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Saturday, April 21, 2012

Octonauts Birthday Party

Last year Belle and Boo were absolutely obsessed with the Octonauts. I think it started when Belle heard about it from her friends at nursery, where they would all play 'pretend' in the school playground.
We didn't mind the girls watching this show as it was fun and very educational.

So when it came to chosing a theme for her 4th birthday party last Summer, Belle quickly decided on an Octonauts party.
The only problem was that at the time there were no party wares or merchandise available, the only thing you could buy back then were the books.
So her mum and I put out thinking caps on and got creative.

Part of my birthday present for her was this birthday banner with matching Octonauts bunting(there were 2 of the triangle shaped bunting chains, only one is in the picture), it was very time consuming and every circle was cut out by hand(so make that 24 big circles, 24 little ones, 24 triangles and 30 Octonauts figures/symbols)

(note my amazing photo editing skills *haha*)

She and everyone absolutely loved it, I have to say I was very proud when everyone complimented the banner on the day of her party. It did take me a good 5 hours to make so I think I deserved it.

My boss ordered some tshirts and badges off ebay, the quality was not great and the transfers came off in the wash despite washing inside out.



Even the guests joined in:


My boss baked this amazing Tweak bunny cake and I made some cute cupcakes, using the Hummingbird bakery vanilla cupcake recipe:



The children kept busy by colouring Octonauts colouring sheets, making Octonauts headbands/hats, playing pass the parcel and musical statues and also 'Pin the eyepatch on Kwazii'


There was fish shaped foods in the form of sandwiches


and crackers, which I 'imported' from Germany:

(source: here)

It was a great party and everyone loved it.
Next: Boo's 3rd birthday party, which is coming up at the end of May, we are buying paperplates from America because the theme is so HER!








Friday, April 20, 2012

I smell PINK!

(first of many non-childcare related posts)
I have recently become addicted to reading 'beauty' blogs. Those girls are amazing with make up and their collcetions of beauty 'stuff' makes my massive drawer dull of showergels, creams, potions, powders, sticks, wipes and other things look tiny.

I don't know where I first saw them but as soon as I did, I just knew I had to have it!


DKNY Be Delicious has recently brought out 3 new(limited edition) scents inspired by cakes, I mean how amazing is that? I LOVE cake!

The three scents are:
*Pink Macaron(pink)
*Tart Key Lime(green)
*Creamy Meringue(yellow)

I love anything pink and sweet, so it was a no brainer, which one of these three perfumes would have to be MINE. I tested it yesterday when I walked past the perfume shop in town and it's so lovely. I will be popping in later with a gift certificate and buy the Pink Macaron before it sells out.

And just for fun, here's a little trip down memory lane about all the perfumes I have used in my life:

It all started out with my mum being a AVON Lady, so when I was little, I always experimented with the little sample bottles and mixed them to 'create' wonderful new scents. I must have smelt horrible.

The first perfume I ever had was CK One, by Calvin Klein. A unisex scent, which is very much not what I would use today, but then again I was a 14 year old non-girly girl back then, so it was a good fit.

I think I used that for a couple of years and when I started working my fulltime job at 16(this makes me sound like I dropped out of school, but I didn't!) I would treat myself to nicer perfumes.
The first one was 'Jil' by Jil Sander(decription here), a perfume that was released in 1997 and has since then been discontinued(and sells for €200/bottle on ebay). A very intense and sweet scent, it really made me feel 'grown up' at the time. *haha*.


After that I bought 'Sensations', also by Jil Sander(description here) , mainly because I had loved the other one by her so much.


Then came 'Amor Amor' by Cacharel (read more about it here):

Then 'Gloria' by Cacharel(read more about it here)



After that I used 'Miracle' by Lancome (see the description here) In my opinion this is a lighter scent, perfect for summer. Definitely not as heavy and sweet as the pink colour would have you belive.

Then I went through a phase of not really using any perfume or using whatever free sample I could get my hands on and now I don't just stick to one, I have quite a few smaller bottles I am using at the moment. Here's a picture of my current ones:


left to right: Amor Amor from Cacharel(somehow all the red 'paint' came of the glass bottle), MEXX Woman Summer Edition(2011), Thierry Mugler's 'Angel'(mini bottle from a Glamour promotion a couple of years ago), Alien by Thierry Mugler, Horizon by Esprit and Jamaica2 by Puma. My favourite one out of all of these is 'Alien', followed by Mexx Woman, a scent I picked up last summer in Germany just because the bottle was pink :)
The Esprit and Puma ones were given to me by my mum and are not really what I would have picked for myself.


Dark Kiss by Bath and Bodyworks. I bought these last summer in Florida and love it. It's only a body spray but I use it like perfume because I find it quite long lasting. Not so much a fan of the bodylotion, but the shower gel is fab. Will be picking up some more in 2 weeks when I'm going back to Florida!

Wow, that was a long post about perfume :) To cut a long story short: I love pink, sweet, heavy and girly perfumes.




Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Having fun with food

Boo is a little bit of a fussy eater and sometimes it helps to make her food more fun, so this is what I have come up with so far:

The very popular fruit faces, the girls gobbled these up quickly:




*The 'hair' in this last picture is made with Kiddylicious Apple Fruit Wriggles*

Happy porridge(I appologise for the quality, this was 'pre iPhone')

And our valentine's day lunch:

Monday, April 9, 2012

Out of the mouth of babes

Both Belle and Boo have always amazed me with their advanced speech and vast vocabulary. We never really used 'baby talk' at home and teach them the proper names for everything.
For example last year around her second birthday Boo asked if we were going to the drycleaners that day, probably not a word in most 2 year old's vocabulary.

Lately Belle has been coming up with some pretty funny things and I wanted to share them with you:

*while we were brushing the girls' teeth I asked them to bite their teeth together so I could brush their front teeth and Belle sais "M. you have really crooked teeth" [while I do have an overbite, they're not crooked]

*talking about jobs and going to university she asked me why I didn't go to university. I told her I chose to be a nanny to look after little boys and girls like her, while their mummies and daddies are at work. She thought for a second and then asked "M. when are you going to get a real job?"

Both girls also insist that I am pregnant, which I am not. Let's just hope they don't say anything like that to their parents ;-)
Maybe this means I need to work on my chocolate addiction!

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

It's been a while

So, it's been a few months since my last post.
At first I simply stopped writing because summer was over and the whole reason I started this blog was to document our summer together, but lately I have been feeling in a bloggy mood so I decided to start this up again and hoping to write a few blogs over the next weeks. They will most likely not all be related to nannying but will instead be about random things in my life, like competition wins, recipes, movies...so really anything and everything.