All-in-One Mum

Just for a bit of fun I thought I'd do a quick competition where one lucky person can win a £10 Amazon voucher by guessing 'Baby D no.2's' arrival date correctly along with having the closest correct guess to his actual birth weight! How to enter Compulsory option: Leave your name and e-mail address and/or Twitter name at the bottom of this blog post along with t he date when you think 'Baby D no.2' will arrive and how much you think he will weigh. Share this blog post by clicking on any of the 'Share This' buttons at the bottom of this post. None compulsory options (but you'll be one of the first to know when I run another competition or giveaway if you do these!): Like me on Facebook . Follow me on Twitter . The competition is open from 29 June 2014 and will run until midnight on 9 July 2014 or until when 'Baby D no.2' is born, which ever date comes first. The person who guesses the birth date correctly and gets the clo...

Yay!  The May 2014 Degustabox has arrived!  I'm always like a kid at Christmas when the monthly box lands at my door.   This month's box includes these great products: Elizabeth Shaw Dark Chocoloate Cocoa Crunch Flutes Crawston Press cloudy apple juice (delicious, by the way!) Taylors of Harrogate Blackberry and Elderflower tea Sweet Potato Kettle Chips Hornsby's crisp apple cider and strawberry and lime cider Garofolo Elicoidali pasta Raw energy sugar free gum Finn Crisp original crisp bread Dr. Oetker cake release spray Cirio La Classica Passata Cirio tomato puree For just £12.99 a month (including delivery) you can have your very own Degustabox delivered to you.  Each box contains 10 to 15 fabulous new food products on the market from new and well known brands.  Great as a gift or just as a treat for yourself, this great value food subscription box doesn't tie you into any lengthy contracts so you can unsubscribe at anytime, although I highly...

Are you pregnant or do you know someone that is?  I've just come across a great giveaway from Argos where one lucky person stands the chance of winning a great bundle containing the following 7 must have baby items: BabyDan Danchair Natural Wooden Highchair Apramo Gaia Group 0+ Car Seat Infant Carrier Angelcare AC1100 Digital Video, Movement and Sound Monitor Onaroo Ok To Wake! Portable Owl Nightlight and Sleep Trainer  Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature Newborn Starter Kit BabyBjörn babysitter Balance Bouncer Mamas and Papas Apple Bobbin 4 Piece Nursery Bedding Set  Clair de Lune Waffle Moses Basket with Pine Stand Baby bath time support from Angelcare Click here to enter.  The closing date is 3 June 2014. Good luck! Ally x

I actually meant to post this last week but got distracted with an attempted nesting clean of my lounge.  I did actually succeed to a degree.  If you saw it this week you may not agree... Before said spring clean I found three packets of hot cross buns in my cupboard.  I had bought too many after a trip to the shops where they were clearly pumping their hot and spicy scent through the air vents, rendering poor pregnant women helpless but to buy them. As I didn't want the buns to go to waste and I felt like have pudding after my dinner, I decided to make them into my version of bread and butter pudding, layered with Nutella and spices.  I had to make a rather large custard mix to coat the buns as best as I could.  It wasn't full to the brim but about 2/3 of the way but the buns still soaked it all up beautifully. The finished product was absolutely delicious especially with the generous lashings of custard and general sounds of quiet and contentedness f...

After I had my daughter in 2010 I swore blind that if I had any aches or pains, SPD or sciatica in my next pregnancy that I would get them seen to instead of suffering in relative silence. In this pregnancy I'd put on quite a bit of weight in a short space of time and I was still running a few times a week up until about four and a half months.  The combination of these two had sent my lower back into mini spasms which desperately needed to be seen to by someone who knew exactly how pregnant women should be massaged during their pregnancy. I had my first treatment session with Helen Brown of Helen Brown Pregnancy Massage Therapy  when I was five months pregnant and believe you me, it couldn't have been at a better time.  Helen, an  ITEC Holistic Massage Therapist who works from the comfort of her home in St Albans, Hertfordshire, is specially trained and qualified in Pregnancy Massage Therapy and a member of the Federation of Holistic Therapists (FHT)....

Either the baby brain is really kicking in or this is just the longest pregnancy in the world.  With my first I was clearly excited for her to be born but with this pregnancy, I just can't wait for it to be over!! I keep reminding myself that this will be the last time that I carry a child inside me and that I need to enjoy every second, but the constant wriggling around leaves me feeling battered and bruised and topping that with simply delightful heartburn/acid reflux, I'm just not really feeling the love at the moment.  Love for baby of course but no love for mommy.  I feel a bit pathetic actually.  I naively thought that the worst thing that could happen to me second time around was that the morning sickness would be worse and having had SPD and sciatica, I knew I could deal with that if I got it again.  Clearly slightly delusional in that regard.   I didn't even get morning sickness this time but instead I am getting to spend the majority of my t...

If you are a foodie or simply love trying new and exciting products, Degustabox is just what you have been looking for. Now into it's third month in the UK, Degustabox is a monthly subscription service that offers subscribers the chance to sample 10 to 15 exciting new food products on a monthly basis.  Some of the products in the food box are new to the market and the joy of having a food delivery put together like this is that all the food products work out to be less than their advertised retail price. The service is £12.99 per month which includes postage with no commitment necessary as long as you cancel before the 10th of the month. One of the most recent boxes contained some delicious times from Dorset Cereals, Zico, Jules Destrooper, Amy's Kitchen, Alice and Oscar's, Go! Kombucha, Goody Good Stuff, Maggi.  What I loved about this selection is that there isn't anything in there that I wouldn't eat or give to my family. I love that the majority of th...

A friend of mine posted a link to a short film on Facebook recently featuring an acclaimed photographer, Jerry Ghionis. Jerry poses the following question to a room full of photographers.  "What is your perfect day?".  A simple enough question to answer you'd think but if you actually took the time to mull it over, it's more than just spa days or track days, an extra few hours in bed or an hour to yourself in the day.  It comes right down to the root of who you are, what your needs are as a human being, what you want from life and what you want to achieve from it. So after watching the video and then discussing it with a few friends over the weekend and telling them what I thought was my perfect day I actually stopped talking and started listening.  The day that I had described simply wasn't true to myself and was something that I could honestly do on any given day of the week if I wanted to. I spent the best part of midnight to 2.00 a.m. having a debate wit...

My daughter has been testing out a beautiful new App called “ Jonty – The DinosaurWho Could Not Go to Sleep ”.   When I first saw the title I felt like replacing ‘Jonty’ with her name, to be honest! This is a very cute story about a lively young dinosaur that has trouble getting to sleep at bedtime.  The story is fully interactive so your child can help to get Jonty to sleep, encouraging ‘invisible learning’ while having fun at the same time.   My little one, who is 3 ½, loved that she could get involved in the story and make the characters move and interact with other items on the page.   I can’t really count the times that we’ve played it but the fact that she goes back to it over and over again, finding new things to do each time is wonderful.   She loves me to read it her as well as have it read to her by the narrator.   For her, getting to interact with the characters on the page really brings the story to life. You can interact with the ...