The last one out forgot to start a new thread!

[blueberryboybait]

Morning, hope you all find me!

OH! Enya the one important thing missing from the video is when cooking it, fill it with beens on parchment for 15 minutes then remove the beans to brown and crispen..... let me go find a video

okay that would be beans and not beens. i can't find the info though. depending on the pie you may not need to cook the shell before you fill it anyway.

Re: shop

What about make it entry to everyone who purchases something in December?

You would have to make the prize quite nice, but as Silk says that once you have taken your profit out you could advertise (for example) a 50GBP christmas gift selection from Tempt which sounds lovely but this wouldn't actually cost that much, and could include a £10 off purchases over £50 voucher or something along those lines ...

How about "take a photo of yourself and your tempt purchase and email it to the paper"

If you've got no baking beans, try spoons. It's just to hold the paper and any pastry bubbles down (careful removing them though.)

I have a 2" burn on my wrist from accidentally waving it through the kettle steam yesterday - looks like I've been throughly abused. Spent 5mins with it under cold water immediately but couldn't manage any more time for self-care than that! Ridiculous isn't it, motherhood? Just applying Sudocrem to it whenever it starts to prickle again.

Cavey - I'd be taking legal advice as well as speaking to the union - feckers

Re the notebook/laptop - am sorry and no offence meant to anyone here but she is 7yrs old. If she gets a laptop/notebook now where do we go from here????? We have laptops in the house and she has a really good vtech one as well as access to computers at school. She's not allowed a tv in her room either Sorry if I'm making myself sound old fashioned but I'm hankering after her being a wee girl a touch longer AND if I start buying laptops/notebooks for her then what am I buying for L when she is 7 etc etc

Salta - great idea - purchase either online OR in store to be entered into the comp!

silky - ouch - burns are SORE SORE SORE - aloe vera gel not arnica in this care

We survived the party! 8 children including my two and no strange mothers wanting to stay (apart from one good friend of ours) so it wasn't too busy and I think they all had a lovely time Need to go and lie down now I think, but really ought to wake Thor who didn't nap at lunchtime and is now conked out on the sofa...

Hope to be back later for chat, and now DD's birthday is done can start to get excited about Christmas, hurrah!

Bibi - I am with you on that one, DH can't understand why DD1 will have to wait until she is 20 much older until she has any thing of the sort. I agree with the if you do it for E where do you go for the next 2? What about a game for the laptop that is just for her? Does she play club penguin?

Busy day here sorting out bedrooms as E is moving into the spare room eventually and they are coming to remove the last of the doggy stained carpets from when we moved in.

Fjornyorny - yay for successful party and no hanger on-ers

I was going to get her that as a DS game but maybe should get her the PC game instead? Once she is in the box room on her own we have our ancient computer that we can set up but I'm just not comfortable with getting her a laptop and we couldn't afford it either

well done for the lovely birthday party Hots and bless Thor

Congrats on the party fjorgyn, glad they enjoyed it

bb dh is waiting til after his meeting with the union but legal advice may be an option. They've basically got 2 people to say they both were there when they heard him agree to this womans' husband working 'illegally', and then that has been rounded off with them both saying how nice this other woman is (the guilty party), and that she would never lie - despite the transcript of the interview not asking a question about her character, they apparently both felt the need to say that . One of the statements was saying that dh always turned a blind eye to illegal behaviour . Its the unjustness of it all that upsets me

cece fucking bastards How I loathe dishonesty. Please do take legal advice. I hope you stitch them up like kippers.

TS J is getting an easel for Christmas but otherwise just a big stocking full of small bits. Our house is packed enough as it is! Am sure the grandparents will go a bit mad though.

Fjorgyn hurrah for successful party, give DD a happy birthday hug for me :) Thor does love an afternoon kip on the sofa doesn't he?

Nipped down to London yesterday night to see my best friend off on her adventures abroad, and ended up staying with my dad which was lovely. Had a nice lazy morning then he drove me back to St Pancras - it took 1.5 hours London is too packed (and people drive like twats).

We have snow here though, a couple of inches, and lots of black ice. DH took DS out twice today and both times he apparently refused to walk on the snow

sounds like a lovely time Star - apart from the traffic.

Cece - I'm with Star and right ready to tool up whenever you need me - bastards.

I've had to cut all my nails off in an attempt to get E to stop biting hers we're growing them to put polish on for christmas! I'm sure she's only biting them because I'm shouty/barky/busy mum

WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY!!

Hello everyone. Sending loads of happiness your way. I'm also looking forward to FJ's party pics. Glad it went well.

and we have a new christmas list from dd1- an ipod touch, dog for the DS, princess shaker maker (?) mario wallpaper (not happening) and two other things that I can't read thanks to D scribbling on them.

Damn my friend for getting her daughter (DD1's BF) an ipod touch for her 8th birthday a few weeks ago. Her 10yr old is getting an ipad so I shouldn't have been surprised

LOL Bibi I'm with you. I feel crap enough about the amount of tv and lack of exercise my kids get. Our kids are rationed to weekends and holiday use or we would never get on the computer. I hate the idea of us all in different rooms plugged into the net or playing electronic games - the time will come soon enough so am enjoying the real life while it lasts. Having same argument with DH about getting a Wii (too much work for me policing the squabbles, I'll put that off as long as I can thanks).

