Madame Suggia's Profile

Lovely ideas. Especially if you have plenty of free time.

Sadly my two small children/dog/home/full-time household income-providing business are unlikely to be on board.

When someone can magic me up another few hours a day, I'm all over being 'mindful', until then, I'll do what I can when I can and be grateful I'm able.

(Wrote this during a 10-minute lunchbreak. Taken @2.25pm, because I've been too busy to do so before. Oh I'm mindful all right, mindful that whoever wrote this is blessed with a slightly easier life than mine.)

My situation was slightly different in that my two are 4 years apart, but I've passed on these 3 tips to other moms and they do seems to help.

1) Make a big brother/sister box, full of items very personal to child #1-we got lots of things with his initial on, like a friend monogrammed some stripey towels with his initial, we put in some simple arts & crafts stuff to do with decorating with his initials like cardboard letters etc, plus I made him a TV pillow & blankie out of super-soft t-shirting which he still uses almost 6 years on. Plus, an 'I'm the new big brother" t shirt!

2) Get a baby doll, as near life-size as possible, and 'practice' changing diapers, feeding, burping etc. Do this with your 'little helper', all the while explaining that you're so glad they're there to help, how smart they are and what a great big brother/sister they will be.

3) Make sure that you schedule some one-on-one Mommy/Daddy + child #1 time and stick to it. Do something that's just 'yours', that the baby is too small for-go for ice-cream, go for a walk or to the library for story time, whatever.

Worked really well for us, our kids are 9 & 5 now and really really close, and baby #2's arrival and babyhood was a delight. She's a total diva now of course but you can't have everything!

Too cool. The music is perfect too!

The before is 'OK' and similar to what I have at the moment. The after looks gorgeous, and similar to what I hope to do soon! I think white kitchens are one of those things, like white bathrooms, towels and bed linens, that are quite timeless, but that's just me. Nice work also in renovating and re-using, rather than trashing.

As I possess a pair of black, black thumbs I'm just delighted to see any garden with anything still alive in it. The layout or colors or style or whatever may not be to my taste but it's really not my problem, or my business.

What @Anna Lisa said, 100%. There are some cute ideas here but as I'm too old to do 'cute' I'll pass. My children would probably love some of them though.

That's quite, quite gorgeous.

Green. With. Envy.

Our 9 year old son has just returned from camp; he flew alone both ways (about an hour and a half each way) and my husband was able to take him physically onto the plane our end, and he was met at the destination by a named camp counselor. He also had some cash, emergency numbers and strict instructions to find an adult in uniform if he had any problems. He breezed through the whole thing, we were more worried about it than he was.

Love these-she's taken a pair of dreary, old-fashioned beds and made them contemporary and useable again. Pretty sure if these had been worthy of restoration they would have been snagged early in the day, so well done for a great job and keeping more stuff out of landfill.