Tweet

For the avoidance of doubt, I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client. Now the formalities are out of the way, let me tell you about our £10 challenge!

How often do we really think about what we are spending? I don’t mean in total, I mean when we are throwing things into our shopping trolleys or online baskets, are we really conscious of how it is adding up? My eldest daughter is now in Junior school and we have weekly homework on multiplication and division and whilst I may moan at her to do it each week, she actually has a good knack for maths, so when we were set the challenge to create a yummy family meal for £10, we put her in charge of the calculations.

So off we trooped to the Asda store in Minworth, Birmingham, which despite being by my parents’ house, is actually quite a rare event for me when I do most of my shopping, including the groceries, online. I was pleasantly surprised to find ample parent and child parking spaces, as given the hot weather I was expecting it to be heaving with people buying BBQ food. Both children wanted to get in the trolley, which meant we needed a big trolley (although we didn’t have a spare pound coin for the smaller trolley anyway. It still baffles me why they have a coin release on those and the bigger ones don’t?) and so we entered the lovely cool store.

Even upon entering, we were still unsure of what we were actually going to buy as our meal. It has been so hot over the last few days that we haven’t really felt like cooking or eating big meals so as we were browsing round, we thought a cooked chicken would be a good idea. We navigated our way through the busy aisles towards the hot food counter and my daughter asked the question "are these the same price as a normal chicken" and to her credit, she found that the fresh chickens were considerably cheaper, leaving much more of our budget to spend on other things.

I am most definately not the gourmet chef in our house but with the weather being so scorching hot outside, the inclination to create a full on meal was fairly non existent. Thankfully both my girls love their veg, (which can sometimes be a challenge in itself when we dine out as everything seems to come with chips and beans) so we chose some seasonal veg to go with the garlic chicken and some garlic potatoes .... good job we are only kissing each other! They all came freshly sealed in ready to cook foil tins, which was not only handy but reduced the washing up too!!

The chief estimator told us that we had just over £1 left, so she went off in search of something for dessert and came back with Moshi Monster cakes. It wouldn't have been my choice but she was so excited that she had found something in the budget, who was I to argue?

So in the end, we had a fresh chicken, flavoured with garlic and herbs, seasonal vegetables including courgettes and aubergines, garlic potatoes and cabbage. Asda have a great range of "ready to cook" vegetables so it really was a case of popping it in the oven and waiting for it to be cooked. (now that is my kind of cooking). One thing I was really pleased with about our shop was that we didn't have to buy the cheapest or "budget" options, to meet our £10 challenge.

I have to admit that the Moshi Monster cakes were a little more labour intensive but the girls really got involved in the mixing (and testing of the cake mix - obviously) and I had to get involved with the extra cleaning of the cake covered floor. They had a great time, with big sister assuming responsibility for reading the instructions (she is quite good at literacy aswell as maths! She must take after her mother!). In the end the cakes looked more like little green blobs than cakes but apparently that was the point and for £1, it certainly kept them captivated.

 

Grocery shopping is usually a one man (or woman's) job in our house, usually by me ordering online late at night, so it was great to get us all involved with the meal selection and even the cake making!

The savings in store are undeniable and as someone who doesn't shop instore on a regular basis, I can see the benefits. However, unless you bring your 8 year old (or a calculator), you don't really take account of the things you are adding into your trolley and with so many good deals on offer, it is easy for the shopping bill to mount up. Asda really do seem to have everything, including toys, games, sweets and everything else that entices children ..... not to mention the musical ride on's that are always so conveniently placed by the front door, so whilst we had great fun with our £10 challenge, it wasn't quite enough to stop me ordering (and budgeting) online.

As for the £10 challenge .... I think we did pretty good!

 

 

I often have friends request to “raid” my wardrobe as I have a collection of dresses for most occasions but when it came to my eldest daughter’s First Holy Communion, I obviously didn’t have anything to wear. Now as a mum, there are a multitude of things that you need to take into consideration when attending a church/school event with your 8 year old child and her friends;

• Firstly you need to be a little bit cool / on trend
• Secondly, not so on trend that you show her and her friends up as they are all suddenly big followers of fashion. (the recent request for crop tops scares me a little).
• Thirdly, we need to remember that we are going to church, so we need to dress appropriately and not for a night out. In the words of aforementioned 8 year old, “God wouldn’t like it”.

