Got my first baby present!! =D

From my dad's employee's mother in law, very sweet of her, especially as I've never met her before, will def have to meet her now though and take baby too iA

Widgey Pillow Review

So, been using my widgey pillow a lot since I got it, thought it was time for a review so far!

It's larger than I thought, the size of a normal pillow basically except a different shape, as you can see in the picture. It's quite firm though, much firmer than a normal pillow. This makes it great for supporting your lower back as well as, I have discovered, making it a great support for lying on your front - you can put your bump in the 'hole' in the middle. This is great as it had started to get very uncomfortable to lie on my front, I couldn't basically. Annoying when you want to e.g. for a massage, but now I can!

Finally, there ar several positions you can it in as a sleep aid. I don't find this quite as helpful as I feel I'd prefer something softer for sleeping, however it's still quite nice. So yes, so far I definitely recommend gthe widgey pillow. Has anyone else tried it out? If so let me know what you think below. I can't wait to try it out for it's original purpose in a few months inshaAllah! =D

Oh also I love it's red cover, very cheerful looking!

What is this and where can I get it??

Or make it??

Mmmm I LOVE this stuff!! Had it in Turkey a few years back when my husband and I went for a week in the xmas hols. I remember eating this amazing lasagne like pie thing but then totally forgot what it was called so have never had it since!

Anyway the other day I was looking through my old photos and realised I'd taken a picture of it! Woohoo!! So now I'm hoping somebody will recognise it and tell me where to get it or, even better, give me the recipe - please??? I'll make you some too!!

If you know please leave me a comment below!! thanks!!

Samba, Salsa and Dragonfly Wings!

Had a fun day at work today (I say today but I only just got round to writing this now, it was actually two weeks ago, which is when I started writing this)! Well, didn't get much planning done for next week but trying not to think about that right now!

We had a carnival day for the new students to get them to have some fun and get to know each other so they had four sessions throughtout the day - samba drumming, dancing, circus skills and costume making. Hannah asked me to help out with the costume making cos she knows I like art and crafts, it was great, I got to know students outside my tutor group, try my hand at teaching art instead of geography for once, and tried making my own costume. I decided upon some dragon fly wings, which I gave to Caren in the end after she asked me if she could have them to wear for her 50th, I was very flattered she liked them so much! And they looked lovely on her. Have to say she doesn't look anywhere near 50 either. So overall the costume making was a great success, saw some of the students really working well together. Only problem was I didn't get much of my own work done, planning lessons etc, so I had to stay late to make up for it, but I didn't mind.

Anyway, at the end of the day we gave out prizes to the students and had a carnival party where they got to show off their skills and costumes! Well, we would have, if they hadn't all disappeared after 5 minutes! Typical students! Oh well, us teachers had fun dancing and eating all the snacks! It was a fun day and I think the students did enjoy it a lot even if they wanted to leave early, I guess it was pretty tiring too! But hopefully we've made a good impression on them and made them glad they chose our 6th form!

Baby Wearing and Back Ache!

Woohoo I came home today (after a particularly long and once again frustratingly unproductive day I should add) to find two parcels waiting for me. Actually 3, but this post is about the other two.

The first to be opened was my widgey nursing pillow. Obv I don't need it for breastfeeding yet but I thought I'd get it early as it can also be used as a back support and sleep support. For some reason I've been getting really bad back ache for the past month or so, which is also why I decided to get a swiss ball to sit on at work as I can't sit on a normal chair without becoming extremely uncomfortable very quickly =(

Still hurts on the ball but not as much cos I can move around and change position more and encourages me to have a good posture. Plus it's fun to bounce on!

So, I will let you know whether the widgey pillow helps once I've tried it out. I briefly put it round my back when I opened it and leant back against a wall and it felt very comfortable so I'm hoping it will at least give me a bit of relief from this incessant back/side ache. Alhamdulillah I also have a very loving and patient husband who has been giving me frequent massages!

I bought the pillow for £16 off eBay. Opened but unused. Good deal cos normally they're £29. If they weren't so much I'd but one for work too! But trying to save money for baby cos I know how much I'm gonna need every penny once I go onto maternity pay . . .=S

So, the second thing was a lovely woven sling from b2boutique. I chose this one because it was the cheapest woven one I could find (wanted woven cos app they're the most versatile) that also looked pretty. It's called Indian Summer by Lenny Lamb. It came in a canvas pouch with a complimentary fair trade white chocolate bar, nice touch! I shall take that with my to have with my coffee at work tomorrow!

