I’ve spent a lot of money over the last few months. Partly it has been the classic ‘I’m sad about breaking up so I’m going to buy some pretty wine glasses’ type of spending, but also there has been a fair amount of eating out because I don’t want to cook and trips to the cinema because I want to entertain Belle but also want to sit quietly in the dark for two hours.

Budgeting as a single parent generally is tricky on several levels.

Firstly there is the fact that you only have one income. Dur, obviously that’s tricky. You have to basically spend the same as if you were a two-parent family though, because you have to live in a proper house and have a TV licence and pay bills and what not.

Secondly, and the bit I actually find hardest, is that you end up solely responsible for entertainment. You can’t tag team the amusements so that one of you can have a nice lie down with a book while the other one attempts wholesome craft activities, and it all ends up feeling a bit intense. As a result, I often resort to the aforementioned cinema trips and other outings that dilute the feelings of responsibility a little but that inevitably cost money.

Thirdly, you basically have no time to do anything and the fact there is no one to research car insurance prices for you makes you cry, and then you have to play patience on your phone for a little while to calm down, get distracted and forget to pay the credit card bill. (This last bit could just be me.) View Post

Follow:

I’ve been in my new house now for a couple of weeks and things are looking pretty good. In fact, they looked pretty good after just a few days.

I fear that this initial impressive level of organisation though may all have been an illusion. For starters, I pretended when I moved out of the old house to forget about the attic. I also casually brushed aside the thought of the cupboard under the stairs, so when I went back a week later to do the handover I had to stuff another entire load of crap into the car before I could give the landlord back his keys.

When I then arrived back at the new house then, I had nowhere to put it.

Opps.

I squeezed it in though. No one will ever know. View Post

Follow:

It’s a good question.

Should kids have their criminal records wiped clean at 18 if the crimes were non-violent?

Hmm, tricky.

What exactly does Mr Tumble keep in his spotty bag?

I dread to think.

It’s questions like these that we are asking every week in my Beamly TV chat room.

Beamly Slummy single mummy room

View Post

Follow:

I have an ISA. I got it a couple of years ago and it made me feel like a proper grown-up lady. I use it to save up money for my tax bill, but as I am not very good at minimising my tax liability, I normally end up hitting my ISA limit before I had saved up enough. This made me feel less grown-up and more like I probably should be managing my finances better, keeping track of expenses and not just putting random receipts into a small box in the shape of a treasure chest.

I won’t be hitting the limits this year though! (Although the treasure chest receipt box is still a thing.)

New ISA

Good news for me in the last budget was that from July 1st 2014 (that’s Tuesday if you can believe it, Christmas decorations at the ready…) the cash ISA limit will no longer be £5,940. Instead the limits on cash ISAs and stocks and shares ISAs are going to be combined, meaning you can invest up to £15,000 per year in total, split however you like between the two.

Even better is that existing ISAs will automatically be converted, great news for me as I haven’t even done things like tell my gas company that I have moved yet. Converting an ISA is just never going to happen.

(Before anyone starts tutting me I have done opening and closing meter readings, just not actually done anything with them yet.)

The changes bring lots of benefits and should mean the whole thing is much simpler. I found it tricky enough remembering the limit of £5,940 – £15,000 is a much nicer number. If however you’re still not entirely clear on what the changes might mean for your savings then Scottish Friendly have put together this short video that sets everything out very clearly.

If you want to find out more about Scottish Friendly you can follow them on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Sponsored post

Follow:

Recently my sister Annabel took her family to Wychwood Festival. This is how they got on.

A few weeks ago we donned our wellies, slung our bindles over our shoulders and headed off for a family adventure to Wychwood festival. From the moment we drove straight to the family camping area (those who arrived before us did tell of hours stuck in queues but us being our usual disorganised selves managed to arrive slightly later on the Friday and cruised straight in) and unloaded we felt the jollity and friendliness of this festival. It is the loveliest, cosiest, most relaxing festival I have ever been to.

Now, admittedly those are not necessarily the qualities your average festival goer looks for – more the availability of alcohol, quality music and medic tent for emergency contraceptives – but when you have small children those hedonistic festival days are but a distant memory and for a family, Wychwood is absolutely spot-on.

The beauty of Wychwood though is that it does not compromise on the festival experience just because it is family friendly – some great acts played the stages from The Stranglers and the Boomtown Rats to The Levellers and Craig Charles; there is something to cover most musical tastes. You can still drink to your heart’s content and mingle with grown-ups, it is just well tailored to children as well.

We were struck first by just how small and cosy it is. You don’t have to spend hours traipsing through muddy fields to reach anything and a good portion of the festival is taken up with the children’s area which kept my three year old and five year old wholly entertained. They were particularly happy with the free Little Tikes village – packed full of toy houses, castles, kitchens and those awesome red and yellow cars that I always wanted as a child.

Little Tykes Wychwood Festival

There was so much for children that it was impossible to do it all; there were bug hunts, bubbleologists, clay modellers, drum workshops and everything else you might expect. Another highlight was the Waterstone’s children’s literature tent that put on talks from illustrators, authors and all sorts of other activities and then there were the most talented face painters I have ever witnessed.

