Empowerment: Pass It On

by 4 Comments

Today is International Women's Day. Last year I didn't understand the point of it, we live in a modern society where women have the same rights as a man, and conditions in the workplace are basically the same. However, this year I understand a little more as to why it's important, because while most women in Britain have these basic rights, there are still a great deal, a quarter, who do not have the freedom of others.

Back in August this year I wrote about the Avon and Refuge campaign to raise awareness about domestic violence. In this post today? No extra nifty little anecdotes here, the subject deserves to be read for what it is.

Domestic violence is not about a row going wrong or someone losing control.

  • One woman in four will experience domestic violence at some point in her life.
  • Up to two women are killed by current or former partners every week in England and Wales.
  • Every single day in the UK, 30 women attempt suicide as a result of domestic violence.
  • The police receive a domestic violence call every minute in the UK.
  • In 90% of domestic violence incidents in family households children are in the same or the next room. 50% of those children are directly abused.
  • Only 16% of domestic violence incidents are reported to the police – the majority of women suffer in silence.

Domestic abuse can be physical, emotional, financial or sexual.

This is why today Aleisha Dickson, who has personally been affected by domestic violence during her childhood, has teamed up with Avon to become its Beauty and Empowerment Ambassador. Today she has helped to launch the cosmetics new Empowerment necklace and Pass It On campaign.

The necklace costs £3.50 and the proceeds will go directly to Avon's charity partners Refuge and Women's Aid to fund support services to women and children who have suffered from domestic violence. Avon has already donated £1 million just in the UK alone through sales of products like the necklace.

And here it is…

I'm wearing this necklace due to an idea from the marvellous Mummy Mishaps who explains why I'm wearing it here:

"I want to help the Pass It On campaign via my blog and I have an idea. 

I am going to open up a linky and I will send this necklace onto another blogger and she needs to take a photo of herself wearing it and link the photo back here and then she needs to pass it on to another blogger who needs to do the same and so on."

I'm sending this necklace on to Yummy Mummy Flabby Tummy who will be helping to publicise this campaign to help empower women and break the cycle of domestic violence.

 

366 #8

by

I've got some exciting news on the #Project366 front! I've managed to negotiate three competitions for you fabulous photographers for the forthcoming months, from three very kind online photography shops. The first one starts next weekend and is courtesy of BonusPrint. Make sure you take advantage of the turn in the weather and get some really creative shots for you to select your favourite from because next week will see three winners chosen from the linky! I'll blog more about it in the week so you might want to subscribe so you don't miss the post.

Anyone taking part is welcome to join the Project 366 Facebook group. The fabulous community building up there offer support to those taking part in this photography project, and give much blog love. We've made it a closed group so that not every Tom, Dick or Harry can see the content but if you'd like to join just click the 'ask to join group' button in the top right hand corner of the page.

  1. Choose your favourite photo from the past week and link it up below.
  2. Please add the badge to your linked-up post so that other people know how to find all the other fabulous entries.
  3. If you can spare five minutes to comment on just a few other entries I know they'd appreciate it!
ShowOff ShowCase

How To Go Self-Hosted

by 22 Comments

I have spent the past month nagging Mr. TheBoyandMe to get a move on with this post on how to move from wordpress.com to wordpress.org. Finally last night he gave it and finished it! I've chipped in with some screenshots etc.

1. Choose a domain.

If you're moving from a Blogspot or WordPress.com site, the obvious domain (without losing too many readers) would be your blog name there, followed by one of the various suffixes like .co.uk, .me.uk, .com, etc. If you're starting afresh, then the choice is more free and could reflect the subject of your blog, your name, or a more generic word or short phrase.

If course, there’s no guarantee that the domain you’ve chosen will be available, so use a site like www.easyspace.com to check before you set your heart on a specific name; just typing it into a web browser isn't sufficient, as there's no requirement for a domain to have a website. With few exceptions, domain names are first-come, first-served so if someone else has the domain you want it’s unfortunately easier just to choose another.

