Snapshot

I am doing my best to be better organised on Raising Ireland – it was all somewhat abandoned last year while we built the house and got married (I know, I know, I’ve hardly mentioned either of those things for HOURS now) – but now, I’m getting back into it.

You see, the thing is, I LOVE writing and I love the fact that I have a little website that is all my own and when the kids are ignoring me or asleep or I just want some time to myself – I write. So why wouldn’t I do it more often, huh? WELL EXACTLY!

This is the first contribution I’ve ever made to another blogger’s link-up and I’m excited! Maud from Awfully Chipper has come up with a fantastic idea to just give a quick snapshot into our lives right now, and as I’m usually so busy running around, I thought it would be a great opportunity to take stock of where our bonkers lives are currently at!

So here I go;

Listening to:

Florence and the Machine, mostly. Nothing like epic anthems to get you going around the park with the dog at 7am.

Watching:

RuPaul’s Drag Race on Netflix. Like, addicted. Can’t stop. May enter next year ;o)

Playing:

Catch-up, mostly. The house, the laundry, the jaysus unfinished garden!

Reading: 

The last two Sunday’s newspapers – why won’t anyone let me do it the day I buy them?!

Looking forward to: 

Booking a holiday. We’re still trying to decide what to do. And find the money. Doing the Lotto and regularly dreaming.

Drinking:

All the champagne. We were off the booze for most of January and February but have just begun to pretend like that never happened and we’re starting to open all our wedding presents. And drink them. WOOT!

Wearing:

Only new clothes. Chucked everything out at the beginning of the year that was tatty and wrecked. Have been clinging onto an old padded maternity coat which is the next to go, fact!

Channelling Avril Lavigne this morning 🙈😂🙈😂

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Eating:

Meat and dairy-free. No I have no idea who I am either!

Working on:

Opening a coffee shop and bakery. We’ve been talking about it for 10 years and I think the time might be now!

Permanently frustrated by:

The news. I’m so over it. Planning on having a week of digging my head in the sand and avoiding it all!

Enjoying:

The good weather. Even the lollipop man was in good form this morning!

Not enjoying:

Two short work weeks ahead of me. Jacob’s school are off this Friday for Paddy’s Day, obviously, but the following Monday too. Noooo!!!

What is going on in your life right now?! Let me know in the comments on Facebook!

 

The 10 Kinds Of Parents You Meet At The School Gates

When I look back over some of the articles I wrote for HerFamily, I realise how much actual craic I was having while I worked there. I mean, where else would I get away with this kind of boldness?!

Wishing editor Sive O’Brien the very best of luck in her next adventure as she moves on from Maximum Media. I feel like I had an intense digital media training under her mentorship for the year that I worked there which was all kinds of priceless (and crazy fun too!)

See you under The Spire for a Johnny Blue some day, Sive (right before we do our Luas passengers makeover!!) x

Every parent is different and everyone has their own way of doing things, we hear that all the time and it is true.

Those unique styles are always really evident, I think, when a range of different types of parents are bunged together by the choice of school, or even pre-school, that they make.

You are all forced into the one carpark, the one line outside while you wait for the doors to open, and the one corridor when picking the kids up again – and you get to meet lots of parent types on the way.

Here are the 10 Types Of Parents You Always Meet At The School Gate:

1. Hot Dad

Let’s just get this one out of the way, shall we? Amidst a sea of mammies doing the school run, are one or two gorgeous dads, who make the wait for the doors to open that little bit more enjoyable. There, I said it.

2. Chatty Cathy

Even if you’ve stated 17 times that really, you must go or else you’ll be late for work/the childminder/your own funeral, Chatty Cathy will keep ‘er lit until you literally lock yourself into your car and drive off while she’s mid-sentence.

3. Aero-dynamic Mum

You can’t miss her in neon pink or green sweats, as she zooms pass, clenching her buttocks as she goes, en route to a half-marathon before elevenses. Guaranteed to make you feel exhausted just by looking at her.

4. The Recruiter

Whether she works for Herbal Life, Aloe Whatsit, a Jewellery company in China or hosts Tubberware parties – there is a woman at the school gates who wants you on her ‘team’. Don’t worry, she’ll tell you, it won’t take up too much of your time – you just need to have a launch, attend weekly motivational group meetings and hand over your bank details. Er, no thanks.

