They say a change is as good as a rest, but when it comes to taking kids on holiday, I’m not so sure.

First off, there is all the stuff. For small people they certainly have a lot of luggage don’t they? Why is it that a baby a tenth of the size of a full-grown adult needs ten times as much paraphernalia? Then of course there’s the travelling, the disrupted routines, the squabbles over strange beds and food. You begin to wonder if it’s really all worth the effort.

One option, particularly when your kids are small, is to go for something targeted particularly at families with children – family breaks with plenty of useful extras laid on to make your holiday as stress free as possible – somewhere like Best Western Hotels.

Now I must admit that until now, I’d always imagined Best Western Hotels as one of those bland motorway service station type chains, but it turns out I couldn’t be more wrong – they have great hotel deals for everyone, whether you’re looking for a smart city break or an indulgent weekend in the country.

BEST WESTERN Park Hall Hotel

Best of all is their new Kids Club. If you’ve got kids aged between 6 – 10, they can sign up for their membership pack, including their own magazine, full of puzzles and stories, sticker book, membership card, luggage tag and a birthday card every year. Each hotel has plenty to keep kids entertained too – from horrible hotel histories to suits of armour, ramparts and dungeons to explore.

Maybe with Best Western a change really is as good as a rest…

Some books you’ll never read? Tasteful bath salts?

Or maybe you’ll get something awesome because you’ve bought it yourself.

A survey by Barclaycard revealed last week that on average we spend a whopping £280 on gifts for ourselves every year. I’m not talking ‘treats’ either, I mean actual presents for ourselves for birthdays and Christmas because we don’t trust other people to buy us something that isn’t awful.

What’s not clear from the survey is if we actually get this money back – are we choosing our pressies and being reimbursed discretely at a later date, or are we simply buying our own presents, full stop?

With me, it’s often the latter.

Being a single parent at Christmas and on birthdays can be a little depressing. You fork out loads of money on the kids, and what do you get in return? Lousy hand-made gifts and cards.* There’s no one in the house apart from you with an actual job, so you get the rather short end of the stick.

A couple of years ago I decided to take matters into my own hands. I was fed up with being the only one of the three of us in bed on Christmas morning not opening a stocking full of gifts. Father Christmas had very kindly left bulging bags of goodies at the foot of Bee and Belle’s beds, so where was mine? I put a note up the chimney, but nothing, nada. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

I went to the cashpoint and took out forty quid. Then I came home and gave it to Bee. “Use this,” I told her, “to make me a Christmas stocking.” She looked a bit taken aback at first, but quickly came round to the idea, because who doesn’t love being given somebody else’s money to spend? “I want lots of things to open, but nothing crap.”

You have to be direct with children I find.

Christmas morning came around and hoorah! Santa had been for me too. It was very exciting and well worth the investment, even if most of the stocking budget seemed to have been blown on a teeny tiny iPod speaker in the shape of a jukebox. (I was more explicit the following year about what I meant by ‘crap’).

What do you reckon? Do you buy your own gifts? Or is it the thought that counts, even if the thought only goes as far as the bath salt aisle of Boots?

*This is a joke Belle. I love you hand-made gifts really. And the cute things you wrap up from your room.

I have a few things I want to mention this week, and it would be hard to think of three things less similar. I’m going to do my best however to blend them into one seamless post. I’m sure you’ll barely realise I’m talking about more than one subject.

First off, ironing. There seem to be two schools of thought on this one – there are the people who spend Sunday afternoons ironing for hours whilst watching the Eastenders omnibus, and people who go more for the ‘fold it carefully before you put it away’ approach. Which are you?

I am certainly the latter, as was proven in the recent burnt-carpet-ironed-onto-back-of-Boyfriend’s-best-shirt incident. It is doubtful that I will ever be allowed to use an iron again to be honest, which is a bit of a shame, as it means I won’t get to play with our new Morphy Richards Power Steam Elite.

There are loads of things I like about the Morphy Richards Power Steam Elite. It’s really smooth and easy to use, it holds loads of water, and is Very Steamy Indeed. You can even use it to steam curtains while they’re up, if you like that sort of thing. One of the best things though is that it looks really snazzy and makes you feel like you doing a very important chore.

On the downside, it does take up a lot of space, and as a complete unit is pretty heavy. Probably not the iron for you if you live in one of those tiny flats with an ironing board that comes out of the wall. (Is that a thing?)

From irons then, to…er…comics!

(Seamless)

It always annoys me that when Belle wants to buy a magazine, she basically has a choice between The Simpsons comic or something in various shades of pink, filled either with popstar gossip or pictures of fluffy bunnies sat in baskets with ribbons round their neck. The range isn’t exactly diverse.

We were really excited then to get sent some copies of The Pheonix, a story comic aimed at kids between 8-11, (although I enjoyed reading it too.) The Pheonix a really lively mix of stories and puzzles, and the illustrations are brilliant. Belle especially liked that there were lots of different types of drawings, rather than just one style of illustrations.

Anything that keeps her away from the TV for a bit gets my vote.

To keep me away from the TV, (slightly smoother), I’ve been reading the new book from Penguin about the London Underground – ‘Underground – how the tube shaped London‘ – celebrating its vibrant 150 year history.

I say ‘reading’ but to be honest I have been mainly looking at the pictures so far. You can’t blame me though, as it’s full of loads of really amazing photographs of the Underground over the years, plus lots of beautiful vintage posters.

Images © TFL from the London Transport Museum collection

My top Underground fact so far though – can you guess what was built in a spare lift shaft at Holloway Road in 1906?

No?

