And a Trip to Brighton, that wasn't work

So sunny we went to Brighton as Tourists on my day off last week, We went on the pier, ate seafood, and generally did touristy stuff.

DD and I went on the roller coasters at the end of the pier - I screamed like a girl and it was fabulous. DD was thrilled that one of them had a loop and as she had never been on an inversion coaster before she was beside herself with excitement. We went on, sat at the front and loved it! she wanted to do it again, but at £4 each I called it a day.

Here are some pics from our day. What is Mr Tattooed Mummy looking at?!

Magpie Monday and the further adventures of Mr Tattooed Mummy

So, last week I blogged this, as a link up to Magpie Monday. (If you didn't see it - pop over to have a read - the rest of this is only amazing if you know the back story)

And some bright spark told Mr TM 'he needed one for coffee'. Now we don't drink instant coffee, we have the real deal and it lives in the fridge in an airtight container, so I thought no more about this silly idea.....but Mr TM did not forget.

On Thursday we went to Chicester to row on the canal

(which is lovely and well worth a visit) and after an hour of lovely rowing (in a boat, with oars - not arguing!) , watching ducks, herons and water rodents we had a picnic and then strolled into the town. Unable to resist the lureof a charity shop (Chichester has many) we wandered into a few and Mr TM had (unknown to DD and I) his eyes peeled.......

So! after a trip to the Scope shop, and for the grand total of £4 we are now the proud owners of..............drum roll.............. three matching lidded jars!

but that ladies and gentlemen is only the beginning, for this jar was part of a set......

Including an actual sugar bowl

a small shallow unlidded bowl of no clear purpose (currently holding our dishcloth)

and last but not least two matching mugs!

So that's it! he wins again! I may as well give up! and he's forbidden to buy any more of these jars EVEN if he does see another one! Where are they from? who made them? are they local? we don't know! There is no makers mark! any ideas welcomed.

Posted for

What have we been doing in the sun?

Well we went to Marwell Zoo which was amazing and lovely.

The space the animals have there is great and the giraffe (our favourite animal ...almost) were roaming round a water hole almost as if they were 'at home' in Africa, on such a hot day we could be forgiven for thinking we were actually there!

We ate delicious Buffalo burgers while watching the buffalo (I loved that!) and we ate icecream while staring at sleeping tigers.

We sniggered at sleeping tapirs, and looked at the pigmy hippo grazing.

Rhinos amongst the blossom, and otters nibbling crab claws.

The day could not have been better! and we even have a new favourite animal, the fossa, slinky streak of madagascan killing machine that  he is!

So if you want a day out with too much to do - I recomend Marwell! Simples.

Oh I nearly forgot - buy your tickets online for  5% discount AND avoid the queue to get in when you arrive!!

(Amazingly this post is not sponsored! LOL)

Silent Sunday

Donkeys are cute - and I have one to give away!

DD receives some scrumptious gifts at her birthday parties. Last year she was given a Stitch-it Donkey Kit, by not one but two people! and it was great fun to make! Simple sewing (so no sewing the wrong side and turning it inside out - just stitch and stuff!) and he is green (my favourite colour)

So we made one and toyed with the idea of making the second but then we thought, why not give him away! there are so many crafty bloggers (with and without kids) out there - I 'm sure one of you would love it! It's suitable for children aged 8 and up, and obviously the grown ups are welcome to try to win it and have a sew too!

2 things though, his ears are too sort to be a donkey in my opinion! and we used stick on googly eyes instead of sewing them, but otherwise ours was as he should be :-)

So what must you do to win such a fun treasure? well sadly you must live in the UK (it's me paying the postage!) or be prepared to pay the postage if you are that keen!!

 and then you need to tell me in 20 words or less why you want to win him, Simples!!

And the winner is @Summer_Faery selected by

Magpie Monday

Finally! only a few weeks late I have the post that is here to show you that not only mummies do Magpie Monday.

For these goodies were aquired at local charity shops (for local people) by none other than Mr Tattooed_Mummy!

He was on the look out for a container for the washing up brush ( we are a dishwasher free house hold - how retro) when he found this

Which I agree was very pretty and suited the kitchen. He planned to discard the lid and use the container, but then the same day after finding this gem (for less than £2) he found this!

which was instantly put to use, leaving the pretty lidded pot with no job! How lucky then, that I needed a new sugar pot!

Now Mr Tattooed_Mummy was very proud of his bargain purchases (both under £2) and flushed with his success he came home yesterday with a a treat for me.

While out with DD he had spotted another little something, that he couldn't resist.....

What were the chances! so now we have a matching tea container....watch this space, as Mr Tattooed_Mummy becomes a confirmed Magpie!

Posted as Part of Magpie Monday - at Me and my Shadow

I'm just not that into you ......the Nokia E5

How I love the power of Twitter. Two weeks ago I sent a random tweet

and quickly received a reply with the offer from @WOMWorldNokia to test a smart phone.

The smart phone they sent me (sadly for two weeks only) was the Nokia E5

Now I don't need to bore you with the details of the features, as they are all on the website and several people have done amazing reviews already which I really cannot improve upon. So this review is a personal one.

