On the twelfth day of September

…… my family gave to me One overflowing bin Two empty loo rolls Three dead animals Four rooms to Hoover Five “Mum have you seen?” Six towels a dumped Seven “what can I eat?’s” Eight piles needing washin’ Nine shops traipsed through Ten minutes peace Eleven socks needing pairing Twelve “I really love yous”   How has your September been so far?!

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The Gallery — Beauty

Beauty: the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as in shape, colour, sound etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest). Beauty for me is generally to be found in the natural world.   Long stretches of sandy beach, sunlight and shadows on the garden, or spectacular views. This picture, for this week’s Gallery, was taken in 2007 during a family holiday with another family in Wales, near Llanberis and Snowdon.   We had gone “on to the top road” and

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How do you find MummyBarrow

Around 1000 people visit my blog every day (I know, I find that hard to believe too).  With page views approaching twice that figure.    And it always puzzles me as to just how people have found mummybarrow. Some of those people are subscribers, and I love these people alot.   Are you one of them?  You aren’t?  <stares>   You can remedy that by clicking that little button over there

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The Gallery — Back to School

Back to school is a staggered affair in this house as for the past two years I have had three children in three different schools or college.  And this is now the first term that only involves E and J.  C is now working full time whilst she makes her uni choices.  So J went back to weekly boarding on Monday night and E went back today.  Though we still

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When it happens to you — September 2012

This is the debut novel from Molly Ringwald.  Name sound familiar?  Remember Pretty in Pink?  Breakfast Club?  Yep THAT Molly Ringwald.   Simon and Schuster (the publishers) say this:   Tales of love, loss, and betrayal are at the heart of When It Happens to You, the debut novel in stories from actress and author Molly Ringwald. A Hollywood icon, Ringwald defined the teenage experience in the eighties in such

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Over Priced Build Project Magazines

I have a “thing” about small print.   You know that bit that tells you all the terms and conditions that you don’t really need to pay attention to at the bottom of the advert.   Quite often Mr B and will see an ad on TV and say “What?  Their group was only of 100 women and 79% liked it.  Is that all?” Don’t get me started on so

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Cycling — it’s a learning curve alright

I was thrilled to finally get a bike last weekend. I thought a bike was a bike, right? Wrong. First of all they are either road / off road or hybrids apparently.   Mine being a hybrid which I am told is a good thing.  Because it gives me flexibility.   Flexibility?  Did you see me trying to walk after I did a mile on it on Sunday? With 21

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I don’t like being lied to

And nor do I like lying to you. Why am I declaring this? Well because I recently ran a competition and reviewed some chocolates that were sent to me by a lady called Genevie who, according to her website, ran a family business hand making chocolates from her home in Scotland. Tales of her son helping to taste them. The love that went into them. I highlighted the fact that

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The Gallery — Movies

This is possibly the hardest theme to date.   I scoured all of our Facebook photo albums.   The hard disk on both my laptop and the family desktop.  Even our newly installed “grunty box” that sits in a corner and is simply a storage unit for music and photos.   I looked all the way back to photos from 2003 and drew pretty much a blank. Until I found

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But I never win anything

I often hear this from people. oh but you are so lucky, I never win anything I always reply with well do you enter anything? It is amazing how many times people then say “well no, what’s the point?  I wouldn’t win” You have to enter competitions to win them!   I have won everything from a private gig with KT Tunstall in our lounge and breaksfast show being hosted

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27 year old gets naked. Shocker

OK so I am wading into the Prince Harry “furore”.    I have seen the pics, I admit.  Yes, he is naked but you don’t actually see anything.   All this talk of “crown jewels” is nonsense. I don’t see the problem.    Single man, on holiday, gets naked whilst playing a game. Nobody got hurt Nobody was snorting drugs   Nobody was doing anything illegal. Where is the problem?

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