I tried it on and it's way too big. Well I did order large but since all the sizes were the same price I thought I may as well get some extra material that I can trim off and use to make a cushion cover! Does give me a bit of sewing to do but I don't mind that, or I could take it down the road to our local, very reasonably priced tailor (Kani's Sewing Room'). The material is not quite as soft as I thought it would be, I was expecting it to be more like a scarf or shawl than cushion covering type material, but I guess it does have to be strong enough to carry a baby (up to 3 or 4 years old according to the website) plus I'm sure it will get softer with wear and washing.

The colours are also different from the picture on the website, not quite as bright. However, this is not a bad thing, I also think it seems less girly than I thought when I ordered it, which is good cos we don't know whether we'll need girly stuff of not yet. I think it's definetly unisex, as far as the baby's gender goes, though I'm not sure my husband will be wearing it. Think I might order him a plain black one.

Well, I can't wait to try it!! But I have no baby to try it with yet, so I shall have to either borrow a friend's baby or go to one of those baby wearing meet ups where they have special weighted dolls. Oo or maybe I can ask my midwife, have an appointment on friday =).

In the meantime, I am very happy with my purchases for now and on that note I really should head off to bed as I have to get up extra early for work tomorrow to make up for my lack pf productivity today . . . . =S

Goodnight!

p.s. b2boutique also sent me some cards with discount codes to encourage me to buy more baby stuff! Not sure I'm going to be using them so if you ask nicely I might let you have one.... just leave me a comment below =)

Back to 'school'

It's that time of year again, summer is coming to a close and new students are arriving to begin the arduous task of AS levels, little do they know they hardship that awaits after GCSEs! Still, sometimes I wish I was taking my A-levels again rather than teaching them!

Worryingly, only 3 students turned up to enrol for geography last week, but another 2 have been added this week, and usually a few more drift in during the first few weeks of term having being disappointed elsewhere or only made up their mind at the very last minute! 6 would be good, I don't really want more than 9 or the marking gets tedious.

This is also the time of year where I start to regret having barely done anything over the summer. Ok so I didn't do nothing at all, in fact, some would question why I did any at all when I was supposed to be 'on holiday'. However, the last minute rush of trying to prepare everything makes me wonder why I didn't prepare it in advance! I have 4 days left before teaching begins and I have half a scheme of work for one class. This week I still have to do 2 more schemes of work, plan a field trip, finish and print student handbooks and tutorial forms, get my red folder in order (ha ha!) and try to have some decent lessons ready for Monday.

To be fair this is my third year teaching geography A-level so I do have lesson resources from the last two years. However, having had no proper scheme of work or lesson plans and only a half hearted attempt at organisation I have inevitably lost or misplaced or forgotten how a lot of it fits together. Normally this wouldn't bother me too much, there's not need to be organised on paper as long as it's organised in your head right??

This year is different though. I don't plan to be here for any longer than the next 10 weeks and 4 days (yes I am already counting down days) before taking a rather extended break to, if all goes well (inshaAllah), to undergo hours of the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my life (or so I hear), the result of which will hopefully be the tiny person who is currently residing inside the rather large bump that has appeared around my middle.... =D

In short, I am expecting baby Garcia this December (exciting!), that's unless he/she decides to arrive in the toilet at work as happened in my dream last week. Fortunately I found out we have a resident midwife at the college so I'm no *too* worried! Increasingly frequent comments on how 'huge' my bump is however, and how therefore I must be having a gigantic monster baby are not doing much to keep me calm and relaxed about the whole thing!

I am excited though, which is making it difficult to concentrate on work as I keep thinking about baby names and which sling to buy when I'm supposed to be planning... but I really want to try to get everything in order before I leave so that whoever takes over will have an easy a time as possible, and hopefully this is also help my students feel confident that  a change of teacher halfway through term isn't going to negatively affect their results.

Right, time for me to get some rest, I need as much energy as I can for tomorrow as I need to have a super productive day after today was spent mostly wasting time stuck in traffic or trying to stay awake while undergoing staff training that, after half an hour, i just couldn't absorb any more of (yet it continued on and on for what seemed like most of the day...). Goodnight!

p.s. this is the sling I've ordered, what do you think??

