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With Christmas rapidly approaching I start thinking about cheap and easy ways to help bring the joy of the season into our home. I LOVE Christmas. I love the spirit, the joy, the excitement. And I love thinking of ways to help build the excitement in our children. I find craft is awesome for this. I get beautiful, festive artworks to display and they get the joy of showing off their creations to all who visit. They also make great gifts for grandparents!

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Are you filled with dread when your child comes home with endless, well it seems endless, school requests and parties that require them to dress up?

I think dress ups are great especially at home or kinder when kids can just help themselves to the dress up box. Mine consists of mainly clothing bought at op shops, some faux pas fashion items I have bought on a whim, scraps of left over material bought for a dollar and old accessories. Read more…

For the first year of my oldest child’s life, I managed to escape the issue of childcare drop-offs. But when my husband changed jobs, the good old days of  only getting myself ready for work were over.

As someone who loves hitting the alarm clock snooze button, if I was ever going to get myself – let alone my two boys (aged 1 and 2) – out of bed and off to child care, I needed a process map. You can tell that I work in consulting!

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Quite a few of my friends have just had a baby or are due in the very near future. This has made me think about those first few weeks at home when everyone wants to visit (more the new baby than you).

It’s lovely for people to make the effort, but the thought of friends stepping into the messy, laundry-strewn, dishes-piled-high house was very stressful. Although nobody else really noticed, I just wanted a tidy space to sit in with my visitors.  

So here are some tips to survive the onslaught of visitors with minimal stress.

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If ever there was a way to bring peaceful resolution to potential childhood playground politics it would be by offering up a slice of my Mum’s To.Die.For Chocolate Slice.

How do I know this? Because it was the currency by which I used to negotiate the wily ways of the schoolyard. There could be no enemies when my slice was at stake and it was a sure-fire way to ensure friends aplenty.   Read more…