Blogging

Presents! For Amy! (There was much excitement)

by Veronica on May 5, 2010

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Toys are the bane of my life. No matter how many time I pick them up, they end up all over the floor again as soon as I turn my back. Not to mention that I am fairly sure they are breeding in the bottom of the toy box while I sleep.

Every few months I go through the kids rooms and toys and freecycle a bunch of them. However, there are some toys I can’t bring myself to Freecycle and funnily enough, these seem to be the expensive, better quality toys the children are gifted with at Christmas.

We’re not going to talk about the growing pile of stuffed toys that Amy has that I can’t bring myself to pass along to other children.

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Amy is obsessed by the mail. It might be because we’ve got some lovely friends in the internet who send me things like chocolate, or because I buy a lot of books online, but there is nothing Amy likes more than checking the mail, hoping for packages.

She was a teensy bit disappointed when the other day, she checked the mail and instead of a letter, we got a red post office slip letting us know we had to go and collect a package.

A few hours and a few tantrums later – she’s been a bit difficult lately – we were on our way to the post office, collecting a package from Nuffnang and Mattel. Of course, I didn’t let her open it until we were home again, and she’d helped me clean up all the other toys strewn about the house.

Excitement ensued when she saw what was inside.

TOYS! MUM! THERE ARE TOYS! PRESENTS FOR AMY! TOYS!

Rather excited.

Mattel rather nicely, sent me some vehicles from the Little People Vehicle range and I’m not sure the kids have stopped playing with them yet.

Despite the packaging taking a while to open, with excited kidlets bouncing around me the whole time, I am so pleased with these toys. They are tough and the little people are soft enough that I’m not worried about the children hurting themselves on the edges. These definitely aren’t toys that I will want to get rid of.

Both vehicles, we’ve got a school bus and a tractor, sing. Isaac spends a lot of time pressing the person to make the car sing and then dancing. It’s rather cute.

All around, I love Fisher Price stuff and always have, so I’m not really a hard sell – and anything that comes in the post and is for the children is going to win them over instantly. Isaac incidentally is still crawling around with the cow in his hand, so I think they’ve won him over.

Now, I’ve just got to referee when they decide that they both need the school bus or they are going to die.

And you know, that’s always fun.

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Housekeeping

by Veronica on April 28, 2010

in Blogging

I’ve been head down in books for the last few days, so while I’ve been about on email, I’ve not really been anywhere else. 7 books in 5 days or thereabouts, with another one started. Yes, I’ve been reading and not much else. Recommendations: If you like Fantasy, pick up David Eddings ‘The Belgariad’ (5 books) and ‘The Mallorean’ (5 books). Much recommended, I’ve only just stopped daydreaming about the characters and that’s becauseI’ve been busily reading the Millenium series, by Stieg Larsson.

So, yes, books. The weather has been shitty, so I’ve not had a chance to take any photos and I’m getting twitchy.

On to the crux on the post – blog housekeeping.

Due to astronomical amounts of spam comments – 300 in an hour type thing – I’ve closed all comments on posts older than a month. I just can’t keep trawling through the spam, checking to see if anything real got caught in the filter – which happens more than you’d suspect.

So that’s that.

That’s it really, if you haven’t joined the Aussie Mummy Bloggers with me, then what are you waiting for? It’s not entirely for mummies, or for Australian’s – we’ve even got an honourary Aussies group and some of my very favourite women are there.

I’ll be back properly when I’ve finished losing myself in another world.

Okay?

In the meantime, what books do you adore? I’m always after recommendations…

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Can I just…

by Veronica on April 19, 2010

in Blogging

Can I just give a huge shout out to Warsaw Mommy, who has elected to stay on as a paying sponsor.

Her blog is fantastic and funny and you really should go and subscribe to her.

And as a bonus, she takes gorgeous photos. What more do you need?

Go. Now. Because I said so.

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If anyone else would like to buy adspace here, just email me and we’ll set you up. Not only do you get a spot on the sidebar, but you get a special link in my blogroll AND random shout outs in posts. What more could you want?

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Seven is a bully – a fat bully.

by Veronica on March 29, 2010

in Animals, Sponsored Posts

This post is sponsored by Nuffnang.

Seven was our first dog, a Dogs Home rescue over 2 years ago. Being at the dogs home and previous, god knows where, well, it’s given her Issues. With a capital I.

Seven is a bat

You can’t pat her without her cringing. She is bossy. And dominating.

I mean, she is a terrier x daschund x whatever – she is short and fat and has tiny little stubby legs so she doesn’t run very fast.

Seven 004

And being a small dog, she gets very fat, very quickly.

When I see her getting fat, I put her on a diet – which works …. for a while. Boiled rice, vegetables, raw bones, and a little bit of dog food is my normal plan (not all at once of course).

However, you’ve got to factor in the fact that Seven is a bully and she’s not averse to stealing everyone else’s food while she is dieting.

In fact, I think she has the cats so scared of her that they purposely throw her their food, just to keep her happy. Think schoolyard bully, shaking the weedy nerds upside down for their lunch money.

Yeah, that’s what Seven does.

So Seven gets fat, I put her on a diet, she loses weight, she beats up all the other animals for their food, gains weight again, I notice and put her on a diet again.

It’s like yoyo dieting for dogs.

And now we’ve got Susie, I need to be extra careful that Susie is eating enough and that Seven isn’t stealing all of Susie’s food, as well as the cats food, as well as any mice the cat catch –

As an aside here, this morning I went outside and narrowly missed stepping on a dead mouse. There was another one in the dogs bed, another near the water bowl and one in the hay. Seven was running around in circles, growling any time the cats tried to steal their (dead, cold) mice back. They eventually gave up. Like I said – bully.

So yeah, Seven is a fat bully.

Heh, Seven is eating from Susie's pile here. Like I said, bully.

Nuffnang asked if I’d like to be part of a trial for some new dog food, Pedigree’s Light and Mature for Overweight or Old dogs and I wavered for a while. I mean, it’s dog food.

But then I thought that it would give me an opportunity to talk about Seven and make Taz happy, so I agreed.

I’m under no illusions, when Seven is looking fat, then she is unhealthy. It seems that nowadays, over 40% of Aussie dogs are fat. Heh, I can just imagine them trying to run around a dog park, puffing and clutching at their sides.

This dog food from Pedigree, it’s formulated for less active and/or older dogs, with 30% less calories. I think Seven with her teensy little legs falls under the less active category. Poor Seven.

She seemed to like it to be honest. Not that that is any great test, I’m fairly sure this dog of mine would eat anything if given half a chance. Susie practically inhaled hers as well, despite not really needing it.

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