5. Mz Perfectly Turned Out

“I don’t come down the stairs without my make up on!” she’ll trill at the rest of us, as we mentally scold ourselves for wearing the hubby’s football jersey again, and wonder when was the last time that you chucked on a slick of mascara.

6. The Expert

‘The Expert’ will have been a physiotherapist, nurse or doula in a past life, and wants you to know that she has the answer to all your problems, even if you haven’t particularly asked any questions. Casually chatting about approaching 40 and thinking about having another baby? The Expert will put paid to that, based on her past professional experience, leaving everyone sort of..well, depressed.

7. The Over-Sharer

You won’t know this woman very well, apart from politely smiling the odd time as you rush off about your business. But one day you will find yourselves alone together, and she will tell you details about her life that you don’t even know about your closest friend. Her husband’s erectile dysfunction? Check. Their plans for divorce? Check. Her burst cysts and subsequent laparoscopy? Check and double check.

8. Earth Mother

She who cannot for the life of her understand why you are mainlining coffee by 8.55am without acute knowledge of the coffee bean’s origin. I mean, how can anybody’s brain be operating at such a wholesome level at this hour? Oh yes, constant juicing and bursts of yoga throughout the night, while breastfeeding the twins simultaneously. I forgot, my bad.

9. Nosy Nelly

If you feel like you’re being interrogated by someone, then you probably are. If, like me, you live in a small town, then lots of people tend to know your business by osmosis.

“I see you’re thinking about going on holiday to Tenerife”, they’ll nod sagely as they greet you in the car park.

“But..my husband and I..just talked about it for the first time last night!” you’ll stutter.

Nosy Nelly doesn’t apologise for their actions. They merely pat you reassuringly on the shoulder and add, cryptically:

“I know”

10. She Who Is Wrecked.com

Even if you or someone you know falls into any of the categories above, the chances are that you will join the rest of us in looking, feeling and acting wrecked at some point. Teething babies, nightmares and terrors or sick kids can all rob us of those precious Zzzz’s that we so long for at the end of the day. Wrecked Mammy gets a free pass from all of us at the school gates, agreed?

I love HerFamily, I hope you’ve checked it out! 

Business and Pensions: A Snapshot of our Grown-up Lives

So we bought a business premises.

Ass Monkey and I became directors of Dynamic Cater Care when I was just a few weeks’ pregnant with Jacob.

We always knew we wanted to work for ourselves and seized the opportunity in 2011 while we had a few quid in the bank and enough contacts in Dublin bars and restaurants to get us going.

So Alan borrowed my dad’s van for his first few jobs and off he went while I kept my then part-time job going (just in case!) and simultaneously sent out invoices on my days off, crossing my fingers that they’d be paid.

Six years later we have a fleet of vans, a great team of engineers, admin and accounts legends and have built a solid reputation as the go-to company for new restaurant fit-outs and emergency service calls when kitchen equipment is going down around the city.

Our next step was to buy our own premises and after much ado with being out-bid, waiting for liquidation solicitors and wondering if we’d get the keys right on our wedding day (we didn’t in the end, but it would have been hilarious; “sorry, can’t make it up the aisle, have to to sign some legal papers” lol) – we finally got our hands on an old FAS training centre in Ballymun.

We’ve spent the last three months tearing apart the building and getting it ready for our purposes. What used to be various training rooms are now our offices and engineers’ workshop and we’ve knocked every wall down to give us the big warehouse space that we need.

We still have a lot of work to do on the building to get it REALLY nice but our operations are all officially moved across since Monday and everyone is getting settled in.

When you are self-employed you often get so busy just running the business and keeping afloat that you forget to take care of your personal stuff.

Like pensions. Yes, I said ‘pensions’. Somebody get me my shawl.

We see this new building now as our pension and security – it’s another little safeguard for our family and our financial future and so aside from it just being SO FRICKIN COOL that we have our own place, it also serves that very grown-up purpose.

ALTHOUGH – it is nestled right between Musgraves and IKEA so my debit card is clearly going to have to be confiscated from Monday to Friday – eek!