In the interests of a full review my son took it upon himself to try every stall available to him so he go-karted, he slid down a giant inflatable slide, he is now the proud owner of the biggest bubble wand known to man and the bounciest balloon and his personal favourite – a helium balloon dinosaur that has legs and walks on the ground.

Grown-ups were not left out though, we sampled the odd tipple from the variety of bar and beer tents, you could also unwind in the healing field with a variety of treatments on offer, the music was good (Baraka were a particular favourite of ours as well KSH and the Going Goods) and being such an intimate festival you could really get up close to the acts and see them from all over the festival.

I would love to say that performances from beloved bands such as The Stranglers or The Levellers were the main stage draw but no…Justin Fletcher (Cbeebies’ Mr. Tumble to any pre-school parents out there) seemed to have the biggest crowd of the weekend on the Saturday morning. I have to admit, I was not looking forward to it having always been mildly disturbed by his voice but it was a cracking performance.

It is hard to find fault with Wychwood, the facilities were good (always a clean toilet nearby – without queues), the staff and stewards were friendly and helpful without being overbearing, the campsite was flat and spacious (advantage of being held on Cheltenham Racecourse) and it was just a really beautiful atmosphere. We enjoyed it enough to book tickets for next year and can’t wait to go back.

Wychwood Festival

Disclosure – Annabel was given tickets to the festival for the purposes of this review.

Follow:

I walked into Taunton town centre this morning.

*stop the press*

It was the first time I had actually left the new house on foot since we moved in as Belle is still on crutches; our outings so far have mainly been to Sainsbury’s where she can wheel herself around in a complimentary wheelchair and we can pretend we are anywhere other than Taunton.

As I walked I tried to think of the positives of having moved out of Bristol. “It’s really handy,” I thought to myself, “that it’s only a ten minute walk to the bank for me to pay this cheque in.” In Bristol I had to go all the way down into the city centre for a branch of the Halifax.

And then I ran out of things. I had been walking for more than five minutes and there was not a single Boston Tea Party in sight and I started to cry.

I totally realise that crying in the street is not a normal reaction to not being within walking distance of a decent eggs florentine. I am clearly the most ridiculously spoilt, ungrateful woman ever, but I waited so bloody long to move to Bristol and even though no one apart from me seemed to like it, it was everything I ever thought it would be. It felt like home. And now I’ve left and I can’t help but think ‘SHIT SHIT SHIT WHAT HAVE I DONE??’

*stamps feet like a toddler who has been refused a giant candy floss*

Eggs florentine Taunton

I do try to remember that I felt like this when I moved to Bristol as well, that it always takes a while to adjust to somewhere new, but that’s part of the problem I suppose, that Taunton isn’t new. I lived here for a few years ten years ago, and never really liked it much then. Ten years on and am I really simply back where I started, only older and more tired?

So I paid in my cheque – that really was handy – then it started to rain so I went to Starbucks and cried in there instead.

This post is an extract from my new novel – 1001 First World Problems to Experience Before You Die 

Follow:

#candidmoments

“Every two minutes, we take more pictures than the whole of humanity in the 1800s.”

 

That’s a lot isn’t it?

That’s a statistic from an article written in 2012, and the number of photos we take is ever increasing, so lord only knows where we are now. It’s so easy though isn’t it? It’s practically compulsory nowadays to whip your phone out and take a picture at every possible occasion. Try going out for dinner with bloggers – no one eats for at least five minutes after the food arrives. View Post

Follow:

A few months ago I went to meet Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company. The message Camila had for us was a simple yet powerful one – there are thousands of children living in the UK who are not OK. They are living in poverty, experiencing neglect, witnessing violence and there is simply not the help available to make a difference. The way things are being done needs to change.

These children need our help and that is why I’m supporting the #seethechild campaign to change Children’s Services in the UK.

I could write hundreds of words about it, but nothing is going to make you feel it quite like watching this video.

Please help these children escape from poverty, abuse and neglect. Take a few seconds to sign the petition by texting I SEE to 63000 or visiting seethechild.org.

#seethechild

 

Follow:

We’re in!

First up, a massive cheer please to my crack moving team – my sister’s boyfriend Aaron and my brother James. Despite not being able to get to me until 3pm on Friday afternoon they had everything packed, moved to Somerset and emptied into the new house before 10pm, including our hour in the pub for pizza and cider – amazing work!

Now we’re here and settling into a routine of sorts, although it is most notable at the moment by its absence. The school I want Belle to go to, the one less than a mile away, is full, so we are having to appeal for a place. We have a hearing on July 15th, which realistically means she is probably going to be at home with me now until September. It’s tough balancing this with needing to work, but we’ll muddle through. I suspect that my idea of ‘home education’ will involve a lot of educational visits to Homesense. (Working out the cost of all the pretty new things I want is definitely maths.)

Not being one to enjoy being surrounded by boxes, I have cracked on and unpacked as fast as I can. I want to make the house our own as soon as possible, to make the fresh start as fresh and as positive as it can be. All this has been helped by the sunny weather and the fact that we have more than our fair share of windows for a house this size – it is much harder to feel sad or regretful when sunshine is streaming in.

