Two brilliant apps that organise my life

I use two great apps on my phone that really help me to organise myself, so I'm sharing them with you. Just to get it out of the way, they are both free (of course!) and no-one has asked/paid me to write about them.

The first app is called Our Groceries. It is basically a shopping list stored in your phone that you can add to when needed, then you have it with you when you are at the supermarket. It remembers everything that you have ever entered, so when you've been using it for a while it remembers your frequently purchased items and puts them at the top of a list to select from. You can also add items individually by typing them in. You can even enter recipes into the app with the ingredients required for that meal, so if you know what meals you want to make you can choose the recipe and then select the items that you need from the ingredients list.

The absolute best thing about the app is that you can link it up with other devices. I have an Android phone and my husband has an iPhone, and we both have the app installed. We can then share the list, so I can make it out and then send him shopping with it, and I can add forgotten things while he's on the way. You can store different lists, for example a regular list or a list for a special occasion like a barbecue or holiday. You can also group the items by category (which you can choose) so you can organise it to fit in with your trip around the supermarket, for example by grouping all the dairy products or toiletries together.

The second app is called Chore Checklist, and I use the free Lite version. Unfortunately, as far as I can see this is only available for Android phones. You can use it to organise the chores that need to be done around the house. It comes with some pre-set options, but you can edit it completely. You can choose the frequency with which a chore needs to be done, so you can set a Daily Routine, Weekly Routine, Monthly Routine and so on. Then every morning when you turn it on you have a list of tasks to complete that day. They start out as orange and then change to red if you don't do them. You can also skip chores or mark them as completed in retrospect. I find it much easier to keep up with housework by doing a little bit every day, and I can adapt it to fit around my non-working days. I am also very motivated by ticking things off lists! It takes a bit of time to set everything up, and you need to run through it for a while to make sure that the routine that you have come up with works for you. Then as a backup you can export the list of chores into an e-mail (or even share on Facebook or Twitter if you are so inclined!). I've not used the full version, as I find that the Lite version does everything that I need it to.

Can you recommend any apps that you use to make your life easier? Leave the name of the app(s) and a short description in the comments, and if enough people have one to share then I'll write them up in a carnival post!

How to make a simple toilet roll tube tractor

Harry is loving his tractors at the moment, but I couldn't find any simple crafts ideas for actually making a tractor, so I came up with this one. We made little tractors using just an empty toilet roll tube and two milk bottle lids, along with glue and paint to decorate. I think they're really sweet!

You just need a cardboard tube (I used an old toilet roll tube) and a couple of milk bottle lids, with glue or tape, paint and scraps of paper to decorate.

Take your toilet roll tube and cut two slits, each 6cm long and about 4cm apart. Try and make the cuts in a part of the toilet roll tube that doesn't have any overlapping card. Then bend the flap upwards. Cut the top 2cm from the flap and coil this around to make the funnel. From underneath the flap cut off two curved strips, each about 1/2 cm wide. Coil these around to make the two front wheels. Secure these parts with glue or sellotape.

Paint the different parts of the tractor. Then assemble the pieces. I used a glue gun but you could also use PVA glue, it just takes longer to dry. I made a little front window from pale blue card. The paint doesn't stick to the sellotape very well, if you wanted to improve the look of your tractor you could cover the pieces with coloured paper, or just use glue to join the ends together.



Adding a bit of colour

When I was a teenager, I was known among my friends for my nail varnish. When colours other than red and pink first became popular around about the mid 90's, I started my collection with a gorgeous pale blue, purchased on a special trip to Miss Selfridge in the next town. Over the next couple of years I built up a collection of nail varnish in almost every colour and I would spend hours painting my nails in different colours, with various horizontal and vertical stripes. I don't know why I got out of the habit, perhaps it was when I went to University and had less time, and over the years I had to throw out the bottles as they dried up.

I did carry on doing French manicures for a while, I was actually quite good at it, although of course it does take a bit of time as you wait for each bit to dry. When I first became pregnant I had the idea that you couldn't wear nail varnish and so I stopped, and until recently I hadn't worn any for years.

Then the other weekend I found myself in a shopping centre without children and some points to spend on my Boots card. Nowadays of course you can buy the bright colours everywhere, although the range that I ended up buying from was called Miss Sporty, which I'm not sure really describes me anymore!

I've also discovered through Pinterest that there are incredibly talent nail artists out there, blogging away with photos of all the different designs that they come up with, it's amazing.

I found that the world of nail varnish has moved on in my absence, the colour dried very quickly within minutes and it cleaned off really easily. I bought two bottles, purple and green, and as they were in fact free with my points I thought that painting my nails might become quite an affordable hobby. It can only be a good thing to introduce a bit more colour into my life, and I see more trips to town to start building up a collection.

Perhaps I am just trying to re-capture my youth?

The Tots100 Summer Party

Last Friday we went down the road to Hove for the Tots100 Summer Party at Zippo's Circus. It was my first blogging event, and I was rather nervous. It didn't help that we made a stop to purchase a car seat on the way over which took a lot longer than we expected, and so we were among the last to arrive. The children were thrilled when we signed in and they were given some light up plastic toys, my husband was thrilled to discover that we could eat as much food from the snack van as we liked, including candy floss and popcorn, and I was thrilled when several people came to me and actually greeted me by name, having recognised me from my photo! Stuffed with junk food, we were taken inside the tent and seated at the ringside for a quick introduction to the circus. We met one of the horses, and learned a bit about how the budgies are trained for the show.

Then we were taken out the back to see the rest of the horses, while some of the older children were having a go at juggling and having their faces painted. I'd been hoping for a go on the trapeze but unfortunately it was far too popular, which is probably a good thing on reflection.