Hold off buying it until you’ve chosen where to host your blog, though; it’s often easier if one company handles the entire process.

2. Choose a host

There are a million and one companies out there that offer domain names, hosting and support at pretty reasonable prices. Rather than listing the plusses and minuses of each and every one, I'd simply recommend Salt and Light Solutions for no other reason than they are the people who host TheBoyandMe, and have been faultless!

Whoever you do choose will be in the best position to purchase your chosen domain name on your behalf, set up e-mail and somewhere for you to store your website, and give you enough information for you to use this space.

At a minimum, you’ll need to choose a host that allows you to run PHP (it’ll be listed as one of their features) and gives you access to a MySQL database.

3. Set up the blog software

I'd recommend the self-hosted version of WordPress, available from WordPress.org, as this is what this site uses. Installation is relatively simple, although it does involve having to create a MySQL database for your blog (which your host should be able to help you with if you have difficulty).

Simply follow the ‘5 Minute install’ instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress and that's your basic blog set up.

4. Importing Posts and Comments

If you’re moving from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress blog, this couldn’t be simpler; under ‘Tools’ you’ll find an option labeled ‘Export’. Export all content (including comments) from your old blog, and import into your new blog: job done!

For most other blogging sites, the process is slightly more complex: but, only slightly. Once WordPress is installed, go to ‘Tools’ then ‘Import’. Select the type of blog you’re moving away from, and follow the prompts to install a plugin that will guide you through the transfer process. For Blogger users this is reasonably comprehensive as it will even download comments that people have made; however, images may have to be transferred separately and Matthew Morley of Salt and Light recommends the separate Blogger Image Import plugin.

In either case, I’d recommend making the last post an “I have moved”, so any fans of the old site follow you to the new one.

5. Categories and Pages

The main reason that I went self-hosted was because of my photography project: 365. WordPress.com allows a main home page with separate posts on it and with each post, a separate set of comments. I had created a 'page' for my 365 photos, but discovered that it was a static page which didn't allow posts. I could only add to the text, and it would only have one comments box. The very astute Mummy Mishaps highlighted to me a week or so into the project that it was going to get very difficult to comment on the photos after about fifty days, and I wouldn't know which photo the comments related to. This is why I went self-hosted: wordpress.org allows you to have proper pages with individual posts and associated comment boxes.

In its standard installation, WordPress puts all posts on the home page but allows one or more other 'pages' to also appear as links at the top; those pages are single posts though, rather than a set of posts. When Project 365 was started, The Boy’s Mummy didn’t want each photo to appear on the home page and the thought of having 365 photos on the same page was unrealistic, so we put together a solution using two free WordPress plugins:

Simply Exclude simply excludes (see what they did there?) any given category from appearing on the home page. For TheBoyandMe.co.uk, this includes 365, 366, reviews, Toyology and competition posts.

Page Links To alters the link that a link at the top goes to. Individual pages have been created for each link, but with this plugin anyone going to those pages is redirected, in this case to the appropriate category page.

With both of these installed, and a little bit of playing with the configuration, we were able to make the blog work exactly the way she wanted.

Extra bits that he hasn't mentioned but that I would suggest:

  • Install Comment Reply Notification

I found out about this from GeekMummy and it is one of the best moves I've made on my blog. Personally I never remember to revisit blogs that I've commented on to see if the blog owner has replied. Comment Reply Notification is a marvellous system that means the replies you make to the kind souls who comment on your posts, are e-mailed to them, thus opening a dialogue which I've been told is appreciated.

  • Install Link Within

I've pinched this idea from The Moiderer, it's a fabulous little gizmo at the bottom of posts which shows the thumb-nails for three related posts to entice the reader.

  • Sidebar & Badges

I'm including this because Two Point Four Children asked me how to do this, so thought it might be relevant. You might want to put a html badge into your sidebar, you'll need to use the appearance -> widgets tool and insert a textbox into the section on the right. Into this copy the relevant html and it magically turns into a pretty picture! Ta-dah!

