An honest Jamberry nails review

So I know that in the States and Australia, Jamberry nails has been going for a little while but it has only recently come to the UK. I had heard about them before and was quite excited to try them out. I do like having nice looking nails although with that said, I have never had a manicure or pedicure in my life!! I think that's shocking and I really need to do something about that :).

I don't usually do the whole review thing. I know that a lot of bloggers do and I've never done it here but when it comes to trying out make up, skin care products and nail stuff (such a technical term!) I have a lot to say about them so I thought I would share them with you! Just so you know, I am not connected with Jamberry in any way. I'm not selling for them, just throwing in my two cents worth.

I received a sample of the nail wraps to try, which I was quite excited about. If you don't know what they are, they are thin vinyl sheets that are heat and pressure activated to stick to your nail. They are meant to last for up to 2 weeks on your fingernails. I have to say, I found the application process a little fiddly. I used my hairdryer to heat up the wraps but I wasn't that brilliant at lining them up so one or two were a bit wonky! I also had to cut some to size because even though the wraps come in different sizes for your nails, I must just have freakishly small nails or something as a lot of them were too big for me, so that took a bit of time. Once they were applied, you then cut them to size and file the edges to make it smooth. I was quite pleased with how they looked. I found that the next day, the edges were a bit rough and I didn't really like the feel of that. I think I was worried about tearing the wrap if I filed it too much so maybe that was the reason why.

I thought I would give the wraps another go to wear to my sister-in-law's wedding. After all, who doesn't want pretty nails at a wedding?! (even though I say that, I didn't even have any nail polish on for my own wedding! I guess I was going through a phase of just not being that bothered about doing my nails at the time or something!). This time I think I got the hang of it a bit more. I managed to get the process down from just over an hour to 45 minutes. I usual manicure would take me just slightly less time, but then of course I would have to allow for drying time as well. It was a definite plus that once the wraps were applied, that was it. I still had to trim them down to size width ways and this time I did a much better job of filing down the edges so it felt a lot better.

I applied the nails on the Thursday evening and they lasted for the wedding, although come the Saturday, they were starting to come away from the tips of my nails a bit and again, they felt pretty rough. My two sons hated that because I kept accidentally scratching them! I don't know how long they would have lasted had I left them on but I took them off on the Sunday as they just didn't feel that comfortable.

Personally, I think I would end up using the nail wraps again. They do look pretty and there are some lovely designs. I also think that maybe I would have more luck with them the more I use them, as I would just get better at applying them. However, for the time being, they just don't really last long enough for my liking. When I do my own nails, I use a base coat (just a cheapy collection one), the colour which more often than not is either Rimmel or Barry M and then the Sally Hansen insta-dry top coat. This will usually last me a week with no chipping. I will get a tiny bit of wear right on the edge of my nail but it's only noticeable to me. More often than not, I remove my nail polish because my nails have started to grow out (my nails grow REALLY quickly. I cut them once every 10 days or so!). I also don't like having chipped nails but the longest I have managed to go is for 2 weeks, which isn't bad considering it's just normal nail polish.

I think the wraps are definitely worth a try but for me, it would definitely be just for an occasion rather than a regular thing.

Sometimes you just have to be one of those Mums......

Before I became a Mum, I would see people post pictures of their children all over social media and I thought it was nice and everything, but I wondered if I would be the type of Mum that would do the same. Would I think that every little expression was adorable and therefore need to post a photo of it or would I just be an occasional photo poster? Well, if you know me, you know that I fall into the category of posting photos of my boys. A lot. I guess there are a couple of reasons that I do this. One is that I have family and friends who don't live close by and who don't get to see them a lot so it is a way of me keeping them updated and seeing the boys growing, etc. The other reason is that I am just one of those Mums who thinks that their child is pretty adorable and therefore feels the need to share it with the world! :)

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Mia had arranged to take pictures of a couple of my friends' children. She is an amazing photographer and she wanted the chance to practise her skills. We too were invited along but had prior commitments so we didn't think we would be able to make it. However, when we finished up sooner than we had anticipated, we went to meet with everyone and Mia took some gorgeous pictures of my boys! I can't decide which ones I like the best, so I am going to share more than just a couple with you..... :)

This one is probably my favourite one of Caleb as it is so him, that cheeky, mischievous smile!

Caleb's expressions make me laugh so much! He's at that age where he pretty much just messes around when he sees a camera. The one with his eyebrows raised makes me smile as that is the thing he has been doing of late, my silly boy! His hair was a little bit crazy as he had bed head, I hadn't styled it as I didn't think he would be getting his photo taken that day, plus he had just come from a play date at soft play! Talking of bed head.....

