Tuesday - why i love Tuesdays

For  those of you who dont know me, i am currently seperated from my husband (thank god). This seperation is obviously a permenant one - my decision.

Every Tuesday and Thursday (and every other Friday) i get i small oasis in the desert that is motherhood, yes these are MY days, the days where little angel pie goes to daddies house and causes mayhem over there.

I usually celebrate these days of heaven by going out for dinner (when iv got the cash) or sit and watch a film and have dinner (something i would consider a luxury considering the act of sitting is quite rare these days), all of course in the company of Mark, my equally mental boyfriend.

Now i love my daughter to bits, but sometimes i just want to NOT be running around like a headless chicken driving between nursery and the childminder, and then work and then the childminder again, a quick stop at tesco and then the park if my feet are not totally about to fall off.

Yes and there is always time for some imaginary tea and cake with george(!) the dolly and bunny, the bunny.

Yes being a mum is wonderful, and adventurous, and i love it.

But not as much as i love TUESDAYS (and Thursdays)

<3

 My two specials <3

2011- Year of the Glammy

So its 2011, happy new year to you all and i hope you had a good new years celebration. God knows i know it can get a bit messy sometimes but its always one of those nights you never forget.

For 2011 i didnt really think it would be a good idea to make the usual list of resolutions...lose weight...stop smoking etc. I thought i would just make one simple resolution and that is to have more fun.

Nothing too specific, but i think we all need to laugh a bit more, love a bit more and just generally take things a bit easier this year.

2010 was a hard year, i worked hard, i hardly partied (party?? whats that again??) lol. But seriously i have spent 2010 earning money and being a good mom but this year its time to start spending a bit of that money and let my hair down (and still be a good mom of course).

Since i am turning 26 this year i have started to focus on what i want to do, long-term, and i have started studying a good photography course. I am hoping that this time next year i am on my way to taking that up as more of a career. Obviously there is a long way to go, but nothing is impossible right?

I guess in 2011 i will try to be a better person, i have made so many mistakes and i have learnt a valueable lesson from each and every mistake, be it learning who true friends are, knowing who to trust, who not to trust and who to confide my deepest darkest secrets in. (Im still looking for that one)

Anyway 2011 is Glammy Mummy year (Glammy) for short. I am rockin and facing 2011 head on with a fire in my belly and i am going to make sure i go through 2011 waering the best and looking my best.

So with a smile on my face and a mcdonalds breakfast in my belly i will bid you all a prosperous new year and i hope you all acheive your dreams in 2011 (or at least make progress on achieving them)

Tori xoxo

Southend, Photography

Today i went to Southend, mainly for a nice day out with the family, but it also gave me an oppurtunity to get a few nice photos. I was mainly practicing my ''macro'' skills today as i have never really used this function before and i really wanted to just experiment and see what happened. I also took a couple of horizon type photos. Bear in mind im completely new to this i would love your honest opinions. (all pictures taken with a Canon Powershot A470 compact camera.

The pictures are mainly of shells. Obviously this might be boring to some people but when you consider the little cracks and holes in some of them are barely visible to the human eye then maybe you will appreciate just what these pictures mean. Enjoy xx

Tori xx

Hobbies - Amateur Photography

Now i have never really discussed any of my hobbies. The activities i really enjoy doing/reading about. One of them is photography. Its kind of like my dream to become a photographer.
Not much of an impossible dream right? well it is if you cant afford a 900 pound camera and you dont really have time to study a course. I hope one day i will be able to pursue it as a cereer.

I think photography means different things to different people. I dont think im amazing, i definately need practice but For me its all about how the photo makes you feel.

For me, nothing is better than photographing my daughter. I want her to have some beautiful photos when she is older and i will try my best to make her feel how i did when i took the photo. The ones below show her with her comfort bunny. She was so relaxed she didnt even realise i was taking her picture.


And sometimes i just like to take pictures of random things, plants etc. I like pretty things and i like to take pictures of pretty things.

Soft Play (Sc)area

I thought i would blog about something i feel quite strongly about and that is soft play areas, baby gyms, activity centres, whatever you want to call them...they are scary and battle-field like.

Maybe i'm just looking at them all wrong, but here is what i see.

Dont ever go alone, oh nooo you will get stared at by the mommy-cliques, they look at you as if you got three heads..

I went to this new one today and there were not alot of people there to be fair, it was a bit dry, but the play area was nice and big and pretty fun(yea i got in there).

I noticed all the moms in twos, threes and even groups of four or more. I guess i stood out like a sore thumb. This one lady kept staring at me as if i was a criminal i have absolutely no idea why, i was also the only mother who actually went into the depths of the ''jungle'' and played with my child which got a few stares. Yea ok so what? at least i make an effort instead of sitting there clucking like hens about the latest contents of my childs nappies.

The only person who spoke to me was what looked like a very friendly daddy who looked like he was alone with his two kids and he was the sweetest person there. To all the others i may aswell have been invisible.

Now i know you might wonder what im going on about, but, as a mom you just expect other parents to be friendly and its supposed to be an atomosphere where everyone mingles and shares the joys of parenting.

Im not sure if there are any other moms who feel like this, who maybe have been to a play area alone and felt left out by all the little cliques.

Its like being back in high school. And i dunno about you but i hated high school.

If you are reading this and maybe you see a girl sitting alone at a soft play area looking a little lonely, do what i would do...oepn conversation and maybe even have a coffee with her.

After all, we all have one thing in common, our kids, the future generation.

The Things you should know about Twitter.

