Yesteday I had to go on a course for work, I can hear you all moan at the mere thought of it and to be honest so was I. That was until someone on twitter pointed out that this is me time. After that I thought about it in a different way, you see when I left the house to get the train the kids were still in their pyjamas. I managed to get myself up and ready and leave without having to do to much in the way of mummy duties.

I walked to the train station at my pace not a snails pace, after catching my first of two trains I was now at Manchester Picadilly train station. Starbucks time. As I waited for my next train enjoying my large filter coffee from starbucks and reading the local newspaper I received a phone call from hubby. It was 8:25am surely he would be manically trying to get the girls ready? well actually no, he was at school and wanted to know why the gates were not open. Seriously he was at school 35 minutes early and aparently he had been there for the last 10 minutes.

So anyway I continued to enjoy my day (well not the course bit but the journey there and back anyway) until it was time to pick Elizabeth up from school. As I collected her I realised her trousers were on back to front and had been since daddy dressed her that morning and one of the mums said she had to help him work out where to put the dinner money and school fund despite me repeating those instructions atleast 3 times that morning.

So yes I enjoyed my starbucks and my train journeys with no children and I enjoyed not being a mum in the morning but I think it might be quite a while before I will leave hubby to do the school run again.

This year hubby has decided that he wants a real tree, ok I can see the loveliness and family spirit of going and choosing one together and all the other romantic stuff that you see in films but hubby is also a clean freak so I cant help thinking he is going to stress himself out over all the pine needles.

I have never had a real tree so I decided to read up on it and you shouldnt really get one until about 2 weeks before christmas (unless getting a potted live one). Mmm that seemed a bit late to me and seen as we are at the Tots100 Xmas Party that weekend it would mean buying one the weekend after. So we would not have a tree until the week before christmas.

I decided that we should get a small plastic tree for in the mean time and then it can go in Elizabeths room when we get the real one. Today after school Elizabeth decided to put the tree up. It was the perfect height for her as it is just 4 foot tall. She wanted a rainbox tree so we have been picking up some lovely bright decorations whenever we see them and we got some coloured fairy lights.

So what I want to know is what type of tree do you have? do you put your decorations on in a certain order? Tinsle and lights first or baubles first? Do you have any other christmas decorating rituals?

This year I decided to get the girls involved in Operation Christmas Child. In previous years I have just quietly done it myself but I decided that would enjoy the experience.

Alison was a bit young to understand it but she enjoyed packing her box of things for a little boy.

I explained to Elizabeth that we were getting some things together to send to children who would not have a christmas present this year, she asked if they had been naughty and when I asked why she said because otherwise Santa would give them a present. Mmmm didnt really think this through did I. Anyway I finally talked myself out of this conundrum by saying they do not have much money so can get nice things and dont even have toothbrushes. This worried Elizabeth alot as she is now scared that all there teeth might fall out and she said can we send it quicker so that we are not to late to give them their toothbrushes.

Apart from the toys and the skipping ropes which I picked up in our local poundshop everything else was from Wilkinsons and all of it together came to less than £5 for both boxes.

They contain
Flanel
Sponge
Toothpaste
Toothbrushes
paint set
comb
pencils
notebook
crayons
colouring pencils
tissues
Plus a skipping rope each and a toy.

Hopefully they will be enjoyed when they finish their journey.

You can join in too but you have to be quick (by the way Shoe zone have lots of boxes stored away in their shops for anyone needing one)  or if you dont have time to do that you can still help out and buy a prefilled shoe box for as little as £11. Check out how to do that and also what you can put in your shoesboxes here http://www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk/

Yep I am finally getting involved in this debate because I am both.

Yep you read that right I am a Blagger and a Blogger and do you know what? I am really, really good at blagging. Honestly I am not lying how else do you think I managed to get 196 prizes in my tombola, do you think they just fell into my lap.

Unfortunately I am not one of the bloggers that gets inundated with emails offering them sweets, toothpaste, toilet cleaner and some sort of weird cruel looking impliment for goodness knows what. I worked hard, I researched companies, I found the right email addresses to send queries to and I found out which PR companies worked for which toy manufacturers. Yes it was hard, yes it took a lot of time and damn I wish I knew a service like RS existed. That certainly might have made my life a bit easier.

Do you know why companies responded so much in my favour?
Well I was downright cheeky, yep thats me, say it like it is. In fact I am going to share with you what I wrote to the 300 odd email addresses I contacted. On the 21st September I wrote this email

Hi

My name is Laura Seaton I am a workaholic mum to two beautiful but very cheeky young girls. I am also a blogger. I am one of those bloggers who is happy to be called a mummy blogger.

I started blogging and tweeting on 1st August so have actually only been doing this for 52 days. I believe I am doing fairly well I have had over 4000 page views and am being followed by over 325 people on twitter.

So why am I writing this email? To be honest I am begging, running a blog is all well and good but being a mum and all that goes with it will only keep people entertained so long. I want to excite people, to make them anticipate reading my next installment and I love christmas.

