My story begins on the mse grabbits board, in Januray 2012 this year, its a fab board with lots of nice people and we all share our bargains, prices glitches and discount codes etc. I have always entered competitions and been lucky (I won a mobile on the BNTM show which was great) but never seriously entered them everyday before. bargains were my favourite! I managed to get all my families birthday and Xmas presents as bargains for the last few years. I was visiting the FindMeAGift website and i saw they has a little competition on their face book page it was to win a Sex In The City necklace like Carrie used to wear, so as i had just bought something off their website, I went and entered. I didn't think anything of it, but then I won!! think there was 3 of us and i was so excited. it took about 3 weeks for the necklace to come as it had to be made specially for me and my name.
Anyway within the 3 weeks of me winning this necklace and receiving it i had entered 1000's of comps and managed to win quite a few! I had the bug! i had actually met loads of people on face book that entered comps too, all people did was like/share all day lol i entered comps wherever i saw them.
Here is a list of some of my favourite wins!
£1200 washing machine - from twitter - tweeted once, got an email a few weeks later was in total shock!
£1000 Tesco vouchers from Real radio, about a week after the washing machine win, that was a shock too!
2 Tickets to the preview of Battleship in London, travel and Hotel with Capital FM - great film and got to see Rhianna, Taylor Kitsch and Pete Berg
Valentines Hamper worth £70 Forman & Field's from a blog competition it came on Valentines day and it had fillet steaks to cook, a starter and a dessert, and some sparkly wine. it was scrumptious!!a
pair of TRACEY NEULS shoes which cost around £400 and they are soo comfy and smart.
VIP Olympic trip, tickets to the athletics, 1st class train travel, personal shopper at Harvey Nichols with £500 to spend and a makeover, Lunch at the Ritz and Hotel stay at the Ritz!! all won with Trebor
Had to show you all the pic of the washing machine, its an LG 12Kg Direct drive Steam Clean amazing machine!! I love it, it fits everything in it, even a kingsize duvet. Having 3 kids, its been a lifesaver, i now wash less and its soooo quiet, i can talk on the phone right next to it, on full spin. more details on it HERE
Funnily to this very day, my favourite prize is the necklace, i wear it everyday and i love it! everyone always says how nice it is and its handy for if i ever knock my head and forget my name. so thanks to Find Me A Gift, I now enter lots and lots of competitions!!
Well today is an ill day, I had assumed it may just be a hangover from Saturday Night but having gone to bed early last night due to aches and pains, I still feel awful today so its a day in bed today, I need to get better as on Thursday, My son and I are going to Wimbledon to watch the quarter final Tennis Olympic style! woohoo. Hes so excited, so I need to be on top form. We travel down on Wednesday on the train, takes about 3 1/2 hours to get to London and luckily its straight through, I have a brilliant Auntie that lives about an hour away on the tube so we will be staying there. It will be nice to see her as we don't visit as much as we should due to living 250 miles away. We will be posting all kinds of pics here at the weekend and hope to write about our fab time and my son is so wanting to see his idol ANDY MURRAY. We have got centre court tickets and great seats grade A. My boyfriend was so lucky to win them on a twitter competition. He only entered because i shouted at him too lol he didn't even understand twitter then. Took him a while to twig he had won as he didn't understand the messages part haha. we will also be visiting the museum, walking around to the other courts and hoping to see some famous people! woohoo.
Centre Court Map
This is where we are sitting! at the dark shaded 111 aisle. looks good to me!
my sons are both tennis addicts, but my youngest Paul who is 13 is the most addictive tennis player ever. he plays daily and will run down to the local primary school every morning to have a hit about. he started playing last summer, he's joined the local tennis club and also goes to a tennis lesson once a week. I have also started him in another tennis club a little further away and paid for him to have some private lessons to help with his serve etc. His school has tennis courts but shamefully they do not have tennis lessons in their PE curriculum. I wish that schools actually wanted the kids to do well in these type of sports Cricket, Tennis, Golf etc i don't understand how we are meant to have sports stars if the lessons and opportunities are not there for our kids.
Ok well more from me when i am feeling a little better......
For the Queens Jubilee this year, we decided as a family to walk up Snowdon. Now we had done this a couple of years ago and had wanted to go again for a while but the weather makes it very difficult as if you go up on a really cloudy day there will not be a very good view and that's what I walk up there for. Luckily i can see the top of snowdon from my bedroom window, so we can check before we go.