  • Inserting images

When you insert an image into a post it brings up a dialogue box with a url option to the image, like this:

I've highlighted the automatically filled url box because you don't want this filled; it takes up too much of your storage space and if you're doing a 366 project then you want every kb for your photos. Click 'none' to empty it. Then if you've got the image-scaler plug-in installed, you can choose the dimension of the image. Generally I go for 300 or 400 wide for my images. Try and keep your images confined to a couple of hundred kb to upload, definitely under 1mb or they'll eat up space!

Hope this is of use to some people!

Support for New Bloggers

by 6 Comments

A year ago, the marvellous Michelle from Mummy From The Heart hosted a new bloggers fortnight and was supportive and kind, naming me as one of her pick of the new bloggers. Throughout the past year, Michelle has been one of my mentors for blogging, and a real shoulder to cry on and brain to pick at various times. New bloggers could do worse than following her on twitter and reading her blog.

It's the time of year again and she's hosting the New Bloggers Fortnight again, and (along with lots of other bloggers) she's asked little old me to write a guest-post for her. My theme: blogging anonymously. Pop over and find out why you won't find a photo of me, or my name, on this blog.

ShowOff ShowCase: The One That Should Have Done Better

by 3 Comments

This weekend is your opportunity to link-up a post that you wrote that filled you with a sense of satisfaction. You typed that last full stop, pressed 'publish' and thought "yes, this will be a good one!" and waited.

But no bugger actually bothered to read it, or if they did they certainly didn't comment on it!

Why? I can still hear you shouting it at the stats counter/comments log.

Heaven only know why. They didn't deserve it, they were good posts. It's not their fault that they were published on a Bank Holiday or when people were experiencing blog-apathy. They don't deserve to feel inadequate, not when they've done nothing wrong.

This weekend, I'd like you to help that post to hold its head up high! Brush them off, stick my badge at the bottom of the post and show them off for everyone to see. Don't be ashamed of them, help them shout at everyone:

I SHOULD HAVE DONE BETTER!

ShowOff ShowCase

This linky only fulfills its purpose if you take the time to read other people's blog-posts that have been linked up; give them some love!

 

We're Going To London…

by 29 Comments

I'm very excited!

Before Christmas, I bought my ticket for the Britmums Live in London in June. Last year I had many lengthy discussions with other mums and bloggers on twitter about going to the equivalent conference held at the same time, but decided that it would be too much like an INSET day for me and therefore I didn't want to go. As it so happened, the closer it got to the big day, and the more twitter was completely and utterly taken over with plans surrounding Cybermummy, I became just that teensiest bit green about the hundreds of mummy bloggers going. It was made worse by the fact that I was having to attend the school Summer fayre and paint children's faces. As pink butterflies.

However, this year I am determined not to miss out again! So during a discussion with someone on twitter, they offered to sponsor me and bought my ticket for the blogging conference there and then. They offered to contribute towards my travel and hotel costs but I declined. I know! Foolishness? No, I don't think so at all. I won't be going there on my own you see, I will be accompanied by The Boy and Mr. TheBoyandMe. Friday to Sunday is a long time for me to be away from my boys and I don't honestly think I'd enjoy it as much as I should knowing that they're three hours and 150 miles away from me. Therefore we're turning it into a family weekend, hence paying for our own accommodation.

Doing it this way means that we'll be able to spend Sunday together as a family in London and show our (then) three year old son some of the sites which he will hopefully find exciting. Last Summer was filled with days out and weekend breaks away, one of which was to Cadbury World in Bourneville. I want this Summer to be filled with similar family days out and excursions, be it to the beach or our trip to London. I'm at a loss as to whether he will enjoy the London Eye or if that might be too chaotic for him? It might be better to go for a quieter (and cheaper) venue which he will enjoy, and will allow us to actually spend time relaxed in each other's company. Possibly one of the parks? I went to Kew Gardens in London on a school trip when I was a teenager and really enjoyed that, maybe it would be better as it is sited on the escape from central London back to the cooler and calmer climes of Cardiff?

