Brolly Good Fun!

Hello!

Well, it's been a while...

I actually have several unfinished posts, about loads of stuff, including recent vintage bargains and gender stereotypes, that I really want to post but they will be as-and-when I can.

This post is photo-based, to show off Aurora's wonderful new vintage umbrellas. Yep, plural. She now has three new vintage brollies.

I was lucky enough to be checking Twitter when @retonthenet posted a couple of photos of the umbrellas. It was love at first sight. 

I messaged to find out if they were for sale... they were!

The postman handed them to a very excited 33-year-old a few days later. It was like Christmas. And at this age, Christmas is no longer like Christmas. I was very excited.

Tuesdays are usually when we go to Jo Jingles, but as it's half-term, we have had a free day; so off we went to Belfairs Wood, in Leigh on Sea, via the Prittle Brook Greenway: there's nothing better than woods in the autumn, The smell cannot be beaten.

After a coffee in the Woodland Centre (listening to some golfers discuss their bladder habits *face*), Aurora and I headed off into the woods to find a suitable place to take some photos of the brollies.

And here they are: I'm pretty impressed with the photos, if I do say so myself. All taken on my iPhone and using Instagram.

It was quite busy at Belfairs today,so I probably got a few odd looks when I was hanging vintage kids brollies from trees. 

For now though, they will be safely stashed away until Aurora is old enough to use them.

Aurora's Busy Weekend

This weekend was a busy one! It was Aurora's first music festival on the Saturday and we went to the Basildon Tractor Plant open day on Sunday.

The Village Green Festival is a one-day, family-friendly event held at Chalkwell Park in Southend. The festival has been free up until this year, when adults were charged £10 each: worth EVERY penny!

There was some grumbling about the introduction of charging an entrance fee, which included an utter plank being quoted in the local paper about dropping a bomb on the organisers!? But if charging a tenner is enough to keep arseholes nuggets like him out, I am 100% for it.

The value for money is superb, this is taken from the Metal website:

600 arts, crafts, vintage and food traders 900 artists performing on 11 stages 140 volunteers 100 production crew

The fantastic line up of artists and musicians included Beth Orton, Eddi Reader (Fairground Attraction); Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip; New York ska band, The Slackers; from London Man Like Me; Youth Club, Shlomo; Danny and the Champions of the Worlds; Kathryn Williams; Eight Rounds Rapid; and hot tips to go global in the very near future, The Hosts!

There was also cabaret, comedy, literature and LOADS more... for £10! How can anyone grumble about that?!

The only thing I would say is that there should have been more vegetarian food stands, or at least more vegetarian options provided. From what I saw, the only choice veggies had was a cheese and onion crepe (there may have been more options but no exclusive veggy stand).

Anyway, I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked, they're mainly of Aurora, but here are a few.

 

 

 

We made it!

So that was Saturday. On Sunday we visited a tractor plant. Yep...

For toddlers and children, and for adults with a love of vehicles, this was a fantastic. It was a free event to mark the factory's 50th anniversary: activities included bouncy castles, mini golf, tractor rides and processions, live music and tours of the production line.

As someone not even faintly interested in the production of tractors, I think they should make it a yearly event: it was really good. 

Knackered from the day before (or just bored) Aurora spent the whole time asleep.

 

And there we have two excellent days out in Essex.

AWOLNATION and Wroxham Barns

This weekend my husband Nik, Aurora, and I visited my parents in Norfolk, which we do as regularly as we can, living in Essex. We went up to see the band AWOLNATION at the Waterfront in Norwich, giving my parents a good few hours of quality time with Aurora.

Pictures from the gig

AWOLNATION vinyl and our 1970s record player... in the dark

I absolutely love AWOLNATION, of course I have the vinyl!

That was Saturday night, during the day we took Aurora and her older cousin out to Wroxham Barns. We didn't have much time to spend there, as we were going out later on, but we had a look around the shops, a bite to eat and Aurora's cousin had a go on some rides.