I have been on Twitter now for almost a year and a half. So you might say im a bit of a twitter expert. I just made a few observations over the last year and a bit and i thought I'd share my findings. You might relate, you might disagree. Either way its MY view and if i have learnt anything, its that freedom of expression is all the rage!

ok so

1) Twitter has 3 levels of usage (a)The occasional updater, you may only come on a couple of times a day. say nothing interesting, have less than 50 friends and are not really that bothered either way. (b)The Mid-way twitterer, you have between 100 and 500 followers and enjoy regular episodes of twitter activity. (c)The complete Twit(i think i personally fall into this category). The Complete Twit updates at least once or twice an hour MINIMUM, you say good morning and good night to your followers without fail. You will be itching to share insignificant snips of information with your followers no matter how minute. You normally have upwards of 500 followers.

What category are you?

2) If you want followers, you need more followers, you must HAVE followers, (and i am not saying there is anything wrong with wanting more followers) you need to utter the three words all fellow ''complete Twits'' like to hear ''TEAM. FOLLOW. BACK.''
Yes, nothing attracts followers like broadcasting the fact that you are indeed with
team follow back. There are two sub catagorys of twitterers. The first half dont get team follow back. They would rather keep their horizons closed and limited. The second half love it, they embrace followback-ness. After all its just polite right?

3)One thing i will say to the hungry twitterers, if you are guilty of the ''only 5 more followers to go please shoutout'' and you do this all day, everyday, i will unfollow you, and so will other people. Ironic huh? oh and the ''i Just lost two followers'' do that and you will lose more.

which brings me nicely to my next point

4)It will baffle me for all eternity why people are so bothered by losing followers. Dont pretend you're not. You are. Otherwise you wouldnt tweet about it or use sites to find out who unfollowed you. I follow people i find interesting and i will follow them up until the point where i stop finding them interesting. If i unfollow you, dont shout me out n shit cos it just makes you look soo sad.
If your ego is that fragile maybe you should close your account.

5) Make money using twitter? i have tried it. It failed. It really is junk it really is SPAM. Noone is going to click your link about teeth whitening or amazing weight loss. QUIT IT already.

6) Your profile picture is crucial to the success of your twitter page. You can also expect the type of followers according to the type of picture. Keep it clean and you might just make some nice friends. Get your body parts out, and you will see all the pervs popping up(literally).
Profile pictures edited with some sort of program that adds glittery writing/pictures and or ''blingee'' icons are just tacky...besides only people under 16 do this.

7) Twitter is just a social network and there are alot of wierdos out there, spotting a faker has become second nature to me. A good example is a tiny picture of a sexy girl, clearly copied from google or somewhere similar and the person will usually have hardly any followers and will talk complete rubbish. Im not sure of the reason for this, i guess people just like to take on other personas for the purposes of stalking. They may just end up spamming you with links that are viruses so clicking on links is also something you should be careful of. Clicking on links promising to get you more followers usually results in you giving up your user name and password to hackers so be careful. There are alot of hackers out there.


If you have any tips you would like to share about Twitter please feel free to share. There are many inexperienced users who could benefit from these findings. So speak up.

Safe Twittering x

Tori xx

An Anniversary To Remember

OK so, i have not blogged for a while, but i had to write down the events of this evening, you just couldn't make it up!

So, me and the OH put our differences aside and decided we would celebrate our third wedding anniversary by going out to a local Indian restaurant. And by local i mean 10 doors away from my husbands work place (he sees these people on a regular basis which made it all the worse).

So, the evening started off OK. Babysitters arrived promptly and we set off on our dinner date. So, it was a bit quiet and there i am eating my poppadoms and all of a sudden CRUNCH! i jumped up having BITTEN what can only be described an an indestructible piece of grit or a seed? anyway...cracked my tooth! really annoyed about this.

So i didn't hesitate in bringing this to the managers attention (very loudly might i add) and he didn't even offer a complimentary drink or anything, despite having told him i have just cracked my tooth!

So anyway we carried on eating and chit-chatting and our food eventually came. Delicious as it looked i decided upon what looked like a nice big juicy bit of chicken for the introductory mouthful.

How wrong i was...i started chewing and I'm thinking to myself ''god, this is dry''

carried on chewing..

Me to OH: OK this is very dry i might just choke..and lo and behold i felt the piece of dry arse chicken hit the back of my throat and just lodge there..it wasn't coming back up and it certainly wasn't going down in a hurry...you know when you swallow and swallow again but nothing happens, it just stays there.

All i remember after that is coming over all hot and that was it...creeping in like a quiet train it hit me PANIC! I'M CHOKING...i motioned to my OH to hit me on my back at which point i saw him staring blank (if not rather embarrassed) and all i kept thinking is FFS HIT MY BACK

Anyway, i managed to stumble up off of my chair and splutter the words ''pat my back, pat my BACK'' (chicken flying out of my mouth as i did this)

He finally started patting my back ( i was literally keeled over the table at this point) and thank god it dislodged and i immediately took a drink.

At which point i looked up, looked around. Oh my god, people were staring. ALL the people were staring! I mumbled something along the lines of ''I'm so sorry'' i was mortified. One gent on the next table just looked at me and said ''oh , don't mind us love you re alright''. Yea do i look alright??

Anyway i sat back down and needless to say i wanted to leave ASAP as the reality of it dawned on me, realising what just actually happened, i was sooo embarrassed i thought ''it would be great if the ground would just swallow me up now''.

Anyway, that's it...two disasters within the space of half an hour, the owner of the place was eyeing me up as if i was that girl off of The Real Hustle. They must have thought i was a right drama queen/scam artist.

We left and made it to the car and both just burst out laughing at the sheer comedy of the whole evening.

It was terrible, but i wont forget it in a hurry!