It may only be January, but I'm starting to make preparations and get excited about our trip in June. I can't wait to see London again, it's been such a long time since we were last there. I'm just as excited about seeing all the other bloggers, but I'm possibly most jubilant that I won't be painting any pink butterflies that day!

And who is my sponsor? That's another blog-post.

Listography: Top Five Tips For Bloggers

by 26 Comments

The fabulous KateTakes5 has come up with a cracking theme this week for her listography!

1. Use the same name on your blog as all your social media platforms.

Building up an identity is essential to helping people remember you easily. I follow several people on twitter who use a completely unrelated nickname to that of their blog, and then have a Facebook account that uses their real name. It's really difficult to remember all three, especially if they have obscure spellings. If you want people to find you easily then use the same name for all platforms, make it easy to spell, different to others (there's a lot of 'mummy' names out there) and preferably under ten characters long (saves space on twitter for conversation within 140 characters). And yes I know my name is eleven characters long, but there you go! Do as I say, not as I do.

2. If you want comments, make it easy for your readers.

Don't use word verification like captcha, etc. It is a big, fat inconvenience for your readers. If you are on blogspot, they'll probably give up halfway through because it is a ridiculous process to comment: write comment, fill in details, press publish, enter word verification, press submit, press publish again. It's not encouraging is it? Install Disqus and your readers will love you forever. If you don't have word verification and don't want to use Disqus, then enable the name/url option for commenting, self-hosted blog-owners will appreciate the effort.

And while we're discussing commenting; if you want comments, then you need to comment on other blogs. It's a two-way street!

3. Consider going self-hosted for more freedom

This depends entirely upon your reason for blogging, and the range of subjects that you blog about. I started blogging on 5th December 2010 and within a month had started the 365 photography project. I quickly realised that I wanted the posts on a separate page to my written content, but wordpress.com doesn't allow for separate posts to be made to any page other than the home-page. It was pointed out to me that by photograph 150, it was going to be difficult to find the comment box, and to know which photo each comment related to. By mid-January 2011, I'd transferred to wordpress.org which is self-hosted. It allows me to set up categories/pages and post to them separately, with individual posts and individual comment boxes per post. I hope it's easier for my readers, because it certainly is for me!

4. Subject matters!

Ha, like the pun? Please don't make me explain it to you!

In all seriousness, your blog is for you, yes. However, I strongly disagree with anyone who says that they only blog for themselves, and have had several discussions about this. If the only person that you wanted to read it was yourself, then why not keep a diary? Or make your blog password protected if just for family? The minute you press publish, then you are opening your thoughts up for anyone in the world to read. To think otherwise is naive (meant without offense).

Therefore, think really carefully about what you put on your blog. If you don't want someone to find you, blog anonymously. If you don't want to be open to criticism, then don't post controversial content. If you want your child to still talk to you when he or she is twenty, then don't post that photo of them naked in the garden. If you don't want your child to be the subject of ridicule in the playground, then don't divulge about his problems wetting the bed. If you don't want your in-laws to know about something going on in your life, then don't press publish.

5. Engage with your readers

Use twitter and become a part of the blogging community. I was using twitter before I started blogging, and I thoroughly blame MammyWoo and The Moiderer for getting me into blogging in the first place. They are two of the first 'real' people that I started following, apart from my husband. If you install a 'Follow me on twitter' button in the sidebar of your blog, then it will make it a damn sight easier for people to know who you are and 'talk' to you in 'real' life.

Another way of engaging is to install a plugin which enables your comment replies to be e-mailed directly to your readers. I saw GeekMummy had this and copied her. I've been told that it was a pleasant surprise to have my reply e-mailed across, and it opens up a dialogue and will encourage return visits.

And because it's my blog and I can, I've done another one!

