March 20, 2012 by Lauren
With Easter fast approaching the shops have been filling up with chocolate eggs, gifts and craft ideas all adorned with cute little chicks and bunnies. The Boys have been doing Easter crafts and Easter themed baking at their Stay and Play group for the past few weeks and are loving it so we were thrilled when Poundworld sent us a huge box of Easter goodies.
Category Reviews | Tags: activities,chicks,chocolate,craft,easter,easter egg hunt,goodies,poundworld | No Comments
November 30, 2011 by Lauren
Hotel Chocolat is one of my favourite shops, with wall to wall chocolate all of which looks absolutely delicious what more can a girl ask for?! I always make a beeline for the gift section, no matter what time of year it is because they seem to be spot on at making the perfect gift with combinations of their finest chocolate. Their Christmas gift selection has to be their most impressive, especially this year. From advent calenders to huge selection boxes there really is something for everyone and every budget. Every time I go into town I try and drag the Hubby into Hotel Chocolat but he refuses to let me stand awestruck staring at chocolate heaven unless it’s close to Christmas. I think he’s just trying to get some gift inspiration by letting me loose in there! However this year my delightful two year old has become a little chocoholic so we are refusing to introduce him to the magic chocolate shop in town for our own sanity, which has led to me missing out. Imagine my pure excitement when Hotel Chocolat asked me if I would like to review something from their Christmas range! I headed straight for the Christmas section on their website and had a very through browse. After what seemed like an age I settled on the Christmas Stocking.
Continue reading “Review – Hotel Chocolat Christmas Gifts” »
Category Reviews | Tags: chocolate,christmas,fair trade,gifts,hotel chocolat,origin chocolatiers | No Comments
November 22, 2011 by Lauren
Category 12 Days of Christmas | Tags: 12 days of christmas,chocolate,chocolate pizza,choconchoc,Codorníu,food gifts,fudges,gifts,green and blacks,guide,hotel chocolat,prezzy box,unique boutique | No Comments
August 5, 2011 by Lauren
A few weeks ago I wrote a post introducing you to Thinking Slimmer. It has been 21 days since I started my Chocoholics Slimpod which claimed it would cure my chocolate addiction. I will admit I was sceptical. I ate chocolate like it went out of fashion. I would go to a shop and spend roughly £5 a time and eat it in a day, even though sometimes it didn’t get close to satisfying the craving.
About 10 days after starting the Slimpod I realised that I hadn’t eaten any chocolate for a couple of days and that I had a bag of M&M’s in my bedroom that had been there for over 24 hours. It was a bit of a shock so I reached for the M&M’s to calm myself down. After about 2 mouthfuls I sealed the bag and put them in my drawer. I have never not finished chocolate but I just didn’t fancy it. That bag of M&M’s lasted me 5 days.
At around about day 17 my Mum mentioned to me that I had lost a fair bit of weight so I should go and weigh myself. I stepped hesitantly onto the scales and looked down. I nearly fell off them! In 17 days I had lost a whopping 11lb! After I had Spud the weight I had gained did just fall off but with Spike I had remained the same weight that I was the day after he was born. I think the sheer amount of calories I was eating through chocolate were counteracting my bodies natural ability to shed baby weight and now that I am not binge eating every night it has started to get rid of the excess weight I was carrying.
I do still eat chocolate. Yesterday I ate a Yorkie. But I ate one Yorkie not three and I enjoyed it.
I love my Slimpod and I know that I may need to re-listen to it in the future if I start to slip but for now I am able to go to sleep without headphones in and still not binge on chocolate every day.
Category Reviews, Thinking Slimmer | Tags: addiction,baby weight,chocoholic,chocolate,cure,slimpod,thinking slimmer | 1 Comment
July 14, 2011 by Lauren
I want to say Spud is spoilt but I don’t want you envisaging a screaming little spoilt brat that gets everything he demands so I will phrase it as “we like to treat Spud every now and then.” To be honest it’s more now than then but you get my drift.
When he was a baby it was bad, he was our first baby so every parent knows what that is like! I had him on my own most of the time because the Hubby lived away so I was constantly buying things without anybody arguing about it. I didn’t think it was a substitute for the fact that Daddy wasn’t there until Hubby went away with work. The day Hubby left I felt terrible and took Spud shopping where he got a great bag full of toys. I felt incredibly guilty that he would spend the next 12 weeks without seeing or even speaking to his Daddy. I was constantly told that Spud had enough and didn’t need half the stuff I got for him but I enjoyed giving him new things! He was too young to understand that when we went out he got something and he never kicked up a fuss if we left somewhere empty handed. Luckily we started living with the Hubby and stopped being able to afford to waste money at around the age when he would have started to question it.
