Charity

Diabetes: Running without Jelly Babies

You know when someone in the office leaves for pastures new, or when a mum in your group has a new baby, and you want to buy them a gift? Someone starts a group text, someone else has a search on Amazon or Etsy and comes up with the perfect suggestion. Then someone offers to pay, and 25 people all Paypal each other £3.76 each to contribute. It gets messy, right? Well I’ve found another way of doing it. Leetchi.com is a personal crowdfunding website that helps you manage the finances on group projects. Basically, you log on, create a personalised ‘money …

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How to Create a Stop Animation Film for Christmas

Don’t you love a good Christmas advert? As much as The Snowman, and Elf, waiting to watch the newest Christmas adverts has become a marker of Christmas – the start to the festive season, and our kids want them played again and again throughout December. But this week has been even more exciting, as they’ve had the chance to make their own, courtesy of a fab stop animation kit from Sainsbury’s. Sponsored post with Sainsbury’s. Inspired by the stop animation film of their own Christmas advert, and its message around spending more time with family and friends over the holiday, …

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Rattling the Cages of Parliament for Type 1 Diabetes #Type1Catalyst

Want to know what’ll get you inside the Houses of Parliament? I don’t mean queuing up to take the tour (which in itself is very cool), or going through security (rather like airport scanning, that’s how serious government is) to sit in the Commons and hear the debates (yes that is totally a thing). Nor am I talking of secret plots to usurp government and all its officials. No, this is about a personal invitation to a private party on that stretch of the river Thames that always looks so inviting on a sunny Friday afternoon; the Terrace Pavilion, where you always …

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Up All Night

  You know when people joke about how, when you have a baby, you’re not going to get much sleep? You’ll be up all night, they say, and you laugh. Then your newborn arrives, and you realise it’s true. You never knew you could survive on so little sleep. You’re amazing. Up All Night After a couple of weeks though, the excitement settles, the adrenalin wears off, and you’re tired to your bones. You ache all over, you eat badly, propping yourself up with sugar, caffeine and stimulants. You don’t know how you will carry on. You do though, because …

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Dear Type 1 Diabetes

Raising money for JDRF, the Type 1 Diabetes charity

Dear Type 1 Diabetes, I’m just writing to let you know what I think of you. I haven’t ranted too much in the last year since you rudely set up camp in our lives, but the time has come. It might get sweary. Actually, strike that; this is going to get totally sweary, and I make no apologies, because it’s about time you were told. Type 1 Diabetes, you are a nasty, vindictive little terrorist, with an impeccable and malicious sense of timing. I have gradually come to accept that you are a law unto yourself. It’s not about food, …

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Diabetes: This is WAR

This weekend we played a game of Bananagrams. One of those games that you either love or hate. My need for order and precision, my discomfort with change means it’s not my favourite. But it grows on you. Those who like to shake things up, change them for the sake of it, experiment, they love it. It makes GG happy. If she doesn’t like a word she’s used, she’ll change it. I wish everything was that simple. I left them to tidy up, and when I next looked, they hadn’t. They’d all wandered off, apart from her. She sat at …

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Being Brave: BritMums and Type 1 Diabetes

In June 2015 I attended the BritMums Live conference for parenting bloggers. I have been many times to the event, and have transitioned from nervous new blogger to being relaxed and excited to catch up with friends and discover new brands. I have spoken at the event in previous years, and gained valuable experience in public-speaking. I have even read a blogger keynote speech before – a funny one that gave me the satisfaction of a few audience laughs. This year though, I was brave. This year I spoke out about what it means to suffer a life-changing event in …

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Tesco Mum of the Year Awards 2015 – the big day

The very special women who are the Tesco Mum of the Year Awards winners for 2015

On Sunday, 1 March, 2015 I attended a very special event indeed. Appropriately dated to fall close to Mother’s Day, the Tesco Mum of the Year awards pays tribute to an exceptional group of mums; mums who have worked hard to support others, after much personal sacrifice of their own. I was lucky enough to meet these women in the ‘green room’ (I know!), and was humbled by how normal these extraordinary women are. Incredibly nervous, worried about tripping up the steps, and coming face-to-face with celebrity presenters, these are just everyday people. Except they’re not. Tesco Mum of the …

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A compassionate Mum: Tesco Mum of the Year Awards 2015

Compassionate Mum winner Tesco Mum of the Year 2015

It’s no secret that we’ve had a tough few months here. My daughter’s diagnois of Type 1 diabetes at the end of the summer has really wiped the floor with us, again and again, in ways we could not have imagined when we first heard those words in the GP’s surgery. I lost a ton of weight, and not in a good way; I just couldn’t eat. Or drink wine – imagine! Over time – although acceptance is still a long way off – that initial shock has become less acute. I found myself tweeting this over the weekend, after noticing that …

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Type 1: What my girl would like to say…

I wasn’t going to write about World Diabetes Day. This is a family blog. It’s a happy space, where I record the things in our lives that I want us to remember: the holidays, the letters to Father Christmas, the amusing anecdotes about funny toddlers that will make guests at their weddings laugh. It is not a blog about diabetes. But as I think about my daughter, about all she has had to come to terms with in the 3 months since her diagnosis, I know that I can’t let the occasion pass without some comment. I was going to …