I took the kids shopping for our picnic stuff, managing to buy lots of great food, sausage rolls, savoury eggs, eggs for our egg may sandwich's and my other faves tuna, cucumber and onion. yummy. Then i went hunting for waterproofs and walking shoes. Luckily i had bought the kids some great walking shoes in the recent sales at Millets, got some great Berghaus Shoes for my son Matty for £20 total bargain and great for this type of walk. I packed up the kids backpacks, picnic, drinks, waterproofs (we do live in Wales! ) I told them to choose a tshirt, a thin fleece for easy packing etc. Then went to make sure i had everything needed.
Now people forget that it may be nice and warm when you start the walk, but as you climb higher it can get freezing cold, so separates are the way to go. i wore shorts and packed some leggings just in case and i had my great waterproof coat. So off we went, my 2 teenage boys, my boyfriend and his cousin and I. we parked the car at Rhydd Ddu, i hadn't been up this way since i was a kid and had wanted to walk up this way for a while now, its a great walk with brilliant views of all sides of the mountain. The only problem is there is a very narrow ridge at the top that you have to walk across so if you are afraid of heights etc then this may not be the best way to walk up. there are currently about 7 official routes up Snowdon. we walked up no. 7's route of the Rhyd Ddu and then down the Snowdon Ranger Path - remember if you do this that the ranger path comes down about a mile away from where we parked the car for the Rhydd Ddu path lol not good after a hard days walk lol
The Llanberis Path (up and down)
Snowdon Horseshoe (5 'nails' possible!)
Via the Moel Eilio Ridge and down Llanberis path
Yr Aran and the South Ridge down the Rhyd Ddu
The Miners and Pyg Track
The Watkin Path and South Ridge
The Rhyd Ddu and Snowdon Ranger Paths
a great link here for all the official routes which shows the routes and gives all the info on times etc
We started walking and we took pics on the way up, the kids loved it, not a single moan. We had only been walking for about 20 minutes when my boyfriend found some car keys, they were for a Mercedes, so we assumed someone had lost them not long before us as it was about 8.15am so we took them with is and anyone who passed us we asked if the kids belonged to them, unfortunately all the way up and back down we never came across the owners. more on this story below.....
The weather wasn't too bad, it started to rain half way up so we all got a chance to wear our waterproofs as we got very wet very quickly, luckily it slowed down to a drizzle after a while, it took us about 4 hours to walk up, only due to the fact we kept stopping cos i was so unfit lol when we got to the top, it was packed! the cafe which has recently been remodelled, was very busy, and the top where u stand for pics was hectic, there was a queue to take your pic, but when i called out for my son, i noticed he had climbed up for me to take a pic. I had to laugh, so i snapped one quick. i saw that anyone who tried to walk past the queue was quickly told THERE IS A QUEUE U KNOW so we couldn't be bothered queueing just to take a pic of a silly stone so we all stood on the edges and took our pics.
We found a nice place at the top to eat our picnic, take our pics, have a quick trip to the toilet and then we started to walk back down. what made me laugh was the fact there was so many people walking up past us as we tried to go down. All the paths converge at this point so its like a huge traffic jam and walking on the tube kind of thing.
The walk down was a little harder and made my legs ache, its very jolting. Thew views are amazing tho and the weather was great, it started to get warmer as we got lower. although it felt like we had walked for hours, it was only 3 hours. Unfortunately as i mentioned earlier, we hadn't realised that the Snowdon ranger Path actually ended 1 mile away from the car park we had started off at, so my cousin actually walked along the main road to the car and drove it back to pick us up. Bless him he was an angel cos i couldn't have walked any further lol
Back at the car park, we looked to see if there was a Mercedes still there, and yes there was a lovely Mercedes convertible just sitting there with no owner anywhere near. We could see there was a bag under the wheel so we knew the owner want that far away so we went down to the local pub to ask if anyone had been asking about their car keys. no one had so we waited around a while, then decided to leave a note with our phone number on home and mobile saying for the owner of the car to ring, and we hid the car keys above the tyre - cow we are in the middle of nowhere here, even mobile phone signal has gone! so not sure what else to do. About 20 mins after we got home, i got a phone call, it was the guy for his keys, he had been to the pub and phoned me direct for there, i told his where he could find his keys and he was sooo happy. he had been up and down Snowdon, then gone up again. he was so glad we had found his keys as he lived In Oxford or somewhere and it was gonna be a long way home without the car to get his spare set of keys. So luckily it all ended well.
We intend to walk up again when the weather is ok, this time we will go up the Watkin Path.