Lenny Lamb Indian Summer Baby Wrap

Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro Review

Finally I have a proper phone!!! After years of having one that could only call and text, and perhaps take a couple of blurry photos, my hubby bought me this one as a surprise anniversary/Eid present! =D (thank you husband!!)

I've had it for a few weeks now so I thought I'd review it to help others decide if they want to buy it or not....

One of my fave things has got to be the keyboard, since most other smart phones don't have one. I'm sure people get used to the touch screen but i really like having a proper keyboard, I find it much easier, mainly because I make far less mistakes than with the touch screen. 

The phone comes installed with Gingerbread but says on the box 'upgradable to ICS'. So a few days after I got it I decided, why not, and duly downloaded the update, which btw is irreversible. That's ok, I thought, because ICS is surely better than GB. However, to my dismay I discovered the keyboard no longer functioned as a qwerty, it had changed to azerty, i.e. some of the keys (specifically w, z, q and a) were the wrong way round! Argh!

After a little research on Google I discovered that I was by no means the only person to experience this problem, it seemed to be a universal fault that could not be fixed (unless you're some type of tech genius). I even spoke to Sony about it and the only option seemed to be to send it off for 'repair' so it could be downgraded back to GB - but then why did it say upgradable on the box??

Anyway, I decided I didn't want to send my phone off to Sony for 2 weeks when I'd only just got it, especially after spending hours customising it (twice I may add, once before and once after the ICS update). So I thought, I'll just live with it, and I got used to typing q instead of a and z instead of w...

Fortunately to my delight a few days ago a notification came up on my phone saying 'system update available' so I downloaded it and lo and behold my keyboard was fixed! woohoo!

So, the point of that whole story was that the phone has just lost a major negative in my opinion. In fact, instead of me rambling on perhaps it would be more helpful for me to provide a summary of things I like and things I don't, so here goes:

Things I like about the Xperia Pro

• The keyboard!!
• Great value (my husband got it new off ebay for £166)
• Video apps, ie. youtube and iplayer work really well (on both wifi and 3G), have had very few probs streaming videos even when I've been on the hovercraft in the middle of the sea!
• Battery life is great so far, lasts all day with me playing music and watching videos
• 8MP camera and video, I've taken some good shots so far
• expandable memory (mine came with an 8GB memory card)

Things I'm not so keen on

• Not many cases available (however, I purchased this one along with some screen protectors, which is again, great value in my opinion, and looks a lot nicer than I thought it would: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ecell-BLACK-PERFORATED-ERICSSON-XPERIA/dp/B0086LU3I4/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1347028049&sr=8-4)
• Internal memory is tiny (less than 1GB), annoying to have to keep transferring everything to the SD card
• The buttons on the phone (not the keyboard) are quite small and fiddly, annoying if you want to take a screen shot for example
• The internet can be slow (weird since the video is so great!) but maybe I just need to try out a new app, I'm using google chrome at the moment. sometimes works great but sometimes just can't seem to load the page...

Summary

I love it! It's the first 'proper' phone I've had as I said, so maybe people who are used to something a bit higher range it might not like it so much, I guess I've had nothing to compare it to. However, it does all the stuff I want it to do - calls, texts, emails, internet, sat nav, watching videos, takes pictures and records videos, calendar, alarms etc, all for only £166, so why would I pay £500 for an iphone or Samsung Galaxy S3? Plus they don't have keyboards! Ok it might not have a huge range of pretty cases available and the buttons are a little fiddly, but I can live with that if I have £350 left for a holiday! Or, to pay my household bills... not quite as exciting but still a good thing!

Oh also, I decided to go with GiffGaff for my network provider, after having been with Orange for 3 years being tied into a 12 month and then a 25 month contract during which I paid them a ridiculous amount of money including when I was on holiday for 6 weeks and not even using my phone (argh!). I discovered that getting a pay as you go phone plus GiffGaff's £10 a month deal is actually cheaper than having a contract (for this phone at least, plus many others) and I get to have unlimited texts and internet, and I can cancel/pause it any time I like cos it's only a 1 month contract - it's great!

If anyone wants to try GiffGaff I can send you a free sim card with £5 credit on it so just let me know!

Hope you found this review helpful!