I love this one of Levi as his eyes look amazing! He has the darkest eyes I think I have ever seen, they are almost black. He never had the blue eyes that most babies have when they are born, his have always been really dark. I love that you can just about make out his dimples in this picture too.

This boy's hair just keeps growing and growing! As far as his bed head goes, this isn't actually too bad but it's always a bit of a challenge to tame the beast that is his hair!  (Since having these photos done, he has had it cut and it is so much shorter! It's actually a bit shorter than I would have liked but considering how much he hates getting his hair cut and how much he screams the place down, it makes sense to go to shorter so that it is even longer until the next hair cut!) Sometimes I think that Caleb and Levi really look alike but in these photos, I think they look pretty different. Caleb definitely looks more like Seth and Levi looks more like me, especially in terms of his colouring. 

Mia then wanted to take a picture of me with the boys. I would have worn my hair down and made a bit more of an effort with my make up, had I known, ha ha! But I was really glad I had a picture with them, I never seem to have many with my boys that aren't selfies! 

We were so grateful to Mia for practising her skills on us! When the weather gets better we shall definitely be calling on her to take some nice family photos of us all :). 

The Corrs!!!!

How I have not already blogged about this, I will never know!

In mine and Laura's teenage years, we were hugely into the Corrs. We absolutely loved their music; Laura had all of their albums and piano books, we both had and played tin whistles and the piano, Laura played the guitar and the bodhran, we pretty much thought we were them, ha ha! We would always sing and play their music. Laura watched pretty much every television interview they ever did and we saw them perform a couple of times. When I got married in 2009, Seth and I walked out to Silver Strand, one of the Corrs instrumentals (if you haven't heard it, listen to it, it's so beautiful). We were seriously hardcore fans. You can only imagine how excited we both were when we found out that they were reuniting (well, they are siblings so I guess it's not as much a case of reuniting as performing again?!) and when we found out that they would be touring, Laura immediately bought us tickets for their concert in Liverpool.

So, a few weeks ago, Seth took the day off work so that he could look after the boys and I headed up to Liverpool for some sister time with Laura and to see the Corrs. We spent the day wandering around Liverpool, going out for lunch, then a little while later going to Area 51 in the Baltic Triangle, a really cool area in Liverpool for hot chocolates and an amazing chocolate brownie. Seriously, brownies are my achilles heel and this one was divine!

That evening we went to the Echo arena for the concert. Our seats were amazing, we were five rows from the front and we were sitting next to one of the central aisles so we had an incredible view of the stage. It was so cool to be able to see them so close up and to be able to notice every detail as they were performing. They played a real mix of all of their music, some of their older stuff along with a lot of their new music. I can't believe that the first time we saw them, I was 18 or 19 and yet they don't seem to look any older!

The concert was fantastic, we had such a wonderful time. The next day we were talking about it all and saying just how brilliant it was. It was so lovely being able to not only go to a great concert but to be there with Laura too, I wouldn't have wanted to be there with anyone else!

It's never going to stop.

I don't know about you but I have always been quite a nervous person. In general, I think I am fairly calm but whenever I had exams at school, or at university, I would dread every single one, no matter how well I had prepared. I would always get that knot in my stomach and I hated it. I always thought that once I had finished school and university that that would be the end of feeling nervous because exams were over and done with. And then of course, there's the whole applying for jobs thing and having job interviews, and with each one of those came those nerves again. Once I had stopped working to become a full time Mum I was fairly sure that I would never have that feeling again and I was pretty happy about it. Who likes that feeling anyway?! It's pretty horrible. But then I decided to take my grade 8 piano exam a couple of years ago and with that, the nerves accompanied me. Seth came with me on the journey because I am too much of a wimp to go on my own, plus I needed the distraction! But as I am getting older, I felt pretty comfortable with the thought that that feeling of dread, angst, nerves, etc. would definitely be few and far between as I felt that I had done most of the things that I would need to be nervous about.

And then I went and got myself a husband and children. Not only did I get myself a husband but when Seth and I got married, he had just finished his first year of university. During our time of being married, he has sat through two years of university exams, graduated university, sat through two years of exams for his Masters degree, graduated from that and has sat through professional exams too. Seth is a pretty chilled out person and if he gets nervous, he never really shows it at all. But you can bet that with each of those things, I was counting the minutes until the end of the exams and until I got the text from him to let me know how it had gone.

