Super keen for Halloween

Halloween is fast approaching and as a mummy to a very active 2 year old and a nanny to a 2 and almost 4 year old I thought it would be nice to come up with some activities and things to do with the littluns in the run up and on the day of Halloween.

1.Pick your pumpkins

There's nothing better now that its dark to walk home and see your lovely carved glowing pumpkins out to greet you. So start by getting your little ones to choose their pumpkin. Obviously with all of the super markets having their pumpkins out and included in some of the deals it wold be easiest to grab one from there. If however you fancy making a day of it their is a pick hour own farm in Surrey called Crockford Bridge where you can go and choose your own pumpkins. Plus during half term they are hosting a Halloween event which looks like lots of fun so you could really make a day of it.

http://www.crockfordbridgefarm.co.uk/

2. Decorate your pumpkin

Instead of arming the littluns with a knife lol its probably best we arm them with some other crafty bits to decorate their pumpkins. So using things like paints (glow in the dark ones if you can get your hands on them), glue, glitters, sparkly sequins etc will allow them to get involved in the decorating safely.

3. Halloween stories
It's hard to get that quality time where we have snuggles and leave the worlds technology at bay with our little ones. So it would be nice to invest in some Halloween themed stories (check out local charity shops if you don't fancy buying from new) and turning off phones, laptops, televisions etc and dedicating even half an hour to reading some Halloween stories. A favourite of mine that ill be purchasing for Freddie will be 'Pumpkin soup' by Helen Cooper.

4. Cooking
Grab some Halloween inspired cookie cutters and get baking. The younger kiddies will probably be more untested i the tasting lol or like my Freddie only want to do the mixing part and cry his eyes out  at the thought of e mixture going into the oven lol.However we've got to remember its their experience and not to focus so much on an ended duct. Whatever they get out of it is enough as long as their enjoying themselves :)

5. Slimy sensory swamp
Wheni use to work in private nurseries one of my favourite activities to do for the children was sensory swamps. Cook up some spaghetti (on a big of a scale as you have space for) dye in even with some green food colouring, cover your table with a messy mat or use a builders tray/sand pit etc and put the dyed spaghetti on the table or in the pit and and some mini beasts and let them get stuck in exploring the slimy swamp.

(Go onto amazon and type on bags of mini beasts)

6. Ghost painting
This is a nice simple one. Simply get some black paper/card and some white paper, and get your little ones to paint their interpretations of a ghost. The older children can the. Use a black felt pen to draw on eyes and mouths of the ghosts when the paint has dried.

7. Pin the legs on the spider
Draw or paint or get a big picture of a spiders body. Stick it on a wall and use some black pipe cleaners wi Sellotape or masking take and get the children to stick the legs on the spider.

8. Make some pumpkin soup
Why not search out a basic recipe for pumpkin soup. Get the children involved by getting them to write their own list of ingredients to take to the shops. They can draw pictures of the things they will need. Then head off to the shops and get them to help find the ingredients they will need. Once home you can talk about how you will prepare the soup of their to young to help with cutting etc, and em once its cooled and get them to have a quick stir. Hopefully it gets the little fussy eaters out there interested in trying something new to.

9. Paper plate pumpkins
This time of year it sold hopefully be pretty easy to get your hands on some orange plates. Cut out some facial features from black paper. Eyes, nose etc and get little ones to decorate and make their own pumpkin faces.

10. Dressing up
Now I can't do a things to do on Halloween without including dressing up can I!? Maybe get some little ones around for some dressing up fun, get them all to bring a costume and they can all swap and take turns. It can be as simple as wrapping a child in toilet toll and bobs your uncle you now have a mummy. Whatever it is be creative and have a blast.

My 10 things to make, do and enjoy with your littluns at Halloween has come to and end but I'd love to hear other ideas from all you lovely mummies and caters of little ones out there to feel free and
encouraged to leave comments :) I'd love to see pictures of any of the things you've tried from my list so feel free to share:) enjoy Halloween everyone love LauraLou x

Therapy waiting room.

Leading on from my yoga post around panic attacks & anxiety I decided to write a little poem whilst waiting for my therapy session this morning. Hoping that others reading this and experiencing these symptoms know they are not alone and it will all pass.