We have a wii Silky but it only gets played on family nights (we had one tonight but watched a DVD) or when DD1 has a friend over for a sleepover/play date which isn't often. DD2 has little interest in it as do myself and DH. We probably should play it more but who can be arsed?!

bibi no offence taken . dd1 only uses the computer for about 2 hrs a week for cbeebies games. I suspect it is FAR more difficult when they get to 6 and start talking about social networking .
lovely eve here, girls and dh been in hot tub and curry eaten. Mil to be survived 2moro

What did you do ts?

why oh why oh why did I google

night all

i must confess my dd1 is on the computer a lot. i'm a computer geek from way back. my father worked for a very prominent computer company. i was around massive computer systems in businesses/banks/hospitals daily and when home systems became available we had the latest/greatest as soon as they could be purchased. because of the internet, i have to do more policing with her than my parents had to do with me. although i am thankful that the internet is no longer charged by the minute. i kind of got into trouble with that one once.

even though i'm very lax, i did take the netbook away from dd1 and forbid her from using dh's laptop this week AND required her to play with the toys in her room or go outside and play with the toys outside. you'd have thought i'd asked her to eat a brick. she's doing better with my demands. very strange it has to be "a demand." GO PLAY IN YOUR ROOM! sounds so terrible doesn't it. LOL!

crispy, the social networking thing is out of this world for kids her age and older. she's allowed to look over my shoulder at my account for now but not have her own account. it's scary when i think of kids having that kind of freedom when they also lack self control and/or understanding of what they shouldn't do in a public forum.

and to prove i'm not a total waste-oid we, as a family, went out running all over the place today, mostly outside and by the lake. we surprised my dad and took him to lunch. basically just bummed around together having fun. it was nice.

wrapped three presents after our return. dcs wanted to unwrap them. this is going to be a tough lesson for at least one dc this year.

epic post over.

DH & I consider ourselves recovering gamers (ok mine were pc shareware but equally addictive as his old Gameboy) so whilst he is forgetting this, I know that there would be times when one of us was playing by ourselves, trying to blank everyone else and going nuts at them for interrupting. This is fine when it's a worthwhile activity you're doing (eg getting personalised advice on home management via Mumsnet), but there just isn't room for a game-addicted adult in a family, it just upsets everyone. As a wife I refuse to share DH's time with a stupid game, as a mother I refuse because it interferes with all the precarious but essential systems I need in place to get through a day without letting my kids down (my biggest phobia.)
I should really tell him all this, shouldn't I?

Hello everyone we have even MORE snow today but our latest philosophical response is to keep going.

I am reluctant to introduce a laptop to the equation here but it's really the last stand because ds does have the console game thing and an ipod. And he can touchtype! He is 12 though. Even now I have concerns around concentration/focus and the interrupt, interrupt culture. Friends of his are on Facebook etc but I think he's still too young for that. We have just started allowing ds2 the occasional bit of television, but I am really glad we held out as long as we did because with ds1 blazing the trail all the gamey stuff is going to be available to ds2 a lot earlier. He can already do the iPhone swipe'n'tap which is a bit unnerving in a 2 year old and I can't say it exactly gladdens my heart!!

I feel I spend too much time on the computer / checking my phone / reading and thereby being unavailable, though technically in the same space (and technically in charge) and I really want to limit that in the new year because of pots calling kettles.

I must confess to loving it when ds1 got old enough to watch stuff with me, rather than me watching stuff with him (I am so fed up with animated films etc, I loved them at the start). He likes quizzes and Masterchef and stuff like that and it's v companionable. We only have 1 tv and that means we are more likely to watch stuff together I think.

Oh dear shall I stop now ?

Ursula - D can do the swipe tap too and I have promised DD1 we'll watch the first Harry Potter in a moment when we don't have the smaller 2 - very much looking forward to that

We have 3 tvs but are never split up watching them and the one in our room is very rarely on - waste of time having it in there but Dh wanted it so that when he was on late shift I could watch it

we had the worst thunder and lightning storm I've ever experienced last night - over 2 hours of what sounded like the storm right over the house [meep] We've about 5 inches of snow and it's still lying but it's horrible wet snow and I'm not going out in it DH made it home, well he's in bed anyway and that's all that matters!! He's back out in it again tonight though and I'm on early shift which means out before the roads are cleared/gritted

am so wishing I'd done the food shopping yesterday

Only one telly here too, permanently tuned to cbeebies, and DD is allowed to play on the laptop but only cbeebies and Poisson Rouge (which is fab) DH is a mad PS2-er but only once the rest of us are in bed, luckily he does not seem to need as much sleep as me.

No more snow here either, am torn between of all the missed sledging opportunities and [relief] that I might make it to asdas tomorrow. DD rounded off her party day by being sick twice in the night, once in the loo and once all over her bed I slept through it all luckily DH managed to sort her out both times. Poor baby, she is still a bit off it today, am hoping it was just too much haribo/cake/jelly/crisps etc at her party but waiting on tenterhooks for the first accusatory phone call from a food-poisoned party guest...

Oh god the Wakey shame of actually typing asdas instead of asda please don't judge my common northern ways