Yes it is that time of year and I know there are a lot of people out there struggling to make ends meet, let alone be able to afford presents for their children. So I had an idea I want to do an online tombola. I am looking for companies to donate prizes of all shapes, sizes and costs to go into the tombola. I will allow people to enter only once and allocate them a number based on the order they enter. Everyone will go into a randomiser and in the order that they come out they will receive a prize to go under their christmas tree. I am hoping to run the competition in Late October/early November. I would like to get at least 20 prizes but obviously the more the better as more people will join in and it will have a bigger impact.

So what would you get in return, apart from being tweeted about as you offer me a prize. I will display your logo on my blog. If you wished me to review a product as well then I would be happy to do that (with links etc). I will be doing a lot of hype and advertising over this tombola once I have had a few companies agree to donate. It will obviously feature on the blog a lot (each new donation will get a blog post), as well as a mention at least once a day on twitter in the lead up to the comp and then a lot whilst it is open.

Please get in touch as soon as possible if you think that you will be able to help, the sooner you get in touch the more publicity you will have.

I look forward to hearing from you and working with you in the future.

Kind Regards


And you know what? I had a great response but by 11th October I was feeling greedy and realised I could make this tombola so much bigger so I sent this to all the people who had not responded at all.

Hi

Its me again, I am just writing to you again regarding my online christmas tombola. Do you remember receiving the first email?

Since Wednesday 21st September, when I first had the idea of spreading christmas joy by giving people an extra chrismas present, I have had over 115 prizes donated. Basically I am just giving you a gentle nudge to see if you want to get in on the action. The tombola will open on 22nd October, it will be open to entry for two weeks. I will not be accepting anymore prize entries after the 21st October which gives you 10 days to respond to me.

Here is the link to all the companies who have currently donated (you will be in great company)

http://tiredmummyoftwo.weebly.com/tmotxmas-companies.html

Although a lot of the products are baby related there are also four other categories Toddlers, 3 to 5 yrs, 5 yrs plus and Mummy treats. I would love to find something for the dads too.

I am not offended if you say no, in fact if thats what you want to say thats fine. I will just remove you from my list and we will each go about out separate business. However if you want to say yes just give me a shout with what you want to donate, whether its a product or voucher and I will get it up on the site and talked about on twitter as soon as I can. Every day I send a tweet thanking all the companies for donating, these then get RT's by the companies and by other readers. If you are on twitter use #TMOTXmasTombola and have a look.

I hope to hear from you soon.


So you see I am really good at blagging, I had some great responses from companies and PR's alike one even said if I needed work doing writing or social media stuff to give her a call. Sometimes being yourself is great and yes we did get sent some stuff to review, in fact I haven't even reviewed it all yet as I try to space it out a bit (I hate blogs that are all reviews clogging up my google reader) I even sent some of the products I had been sent to other bloggers to review. In fact I have three posts in my review blog that were written by other bloggers. So although I am a very good Blagger I do not do it for my benefit but why should I stop. Companies and PR's alike want people to review their products they like people talking about them on twitter or facebook or even just with their mummy friends at the school gates.

So far I have been directly contacted by 4 companies to do reviews that were not related to my tombola, one has yet to arrive, one is very well loved, one was a great day out and well the fourth one will never feature on my blog by mutual agreement with the company involved. Its not because it was a bad product just one that did not fit well with my children and has since been donated to charity.

You know though it had me thinking about the reviews I have written, yes they all seem fairly positive (well apart from Doggie Doo but that is a completely different story and features in my blog and not in the review section because I actually paid for that pile of ****) but then I wouldnt accept something to review if I did not think I could be positive about it.

I just flicked through all my reviews and actually there is not a single item that I explicitly went to that company and said give me this product for me to review, there is a few where i said give me a prize and if you would like I can do a review but then I only asked for prizes I would have been happy to receive myself.

So as the debate wages on over Bloggers and Blaggers and I will just sit here thinking "what is so bad with being a newbie blogger who blags stuff?" if you have the gift of the gab, as my family call it, why not use it, and if people give you stuff well thats up to them.  You know if you are reading this you more than likely entered my tombola, did you win? I blagged that for you so enjoy it.

I wanted to write this blog post last week but at the time I did not have all of the information available to me so I decided not to jump to conclusions. However I will detail to you what happened last week at Elizabth's school that irritated me so much.

Thursday

I went to collect Elizabeth on Thursday as normal and was called into the classroom to talk to the teacher. Basically what I was told is Elizabeth hurt a little boys fingers and the Reception class teacher (teaches 5yr olds normally) was covering at the time and asked her to say sorry. She refused so was placed in timeout. She was asked to say sorry again and she still refused she had a huge temper tantrum and was placed in timeout again. After this they kept trying to get her to say sorry but she wouldnt.

So I spoke to the teacher (her normal one) and explained that Elizabeth is usually very quick at saying sorry if she thinks she had done something wrong so I was surprised at this behaviour. I also explained that my very determined stubborn little girl would not say sorry if she did not think she had done anything wrong.