When Caleb started preschool in September, everyone told me that it is horrible taking your little one there on the first day. I don't even think I managed to eat breakfast that morning, I actually felt physically sick, even more so when all of the children were lining up outside, waiting to go in for the first time. The funniest thing is, he didn't really care at all! In the photo that I took of him waiting outside he looks like he was so nervous and he wasn't at all; he was really excited about the whole thing and took it all in his stride (note: I didn't cry after I dropped him off! I was so proud of myself for that small victory!)

I have now come to the conclusion that I am always going to have something to be nervous about and it's pretty much not going to end! I'm sure that I will feel nervous when Caleb starts school, then when Levi starts preschool, etc. Perhaps I was quite naiive to think that my time for nerves was over and done with but I didn't take into account that because my family are an extension of me, I am always going to feel nervous for them when they have big things happening in their lives, because in a way, they feel like my milestones as well. As much as I hate that feeling, I am also weirdly kind of grateful that I have these two little monkeys to feel nervous for in the coming years!

Levi turns one!

How did this happen? I am pretty sure that I just gave birth to him yesterday. I have often heard it said that as you get older, time passes by more quickly and I have definitely noticed it since having children. It really doesn't feel like it was a year ago that after a pretty short labour and no time for pain relief (other than gas and air), Levi Luke Manning came into the world!

I don't even know where to begin when talking about this boy. It was pretty much love at first sight. He is just amazing and I have loved (and hated, every Mum knows the feeling!) watching him grow and develop over the last year.

He is the most chilled out little boy around. He rarely makes a fuss about anything and the only times I really hear him cry that much are when he is really tired, when he is teething or when Caleb gets overly affectionate! Other than that, he is so happy and smiley. He has such a cheeky little personality and I can already tell that he is going to be a feisty one. He is a nightmare to get dressed as he is constantly trying to get away from me and bathing him is an adventure in and of itself! When Caleb was his age, he would lay nicely on the bath hammock thing and although he would kick like a mad thing and get me pretty wet, he would stay in one place. Levi, on the other hand, thinks it's really fun not only to swim laps of the bath but to try and stand up, attempt to turn on the taps, etc!

Levi loves being around people. If any of us are in a different room to him at home, he will wander around until he finds us. He is getting very chatty in the usual way babies his age are, saying mama, dada, baba, wow, gaga, all those fun sounds. He recently has started to dance along to music and it is the most adorable thing to see. He loves being tickled and will squeal with delight when you do it. I must admit, I am far more rough and tumble with him than I was with Caleb at that age, but I think it's down to him being a second child, bless him!

Up until Christmas, he would only commando crawl around the house but now he is properly crawling and pulling himself up on furniture, people's legs, the oven door, whatever he can get hold of! He walks along holding on to furniture and I don't think it will be that long until he is walking properly. He loves sharing a room with Caleb and quite often I can hear laughter and chatter in there in the mornings before I go in to get them both up and ready for the day. Levi has a bit of a love / hate relationship with Caleb, he adores him and always wants to be around him (Levi is literally Caleb's shadow) but he hates it when Caleb plays with his toys or tries to take things away from him.

That boy is teething like mad and he is chewing everything. His favourite things to chew at the moment are my Cons! We always catch him with them in his hands, chewing away at the heels and when we tell him not to, he throws them away and looks at us with a startled expression, it cracks me up every time.

Levi is an absolute joy and delight. Before I had him, I couldn't imagine loving a child as much as I loved Levi and it's amazing to see how much I actually adore him! He is such a wonderful addition and blessing to our family and I just love seeing him learn and grow.

Happy Birthday, baby boy!

It's the most wonderful time of the year....

I thought I would just use one of my favourite Christmas songs as the post title. Doesn't it just scream Christmas to you? I love it!

I absolutely love Christmas and all things to do with it. Obviously as a child I loved it then when I was around 12 to when I was 18 or 19 I sang in my church youth choir. We would put on carol concerts each year and we would start practising for them in September so Christmas always started early for me. I loved singing in the choir and as soon as rehearsals started it just felt like Christmas had begun.

We put our Christmas tree up at the beginning of the month. It's the first time that Caleb has actually helped to decorate the tree and he loved hanging the baubles on the branches. I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to tree decorating and I always like the baubles to be evenly spaced. I had to surrender control this year as Caleb carefully placed the baubles in clusters on the tree. But I loved it, he was so enthusiastic and really enjoyed decorating the tree. It was nigh on impossible to get a nice photo of him in front of the finished tree though, as soon as I try to get him to pose for a photo, he starts doing crazy things! I kind of love it though, it makes for much more fun, interesting photos of him. (excuse the rubbish quality, the fairy lights were doing weird things to my camera!)