For Aurora's cousin, who will be 3 years old in a few weeks, Wroxham Barns is excellent: she's an animal lover and has been to the Junior Farm with her parents before, and loved it. We had a look around a couple of shops, including Sugar and Spice - a children's clothes shop - which had a lovely range of baby and kids clothes, and a very nice owner.

We then decided to get some lunch at the The Old Barn Restaurant, this ended up being a total disappointment and ruining the day.

We got a table straight away and given our menus. One of the (many) young waitresses came over to take our order after about a 15 minute wait, but we got the feeling we were an inconvenience to her. Two Paninis, two of the day's specials and a Knickerbocker Glory (a toddler's main meal, apparently!?) were ordered, along with soft drinks for everyone. I had a Brie and Cranberry Panini which came with a side salad and my husband had the chipolata Panini - mine was pleasant, but my husband found his to be dry.

It turned out toddlers get it wrong sometimes, and they don't necessarily just want a Knickerbocker Glory for their lunch, so I shared some of my Panini with my niece, thinking I'll treat myself to my own Knickerbocker Glory for dessert (I didn't particularly want to share my niece's after her... oniony additions).

We ordered out desserts, which included three slices of cake and a Knickerbocker Glory and waited eagerly... and waited some more... and then waited some more.  Then my niece got bored so my brother took her outside to look around. Still we waited. We noticed the staff standing around chatting to each other a lot. After probably 20 minutes we got the attention of one of the waitresses and said we were still waiting on our cakes and ice-cream. She went to look for our order and couldn't find it, so had to ask us again what we wanted. As the cakes only had to be taken from the display cabinet, my husband, brother and dad got their order straight away - feeling a bit annoyed and yes, petty, I cancelled my Knickerbocker Glory. I knew it would take a while (not THAT long, I know) to make up but I was so annoyed about our order, I just wanted to leave. My mum felt the same too, so went to pay the bill. It put a real dampener on the visit.

We would have gone home after the meal but my niece knew there were rides and activities, so we took her to the fair ground area.

The tokens are £1 each and she had an excellent ride on the train, a round-about ride and water-squirting activity. She loved it - my mum and I however were still having a moan about the poor service t the restaurant though.

 Apart from the meal, we thought Wroxham Barns was great and I look forward to visiting when Aurora's older, so she can enjoy the activities (although we will probably take a picnic).

Day Out in Dedham

What to do on a rainy Bank Holiday Monday, with a 6 and a half week old baby - who has no idea of what's going on and just wants to eat, sleep and poo - that's cheap and fun? Get out into the countryside of course. Constable Country - situated on the Essex-Suffolk border - to be precise.

It's an area my parents took my brothers and me to when we were younger, we'd walk (or row) from Flatford to Dedham along the River Stour. I took my husband for his first time a few years ago, and we have since been back several times.

Row boat hire is available for either £5 for half an hour or £8 for an hour's hire, but we didn't think that was a suitable activity with a baby...

Usually we drive to Flatford and use the car park which cost £3.50 (free for National trust members), but this time we drove to Dedham and found a free parking space on the street.

After getting a Rossi ice cream from the Art and Craft Centre we took the 40 minute walk along the river, over the flat fields with awkward kissing gates and a herd of cows, to Flatford. The kissing gates were only awkward because we had the pushchair/travel system, or whatever they are called these days. We only had to lift if over 2 gates - we were able to get it through the other 2.

After a look around Flatford, which included Morris dancers, we took the walk back to Dedham and got some lunch. We could have taken a picnic but I'm not that organised at the moment - so we got a toastie and drink each, from Pandora's Box, before heading home.

I got a few photos, but what with pushing the buggy or holding Aurora, I didn't actually get photos of Flatford or the river!

We started off in lovely Dedham

Rossi ice cream - Southend's finest.

A rather pointless kissing gate - an easy one to get through

Nettles...

Ah...

The gate to get to Flatford was on the other side of the herd