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Tell me about your Mum: Tesco Mum of the Year Awards 2015

Last Autumn I went to a party. Not just any old party, this was one of those surreal, dreamlike events where I ate beef two tables away from Boyzone, tried not to gaze at Jason Merrells over my pâté, and gossiped with Eileen from Coronation Street about what everyone else was wearing. This was the huge perk of being an ambassador for the Tesco Mum of the Year Awards.  In actual fact though, it was difficult to stay starstruck for very long. Every single person in that room – famous or not – was in tears at some point, as we …

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Ideas for a day out in London with kids: Freaky Rivet

Ideas for a day out in London with kids

I’ve seen a number of posts recently from parents worrying that their children are getting too much screen time during the long school holiday. Personally I’m comfortable with an hour or so of TV or gaming – kids need to switch off and mine are definitely happier for a bit of down time. But too much will turn them feral, and so once my official work hour is over, I’m all about getting them active, or using their imaginations, in a fun way. Getting kids active in the holidays. This year we’re working with an organisation called Freaky Rivet, to …

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Asthma – the cold fear inside

I lay next to her as she slept in my bed, and listened to her breathing. The rash was up again; her beautiful face was covered in puffy, red patches, that were spreading down her neck and shoulders as I watched under the torchlight. It hadn’t been there at bedtime, and yet when I checked on her at 11pm she was covered. I had dragged her from sleep to administer anti-histamine, brought her to my bed so I would know if she worsened. She has asthma, you see, my baby girl. What if this sudden – and very dramatic – …

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How to decorate a Chess and Football cake

Sporty cake for the Sport Relief Great Bloggers Bake Off

I’m not a huge baker. Occasionally I spend an afternoon with the kids throwing random things at a pan, loosely based around a recipe book, but more often than not substituting ingredients as we discover we don’t have what we need. I need to get better at prep. But give me a decorating challenge and I’m all over it. Take the time I spent 5 hours pimping this for my 4 year old’s birthday:     So when Jenny laid down a challenge to create a sport themed cake for the Great Bloggers Bake Off for Team Honk, I didn’t …

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Can we get Mum running for Sport Relief 2014?

She was not a runner. She hated this winter term, when tennis was long-forgotten, and the hockey pitch too wet to play on. Cross-country running: the words struck nausea into her belly, her ribs and shoulder twitching with the learned weekly stitch she knew would develop the minute trainers hit pavement. She wasn’t a rule-breaker though. She couldn’t follow the short-cut girls through the housing estate; besides the PE teachers varied their lookout points so you’d never know whether you’d been spotted until you returned, red-faced and heaving, to the smelly changing rooms and the sting of hot water on …

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What does it take to be Tesco Celebrity Mum of the Year?

On 23 March I will be attending the Tesco Mum of the Year Awards. It’s been a thorough process of nominations, and I have read about all of the finalists open-mouthed in awe. These are not just special women, tireless women, hard-working women; these are slam-dunk incredible women whose energy and motivation I cannot begin to comprehend. Here and there I read heartbreaking stories of women who have been through unimaginable personal tragedy, and gone on to establish astounding support networks for others facing similar situations. I get where that might come from – the grief and anger that fuels …

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Buzz Lightyear and the Rocket Scooter #TeamHonkRelay

*Updated: for pictures of the event scroll down. By GG… I am embarrassed. As I sit in maths today, my mother will be gearing up for her part in #TeamHonkRelay. Which means she will be clothing herself in this Buzz Lightyear costume and scooting into the centre of St Albans on a Rocket Micro Scooter. She has practiced on the scooter. But only in our kitchen. So she will be rubbish. But that is not what’s embarrassing me. It is well known that people go silent when in the presence of a lone adult in fancy dress. Fear and uncertainty …

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Change the Story Mother!

My mum went somewhere really important this week. I could tell it was important because she disappeared into the back of the wardrobe and emerged in a smart shirt and crisply ironed trousers. She used to wear them when she worked near Westminster, before I was born. As it happens, she was back to her old stomping ground, but this time she was visiting the House of Lords, and this time it was reeeeeeally important.   What is Change the Story? Considering we live in a sophisticated society, it might surprise you to know that last year 1 in 4 …

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Tesco Mum of the Year Awards 2014: do you know an incredible Mum?

Image by Stephanie Belton “Muuuuum, how come I love you so much?” I asked Mummy as we left the supermarket. “Because I’m the most awesome person in the world ever?” She replied, with irony. “Yessss! That’s exactly why!” And I gave her a massive squeeze as we walked, just to prove it. The truth is, although I think she’s pretty epic, there are mums out there who beat her hands down in terms of what they do, what they’ve been through, or what they’ve inspired. The Tesco Mum of the Year awards honours these “women who have inspired a generation,” …

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Doing something ridiculous for Comic Relief

I went all out to embarrass my mum today. Egged on by the lovely Mummy Alarm, she decided to give this dress one more outing by joining #TeamHonk’s Red Nose Day Team for Comic Relief. Originally she asked 100 people to donate £1 each. On reaching her target, she promised to wear the silver ball gown she last wore aged 21, to her Eighties themed rehearsal at Rock Choir. Which she did: But not content with that, Mummy raised the bar, by promising to wear the dress again, on Red Nose Day, on the school-run! #nutter… She wanted £200 before she would …

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