Smothering strangers sharing similar dangers

A waiting room full of nervous glances and flitting stares

Does anybody speak? Nobody dares!

The room begins to move and my heart is beating fast

I wonder how long this one is going to last!?

I shift in my seat with growing agitation 

Trying to catch my breath but becoming consumed by frustration 

Everybody is staring they can sense I can't cope

Self esteem drops and I begin to loose all sense of hope

I can't breath this is it, I'm going to pass out

As much as I try to reason that's all my brain is shouting out

I'm hurting towards rock bottom

The revolving door of life spins me through this process again and i just can't seem to stop em

My head begins to pound and my heart is fighting to leave my chest

To live is all I want but to die sometimes seems best

I take that long last attempt at a deep gasp for air and the oxygen kicks in

The aftermath of the attack can slowly begin

Exhaustion, cold shivers, the headache and nausea believe it or not are a good sign

It shows I've survived this one and the panic attack and anxiety will all pass in time.

I love yoga!

So as its mental health awareness month I thought I would do a blogpost on yoga. I want to start off by saying I have only been doing yoga for a week so im no expert by any stretch of the imagination.

I have been contemplating yoga for a long long time & I could feel a panic attack coming on last Friday night & I took the plunge & decided to give it ago. I simply typed in simple yoga into youtube & up came the video 'yoga for dummies'. Since then I have done the video every night apart from one night and amazingly haven't had a panic attack since. Don't get me wrong I'm still suffering with the baseline anxiety everyday but as for the panic attacks I haven't (touch wood) suffered with one since that day.

The main point of yoga that I have gathered so far is to concentrate on your breathing. Paying attention to your body and kind of becoming one (totally feel myself merging into my hippy mother). The video consists of 12 postures called the daily dozen and each pose is held for the count of 6 deep breathes. The breathing is amazing. The breaths in yoga happen both threw the nose and out of the nose creating a hollow sound in the back of your throat like the ocean. That alone calms me down and gets me relaxed and if I'm out and getting a panicky niggle I always start to do the deep yoga breaths and find myself calming down instantly.

I'd recommend yoga to anybody suffering with anxiety and panic attacks, but obviously what works for me cannot be guaranteed to work for everyone else but I'd urge everyone to give it ago. Even if you are not an anxiety and panic attack sufferer the busy hustle and bustle of everyday life can call for some peace and a tranquility so give it ago :)

Happy Birthday to me!

So on the 23rd of September i turnt 25. I found the approach quite daunting. I'd been umming and arring about having a party for months and then one random night after my surgery me and my best friend were driving past a really nice pub at the end of our road and before I knew it we were in there booking it up for my 25th birthday party.

The rest is kind of a fuzz after that because my best friend took it under her wing as her birthday present to me which was super hard for me as the super organised party planner lol, she's more nonchalant and relaxed.

This birthday signified a lot for me this year. Not only is it my big 25th but this is a birthday that at times I never thought I would see due to the cancer, so it was a double celebration, one to say I've kicked cancers arse and one to mark a fresh start.

I wanted to stand out a bit at my party and decided I would dress 1950s inspired as I love everything about that era from clothing to music. I did days worth of searching for the perfect outfit and flitted between dresses, skirts the lot. Eventually I landed on a gorgeous skirt with red cherrys on it and matching headband. When it arrived I couldn't wait to try it out and it fitted like a glove I was over the moon. It's probably the first time I haven't fussed about an outfit for an occasion ever. I teamed the skirt with a plain black body from ASOS and some black heels I wanted everything to be as plain as possible so that the skirt stood out in all its glory.

I got gorgeous gifts from my family and friends and the party was lovely. It was so nice having all of my close family and friends in one place.

I've decided it's time to grab life with both hands and by the time I write my 26th birthday blog there are a few things I would have liked to accomplish. These being:

* Self teach myself the guitar.
* Go abroad with my son and partner (I've never been on an aeroplane)
* Go and watch the military tattoo at Edinburgh castle
* Raise money for charity by doing something physical EG: Race for life
* Have a complete style overhaul (one of the downsides of loosing so much weight is the frustration of needing a whole new wardrobe and obviously being a female needing it all at once lol)

So to conclude I am now the ripe old age of 25. I've achieved a lot in my life already and am proud of how far I have come and the battles I have gone threw. Those things have made me the me I am today and although Its hard to accept how drastically life has changed for me it's time to embrace it and grow with it :)

Vegetarianism and me!