Well its a lovely day, sunny at last, just a shame I am feeling a little delicate! seems the older you get the worse the hangovers are. Had a fab night out last night to celebrate Ella's birthday. Hope she had a great time, i think i did lol So we all went out, hit some bars, luckily where we live in Bangor, all the students have gone home for the summer - woohoo!! so we can party in peace. The pubs are all in a line, so we start at the top and make our way down. So we start off in Varsity! have a new drink called a "Fish Bowl" and literally its a fishbowl lol
I mean how cool is that? lol luckily its made out of plastic. i think ours was called Island of sea or something, its got Bacardi, peach snapps and some juice. tastes pretty fruity so a bit like a an alcopop. Then we moved along, visited a few pubs, had a guy decide to strip for us (cannot post that pic here as its a little X-rated!) got Ella a free drink of something fruity and very alcoholic from a bar, visited the Three Crowns which is known for is "fabulous" music and we jived a little in there.
Since giving up smoking last November, my only craving for a cigarette is when i am out drinking, luckily i don't go out that much, but since the last time i went out i have acquired one of those electronic cigarettes, so i give it a go. its a freebie my friend Kay gave me a link for from the Zebra Website and its was delivered free, i decided to take it out with me. its got nicotine in but not the tar and all the other bad stuff a normal cigarette has. its pretty good, when u take a pull of it, its just like smoking, u inhale and get the hit and exhale and smoke comes out. I was excited to try it in the pub, with the no smoking indoors rules i thought it could be fun to see if they try and throw me out lol No one said anything! how boring. But i think it was great idea, normally i would be stealing a drag here and there of a friends cigarette, this time, i just had a couple of pulls of the great invention and i felt part of the smoking group but without the awful stale smell of smoke that comes with it.
Then we all decide to hit the new Nightclub, now i say NEW but its been there a while, we have another nightclub which we haven't been to for a while, but this new one is called The Embassy and its pretty good! its in the old Post Office where I used to work before having my children and they have kept the old counter and used it as a massive bar. I find it a little odd being there dancing. We dance all night and leave around 1.30am when my feet are so painful I can no longer walk in my high heels!! Luckily i have given my boyfriend strict instructions to pick up pizza and chips from the best ever Pizza place!
Pizza House, 53 Holyhead Road, Bangor, Gwynedd County LL57 2HE Contact us: 01248 364797 facebook page here http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pizza-House-Bangor/132205180150132
We get a 10"ham, chicken, pineapple, sweetcorn and mushroom, with some large chips which costs about £9 ish, its a thick crispy pizza that tastes amazing, and its sooo cheap too. much nicer than Dominoes etc that cos the earth and taste drab!! So if you are ever visiting North Wales, make sure you stop by! We take my mate home who lives local and we all sit and eat our scrummy pizza. then its off home to bed!
Oooh am so excited, am currently booking flights for all my daughters friends to Portugal for her 18th Birthday!! i wanted to have a party of some kind to celebrate her 18th, but as Natalie is the oldest in her year I thought the pubs or clubs probably wouldnt serve her friends as none of them will be 18 yet! ahhh so what to do, anyway, i thought maybe Prague, Amsterdam etc but decided, it will be pretty cold in October and seems silly to go to a strange country where we dont know how it all works etc.
So my sister came up with Portugal, as she has recently been on a hen night and they had had lots of fun. so off we go, i have booked 4 nights in a 2 bed and 3 bed bungalow. sleeps 14 in total and around 10 of us are going so far, all girlies, 2 adults (myself and my sister) flights are approx £120 from manchester and the room is cost £277 for all of us, so works out to £27 each so far lol BARGAIN!!
We are staying at the Vilanova Resort (pic below) and its apparently very central for all the nightlife, which is what we want so it will be fun!!
So what else can i do to make this trip fun fun fun, some ideas below
tshirts with Natalies pic on and happy 18th birthday
fancy dress theme for her actual birthday night
some kind of birthday cake found locally
stripper? he he thats for me and my sis haha
so if anyone that think of some great birthday ideas, please let me know in the comments and if anyone can think of anything important i may have forgotton please let me know, i am a little ditzy these days lol
The sun has finally come out!! woohoo am so pleased. i had forgotton what it looked like.