So after scouring the internet for the perfect outfit and parcels coming and parcels going, my gorgeous other half said that we needed to go shopping. I was a bit perplexed as this is what I thought I had been doing but he was suggesting going into actual department stores and trying things on in changing rooms <<shudder>>.

So I reluctantly agreed as time was running out and the we ventured out to our closest John Lewis store where in the words of my other half, “there are floors full of clothes, make up, bags, shoes, homeware, garden furniture and even ceiling lights so surely we must be able to get something in here” I was hoping he wasn’t suggesting I wear a bag or a ceiling light but I kind of appreciated where he was coming from and although I don’t like admitting he was right, I found the perfect dress on offer too (although I did get the shoes and bag in the sale online - ever the bargain hunter).

Her Holy Communion was my first experience of such an event and the day was beautiful. I know that ultimately it is her dress that is the important one but it was nice to get something that even she looked and said “wow mummy, you look lovely”.  It just worries me that if an 8 year old can have such an opinion on fashion …. What is she going to be like at 18??

Tweet

There are some massively differing views on the end of year Teachers Gift, so before I go any further I need to confess something. I am THAT mother. You all know the type, the kind that happily does a collection at the end of term and the type that other mums either love or hate. I admit that I like or organise and co-ordinate, being a PA for over 15 years means this is part of my make up but when my eldest daughter was in Reception class at her new school, she had two teachers and two teaching assistants and I can tell you now, Christmas that year was expensive! So when one of the other mums suggested doing a collection, I thought it was a great idea and somehow assumed the role of organiser.

Some of the mums at school don't contribute and arrange their own thing whilst some are just eternally grateful not to have to think about it. Whichever camp you fall in, either works for me.

Over the years the teachers have had a variety of gifts, from handcrafted plant pots, personalised plaques to the trusted gift voucher and this year will be no different. The donation to a collection doesn't always mean that the gift loses its personal touch.

When we were approached by Asda to review their range of teachers gifts, I was interested to see what a large supermarket chain could offer in terms of the personal touch, so when these items landed on the doorstep, I was pleasantly surprised.

My daughter has a love of cuddly toys (her bedroom stands testament to this), so she absolutely adored the cuddly cow and we thought that the mug was a nice touch for their teaching assistant. The range is much bigger than this with pen pots, keyrings and sticky note pads but with all the items under £5, it won't break the bank.

I firmly believe that a teachers gift should be a token of appreciation, whether that is a handmade card, a well thought out present or a gift card, every school and every teacher is different. I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Maggy Woodley a few weeks ago and managed to get a very personalised signed copy of her book Red Ted Art for our teacher, which will be part of her end of year gift from the class.

So whilst some of us mums may not be as craft minded as others (or indeed as Maggy Woodley), the gift is always very personal, thought out and given with thanks.

Tweet

Isn't it funny how things can change so dramatically in a generation? I was telling my eldest daughter to go to bed the other night and she was doing her usual trick of using every delaying tactic in the book and I said, "go to bed, do not pass go, do not collect £200". She simply looked at me with a confused face and asked me what I meant. Only a few days later, when I was delirious with exhaustion, a friend told me to "go to bed, do not pass go and do not collect £200". I smiled. 

My daughter had no idea that the phrase I used was from Monopoly, especially when in the modern game the monetary values are multiplied by 10,000, so instead of £200 it is £2,000,000 and all payments are made by card. Admitedly, I very rarely carry cash with me, so the use of the card is much more relevant to our household but it still makes me a little sad that "old fashioned" games cannot just stay the way they are.

I remember my grandad teaching me how to play chess and we would sit there for hours on end working out the next move. I cannot imagine my daughters sitting still for that long ..... unless there was a touch screen and interactive prompts.

Technology is very much part of our household and our daily life (clearly evident by our online boutique and blog) but it would be lovely to switch it off and just go back to basics. We still love to draw (with real pens and pencils), we craft and we make daisy chains but the girls have TV programmes on demand, technology at their fingertips and computer skills better than my mum!

In reality I know that life moves on and things change but wouldn't it be nice to play solitaire with real cards or a game of chess without the hints and tips? Or should I simply accept that I cannot pass go, I cannot collect £200 and I cannot go back?

Do you miss the simplicity of your childhood or am I wearing rose tinted glasses?

Image courtesy of Freedigitalphotos.net.