I discussed this with Elizabeth on the way home and she explained to me that they were together and he got hurt but that she did not mean to hurt him. So as far as I was concerned it was over with, she had been in timeout, she had been told off, so that was the end of it or so I would have thought.

Friday

Today Elizabeth went into school a happy child, she didnt whinge (unusual for her as not a morning person as all) so when I dropped her off I suggested to the teacher that maybe they should give her a sticker for being such a brave and good girl that morning, the response was "umm we shall see". This in itself kind of irritated me a little bit but she was busy so I brushed it off.

When I collected Elizabeth she was puffy faced and miserable such a change from the little girl that I dropped off. The reception class teacher wanted to talk to me so I listened to her explaining that she had spent the whole afternoon trying to make Elizabeth say sorry to the little boy she had hurt the day before. I also received more information on what exactly had happened. You see Elizabeth and the boy in question were in the cloakroom unsupervised and then the boy started crying. When asked to explain Elizabeth didnt talk and so they suggested to the boy that Elizabeth hurt him and then suggested that she did it on purpose and I literally mean suggested aparently the teacher said "Did Elizabeth hurt you?" and "Did she do it on purpose?" The Teacher then suggested to me that they try again on Monday at which point I had to speak up and say no. I very politely whilst biting my tongue suggested that seen as she is so upset with the constant harassment (I mean reminders) that it might not be such a good idea. Reminding a three year old they did something wrong yesterday is not ideal but remining them they did something four days ago is just plain stupid. As annoyed as I was I made the teacher agree that seen as I had spoken to her and no one at the school had actually managed to find out from Elizabeth exactly what happened then the matter should be dropped.

Today

Elizabeth woke up this morning and the minute I mentioned school she said she didnt want to go back and she didnt want to say sorry. Wow that had me thinking, what did they do on Friday to make her so negative about school?

She was very upset when I dropped her off this morning but her normal teacher was there so after a quick hug she was happy again.

On collecting her today I was greeted with my happy smiling confident little girl again. I spoke to her teacher and she had had a great day, she accidently stood on her teachers hand and said sorry straight away and when another child hurt someone she told them she had to say sorry. Her teacher was surprised as how easily she said sorry after all the issues last week but I wasn't. Elizabeth is a loving caring child who is very polite and will say sorry very quickly if she believes she should .

Her normal teacher also filled me in on some details that I wasn't aware off, you see the child who got hurt does not speak english as a first language, he doesnt speak or understand english very well either. She was not in the classroom for either the incident or the Friday afternoon and that at both of these occassions it was the reception class teacher who had dealt with her.

Ok so let me just clarify, a teacher who Elizabeth doesnt know (hence the shyness) accused her of hurting a little boy, who no one actually saw how he got hurt, and he doesnt speak good enough english to have explained how he got hurt and she was punished not just on the day in question but also the following afternoon? Seriously this is a three year old. Well to say I was annoyed was an understatement.

Anyway its over with now but it did make me wonder if we had done the right thing by putting her in school instead of her old private nursery.

WOOHOO It has finished and I can now get to the good part an tell you if and what you have won so whilst I do that I thought you could caption the tombole (a bit of a twist I know) would love to hear your thoughts

This is a completely unplanned post but whilst getting dinner ready tonight I was looking through my cupboards and was shocked at how much value food we have in our kitchen.

I am a food snob, I will admit that I love good food. I love buying the best cut of steak and I dont even flinch at the price. Now don't get me wrong we do not have loads of money but on the rare occassion that we are going to have steak why not have a great steak otherwise what is the point.

So this post is really to share my opinions and ask for more ideas on what is still good even when it is the cheapest and what is not. Now I am known to shop at lots of different supermarkets. We tend to pop to tesco's, do our bigger shop at Morrisons, we occassionally shop at Asda or Sainsburys depending on their advertised offers and do our two monthly online shop via Ocado. Its a lot to think about really isnt it.

So meat has always been an issue with me, I hate cheap mince and sausages. However I am happy to buy value chicken, ok its been pumped full of water but if its cheaper per gram than the other stuff then I buy it.

Vegetables are vegetables so value or not I am happy with them same with fruit, in fact as long as quality is not affected I am generally happy with the cheapest of everything.

So in my kitchen I have the following value food items

Pasta
Rice
Ham
gravy granules
grated cheese
diet coke (tesco value 17p fr 2ltrs love it more than coca cola)
lasagne sheets
baked beans
chopped tomatoes
vegetable soup (my girls love it)
spaghetti
Peanut Butter
Margerine
tinned spaghetti
Nappies (yep you read that right, I love Morrisons value nappies)

Things I will not buy in the value range

Bread (unless it is for the ducks)
Coffee
Tea
Mince
Sausage
Toilet roll (I know its not food but its very important to me not to have value toilet roll)

So what do you buy in the supermarkets value range and what won