First impressions. The phone looks like a Blackberry- or maybe the Blackberry looks like the Nokia, who knows! :-). It's smart. Easy to use straight from the box. I'd like to stress that bit - I opened the box, popped in the battery and my sim, turned it on and within 10 minutes had everything set up and raring to go. OK I'll be honest - within 5 minutes I was tweeting

So I was very impressed! The qwerty keyboard was easy to use despite it's size and  intuitive too, with keys for adding symbols, changing case, and the common symbols (full stops and question marks) having dedicated keys.

The phone also has shedloads (technical term) of exciting business stuff, it has email (of course) and a little Office suite but although I poked about in them, I didn't really use them.

It does lack a dedicated Twitter app, opting instead for a link to mobile twitter, so I added an internet bookmark (easy to do) to dabr and installed Snaptu, two twitter thingies that I use on my current samsung 'Non-Smart' Phone. Snaptu works better on the Nokia, and so does Dabr - as the twitpic uploader actually works!

Which leads nicely to the 5mp camera, great pics, nice video, no reason to lug a camera around with you unless you really want to. I tested the camera a London Zoo, and even though the Nokia has a flash I was a little disappointed with how it handled indoor shots, like many cheap cameras it seemed confused by backlight, and refused to flash even when I tried the override option. That said the outdoor pictures were amazing and many of the indoor shots were at least as good as my usual camera.

While in London DD and I tried the GPS which is great! Very clear and easy to understand, it doesn't favour allowing walking routes through parks! Preferring instead that you walk via roads, so best to be used as a satnav in the car only but on the whole the maps, directions and rapid ability to pinpoint your location was good. (as an aside, there is a weather link i n the GPS suite of programs, and it links direct to the weather where you are! too funny, the lovely phone seems to think I can't just look! - of course I can ask it to look elsewhere too)

I haven't tested the wifi, now you'll all think I'm rubbish but I work and have no wifi at home so chances were few to test it - at Victoria station I found Free Public Access Wifi but couldn't connect...maybe me, maybe the phone, I don't know, but we failed to do it. There there little Nokia don't cry.....

I could play Youtube videos pretty easy even over the 3G connection, and the big memory meant that I could have numerous apps open at once with no problem (this I like a lot)

The Phone also utilises it's flash as a useful torch when the space bar is held for any length of time, great for finding a lost stick insect in the dark bedroom with out waking hubby.

but......I was warned that the Nokia used a different OS to everyone else, and it doesn't let me use flash, it wouldn't let me play BBC News videos on the BBC site which was annoying. And the biggest annoyance of all............the Nokia sulks, it randomly froze and restarted itself!! Often mid Tweet! and when I googled the issue it seems I am not alone, lots of them are prone to the same trouble. A glitch that definitely needs sorting.

and as for Battery life - well you all know I'm a twitter addict, I spend most of my phone time tweeting, a bit internet surfing, some texting and rarely use it to make calls. A day in London using twitter, camera and GPS was too much for the Nokia E5 and it gave up at about 6pm on the train home. The battery life is far better than my samsung, but can't keep up with my internet use.

That said, the phone is slick looking, business like, grown up, has lots of good points and is not too expensive for a smart phone. Also the screen resolution is pin sharp! very nice! Would I buy one? No. Not because there is anything wrong with the phone (except the rebooting issue) but because despite the keyboard it was difficult to type as fast as I can on my Samsung, mainly due to the upright style (I like to type with 2 thumbs).

So sorry little Nokia, but I'm just not that into you, it's not you though, it's me. :-)

I'll still miss you when I send you back tomorrow though.....

• Looks 9/10 
• Value For money 10/10 
• Usability/Usefulness 8/10 
• Fun 9/10

The Zoo, Herons and Vosene

You will recall that I have blogged about nits and headlice on occasion. I have a child and therefore it seems, I cannot go through life with out scratching and combing and nitty nora style exploring sometimes.

I'm assuming that this obsession with the louse is what led the lovely people at Vosene to find my blog. I had a giveaway a while ago for their Tea Tree oil shampoo that is designed to fool and repel the wee bitey beasties and so far it seems to be working......

But not content with the shampoo sample those sweet people at Vosene invited me (and some other lovely mummies) to London Zoo to see the new products in the range, some new products that are on the drawing board (I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you) and to tell us of their fantastic new competition, because if there is one thing that Vosene love (nearly as much as they love clean hair!) it's FAMILIES

So if you would like to WIN an enormous prize for you and your family do pop over to their site and join in, lots of smaller prizes too.

I would like to thank Vosene for a fab day, there were things to do for the kids, food (CAKE!) and then a lovely wander around London Zoo afterwards.

Herons in Regents Park

Boo Hiccup the Magician - DD was enthralled by the close up magic while @PippaD's wee boy giggled like a loon at the 'naughty ferret' LOL

There was dressing up

More Magic

Cookie Decorating (and eating)

Cake!

Face painting

and animals of all shapes and sizes!

Silent Sunday

Mothering Sunday

My lovely DD has written me a poem and said I can share it with you. It is wonderful and made me all smiley and teary at the same time. I'm lucky to have such a sweetheart (remind me I typed that next time I'm close to strangling her)

and the silly bit? well maybe she had this in mind - a polaroid from yesterday's trip to London Zoo courtesy of Vosene (more of that later)

Hope all mothers (and those doing the job of mothering) have a lovely day today.