Thursday 19 December 2013

Hotel Chocolat – The Signature Christmas Collection

If you've been reading this blog then you will know that I LOVE chocolate ! It is my Achilles heel and if it’s in our house it rarely lasts long. If I’m not surreptitiously devouring a morsel or three, it’s the rest of the household fighting over who gets the last piece. Saving your last rolo for someone you love in our house is a rare occurrence. It’s very much each for their own on the chocolate front !

We lived in France for just short of 3 years and in that time I was able to sample an eclectic mix of chocolate much of which was made for the discerning palate. Despite the fact that I love a square or two of what the European’s term as “chocolate substitute”, I do love a piece of dark cacao rich chocolate and I am pleased to say that my 2 girls have inherited a penchant for dark chocolate too. To see a 2 year old devour with joy, a piece of 90% cocoa dark chocolate is a beautiful sight and long may it continue.


So, when the opportunity arose to sample some of the Christmas Chocolate Selection from Hotel Chocolat, every sense in my body woke up and said “Me, me!”

Thursday 12 December 2013

Britain’s Best Blanket Fort Competition

We’re back !

“Hooray”, I hear you cry or perhaps there are a few groans from the back there? Whatever your reaction we have returned from a mad few weeks of kiddie sickness and life’s challenges getting in the way of my blogging which I have to say I’ve missed – a lot !

So, when I got wind of a fun challenge happening which involved building a Fort made out of blankets, I jumped at the chance of creating some fun and carefree time for myself and the girls.

Sunday arrived, Daddy was off on a Wing Chun (Kung Fu to anyone who’s unsure) seminar for the day, so the girls and I set about making our Fort. The previous week we’d seen Granny and Grampy and the girls had been given a large cuddly blanket each. Perfect material for our fort building and the first things placed over our chairs, table and speaker stand to begin our structure.


I knew we had a stack of other blankets somewhere, however it’s always when you want and need them that you can’t find them ! I have to add that a few days after our Fort building exercise, I found said blankets and was a tad miffed that they’d probably been staring me in the face all along.

Anyway, I digress. We therefore decided to raid Mummy’s scarf box instead to decorate our Fort with colour. Belle took the bunting from her wall and hung it around the front of our beautiful Fort which was really beginning to take shape. Belle had woken that morning with lots of ideas which was great. I love how children’s imaginations can really run wild when they are left to their own devices.


Belle then remembered the flags we had been given when we watched the Torch procession in town for the Olympics in 2012. Out they came from the dress up box and were ceremoniously stuck onto our fort, giving it a very British and English feel all at once.


We surveyed our handy work and agreed that it did indeed look fabulous but needed some added extras. In went a cooker and two seats. By this stage tummies rumbled and lunchtime called. As you can imagine, this had to be served in their newly built fort. Once finished and with full tummies and energy levels renewed, the girls took to becoming a princess lion (yes, I know, makes no sense to me either!) who scared the other princess in the Fort. Then a quick change, and the grand finale involved our princess lion and her friendly Knight guarding their newfound Fort from any intruders.


As you can see from the last picture great fun was had by both the girls and the fort had to stay up all day until Daddy came home. We couldn’t afford for Daddy to miss out on seeing it in all its glory, our very grand and regal Fort.


So what do you think? Have we passed in our ability to build a play fort? I think so and can honestly say we had the best fun together. It took me back to how much fun building dens of any kind is when you are small ................. and big too !

If you’d like to enter Britain’s Blanket Fort Competition with your kids, you don’t need to have a blog, all you need to do is build your fort, take a picture and then tweet it to @MarketFurniture using the hashtag #blanketfortcomp. You could be in with the chance of winning £100 worth of Love2Shop vouchers which you can spend in most high street stores. So what are you waiting for? Get building x


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This week we are also linking this post up to #PoCoLo (Post Comment Love) one of our favourite Linkys with Vicky Welton.


Post Comment Love


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