"Nothing will benefit health and increase the chances of survival of life on Earth as the evolution of a vegetarian diet" - Albert Einstein

I met my partner 4years ago & at the time of meeting him he was a Vegan and I was a meat eater! I was ignorant and naive and couldn't understand why he wouldn't want to tuck into a bacon sandwich after a night out or sink his teeth into a lamb roast on a Sunday! Never the less I respected his views and didn't find it effected our relationship. He later went on to turn Vegetarian instead and after a while would talk to me about why he was a vegetarian and what it ment to him. I understood and even began to agree with his reasons and when we started living together I found it really easy to start substituting my usual meat free meals for vegetarian ones every now and again.

When we found out we were pregnant with our son Freddie I found it quite easy to agree that we would raise him a vegetarian. However when he was born and started weaning I found myself getting frustrated with the limited amount of knowledge I had regarding vegetarian recipes and meal ideas. It was challenging to prepare a variety of meals that weren't similar as my cooking skills had always been based around meat. So I sat down with Dean and we spoke about it and he started really helping me to understand the basics of vegetarian cooking and we trawled books, the Internet and the good old brains of some vegetarian relatives (mainly Freddie's vegan Grandad) and suddenly cooking wasn't such a daunting experience. Instead I began to enjoy exploring all of the different recipes we would find.

At this point I was still a meat eater, however I was eating less and less meat products now that Freddie was around, mainly due to the fact it was easier to cook one main family meal rather than co, myself a separate one. The when Freddie was around 18months old I watched a video which I kept seeing repeatedly popping up on twitter by PETA and narrated by Sir Paul McCartney called 'If slaughter houses has glass walls' and I was sickened by it. Now don't get me wrong i know where meat comes from I'm not that naive but watching the practices and cruelty the animals faced literally turnt my stomach and quickly changed my views on meat. That night I vowed to become a vegetarian.

Since then I haven't looked back and I've now been a vegetarian for about 8months now. Not only did the video have a huge impact on the way I viewed meat the and meat industry but becoming a vegetarian made sense to my family and my healthy lifestyle. It also sets a good example for Freddie that both mummy & daddy are eating the same way he does and I couldn't be happier with the choice I've made. I'd be lying If I said I didn't miss the occasional meat product that my body has grown accustomed to over the 24years I've been here and i of course get the sarcastic and sceptical comments from friends and family thinking its just a phase im going threw but I haven't touch meat since and I can safely say I never will.

Living with Anxiety & Panic attacks

So as mentioned in a prior post I live with anxiety & panic attacks. I've decided to do a more in depth post on it in the hope other people living with Anxiety and panic attacks won't feel alone and realise that we're all in this together. For as long as I can remember I have always been a very anxious and panicky person so I would say I've lived with this disorder my whole life. However things have happened along the way that have made it worse and at times unbearable. I am without at doubt at the worst stage of my life with this disorder and if this post helps just 1 person reading it will be all worth it.

1 in 4 people will experience some kind of mental health issue with mixed anxiety and depression being the most common. With that in mind a fifth of adults in the UK experience anxiety and/or depression.

What is it?
I've been wondering how to explain what anxiety and panic attacks are to people who may not be aware or that do not personally suffer and last night I came across a video on youtube by zoella280390 called dealing with panic attacks and anxiety! Must watch video. Her analogy of panic attacks and anxiety was amazingly simple yet effective and accurate. It was: "in a street where there are cars all lined up we are the ones who's car alarm goes off just from a gust of wind sending the alarm beeping like crazy, where as all the other cars need a good whack before their alarms go off". Basically all of us are tuned with the 'flight or fight' mode and some of us only need the littlest thing to spark us into panic, cue the panic attacks! Seem of you lucky folks out there will never have nor will you experience a panic attack or anxiety and boy do I envy you lol.

