You might remember that I met Tracey Harding of Visit Ely at a Gourmet Brownie event earlier this year. Tracey invited me to get a team of Ely bloggers together to try out the Ely Escape Room. She was keen to find out what we all thought about the challenge.
Before going to my first yoga class, I’d tried it at home using a DVD and YouTube. It isn’t easy getting into your downward-facing dog or maintaining balance for your warrior pose while keeping an eye on the screen! For Day 50 of #100DaysNoTV I joined Sally at her Yoga Hut so I could learn how to do it properly.
I love it when my blog allows me to spend time with friends, learning about their passions. My evening with Ruth, trying some mandala painting, was brilliant. While stone painting itself isn’t completely new to me, it was the first time I’ve tried to paint a mandala pattern; in fact, any elaborate pattern at all, so it was always going to be challenging.
Living just over the Norfolk border, the Roarr! Dinosaur Adventure theme park, near Norwich, was always on our list of places to take the boys. From an early age they, like many children, were really into dinosaurs, but we’d never managed to get there.
Are you a fan of chocolate brownies? Do you know someone else who is? If you can answer ‘yes’ to at least one of those questions, read on! There’s something special below for fans of these delicious chocolaty treats – and, I wouldn’t share something if I didn’t think it was awesome 🙂
Ah, Christmas. Seems like a distant memory as I write this. I had a little break from writing as it was a jam-packed December and new year for The Smiths, but I still want to tell you about one of my festive highlights: The Nutcracker at the British Museum.
I think by now we all know that plastic pollution is a huge world problem and the effects on the environment and marine life are horrific.
It’s hard to know what you can do as an individual and it’s easy to feel powerless. The way I feel is that while my family is four people in 7.6 billion, we can’t sit by and do nothing at all. In the words of David Attenborough following Blue Planet II, “…if we start doing those small steps that are easily achievable, we can, before long, really have an effect.”
I live in Ely which is home to around 20,000 people, and the city is on a mission to reduce the number of single-use plastic bags used in our shops. It’s something everyone can get involved in and I’ve made my small contribution 🙂
As children get older it becomes harder to know what to buy them as gifts. I have a group of friends whose children are the same age as our two, and the year when our eldest children were turning seven, the idea of a book voucher, or gift card, came up.
When I was young I loved getting book vouchers (back then they were actually vouchers, like paper money!) as the whole experience of browsing a bookshop was something I loved – and still do! Nowadays, book vouchers tend to come as a gift card and while it is a great present, it may be a less exciting prospect for a child than something big to unwrap 🙂
In a sleepy corner of the Fens, on the outskirts of the small village of Wimblington, is a destination for a whole day of family fun: Skylark Maize Maze & Funyard. Living just under half an hour away in Ely, it was on our list of activities for a family day out and we got our chance to go this August, thanks to a VIP ticket from the Skylark events team.
The funyard is open all year round with events to coincide with Easter, Hallowe’en, Bonfire Night and Christmas. During the summer there is a very special addition — the maize maze. The 12-acre maze is themed and every year is different. In previous years the maize has featured the BFG and Star Wars, both of which we’d have loved, and this year is no different as the theme is dinosaurs!
During the summer I’ve had the pleasure of volunteering with a brilliant bunch of Cambridge United fans. Together we’ve painted and prepped all corners of The Abbey Stadium ready for the new season. On Day 44 of #100DaysNoTV I took our boys to the ground on the eve of the 2018/19 season to see the fruits of our labour of love. The Abbey was looking at its beautiful best.
#100DaysNoTV 