02-04-12 Love Lifestyle Weekly

02 April

Kate’s a real smasher
Kate Middleton is sitting in a limousine on my work surface.

Oh, alright then, I admit it: it’s not the real Princess Catherine of Middleton. It’s an egg sitting in an egg-box. But my daughter swears blind that it’s Kate.

“Can’t you see her hair?” she says indignantly, pointing to the brownish splodge somewhere near the reddish one (that’s her lipsticked mouth, apparently).

“Ohhhh … yes,” I say dutifully, nestling her back into her egg-box limo.

My daughter was very proud of her egg-princess. Until, that is, we got to school.

There, we were greeted by the most astonishing range of eggs you could ever encounter. The Eggs-Factor (complete with wigs, stage and disco lights); an Egg-splosion (a Chemistry lab with an egg-head professor); an egg flying a Lancaster bomber. Some parents obviously have too much time on their hands.

“I don’t think I’m going to win,” my daughter sighed.

Unsurprisingly, she didn’t win. But as I look at Princess C on my work surface, I think that she and my daughter are both simply smashing.

Poo In The Toilet

Subjected ourselves to another episode of unashamed broad daylight extortion at the Dunelm Mill cafe. £2.05 for a pathetically tight-arsed portion of Victoria sponge cake. Downing a pot of black tea to calm my nerves after allowing myself to be seduced by the mere whiff of butter cream, I fed Betty and remembered she was due for a bum change. I left for the loo as my nan collared a woman wiping the table opposite and began to outline the three hundred and seven ways £2.05 could be better spent.

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Recommended by My Funny Mummy

The small stuff.

Sun on skin. A sea breeze. Clinky drinks with ice and a slice. A chapter read in the bath (uninterrupted). Fish & chips. Champagne. Fish & chips served with Champagne. Dancing in the kitchen. An empty laundry basket. Clean plates. My one and only matching set of underwear. Having chicken stock in the fridge. Singing ‘It’s a hard knock life’ (the original) with my sister, word perfect. Amaretto. Bluebells. Using the wonky pots I made on my one day pottery course. Stirring risotto. Very chilled white wine, making the glass cold to the touch…

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Recommended by Knackered Mother’s Wine Club

Getting dressed for breakfast

I can’t speak in the mornings till I’ve made myself a strong cup of Earl Grey so I certainly couldn’t cope with getting dressed first – or heaven forbid, putting on any make-up. And my children are pretty much the same. In fact my night owl daughter would quite happily drift around all day in her pyjamas (non-matching of course) while our former neighbours were perfectly used to seeing my son bouncing on the trampoline at dawn in his PJs.

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Recommended by House With No Name

10 Chocolate Free Easter Present

Now I’m not usually one to turn down chocolate but at Easter even I can start to find it a bit overwhelming. So if you don’t want to buy something edible what are your options? Well luckily there’s lots and as a blatant excuse to spend the afternoon browsing some of my favourite online shops I thought I’d give you a run down of the best.

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Recommended by Yellow Days

Domesticaphobia

There must be something wrong with me.

First it was the carpet and dusting off the ancient Vax machine, searching online fruitlessly for some instructions before conceding to the “suck it and see” rules of experiementation and sudless anti-foam carpet shampoo. The results were considerably less wet than expected and considerably cleaner carpets than expected. But I was audibly shocked at the colour of the water coming out. As a side effect, ancient carpet cleaners make for great upper body workouts.

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