6. Enjoy it!

It's a competitive world out there, full of stats and rankings. It's incredibly easy to get upset if you've found that you've dropped in the rankings, or haven't been invited to a major PR event in London that the world and his wife is going to, but don't. In all reality, could you make it to London for an event that lasted only an hour? Would you want to? Will the drop in rankings stop you from blogging? When you rise, someone else falls and think how that makes them feel. When I climbed 200 places in the Tots100 and made it into the actual 100, I was overwhelmed and overjoyed. Until I found out that one of my real-life friends had fallen 150 places. Swings and roundabouts see?

Do you have any more to add to the list?

Photobucket

12 From '11

by 7 Comments

This past year has been a whirl-wind of fun and chaos and all thanks to eleven little letters contained in four words:

The Boy and Me

Not only is this site a place with photos and reviews and competitions, but it's also our lives: the lives of my son, my husband and me. It's been a year of change and adjustment, fun and games, tears and therapy. There are people who read my blog, who comment and have become friends in real life, which is something that I would never have imagined when I penned my first tentative post. Thank you to everyone who reads about my little corner of the world, I really appreciate every single read and comment.

Here's my 2011!

January

The start of the year saw me pondering the loss of the technology in our home.

February

I confessed one of my deepest darkest secrets to anyone who wanted to read it. Oh the shame, my cheeks are still burning!

March

We decided that the cold was for wimps and got busy with a few meters of plastic tubing and a watering can.

April

An egg-citing trail around the garden lead to much consumption of cocoa.

May

Finally, 17 years after completing my GCSEs, I gained an 'ology!

June

The Boy celebrated his 2nd birthday.

July

With the sun beating down on us on one of the hottest weekends of the Summer, we decided to spend it going to a chocolate factory, meeting other bloggers and going on safari!

August

Toilet humour was the order of the day as one of the most stressful and confining experiences of my life began!

September

We discovered the wonders of wellies.

October

With random heatwaves and bouts of frostiness, we met a CBeebies hero.

November

My baby became a little boy as testosterone kicked in, in an astounding and upsetting way.

December

The celebrations for Christmas started with a big weekend party.

What one event would you pick to sum up your 2011?

A Weekend Full of Tots: Both Big and Small

by 12 Comments

I intended to write just one post about the TOTS100 Christmas Party but I got carried away talking about the Butlins resort at Bognor Regis so decided to split them into two posts.

When I heard about the event, I immediately checked with a couple of others to see if they were going and signed up. I was nervous as hell about going to the event because I felt like I was surrendering my anonymity, however at the same time I was desperate to meet some other bloggers (I rarely get invited to events) and meet up with Jenny and Helen who I'd previously met. The three of us were pretty much desperate for a break away from it all and we willingly jumped in the car on Friday evening to drive the three and half hours down to the South coast.

We were quite lazy on Saturday morning but eventually got ready to leave our cocoon of a hotel room and venture over to find out what Butlins had in store for us. In the foyer I noticed a couple of other mummies and deduced that they were Mummy and The Beastie and Mummy, Daddy and Me Makes Three. We chatted briefly to them, admired the decorations and Christmas tree and played jumping while waiting for Mummy Mishaps to come and rescue my poor, neglected son (I'd forgotten to bring a coat for him, that's what comes of leaving the house with him in his pyjamas and sleeping bag!). Thanks Burton for lending him a coat for the weekend!

We headed over to the Skyline Pavillion for lunch, had a mooch around and had a good run around on the chaotic soft-play. We enjoyed a puppet show which had some fabulous puppetry and dancing courtesy of the Red Coats, those ladies earn their bobby-socks and blazers!

In the afternoon, while The Boy had his sleep and Mr. TheBoyandMe rested his eyelids, I met up with the other 34 bloggers for the afternoon reception that Sally had arranged for us. Having already seen a tweet from her a few days before about boxes from Hallmark, I suspected that something was on the cards for us and she didn't disappoint. We were split into four groups for the purpose of socialisation and given an hour to decorate an empty Christmas tree using the contents of the middle table.