Then we took our seats for the circus. It was at around this point that I realised our children (3 1/2 and 1) are probably a bit too little for a circus. Although Harry was able to understand what was going on, he insisted on sitting on my knee and he wouldn't keep still. He refused to eat any of the snacks that we had, and he was also fascinated by the toilets in a caravan, necessitating repeated trips. Mia was tired, and wriggled about whinging, only falling into the exhausted, quiet state about five minutes before the show finished. As a consequence unfortunately I have no photographs of the show!

Harry loved the clowns, he was in hysterics at the slapstick humour when the clown fell about on the trampoline. Personally I was fascinated by the performing budgies and amazed at the limbo dancers. The grand finale was stuntmen on motorbikes riding around and upside down inside a metal globe, and this certainly caught Harry's attention. There were plenty of different things to see, and it had a very traditional feel to it, with circus acts like juggling and the trapeze.

Perhaps we will wait a few years before we attempt a circus again, but we still had a really fun day out. Thanks to Tots100 for organising it and to Zippo's Circus for making us so welcome. 

Introducing maps to young children

My husband and I love travel, and we've been lucky enough to have visited many countries around the world. To a certain extent that is on hold for the next few years, but I'm still keen to teach Harry (and Mia of course when she's a bit older) about the world and his place in it. So I've been putting together some ideas on how to introduce Harry to maps. He is currently 3 1/2.

The first thing that I did was to teach him how maps relate to the real world. To do this I took three cups and a small toy. I laid the cups out in front of Harry and placed the toy underneath one of them. Then I drew three circles on a piece of paper to represent the cups, and drew an X where the toy was. To my surprise Harry picked this up very quickly and was able to find the toy when I hid it while his back was turned.

I expanded upon this idea by making a very simple map of the living room. I drew the key features (sofa, television, mantle piece, window etc.) and explained to him what they were. Then he left the room and I hid the toy. When he returned I showed him on the map where the toy was and he went to find it. He did pretty well with this, he couldn't manage it when the map was rotated but I think that he had at least some understanding that the picture on the paper related to the objects in the room around him.

Then we went to the computer and loaded up Google Maps. I found our house, and then I zoomed out to show him our street, village, country and so on right out to a map of the world. Then I zoomed back in again. He was absolutely fascinated by this. I found the places that we walk to locally, the playground, the village shops, baby group and so on, and he loved it. I left him to explore by himself clicking around with the mouse and he was entertained for ages.

We also looked at an actual physical atlas, to familarise him with the shapes of the different countries and continents. We have a world map in our study and one over his bed in his bedroom, and we often talk about the different countries. I've pointed out ones with distinctive shapes like Australia, and ones with special meaning to us, like the United Kingdom and India, where one set of grandparents are from.

We've also done a couple of crafts around the theme of geography. Together we put together a Me on the Map book, which is a really good way to introduce the concept of geography to small children.


We also made lots of flags from different countries in Europe to celebrate the Euro 2012 football tournament and the Olympics. This also helped to re-inforce the idea of the world being made up of lots of different countries. There are lots of activities that you can do when you have a selection of flags, for example sorting them according to the colours that they contain or the features that they have, like stripes or circles.


Do you have any more ideas for ways to introduce geography to young children? Please feel free to add suggestions or a link in the comments below!

Top image by John-Mark Kuznietsov via Unsplash

Craft - making a campervan from a shoebox

I love making Harry toys out of cardboard boxes. We've made lots of things - a car wash, a bus, a car house...and as he gets older he has just as much fun helping to make them as he does playing with them. I have very fond memories of the Playmobil campervan we had when I was little, and so I thought I'd have a go at making a simple camper van for Harry to play with.

I used an old shoebox, and it is the right size for his Happyland figures. I cut the lid off so it was removable and made a door in each side.

We painted it pink (Harry's choice) and I used cream card to make the shaped bit at the front. The windows are light blue card. For the distinctive Volkswagen camper van logo I printed one out that I found on Google Images. For the wheels I used our Rolobox Wheel Kit For Boxes (affiliate link) which are brilliant, we've used them to make lots of different things. They are simple plastic wheels which screw into the cardboard, they also come with a pull cord. Otherwise you could just make the wheels out of cardboard.

Unfortunately the lid for the roof didn't really work as it was a hinged lid. A box with a removable lid would have worked better. I stuck the windows to the roof so that when it is in place you can see the windows, otherwise the box is too shallow for them to fit.

I (sorry, we) had a lot of fun decorating the inside. I used little cardboard boxes to make a bed and a sofa, then we stuck a photograph of a television onto a small box and made a fruit bowl and table with bottle lids. We cut out pictures and a mirror from a catalogue to decorate the inside walls.

We've also used these fab Rolobox wheels to make a double decker bus.

Stage 4 weaning with Plum Baby

If you've been weaning your baby in the traditional way, by the time that they reach 12 months or so they will be ready to eat the same food as the rest of the family. However not all the food that you eat as a family may be suitable for a baby, for example it might still be too high in salt or sugar. Successfully weaning a baby can seem like a really complicated process with lots of conflicting information. So in June, organic baby food brand Plum ran a competition for five lucky mums to come down to the Plum Cookery School in Buckinghamshire to learn about Plum's recipes and to offer expert advice and support on the weaning process. Celebrity chef Rachel Allen and child nutrition expert Beverley Glock helped to put together a series of weaning videos to pass on their advice.

We've used Plum products at all stages of weaning, and there are such a wide range of products that you can pick and choose as to what suits your family and weaning style, whether for an entire meal or just for simple, healthy snacks and finger food. Even though I've had babies that have wanted to be independent eaters, I've found products like small packets of baked biscuits really useful to keep in the change bag for when you're out and about and baby starts to get hungry and grumpy.

I was compensated for sharing this information.