All White!

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Hi lovelies, it’s been a while, I know. This time of year is crazy, with the end of school coming up. 

The weather in Connecticut has been dismal, every day grey skies and rain. Remind me of being in England. I’ve noticed how much it affects people’s mood and motivation. 

Anyway, today was a glorious day and it coinsided with my youngest sons school concert and graduation from the Three’s! They begin with a nostalgic slide show of the children’s year, partnered with songs like ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’, thirty seconds in and the tissues were out! The little cherubs sang sixteen songs! Two were in Spanish, which was pretty impressive for three year olds! My older son hates participating in these concerts, but the younger one is quite the exhibitionist! Anyway it was just lovely. He didn’t want to stay at school, so we left and headed to a friends house for lunch.

Now I don’t know about you, but aren’t you curious about the Facebook adverts that now plaster your feeds? You know they’re all shipped directly from China and we’ve all heard/seen the photos of the stunning dresses that in reality are absolutely hideous and in no way reflect the photo, but at those prices, it’s worth it at least once, right? So today’s dress I saw on Facebook, the company is http://www.floryday.com. 


This maxi, white, linen dress was $39.99 plus $10.99 shipping. They normally have a 10% off promo running. It got here in about ten days and I was so pleasantly surprised, I really love this dress!! I had so many compliments today. It’s so light and comfortable and it’s actually decent material. It’s slightly transparent, but nothing a slip won’t fix. I had Melanoma four years ago, so I am incredibly conscious when purchasing clothes that can protect my skin from the sun. 

The dress is paired with $18 sandals from Primark. They’re slightly clumpy when you walk, but actually really comfortable. Their shoes normally give my feet blisters. I also added a belt from dreamy Spell Design – http://www.shop.spelldesigns.com and a hat a picked up at a flea market. 

It’s a very affordable, gorgeous outfit you can wear for many occasions. ❤️

The $50 look!

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It kind of annoys me that most of the famous fashion blogs are all dreamy, professionally shot photos, that look effortless. No sign of the hours spent in hair and make up, with stylists putting together the looks, promoting clothes that cost thousands of dollars, that they didn’t even pay for. Even when they promote the under ‘$100 top’, to seem accessible to the average person. They neglect to mention the cost of the $4000 Chanel handbag and the $700 Louboutin shoes they’re pairing the outfit with. 

We all gaze in admiration at the beautiful shot thinking If we just bought the outfits we might look like that. It’s the power of marketing, and spot on to the team, that’s their job and they do it well. But it would just be nice, if some of the looks were more accessible to the average consumer.

Now, I certainly don’t have the time or energy to be that glamorous every day. It’s not realistic for most of us with children. Plus you just don’t always feel like. Some days you need comfy clothes, that look cute and is a bit more effort than leaving your sweat pants on all day! 😜

These super cute, boho sandals are from Primark. Primark is a Irish chain that are hugely successful in the UK and they just started opening a few stores in the states. These sandals were $13! No, unfortunately they don’t have an online store. They sell the latest fashion looks at very affordable prices.


The sweater is from Misguided. This is my first time ordering from them. They were great! They’re based in the UK and standard shipping took about a week. 


It was $29, but they always have an offer on, currently it’s 50% off! Here’s the link: https://www.missguidedus.com/cream-off-shoulder-knitted-sweater?gclid=CNeIrLTno9MCFQ6BswodYi0P7Q&dclid=CPWR1rTno9MCFQVBDAodHTkF-w

They have lots of colors and it goes with anything.

The pants were on sale at Forever 21. You need to be in the mood to go through row after row of mainly rubbish sale items, but there’s always some gems. The pants were $8!

Spring time, play time!

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We had our first day of glorious weather this past weekend. It was pure joy to step outside and feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. The vitamin D instantly released so many endorphins!!

Sunday was originally a day of chores, but scrap that, we made it a day of play instead!


Nothing beats a tented, bounce house, hula hoops, a clutch of chickens and a splash pool for the ducks first swim. And oh boy did those ducks love the water! 


Of course the first thing they did in the water was poop, nothing new there then! Since owning ducks, I truly understand where the expression ‘mucky ducks’ comes from. It is a nightmare to keep their container clean. Every time you fill up their water dish, they use it to saturate the flooring and the smell, oh the smell that manages to emanate throughout the house, if the door to the garage is open. It drives me crazy, it’s a very good thing they’re so darn cute!

It was also the first time we mixed the big girls with the chicks. It went better than expected, they weren’t fussed by the chicks, that was until I added meal worms. Those big girls were not sharing! 

Lunch time came about and as a special treat, I made these milkshakes. As you can see, they went down a treat! Luckily they enjoyed them so much, given the mess I made making them.


The sugar must have gone to my head. I decided that it would be a great idea to then head down to our playhouse at the bottom of the garden. 


As you can see it’s adorable, it’s a mini version of our house, but it’s in dire need of some tlc. We’ve been in our house for three years and for some reason, we’ve never worked on the play house. Perhaps because the boys have never been particularly fussed about playing in it. But now we’re all very excited about the playhouse and this is my latest project. Every day when I pick my son up from school, he asks how much painting I’ve done that day. Ive been getting into trouble!! 

Luckily I had a little helper yesterday!