A few of our team raced for a tree, while a couple of others grabbed baubles. Unfortunately, one of the other groups doubled up on the lights, sellotape and scissors leaving us without any and we managed to wrap a large selection of objects without either sellotape or scissors. What Mellow Mummy, All About The Boys and I can't do with ribbons isn't worth mentioning!

Ably assisted by one of the lovely twins from Here Come The Girls 'helping' with the baubles, and Bloggomy doing her twirly things with ribbons (and a kind Butlins staff member who found us some lights), we managed to get a very sophisticated tree done with time to spare. Just enough time to steal borrow some additional decor from the Butlins reception to boost the silver and red theme before judging. Unfortunately we didn't win the hampers from Aldi but it was the perfect activity to get everyone chatting and mixing together.

After this, I popped back to the hotel and picked up Mr. TheBoyandMe and The Boy so that we could go and get them something to eat before our evening meal. We nipped into Papa Johns for the pizza buffet and managed to join the table already occupied by fifteen other people: Multiple Mummy, The Crazy Kitchen and MummyMummyMum and their gorgeous children. After we had our fill, we went back to prepare for our big night out. All the lovely, glamorous ladies met in the foyer of the hotel and we all froze our arses bottoms off as we nipped over to Bar Rosso for complimentary cocktails: cranberry and vodka = fruity and strong and yummy!

Turner's is a very nice restaurant that was designed by Brian Turner and the chef there used to be the head-chef of The Ivy. That's the closest I'm going to get to posh London dining, and to be honest if that's the best they can do for a vegetarian at Christmas time, then I'll stick to Pizza Express in Cardiff Bay! Wild mushroom risotto is great for a Summer evening meal, not for a warming Winter and Christmas meal when the meat alternative was a full Christmas dinner.

I didn't take a photo of the pudding: figs and apricots do not inspire me, although the cinnamon ice-cream and poached pear was nice. No replacement for a sumptuous cheesecake or the traditional Christmas pudding though.

However, a meal like this is all about the company and the presence of Mummy, Daddy and Me, Multiple Mummy, Dear Beautiful Boy made the evening fly by! I forgot to take a photo of them but did manage one of Jenny and Helen!

We dutifully meandered over to the resort's club afterwards, but decided we just wanted a quite chat in the hotel bar instead, leaving the more hardcore MammaSaurus and TiredMummy of Two to party with NewMumOnline and the glamorous Actually Mummy.

After a tipple or two and having the lights turned out on us in the bar, we retired to bed!

To cut a long story short (too late I hear you cry!), the Sunday saw us have lunch with Mummy Mishaps and her lovely family (in Papa John's), playing with some more rides in the Skyline Pavillion, all of us falling asleep for an afternoon nap, seeing Bjorn's snowstorm and then having an evening meal with Mummy Mishaps again (this time in the Sun and Moon pub). The Boy and Burton started to have a good old natter about this and that, until Burton fell asleep following his mammoth two hours in the swimming pool! Just before we had to do, The Crazy Kitchen turned up to join us, and the littlies set about making a bus to drive us home.

Unfortunately we had to leave on the Sunday night as The Boy had developed croup and I wanted to get him to a doctor, but I shall leave you with some images of the Sunday.

I thoroughly enjoyed our weekend there and found that Multiple Mummy is just as funny and friendly as I suspected and I wish we lived closer because we got on well! It was brilliant to meet up with the others and find that they are just as lovely (and glamorous) as I'd imagined. I wish I'd had more time to speak to others including Kate from I Am Wit Woo and Jen from Mum In The Madhouse, amongst others.

Never mind, there's always next time!

'Ho-De-Ho' Not 'Hi-De-Hi'!

by 16 Comments

If you've been hiding under a rock for the past month then you'll be excused for not knowing that this weekend was the Tots100 Christmas Party at Butlins, Bognor Regis resort. Anyone else has no excuse and should hang their heads in shame now!

