Genesis Research Trust has asked me to help publicise this very worthy cause. It look like brilliant family fun and an amazing celebrity- filled day out all whilst raising vital money for research in to diseases affecting women and children so please read on and join us! Continue Reading

I’m in need of a beauty boost. A beauty ‘spring clean’. It’s been a miserable, long, grey winter (apart from my fabulous two weeks in Mauritius!) and I’m a year older and definitely feeling it. Staying at home looking after Alexander is taking its toll on my looks at least age-wise. I used to tell people my age and they would recoil in surprise (in a good way!!) but now I don’t seem to get as much of that as I did. It’s so depressing.
So, to help with my misery, a little therapy if you like, I’ve booked in with my favourite anti-ageing expert Dr. Daniel Sister of Dracula Therapy fame for a skin overhaul. He managed to fit me in between his lectures and his teaching – he is at the forefront of his industry and is in high demand so I am honoured even to get 10 minutes! Continue Reading

‘All change please!’. A phrase that once I was accustomed to hearing at Tube stations in a previous life in the City. Now, it means many different things but most relevant to today is the need for a totally new wardrobe for a toddler. They don’t need excuses ‘ it’s gone out of fashion’, ‘it shrunk in the wash’, ‘it’s so worn out, I look like a tramp’. No, the toddler has the ultimate excuse; it doesn’t fit me anymore! Nuff said!
It’s funny because I’m great at shopping for myself, I think that I have a great sense of style (!) and automatically seem to know what goes with what when it comes to my own clothes but give me an 18 month old little boy and I seem to lose any sense of that altogether. Continue Reading

It’s a hard task being a modern day mum. It’s often a thankless task too. Time is generally of the essence- or lack thereof unless you work on a 24 schedule, which is often possible with the hours that some babies like to keep! At each different age your child’s needs change but yet they you find that most of your life is centred around that same one room- the kitchen! Its no wonder that they have become focus rooms in houses. Whether it be heating up bottles and washing them up, to making endless batches of purées to freeze in cubes to finger food through to toddler meals. Small portions of brain-growth-encouraging oily fish and fields of broccoli that get steamed only to be thrown on to the floor (along with all the rest of the lovingly slaved-over fayre!).
Having lived through some difficult stages and emerged alive (not triumphant, mind you) the other end one would think that I would have masses of useful advice. Well, I can’t say that I do although the most important and the advice that I find impossible to follow is to ‘relax’. Children don’t starve themselves. ‘They will eat when they are hungry’. Familiar words? I’ve read and heard them a million times over but if you are a control freak like me then my best bit of advice is get someone else to handle meals! I hope that doesn’t sound mean. I don’t intend it to. I love my gorgeous little boy so much that of course I want him to eat all his healthy food when and where I tell him. I have his best interests at heart. Have you tried telling that to a 17 month old? Does he listen? Of course not!
So, I’m going to throw a curveball here and say that my real advice is that ‘a tidy kitchen is a tidy mind’!
What I mean by that is being organised can help the most frustrated of control-freak mums. Having the right equipment and keeping tidy and hygienically clean. Being prepared. I have found much solace in controlling all the things around me in my oh so important kitchen when Alexander decided to do his own thing!
So, what would I recommend to help a modern mum in the kitchen? Click here to find out!!!! Happy cooking! Continue Reading