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Children, Food, Inspiration, Recipes

Camping with kids- a little guide

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I posted a while back on my IG @arangoirene about going camping with our kids sharing some of the adventures we had while we were visiting a UK coastal town. I was surprised by the amount of parents that asked about it- what did we take, did the kids like it, was it cold, what did we eat while camping etc that I decided writing a blog post sharing all my experience in the matter was a must, and here it is. My guide to camping with kids! The most important part of camping is having the right kit. For us, these are the essentials: A good tent. We love our Regatta tent (www.regatta.co.uk) It’s a six person tent and the way its structured works perfectly for a family of 4-6 people. It’s called Karuna. It has three bedrooms, one of them on the opposite side of the other two giving some privacy as the kids grow older. For now, we all sleep in one large bedroom that can later on be divided in two by a very practical fabric zip (included). We use the other bedroom as storage keeping the living room as a place to chill if cold…

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14 August, 2021
1689
Children, Food, Inspiration

Allotment life with kids

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Some of you might know that we have an allotment as I share snippets of our time there on our IG grid. Many times I have been asked how we manage the kids while we are there and what do the kids help with so I thought I would share some of the things the kids enjoy doing and what do I do to ensure we have a pleasant time at our veggie garden. We have had the allotment since four years now and we share the site with another lovely family (the founders of our all time favourite lollies Lickalix) and between us all we have four children in between 0-7 years old. Very early we discovered that the key to kids enjoying the allotment is to make sure they have their own set of easy tasks to complete (and plenty of snacks!). They do not like to do everything, so we try and allocate them considering what each child likes most. For example, Oliver loves digging while Ariana enjoys planting more. All the kids absolutely LOVE picking strawberries and raspberries and these never make it home with us 🙂 So my tips for a successful allotments day are:…

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9 February, 2021
2158
Beauty, Children, Crafts, Inspiration

Homemade bath bombs

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Ariana is a big fan of bath bombs. I mean, who isn’t right? It’s just so satisfactory watching them dissolve in your bath while the smell of the essential oils surrounds you, the colours make your bath water look cool and you see all those tiny bubbles disturbing the surface of the water… Unfortunately, good quality bath bombs tend to be very expensive and a lot of them use not so good for the skin colouring agents. That’s when Ariana asked me why couldn’t we just made our own. And I though, oh well, why not? We had previously attended a workshop at Lush, where they taught us how to press the bath bombs together, so it was really a matter to make the mixture beforehand. I started my research and I discovered that making your own is pretty popular and you can even buy kits for it on Amazon (like this one) but I preferred to select our own essential oils and use different colourings for ours and we simply bought each ingredient separately. Obviously being Ariana who she is, an aspiring scientist, she started asking me why bath bombs fizz, but during my research I had already prepared…

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2 April, 2020
2423
Beauty, Inspiration

Living Plant Walls- are they good for a private garden?

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A couple of days ago, I passed by this wonderful wall close to Paddington Station and spotted this beautiful living wall. That little stretch on the side of the Canal is full of street art and inspiring views and architecture. I love walking by the Canal, checking out the little boats (one of which is actually home to a dear friend of mine!), seeing the swans swim by and people strolling around enjoying the walk. It always feels like a little break from the city.

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21 October, 2017
1240
Children, Crafts, Inspiration

Working with concrete for succulent planters

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One of the projects Ariana and myself enjoyed the most this summer, was making these super cool concrete planters. It was fun (and easy) from beginning to end- choosing the paper and plastic containers for the shapes, choosing the plants for each, mixing the concrete with water and finally, assembling the whole project together! Oliver just watched us through the whole process highly uninterested, but I am hoping to get him engaged in our craft making soon 🙂 There are different ways to make concrete pieces; you can buy the ready to mix powder, like Breton (which we did on this occasion) or mix the concrete with sand yourself to various proportions.This lat option is certainly the way to go if you are planning to do larger pieces because the other mix would be too expensive. I have been looking for a white coloured concrete for a project I have in mind and it seems Snowcrete is widely available, but regular concrete would do for a grey looking finish. Making these super cool pots didn’t take long at all (except the waiting time for the concrete to dry!) and it was super easy. I mean, Ariana is 3 and she…

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21 August, 2017
1285
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