I have been trying to keep fit and lose all the excess weight i have gained since i stopped smoking in Novemeber last year. i am currently doing the couch to 5K run, that i downloaded from the NHS Website you can get their pod casts and download them direct to your phone or add them to any mp3 player HERE, they are great. I am currently still on week 1 but I was a total couch potato before that and totally unfit. I hope to work my way up the weeks to week 9 and be able to run for 30 mins without stopping. week 1 is a 30 minute keep fit plan, you walk for 5 mins to warm up, then run for 60 secs, walk for 90 secs, run for 60 secs and so on, then a 5 min walk at the end to warm down. They also have some music on the mp3 to help make it more enjoyable.
some notes to remember if you start this:
1. I dont have an ipod so used my phone (nokia lumia 800) - this is a little bulky and it kept dropping so it got scratched, i am currently saving up for an ipod shuffle like this one HERE
2. get yourself some decent running shoes - DWSports currently have some decent trainers in their sale for £17! they also have a free Gait checker - this figures out how u run and can help stop foot injuries etc. a great article HERE that shows you how important it is to get this checked before running alot.
3. find somewhere flat to run, as i have alot of issues here in Wales where there are hills everywhere lol its hard to run uphill especially on week 1
4. find something nice and comfortable to wear, you wont feel like running if you feel all drab. there are some lovely sports clothes these days so go treat yourself. it all helps motivate you.
5. find a run buddy! even if they are on a different level to you, its all fun and will help you enjoy it more and motivate you.
6. dont worry if you dont fancy it for a few days! you are told to leave a whole day inbetween runs and only do 3 runs per weeks so do it at your own pace. its all about keeping fit, losing some extra weight and having fun.
ok well good luck, i will let you know how i get on, am hoping to start week 2 in the next few days, should be fun lol
I have survived the first week of the school holidays! as a my good friend Hilda was asking, I live by the seaside on the beautiful island of Anglesey. Its a real tourist trap and it can be very frustrating to live here during school holidays! Bank holidays are a nightmare. We have 2 bridges coming onto the island, one is a dual carriageway which turns into one lane on the bridge, and the other is the beautiful Menai Suspension bridge which is on the old road and used mostly by locals and the odd tourist trying to get the most amazing pic of it while hanging out of his car trying to drive through a tiny gap at the same time lol
Anyway, the Brittania bridge that connects to the dual carriageway is the main route on and of the island, on bank holidays, the traffic queue is amazingly long, so if you want to pop to Tesco, then I suggest you use the smaller bridge lol Also the tourists are not used to our narrow roads and our bends and steep hills, they don't seem to understand our roundabouts either, so many accidents occur, mostly when people are looking at the lovely views while driving! ha ha
The beach's we have are beautiful, Benllech is one of my faves, only because the kids love it, there's a shop for a cup of tea and chips and you can spend all day there playing. If you are looking for a beautiful beach, then Aberfrau is lovely, sand dunes and little coves. There are also lots of activities to do, horseriding, visiting castles, crab fishing off the local pier and lots more.
Due to the price of petrol lately, we do not seem to drive around the island and surrounding area as much as we used to, which is a great shame as there are so many beautiful walks to be taken. I will have to post about my recent walk with the children up Snowdon for the Golden Jubilee weekend, this was great, although who knew being on the top of Snowdon you would come across a different kind of traffic jam and queue's! lol story to be continued....
Welcome to my first competition,
I was lucky enough to win two £5 vouchers for Baskin_Robbins ice-cream from their recent competition on Facebook. Unfortunately there is nowhere within 100 miles of me that i can visit to spend it. I was hoping to use it in my local cineworld but it says that it cannot be used! grrr was looking forward to it to be honest as i love ice-cream.
So I thought I would offer it for my first competition prize! I am hoping that you can all give me some ideas of what i should be writing about on my blog. what DO YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT??
so please, invite all your friends, share, share share and lets have some fun....
if you are looking for another great competition, then visit the FindMeAGift Blog now, as they are currently running a win a 16GB iPad 3 competiton. Visit their Facebook page now for more info
Ok, well i have decided to join everyone in making my own blog. Now i have no idea why anyone else would be interested in what i do all day but everyone esle seems to be doing it, so why not me! i do some quite fun stuff i think sometimes.
Well about me, i am a mum of 3 teenagers, 2 boys and a girl. i have a lovely boyfriend and i live on Anglesey, North Wales.
Now this month is gonna be very busy for me, I have 2 trips to the Olympics lined up, 1 trip to Manchester to see Alex Clare - dont ask me who that is, but my daughter thinks hes great lol oh and also a trip to Lanzarote with the kids to visit my parents who moved out there a year and a half ago.
hope you all enjoy this blog, any feedback and comments most welcome! :)
