Rent A Villa In Crete www.rentavillaincrete.com

My latest venture, with the greatest invaluable help from @mediocre_mum is 
http://www.rentavillaincrete.com/
I'm very excited to see if I can direct traffic with my own site rather than paying to be on others - we will see!  We are going out on Sunday so will be taking lots more pics.
Thanks for looking!
Annie x

Tangle Free Locks forever!

After

Before

My daughter has lovely long, fine hair.  However fine hair quite often means tangled hair.  We've had the battles of hair-brushing and the tear-invoking tangles pulling at my heartstrings.  
I therefore jumped at the chance to have a play with the Supersoft Detangling Spray and 2 in 1 Shampoo.
I had to convince Scarlett that it would work (crossing fingers) but the fact that it had the lady Smurf on the front gave it instant approval!

I have to say, it did work, instantly!  No idea how or why, but it does, and it smells gorgeous too!
Mornings are stressful enough getting two children to school, but this has helped enormously!  At Sainsburys they currently retails at £2 per unit.  I have been using for a while yet and haven't run out so figure that it's very good value!

KiCK Magazine - Special Subscription Discount

I was very excited to be offered the opportunity to review KiCK magazine, a football magazine aimed at children between the ages of 6 and 14.  
I received the first copy and really enjoyed flicking through it, it was jam-packed with features and pictures, including those of our own Adel Taarabt and Joey Barton, and I was impressed with the amount of quizzes and competitions.  My Jasper is 7, and although he loves going to the Arsenal with his father, its more of an outing with Daddy.  So I decided I would like to share this experience with 9 year old Harry, the son of a very good friend who is mad about football - sorry Arsenal fan again, but thought it would be good to get his first hand experience of it.

Whilst I await his opinion, I thought I should pass on the chance of a discount on a 6 month subscription! Each magazine retails at £2.60, but you can get 6 months for just £9!  Gotta be worth  the pocket money I'd say!  The code for this magazine discount is K71 KiCK 
Will update as soon as Harry can tear himself away long enough to give me some feedback!
Thanks for reading!
Annie x

Mum can you wipe my bum.......

My talented neighbour (well round the corner a bit), who is responsible for the brilliant 
tunes 4 toddler tantrums CD, has come up with the following!  A must see, particularly if you have young children of your own! (YouTube)
Mum can you wipe my bum.....
And has now added her latest song : Comedy Twinkle
Annie x

Holiday in Germany, via Belgium 2011

Scally loving the train :)

We normally go to our Villa in Crete for the Summer, but this year we went earlier in May and decided to visit Germany instead.  A tad random, but Chris used to work with a guy who left his job to renovate a 16th Century house he'd bought in the Mosel Valley, which they turned into rental accommodation.  The promise of good wine and good company was too much to turn down!
I don't do boats, so we decided to take the Eurotunnel instead.  I love it, drive your car onto the train and 35 minutes later you're in France!

We'd booked 2 nights accommodation in Belgium to break the journey up, as we figured going direct to Germany would have been a nightmare with the children, and besides we had 10 days to play with.  We stayed in a little studio room on a farm.  The lady was lovely, and the food was good, but the room was a bit basic for the money.  However, location-wise it was excellent, and that afternoon we went to Breskins in Holland, and had a lot of fun watching the kids jumping off things from the lookout point!  Silly game really but got some cracking photos.  Breskins itself had a nice feel to it, but apart from that it was just a little seaside town, though too cold to enjoy the seaside!  Forgot to mention that it was freezing and I had packed for high Summer - silly me!  I did enjoy the fact that in one day we'd been in England, France, Belgium and Holland, blessing the Euro currency!  The next day we decided to go to Gent as so many people had said how lovely it was!  At first, driving around, we weren't so sure, but eventually we found the centre and was blown away by everything! We thought we might be there a couple of hours, but we stayed until 6pm and had a fabulous time!  First of all we took a boat trip, the sky looked iffy but the clever lady said they had umbrellas!  Indeed 10mins into the trip the heavens opened, and yes, thankfully they did have umbrellas.  It was a great tour, fun and informative.

Looking over the river

The old Brothel

Big Ben/Westminster

Steps from the Bell Tower

We found out that the Marriott used to be a brothel!  The two swans in their frontage - who normally mate for life - are deliberately not facing each other!  We also found out that two of the other buildings are modelled on Big Ben and Westminster Cathedral, the first is a little short of our own and hmmm on Westminster!  After a very reasonable lunch we went to investigate the castle, with its display of torture equipment, including a guillotine - with original blade!  All sorts of other nasties were a great attraction too  After that we went to a Bell Tower with a fab exhibition on how the bells are made - most extraordinary, and then up to see the bells in situ.   We chose to take the lift back down, but Chris took the 225 stairs route!

Ended 8-2 whoops!

Oh dear!

Lastly, as we had found an Irish bar earlier showing Sky Sports, Chris decided he would quite like to watch a bit of the Man Utd vs Arsenal game.   If you know what happened I think these pics say it all! That night we decided to go out for a nice meal.  The local restaurant, The Red Mouse, was about 20 mins walk away. We'd ordered silly for lunch on the first day, but being a bit better informed we had a successful 2nd go.  Chris had an amazing steak and I had some wonderful garlic Gambas - the kids enjoyed spaghetti and the wine and ales were good.  Along with the double rainbow we saw the evening ended better than I expected!
The next morning, after breakfast we began the 3 hour drive to Germany.  Between my iphone, loaded with Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and Jasper's DSI, it all went swimmingly!  Apart from the row I had for being overcharged in the services, don't ask!  We eventually, finally arrived here and I was geniunely open-mouthed!  You can see from the website for Zur Alten Weinkelter why!  Will update further when I have time :)
Thanks for reading!
Annie x

Herman Friendship Cake

This was new to me.  One of Chris's colleagues gave him a share of her Herman cake. Which is a German sourdough friendship cake. 

The idea is that you grow it and feed it as instructed, over a period of 10 days.  

Some days you just stir it and on others add sugar, flour and milk.

On the 10th day you bake one quarter of it, having first shared out portions with three other people!

I have to say I was sceptical, but Chris followed instructions, and the cake turned out to be pretty delicious!

Nurturing and feeding!

Finished Cake!

Magnetic/Blackboard Wall Paint - That's Magic!

Recently I visited my friends gazillion pound house in Gurney Court Road, NCT Capital of St Albans - IMHO, and one of the many things I lusted over, that was actually achievable, was her magnetic wall!  To me it's genius!
Since Jasper started in the school system we've had loads of letters and dates and basic "stuff".  We used to use a corkboard and hang stuff but to me it looked ugly!   Obviously not including the QPR Calendar in that statement!
The Magnetic/Blackboard paint was the obvious answer.   It goes on black, obviously, and you can keep it like that if you wish, but I like the idea of being more subtle and painted over.

I'm loving it!

The magnets we had didn't all work as were not strong enough, but I found these brightly coloured ones on the net for around £10 for 16!
I love it, and thought I'd share :)
Enjoy! x

Brightly coloured magnets!