Already I have a couple of favourite spots in the house, spots full of pretty things that I can look up at and smile and that make me feel happy to have moved.

These are they:

Coloured wine glasses

 

Spiral staircase

What are your favourite places in your house? How do they make you feel?

Follow:

The big day is nearly here. Tomorrow I am leaving Bristol.

Although the last couple of months have felt like forever, moving has at the same time crept up on me and I suddenly feel like I have an awful lot to do and not enough time to do it in. I have spent the last half an hour running up and down the stairs with boxes and bags, hoping to clear my mind of the worry and the doubt, but still it lingers.

Moving under any circumstances I know is hard. You spend so long building up a life around you, collecting stuff, surrounding yourself with things, and then suddenly there it is, just a stack of boxes. You literally have to pick up every single thing you own, see it, put it in a box, take it out again. You unpack, try to recreate what was there before, or maybe something different, but what does any of it even mean?

IMAG3154

These things of course are more than just things – they represent interests, hobbies, passions and shared memories, which is why I suppose that having to look at every single one of them, when so many of the memories are no longer shared, is so sad.

Everyone keeps telling me that a fresh start is a good thing, that once we are in a new house everything will feel better, and I know that’s true, that feelings do fade, but I’m just not convinced I want them to.

Follow:

How do your kids feel about science? As geeky as science has a reputation for being, it’s actually something that’s really easy to engage kids with – there are explosions, chemical reactions, mini beasts, space rockets, what’s not to love?? We’ve been to The Science Museum in London a few times and I have always loved it as much as Bee and Belle. My favourite bit is actually in the basement where you get to see home appliances through the ages. It’s not rockets, but I love the nostalgia of it.

I asked Belle what her favourite bit about science was.

“It’s the way there are actual answers,” she said. “It’s not like English where you just have to make up stories, there are actual right and wrong answers.”

I know exactly what she means. This is why I always enjoyed maths at school – I love that you can check your work in the back of the textbook and give yourself a big tick, knowing it is 100% right, with no room for subjectivity. I always liked molecular chemistry too. I am so rock and roll.

If your kids are interested in science or you are looking to spark a bit more enthusiasm for the subject, then The Energy Show at The Science Museum is definitely worth a visit. Check out this video to find out more about it:

The show is running from Tuesday 22 July – Sunday 3 August 2014 so now is the time to start planning your trip. Here are my top three tips to make sure your visit to The Energy Show goes quite literally with a bang:

Set up your schedule

I’m not saying you have to go all Monica on it and plan out every minute of your day, but do make sure you allow plenty of time for everything. Travelling across London always takes far longer than you imagine and you don’t want to be late for all the science fun times. Make sure you build in lots of time for exploring the museum as it will be busy in school holidays.

Bonus tip: Think about food too. The Science Museum does have several cafes, but these can get very busy and aren’t cheap if you are a large family. A better option could be to take your own food, as they do have picnic areas.

Plan your travel in advance

You can save an awful lot of money on travel by booking in advance and committing yourself to particular trains or coaches, so do shop around for the best deals. Don’t forget to look for extra discounts too – a Coach Card from National Express or a Family Rail Card are both good value and if you’re travelling to London you’ll probably find it pays for itself in just one trip.

Bonus tip: Kids aged under 11 can travel free on the tube and buses around London when accompanied by a paying adult, leaving you more money for the Science Museum gift shop.

Think about accomodation

Travelling with children is hard work, so it might be nicer for everyone if you can turn your visit into a mini-holiday and stay overnight. London accommodation doesn’t have to break the bank either; there are three Holiday Inns within a decent distance of The Science Museum including Holiday Inn London Kensington Forum, (less than five minutes away by car), Holiday Inn London Regents Park and Holiday Inn London Bloomsbury.

Bonus tip: Book in advance to take advantage of the Holiday Inn 21 Day Super Saver rates.

Are you a science geek? What’s your favourite science topic?

Sponsored post

Follow:

The big day is here! Get your best frock on, mix yourself a mojito – it’s party time! I’m joining Gocompare.com tonight at 8pm for an hour of chat about travelling with children.

We’ve all been there; you’re ten minutes into a journey and everyone is complaining that they are bored, you’ve made one toilet stop already and somehow the car is covered in a thin layer of Wotsits. An hour in and you realise you’ve forgotten the phone charger, spare pants and your credit card.

This bit might not be fun, but it’s worth it for that moment when everyone finally relaxes. The sun is shining, the wine is chilling in the fridge and the children are exploring, leaving you in peace, even if just for a blissful few moments. That’s what holidays are all about.

Get into the holiday spirit by joining the Twitter chat tonight and talking all things travel.

Gocompare Twitter party

So here’s how to join the party fun. Simply follow me – @mummyblogger – and @Gocompare, and join us at 8pm tonight, using the hashtag #gocomoneytalks. We’ll be giving away two £50 Boots vouchers during the chat, so come and get involved for your chance to win.

See you tonight!

For full T&Cs please see here. This is a sponsored post.

Follow: