essex this seemed amazing.  Little did we know at the time these new ‘friends’ we had made may not have been as a nice as we naively believed them to be.  The worrying thing about all of this was our parents were none the wiser to all this danger as the cyber world was even more of a mystery to them than it was to us.  Cyber-bullying and Cyber-grooming were not things our parents even had to worry about when they were growing up so they, for the most part, were unaware what may be happening to their own children while they were safely in the next room using the computer.

In 2011 I would like to think that parents are little more clued up about cyber safety and how they can protect their children while online.  However after reading a report compiled by Virgin Media following research they completed with parents in the run up to Christmas I was shocked to read that 9% of parents had never even thought about internet safety and another 32% of parents thought that they would not know how to set up the safety controls.

I will certainly be putting parental controls in place when my little ladies start using the internet alone.  I will also be using the following advice supplied by Virgin Media when educating my daughters on how to stay safe online.

1. Check with your Internet Service Provider whether they offer any type of parental controls as part of your service.  Virgin Media offers this service to its customers for free for the lifetime of their broadband service
2. Consider how your child uses the internet and where you can introduce some restrictions.  Many parents don’t realise that most parental control services are highly flexible so you can limit access to certain categories of sites whilst still giving children the freedom to enjoy safe sites
3. Help children to understand they should never share personal details with people online that they don’t know offline
4. Educate your child that the internet is not a private space and that anyone could see something they share online
5. Advise your child not to open files or videos they receive from a stranger as these could contain a virus, or inappropriate visuals or videos
6. Make sure your child understands what information is personal so they know not to share telephone numbers, addresses, the name of their school, siblings or sports clubs
7. Consider becoming ‘friends’ with your child on Facebook and other social networks so you can passively monitor the people they are becoming friends with
8. Make sure your child knows that they can talk to you about anything they see or receive online. Look out for ISPs that are part of the government backed Code of Practice announced in October as they are committed to ensuring that parents are better informed and educated about the options available to empower them to control access to online content

How do you keep your children safe online? Is it something you worry about or do you trust your children to know what is best and how to stay away from danger when surfing the net?

For general advice on staying safe online, visit www.getsafeonline.org

Rainy Day Crafts – Christmas Edition

Now I do not profess to be a craft wizz by any stretch of the imagination – but since becoming a Mum I have had to learn how to hold my own in the ‘cutting and sticking’ area of my job description.

So here is a simple little festive craft for the ‘non crafters’ amongst us – it’s my Christmas gift to you all!

Salt Dough Decorations

I love salt dough – so easy I make, even easy enough for little hands to help, and you can actually fashion some quite good things with it.

You will need,

1 Cup Flour
1 Cup Salt
1 Cup Water
Festive Cookie Cutters
Paints
Glitter

Optional – a little patience for the control freaks and neat freaks like me

Mix the flour and salt in a bowl and slowly add the water untill you have a dough the consistency of playdough.

Roll out on a floured surface till it is 2-4mm thick and then cut out the shapes you want for your decorations. Don’t forget to then poke a hole at the top of them for the string to be added later.

Bake these in the oven on a low heat (about 100) for about 60-90mins until the are hard.

Allow them to cool and then they are ready to decorate with paints and glitter.

Add some string or ribbon and then they are ready for your tree.

1.