Caleb had his preschool Christmas nativity a couple of days ago. Seth was able to come to it too and we were there early to get good seats in the church. The place was packed full of parents and grandparents, I'm so glad we got there when we did! When all of the children came in in their costumes, they looked so adorable! Caleb looked confused, like he really wasn't sure what was going on, ha! He was right at the back so we didn't get to see him for most of it. I was a bit gutted about that; I was really looking forward to seeing him singing all of the songs (I have heard them a lot over the past few weeks, he has been practising them a lot!!). He and some of the others who were also innkeepers came out and did a little dance to one of the songs, it was adorable! Preschool nativities are just amazing. My little innkeeper did such a good job, I was such a proud Mum!

My Mum came down to see us last week and bought the boys matching Christmas jumpers. Seth isn't a fan of the matchy matchy thing but I think it is so cute to do when they are young! They both wore their jumpers for the first time a couple of days ago and they just looked so cute! Yes, I know I am biased but I don't care, I think my boys are lovely! I knew that Mum would want a photo of them both in their jumpers so once again I set about the task of taking a nice photo of them. I wanted one of them in front of the tree but Levi kept crawling away so we ended up taking them on the sofa. As you can see, they are completely not posed but the pictures capture the boys perfectly!

I can't wait until Christmas and am looking forward to doing more Christmassy things with my Manning men. Let me know if you have any fun things planned so that I can steal your ideas ;)

Why I've decided to carry on...

I have kept a journal from around about the time I was 11. I used to write in it sporadically but from the time I was around 14 until now, I have written in a journal every day. To be honest, there really is nothing particularly interesting or juicy in my journal; sometimes it seems like anyone could just pick it up and read it and that would be fine because for the most part there is nothing I have written that is particularly private or personal. Not to mention the fact that I'm really not a very private person anyway (hence the blog :))  so even if they did read it, it wouldn't really matter. 

A few months ago I decided that I didn't really want to keep a journal anymore. Often when it came to writing in it in the evenings I just didn't feel like doing it. I started to write in it once every few days but then I would find that I would have to play catch up to explain what had happened a couple of days before as it would relate to what I was writing about on that particular day. So, it seemed like an all or nothing thing for me - either carry on writing pretty much every day or stop.

My mind was made up a few days ago when I took Caleb to preschool. As we were waiting outside to go in, one of the other mothers there was admiring Levi and she asked how old he was. She then asked when he had started to crawl (he literally started to properly crawl yesterday, before that he was kind of commando crawling everywhere. He is going to have amazing biceps by the time he is one!). I couldn't really remember and then she asked how old Caleb was when he had started. I gave her a rough guess and that was it. Then I came home and cried about what a terrible mother I am because I couldn't remember the small details and milestones in my children's lives. I thought that I would have probably written it down in my journal somewhere but I didn't have it written down anywhere else that I could quickly go to to look up details like that.

The next day I went to Paperchase (where all of my journals have been from from around 2007 onwards! They're just so pretty!) and got a nice new notebook to document the boys milestones. I have been filling it in in the mornings while Levi is sleeping and Caleb is at preschool. I started with Levi (being only 11 months old, it was easier and quicker to start with him and then do Caleb afterwards  - his life has been longer, there is more to write! Start small, people!) and I looked back in my journals to find all of the information to put into the new book. I was so glad to realise that I had actually written down more than I had originally thought!

I am now onto writing down Caleb's milestones and it is so interesting to read back on everything. Not just on Caleb and the things that he has done since he was born, but the day I found out I was pregnant, my first midwife's appointment, how we announced the news to our families, etc. I also found loads of other stuff that I had completely forgotten about, like how Laura and I had played a game of name that tune all the way from Norwich back home after being in Norwich for my niece to open her mission call (it was an epic game, it literally lasted two and a half hours). I also glanced back in some of my older journals and read about how Laura, Mum and I had played an epic game of "who am I?" on a roadtrip from St. George all the way to Vegas when we were on holiday there, when Seth and I had started dating, etc. I had always thought that I was pretty rubbish at keeping journals or at least writing anything interesting but it turns out that I'm not as bad as I thought. There were so many things that, when they happened I thought I would always remember but I had actually forgotten them and it was only in reading back that I was able to recall them.

Needless to say, I have decided to keep writing in my journal. Since making that decision, I have also been paying more attention to day to day stuff; the little things that Caleb has said that I have thought were really cute, sweet little things that Levi has done, etc. and I have been making a note of them on my phone so that I don't forget about it when I come to write about it in my journal that evening. And yep, there will still be times that I can't be bothered to write in it but I know that I am documenting some great memories that I will be able to read back on one day.