 

Ain’t Nuthin’ Going On But The Lent

My poor little confused non-Catholic child.

He has no idea that he’s a non-Catholic who is receiving a Catholic education in primary school.

And why would he? At 5 years old, he is just following the pack and doing what he’s told (despite behaving completely to the contrary at home, of course!)

When we started the school year and he first came home blessing himself and talking about ‘Holy God’ we did have a chat with him about how Mammy and Daddy didn’t believe in god and that he didn’t have to do the morning prayer if he didn’t want to.

Ass Monkey and I also spoke with the principal and vice principal who were very reassuring in the sense that they kept religious education to a small part of the educational curriculum and mostly, they were of the impression that the end to the Catholic Church being the primary religious hold over schools was in sight.

Maybe in 20 years, they said. I hope I live to see the day, I said.

As Ash Wednesday approached this week, the talk of Lent and ‘Holy God in Heaven’ was firmly on the lips of our little school goer so I thought maybe it was time to have another chat about our non-religious viewpoint as a family.

So while he was in the bath on Tuesday – CALM, I thought – I told him again that the morning prayers in school are his choice to do or not (he has been choosing to do them) and that he didn’t have to receive ash on Ash Wednesday if he didn’t want to.

“Why mammy?” he enquired, attempting yet again to shove his toothbrush down the jet holes of our bath.

“Because your school and some of the people in it believe in the god that you are saying your prayers to every morning, but mammy and daddy don’t believe in that god. Actually, mammy and daddy don’t believe in god at all”

His reaction was spectacular.

“WELL I BELIEVE IN GOD! I BELIEVE IN HIM BECAUSE HE IS IN HOLY HEAVEN!!!”

And he pouted for about half an hour, truly upset.

I felt like I’d told him that The Man In The Big Red Suit Who Lives In A Toy Workshop With Elves At The Furthest Northern Point Of The Planet Whose Sole Purpose Is To Reward Good Children With Gifts And Bad Children With Sacks Of Coal At Xmas Time wasn’t real.

Kinda the same thing though, innit?

Anyway, he got the ashes. And if he wasn’t sure before, at least now he knows that jesus loves him.

FML.

 

The Vegetarian’s Wife: How I Accidentally Gave Up Meat (ish)

One morning late last August, I came downstairs to find my husband standing in the kitchen who uttered the words no woman wants to hear:

“I am becoming a Vegetarian”.

To say I was shocked is a bit of an understatement. Ass Monkey is a Meat Man.

Tales of his BBQs are whispered in snugs around North County Dublin; his pulled pork sandwich creations have been known to end long-standing family feuds and his Xmas glazed ham.. well, let’s just say it’s 84% the reason I married him.

But as a lover of documentaries, Ass Monkey had watched one on Netflix the previous evening which outlined all of the reasons why meat consumption is not only a huge strain on our global resources, but also endlessly cruel to – as he put it himself – “the poor animals”.

I sort of thought it might be a phase. He was shocked by what he’d seen but would forget about it and would slip back to his glorious Lamp Chops served with honey mustard glaze ways, wouldn’t he?

Our wedding was coming up and I despaired, “What are you going to EAT, though?!” and his reply was calm and assured, “They better have amazing vegetarian food or there’ll be trouble”.

And Ballymagarvey Village DID have amazing vegetarian food and there was no trouble.. aside from when I started drinking shots at the bar..

Let’s move on.

On honeymoon in Edinburgh, we mostly ate at great Vegetarian restaurants. I figured it would be easier for both of us to eat well at a dedicated vegetarian restaurant than have one of us eat badly at a regular restaurant. And to be fair, it was all very nice. Actually, I mostly drank through those few days so it was all VERRRY nice!

He cooked the Xmas turkey and ham.. but says 2016 is the very last time he’ll ever do it. This could be grounds for an annulment.

Because I don’t cook – no, really, not a single thing, I’m just so shit at it – most of what I have consumed at home has been strictly vegetarian.

There was a spell there where my dad would take a trip to his farmhouse in Roscommon and arrive home with sirloin steak that he would slip into my hand when Alan wasn’t looking. He’d make a great prison guard, my ole lad, and they were the most delicious contraband I have ever tasted.