I will keep you posted on the progress!

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, it’s back to reality we go

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So we’d signed up for the CrossFit Open for the first time this year. Which didn’t go down too well with my husband. He doesn’t like this kind of commitment at the weekend. We did the first three WOD’s, which were blah, but for the forth WOD we were on vacation and honestly couldn’t be bothered to go to the effort of finding a CrossFit in Grand Cayman to do it. The Open is supose to bring meaning to your training, bring out the best in you and motivate you. Honestly, that wasn’t our experience of it. We didn’t want to work out hard in the week leading to the next Open WOD, as we were worried our bodies would be too tired to do well. Plus you can forget Friday or Saturday night dinner/drinking plans. I felt deflated after almost every WOD. The competitiveness didn’t make me push myself harder, it just made me realize that I need to work ALOT harder to get any better at CrossFit. We now feel that I’ve lost five weeks of training. 

Anyway, this weekend was the final workout. Our gym was turning it into a competition, adding a further two WOD’s to the open! As if ninty thrusters and three hundred and fifty dubs wasn’t hard enough! So on Friday, I went to the gym for the first time since getting back from vacation, we did zero working out on vacation, other than lifting our arms to sip cocktails. I’d been out with girlfriends on the Thursday evening, so wasn’t feeling the best. But I was annoyed with myself that I hadn’t been to the gym in a few weeks. We did the first WOD, which was fine. I was actually really happy, as I managed to break my dub record, I got thirty! The next workout was a team rowing competition. It was a measly five hundred meters twice, for time. I got off the rower on the first round, legs like jelly, my knees were barely able to bend! I headed straight to the rest room to throw up!!! This is the first time this has ever happened at the gym. I stumbled back to my team, I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to let them down. So I stupidly I rowed, again. Got off, same thing! Only this time my head was also throbbing. I left that day shocked and thinking ‘wow, it’s really been too long since I’ve been to the gym, that’s pathetic!’

I felt lousy all day on Saturday and I was fed up of cleaning excrement from the chickens, chicks, dog (who’s pooping inside as punishment for us putting him in the kennels), and my son that had managed to smear his droppings all over the window ledge!! How does that even happen?!! Bath time came earlier than usual. My older son starts screaming ‘mama!!’ I ran in, to find a pool of orange pieces floating; my younger son had thrown up in the bath. Joy! Poor lamb.  I managed to get him into bed with no episodes. Half an hour later, he’s covered in vomit, as is his bed. This continues for the remainder of the evening. I had to change the bed seven times and this is with me lying next to him trying to catch it in a bowl! 

Obviously, this morning I was exhausted and certainly not in the mood to participate in the wonderful 17.5. What I’m taking out of it, is that my vomiting was due to a tummy bug and not my lameness! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! 

Luckily, my little man has stopped the vomiting and is soundly asleep, for now. And the warm, powdered sand and the crystal clear, turquoise waters are now a distant, fond memory!

Donald Duck

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Let me first introduce you. This is Ethel, Bethel and Clucky.

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These are our one year old Buff Orpingtions that we got last Easter. We had originally started out with six chicks. Unfortunately, we lost one chick early on, to an unknown cause. The other two were sadly nabbed, whilst free ranging by wretched hawks. 😦 After these incidences we could no longer safely let our chickens roam our garden.

We keep chickens for pets. They are super kid friendly, the kids love playing with them, they’re relatively easy to look after and the eggs are in abundance.

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Before winter hit, he had a twenty chicken coop built with a large run in our garden, that has a covered roof, much to the dismay of the hawks! We wanted a good set up so the chickens could make it through the long, cold winter. He ran electric to it so we could power a small heater and light. This worked out so well and the chickens continued laying all winter.

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They had moved from a tiny coop that could only hold six chickens to a palace in chicken terms! They didn’t like it to begin with. We would go out at night to close the coop and they’d be piled on top of each other in a corner outside! They now love their home.

We decided we’d get six new chicks. Originally, we were going to get three Buffs and three Black Australorp’s. But things change when you take two, very excited boys to pick the chicks! Of course Darwin spotted the ducks. The fluffy, adorable, melts your heart, ducks! My initial reaction, NO. We’ve never had ducks, we don’t have a house for them, just no! We had to get a number of supplies, so we were in the store for a while. Slowly and slowly Darwin was grinding away at me. ‘Please, please, please’… We were next to the checkout when Darwin dragged me to see the ducks. One look and I was toast! I said on the condition that you look after them, which he happily agreed to. I’m sure that’s a blog for another time. 😉

Anyway they’re all happy at home now. Eating, drinking and pooping incessantly! We ended up getting two Buffs, two Black Sex Link’s and two Columbian Rock Cross. The ducks are Khaki Campbell’s and there names are Ming Ming (from the Wonder Pets and Donald (for obvious reasons). The ducks and Columbian Rock Cross are a few weeks older, so they are to be separated from the baby chicks for a few weeks. Turns out, the ducks can live with the chickens and you can put a small splash pool in the enclosure. We can take them to our pond whilst watching them, but the hawks will most certainly get them if they’re left unattended.

It’ll be interesting so see how Ethel, Bethel and Clucky feel about their new family members!

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Any name ideas would be greatly appreciated!