Spud at 8 months - only 1 month before Xmas
Spud at 8 weeks - his first bout of toys
Spud at 7 months - yet more new toys
He doesn’t get upset if we don’t get him something that he asks for. In fact the other week we went shopping and he picked up a Choco Dip, I told him to put it back and good as gold he put it right back where he found it. We paid and as we were leaving a lady that witnessed the incident handed him a Choco Dip that she had purchased for him because he had been such a good boy. He still gets a big treat every so often but what I am really blogging about is the dreaded trip to the local shop with rows and rows of chocolate and sweets! Now he usually always asks for a treat when we go to pick up random essentials and like a lot of parents we threw a chocolate bar or bag of haribo down on the counter for him. The last month of so it has dawned on me how much sugar he was actually eating and then I was told about a 5 year old that we know, having to undergo general anesthetic to have 4 teeth removed due to decay from too many sweets. This has terrified me. Spud doesn’t eat an excessive amount of sugar, one or two biscuits a day, a small chocolate bar every other day. We brush his teeth twice a day which for a while was a struggle but now he lets us get to every tooth. His teeth look perfect. But there is still a nagging feeling in my head.
So the last time we were at the local shop I picked him up a packet of stickers when he asked for sweets. They were Lightning McQueen so of course he wanted them instead and all thoughts of sweets evaporated. They cost the same, if not less, than the packet of chocolate buttons that he wanted. He loved them so much that the Hubby and I decided that perhaps it was a brilliant idea. Fool proof perhaps?! A lot of you are probably asking “well why don’t you just say no?” But I like treating him, I love his reaction when he gets something nice, he doesn’t expect it and he certainly deserves it because for a two year old he is far from terrible!
I went to the big Newsagent and got him the sticker album which he adores and we spent some time putting in his stickers. It’s very precious to him and the only thing he owns that he will not let near Spike!
It came with a large double sided poster, one side for the special sparkly rare stickers and the other a picture of the characters. He has insisted that it go on the playroom wall and shouts all the names of the vehicles at it when he’s playing!
Today we went to the local shop and he asked for stickers and not sweets, I think the woman behind the counter who knows him nearly fell off her chair! If this continues I will be ecstatic, I don’t want him ending up addicted to chocolate like I am and I certainly don’t want him to have bad teeth!
Category General | Tags: chocolate,decay,Panini stickers,stickers,sugar,sweets,teeth,treats | No Comments
June 23, 2011 by Lauren
I’ve never done baking with Spud before. You will have gathered from a previous entry that I don’t bake very often ever. Now that Spike has started napping in his cot I have been trying to engage Spud in quiet activities for 45 minutes or so in the morning so that he doesn’t disturb his brother who is always afraid that he’s missing something.
Today much to the Hubby’s surprise (more comments of “what’s gotten into you?!) I decided to let Spud help me bake. I am a total control freak and perfectionist so letting a 2 year old loose on MY cakes was a daunting prospect. Luckily he did really well – he’s my budding chef.
You’ll have to excuse the decor, the industry that Hubby works in has suffered a lot of cuts recently and they can’t won’t update our drab 1970′s kitchens!
He soon got bored so I let him help to unload the dishwasher.
At last they were ready!
By this time Spike was awake so we went to go and do some colouring whilst the cakes cooled. I left him to two minutes and came back to this:
At least he found something to occupy himself! The cakes were now cool enough to decorate and Spud informed me that he would quite like them to be “mishy mowse cecks,” Who am I to argue?!
So there you go, the woman that doesn’t bake, did it again!
And now for the seal of approval:
Category General | Tags: baking,cakes,chocolate,fairy,mickey mouse | 1 Comment
June 15, 2011 by Lauren
Well the house is still sparkly and the washing basket is empty. For once it’s not just piled up in the garage in front of the washing machine, it’s actually all washed, folded and put away in everyone’s cupboards! If the hubby wasn’t suspicious enough from my sudden clean and tidy bug tonight I stunned him even more. After the boys have gone to bed I’m usually gagging to put my feet up and just slob out either on my pc or staring mindlessly at some rubbish soap opera. Tonight I said I was going to the shop and left pretty sharpish. The hubby assumed I had gone to buy some chocolate for my night in front of the tv.
About ten minutes after I got in the hubby came running into the kitchen to find out what the weird whirring noise was. There I was stood adding ingredients to the mixer whilst he stood there with his jaw on the floor. He gave me a very worried look and said “Are you ill?!” I should be offended but anybody that knows me, knows that I am far from the perfect housewife! I lack confidence when cooking so don’t often do it, I married a Chef but rather than learn from him I just let him cook for me! Even when I called my mum, whilst the cakes were cooking, I got a similar reaction. Ever the pessimist though she did ask me how long I thought I’d be able to keep it up for!
So here are my creations, from the woman who can’t bake
p.s I will update tomorrow with the results on whether I have just poisoned my family!
Category General | Tags: baking,cakes,chocolate,fairy,housework,laundry | 2 Comments