As this was my first proper blogging event, I was so excited but incredibly nervous. Obviously anyone is nervous about these, but I have been particularly nervous as this was the big reveal: I was no longer going to be a green bug with yellow antennae and a permanently happy smile.  However, with Mr. TheBoyandMe and The Boy in tow for the family weekend in Bognor Regis, and my lovely friends @JennyPaulin and @Jessies_Online to support me I felt a lot more comfortable at meeting the other bloggers.

Having decided to stay an extra night, we drove down on Friday night (right decision, roads were empty) and with The Boy settled into his pyjamas and travel Gro-bag the three and a half hours passed quickly.

We were soon settled into the incredibly plush Ocean Hotel in the Butlins resort. I didn't get the chance to see the Shoreline hotel over the weekend and I understand this to be more orientated towards younger children, but the Ocean is more my cup of tea: a nice boutique-style hotel with additional facilities making it easy enough for those with younger children.

We stayed in an Atlantis room which is more of a mini-suite with a king-size bed in the main bedroom area and small seating area, good-sized bathroom (with a fixed overhead rain shower) and a twin bedroom area. There are flat-screen televisions (with in-built DVD players and freeview) in both sleeping areas, a plethora of towels and a complimentary toiletries set, a small fridge in the main room, a balcony with table and chairs, a safe (big enough to fit a laptop, DSLR camera, video camera, etc), a kettle (with four mugs, tea bags, sugar, long-life milk and coffee sachets), an iron and ironing board, a hairdryer and 'disco' lights throughout! That's not something that I'd normally consider a selling point, but the slow colour-changing ambient lighting was strangely calming and The Boy and me (ha!) loved it.

The room was excellent and I can't recommend it highly enough. I have only three tiny niggles: the first was that the carpet didn't appear to have been hoovered and so on Saturday morning I asked at reception if they could send house-keeping in to give it a quick going over. Reception were most apologetic and by the time we got back two hours later, every fibre of the carpet was standing to attention having been vacuumed to within an inch of its life. Secondly, it was incredibly hot in the room! The other thing that irked me was that they didn't empty our bins on either day, and as we had eaten breakfast in our rooms we had food waste, plus with a child who is still in nappies at night, there was a fair amount in the bins overflowing onto the beautifully clean carpet!

I was amazed at the amount of entertainment available throughout the weekend, definitely something for everyone in the family. The staff are genuinely helpful and caring, being a redcoat really does matter to them! I'd downloaded the brilliant (and free) app for the iPod Touch which can add entertainment events straight to your calendar, this made it really easy to keep track of where everything is taking place and at what time. With free wi-fi (strict firewall settings making it safe) available in both hotels and the Skyline Pavillion it makes it easy to check against the app. Oh and to tweet!

There's a fair amount of places to eat: pizza, pub food, snacks, bar food, Burger King, Turner's (where we had our meal) and in the hotels themselves. However, having spent £90 on just four meals (lunch for the three of us on Saturday and dinner for Mr. TBAM & TB, lunch and dinner for all three on Sunday) the prices are a little on the steep side, which makes the Spar shop a good addition to the site. We had a very good meal with some healthier options available (there's quite a fast-food vibe to some of the 'easteries') in the Sun and Moon pub. The Boy had three fishfingers, five smiley faces and a pot of peas for £3.50 and it was served on the most sensible plate I've seen given yet:

Unfortunately we had to leave last night rather than this afternoon (as I wanted to get The Boy to the doctor this morning) and therefore we missed out on seeing Father Christmas in our designated slot, but were provided with a small gift of a selection box as a consolation.

Would we go again? Yes!

Would I go in the depths of Winter again? No! The site is right on the coast and it was bitterly cold in the open air.

Was the Christmas vibe present during that Christmas Festival weekend? Yes, in abundance!

Overall: service – excellent, hotel – excellent, entertainment – excellent, food – good but pricey.

This is neither a sponsored or a review post. We had a reduced hotel-rate as part of the deal that Tots100 organised with Butlins, but this has no bearing on the outcome of this post which I wasn't asked to write. I just wanted to share the love!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...