A spiral escalator! Funnily enough, it apparently never made it into public service. The mind boggles…

Can you guess what I was doing yesterday morning? OK, the title gives it away a bit I guess…

I was in London, learning to tango and samba with Total Greek Yogurt. (Not actually dance with yogurt you understand, that would be difficult. Especially if it were not in a tub but just loose.)

We were taught by the very lovely Dee Thresher and Jesus Reyes Ortiz and I had a really brilliant time, not least because after two hours of dancing, (for dancing read ‘tripping over own feet’), we were treated to a delicious yogurt inspired lunch, and we all know that lunch is one of my Best Things.

I thought I’d share some of the photos from the day with you, and if I have inspired you to get up on your feet, Total have some video dance lessons you can copy too.

Our wonderful teachers looking hot

We put our best tango faces on

It’s hard to look elegant when you are concentrating so hard on your feet

We look on admiringly

And smile ladies!

Delicious yogurty lunch

Muffins. Nuff said.

As well as nursing slightly stiff shoulders today, I am also recovering from being told that there are apparently ONE THOUSAND recipes on the Total website! Who’d have thought there was so much you could do with yogurt??

Photos courtesy of Satureyes

There are lots of things I like about our new house. I like that I can sit in the living room and look out into the garden.* I like having a garage and a driveway of sorts and not having to drive around the block for ages looking for a space to park. I even quite like having a bedroom back on the same floor as Bee and Belle and being able to hear them moving about.

One thing I’m not so sure about though is the carpets. They are cream. (Cream!) Throughout the entire house, including the bathrooms.

I’m not exactly well-coordinated at the best of times, (think me crying, unable to park a van), and will quite often just walk into door frames, but in the old house, this was OK, as we mainly had floorboards. Floorboards are much easier to wipe down when you uncontrollably slosh tea on them. Here though, nowhere is safe. I already dropped tomato on the carpet today from my mouth. My cream carpets don’t stand a chance.

The worst bit though is shoes. How do you train two unruly children to take their shoes off at the door?

Belle at Beautiful Days. I fear she will just walk into the house one day like this.

I have a few ideas:

Distraction – It only takes a few seconds for them to remember, so to avoid them getting to the middle of the hall and going ‘Oh yeah!’, I need to dangle something like a malteser from the ceiling, just out of reach. In the time it takes them to figure out how to get it, (stood safely on the mat the whole time), they will have remembered about the shoes.

Positive reinforcement – This, so I’m led to believe, is the most effective approach to parenting. Whenever they take off their shoes at the door they get a little treat like a chocolate button, a pat on the head or the chance to stroke a kitten.

Negative reinforcement – I hire someone to stand by the door, and every time they forget to take off their shoes they get punched (in a gentle, child-friendly way), in the side of the head.

Desperate times and all that.

*I make it sounds like I occasionally glance up and admire the view. What actually happens is that I find myself staring out at nothing in particular for minutes at a time. I’m tired though. I’m sure the staring will improve.

When you think of the beauty brand Dove, what does it mean to you?

If the answer is ‘nothing at all’, this post is probably not going to fascinate you to be honest. You might have more of a laugh reading this one about me getting a smear test instead. If you’re intrigued though, read on.

Dove are currently running an exhibition, exclusively for Dove facebook fans, to encourage women to showcase what the beauty brand means to them.  All you have to do is come up with a creative design that incorporates the iconic bird image and that has emotional resonance for you – from a place that inspires you, to a person who makes you feel beautiful.

The Dove Bird in full flight

I do use Dove products, and have ever since I was a teenager. When I think of Dove I think of something very simple and pure, and I guess it’s this purity that Dove are trying to capture. Dove’s message after all is that beauty isn’t about complicated beauty regimes and treatments, or difficult diets and layers of make-up, beauty is really about something simple – you.

Here’s a little video that tells you a bit more about the exhibition:

The personalised designs can be a photograph, drawing or graphic incorporating the Dove bird – the more creative the better.  Once digitally submitted, the designs will be showcased for fans to enjoy and ‘like’, with the most likes of each week being celebrated on the Facebook wall. The first 100 entries will receive a unique set of 10 printed postcards featuring their bespoke design to share with friends, so why not visit the Dove facebook page now and get creative?

“The Dove By You Exhibition is a chance for our loyal fans to celebrate their creativity with one another.  Real Women have always been at the heart of everything we do, and this new Facebook activity gives them a platform to show just what Dove means to them.” says Ali Fisher, Dove Marketing Manager. “For many of us, the Dove bird has been a symbol in our lives for as long as we can remember. It’s a symbol synonymous with what Dove cherishes most, the celebration of Real Women and Real Beauty.”

This month, as I was just reminded on twitter, not that I’d forgotten or anything, I am hosting a Mental Health Carnival.

The Mental Health Carnival is a monthly round-up of mental health related blog posts, started by Carol from Dance Without Sleeping and hosted by a different blogger every month.

On April 27th I will be publishing a selection of the best posts from across the blogosphere, which makes it sound terribly exclusive, as though I will be reading EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD and then choosing my favourites, but actually it’s not like that at all. If you have written, or plan on writing, a relevant post before April 25th and would like to see it featured, all you have to do is email me the link, and I will include it.

You see, not that exclusive after all is it?

Even if you’ve never written about mental health before, this could be your chance. Perhaps you have a personal story you’d like to tell, thoughts you’d like to share, random words you want to jot down on a scrap of paper and scan, it’s up to you.

Just drop me a line before April 25th* and leave the rest to me.

Thanks!

*This is my birthday by the way. Just saying.