Signs & symptoms
You will be dealing with all different emotions and feelings whilst having a panic attacks and often lots of emotions and feelings will be happening at the same time. Some of these can be:
* Palpitations/pounding heart or accelerated heart rate
* Sweating/trembling
* Sensations of shortness of breath or that feeling of being smothered
* Nausea
* Feeling dizzy/faint
* Fear of dying
* Chills/Hot flushes
After a panic attack you are often left feeling mentally, emotionally and physically drained and I personally can be left with a pounding headache.

Ways to manage
All of us as individuals will have a preferred method of how we like to deal with our panic and anxiety, and sometimes this may even change depending your circumstances and how severe your attack is. So at times I like to be distracted and talked to and other times I need to be by myself,  most of the times I need to be outdoors that is a big help to me I suppose because the open space helps deal with the clostraphobia. I have recently found that deep breathing and simply trying to rationalise with myself helps a lot. Also my mum is my bigger support and my number 1 point of call if they are getting out of hand closely followed my my amazing understanding boyfriend.

To wrap up I just want today if your reading this and need to talk to someone who understands your more than welcome to contact me. You can tweet me at @LauraLou9820 or drop me. Comment on this post, please don't feel you have to face this alone.

Things I love about Autumn/Winter

With the cold weather making its abrupt arrival I thought instead of moaning about it I'd think of all the things I actually liked about the upcoming seasons. Turns out there's actually a lot I like! So ive decided to let it inspire my latest blogpost and list a few.

Fashion:
Chunky knits! I love cosy clothes, so chunky knits in winter fits the bill perfectly. Nothing better than snuggling into your jumper before facing the cold weather. I like shopping for new nail varnishes for the upcoming seasons (well which female doesn't want an excuse to shop ai ladies lol) my favirote colours for autumn/winter are reds and greys! Also as my best friend would jump to point out that ilove being in my pyjamas and slippers. So new comfy PJs and slipper boots are essential.

Weather:
Right so here's the thing. I love listening to the rain and especially watching it dance across the floor when the wind hits it and sweeps it across! But ... I cannot stand being out in it! The other day a 2minute walk from the station to my house left me looking like a drowned rat, this is neither a good nor comfortable situation to be in I can assure you lol and I can imagine many of you can sympathise and have been in the same situation. I also hold a very similar view about the snow LOL, it's gorgeous when it first sets, looks magical & scenic, the snowball fights are great, from littluns to bigguns we've all got to indulge in a sneaky snowball fight lol But ... Yep here comes that but again! What an awful slodgy slippery dangerous mess were left with for days later, causing you to either be stranded at home (maybe not such a bad thing if you can get an extra day off work lol) or worse fall right on your backside in the most embarrassing undignified way & yep that's usually me all legs in the air flat on my back looking like a rather unfortunate stranded beetle.

Holidays:
Any excuse for me to dress Freddie up is one i can't turn a blind eye to lol. So firstly we have Halloween. Last year Freddie had a couple of mates and his cousin round and they all dressed up which was cute. This year I can't quite decide what to dress him up as lol (ill have so much embarrassing ammo for the girlfriend he brings home in the future lol) cue the cringy pictures lol! Secondly I love love love Christmas! Who doesn't?! Well actually I know a few Scrooges lol. I love everything about it! From buying presents for my loved ones to going to visit Santa (accompanied by my child of course hehe). The Christmas dinner, the films, music! Ok I'm going to stop there because undoubtably I will be doing a separate post decicated to Christmas later on in the year lol.

Food & drink:
The return of the cinnamon porridge to set me up for the cold day ahead. The stews and casseroles with the dumplings that are bubbling away in the slow cooker. The chunky soups to bridge that gap between the porridge and the stews lol. The hot chocolate to warm you up before bed before in my case I don the 2 pairs of PJ bottoms, 2 tops a jumper and my bed socks lol (my mum will not approve of my layering). The smell of cookies and treats being baked and yes once again that Christmas dinner lol.

Well I'm going to call it a day there but I cold go on forever. A few things I want to purchase for this Autumn/winter are leather gloves! Seen a right pair of beauts in river island, a pair of really nice thigh high boots which im yet to spot a nice pair of, and some nice new cardigans and jumpers.