But as I have eaten less and less meat, I find that my desire to eat it has also lessened. I haven’t seen the documentary that Ass Monkey watched but I see in my husband that there is something very important here in what he is doing.

He wants to reduce our carbon footprint in the world, he wants to save the animals who are reared for the butchers shop from a life of cruelty, and he wants to live a healthier lifestyle too.

At this moment in time, there isn’t a scrap of meat in our fridge or freezer. We have quorn this and that and are horsing eggs into us like our (protein) lives depended on it.

Sorry, I said ‘horsing’. My bad.

Do I miss it? I do. Did I have a sneaky McChicken sandwich on Saturday afternoon when I had a bit of a hangover? I did.

Am I proud of myself? Not really. Just don’t tell Ass Monkey, ‘k?

Our Alternative Valentines: Doing It When You Have Kids

Well, we all know how to ‘do it’, otherwise we wouldn’t HAVE kids, right?!

But if you’re a fan of Valentines (and I AM, despite being a grump about most other things), you might need to adjust your way of doing THAT each February 14th.

Now that Ass Monkey and I are an old married couple (!) we agreed that having just had two weddings in the past couple of months was probably enough romance to last us another while yet, and we’d keep it in our pants this year.

…

(You know what I mean)

Anyway! The kids were excited about Valentines and at 5 and 2 respectively, were very busy in school and pre-school making cards for their mum and dad.

As they were all jazzed up about it, we decided to have a Big Family Valentines Day Out to celebrate little chubby Cupid’s day.

We took the kids to The National Sea Life in Bray for the afternoon, something we’d been meaning to get to for ages.

The weather was pretty bleak, grey and windy that day but the colourful aquariums inside The National Sea Life were all kinds of colourful and gorgeous by contrast.

We’re having a blast in @sea_life_bray today. Full craic in Instagram Stories 🐠🐟

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The kids loved every minute of it and I have to say that the staff were particularly amazing. They gave every family lots of attention and answered every kid’s questions (Jacob had about seven thousand of them).

You can spend a good hour and a half visiting each section, learning about the fish and hanging on for feeding time at the ‘Nemo’ and ‘Dory’ tank.

There’s also a cute little merchandise shop at the end of the tour where Miss Eva insisted on having a pink pirate costume to bring home. And who can deny her?

There is only one real way to be a pirate and that is IN HEELS 😂

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If you want to go for something to eat afterwards, Bray has many, many great places to eat along the seafront yet sadly we didn’t choose one of them.

Not that I am one to name and shame but someone should tell the manageress of the Shmocean Shmar And Shmill to never, ever, EVER pour the dregs of one woman’s white wine into the fresh new glass she just put on the table.

(Also, the food was shit)

But the company was TOP CLASS and I love our new family tradition for our very own Valentines Date For Four.

Tickets bought online for Sea Life are €10 per adult and €7.50 per child aged 3 – 14 years.

Welcome To The HerFamily Week By Week Pregnancy Guides!

If you are secretly pregnant.. congrats. (I promise your secret is safe with me!)

At Week 4 you might not even realise that you’re pregnant yet and are wondering if you’re so exhausted simply because you drank so much wine at the weekend OR because you are already mum to a small child.

I knew between weeks 4 and 6 that I was pregnant with both of my kiddos – I’m acutely aware of my body’s changes and ran for pregnancy tests as soon as my symptoms presented themselves!

Finding out this early means you have a VERY long pregnancy but you also get to keep a secret with your partner for ages too before you reveal the Big News in a couple of months’ time!

I recorded these Week By Week Pregnancy Guides with HerFamily and WaterWipes in January and I think they’ve turned out SO well.

There’ll be an update each week on their Facebook page and YouTube accounts and I’ll share them here too.

I hope we can share your exciting preggo journey together – this all isn’t making me broody at all, I SWEAR!

Got any nice pregnancy announcement ideas to share? We’d love to hear them so let us know in the comments on Facebook!

 

Shazzy’s 5 Top Tips For Digital Sanity in 2017

I don’t know whether you’ve heard, but I have been getting VERY grown up lately.

Having neglected my adulting duties for the past year while Ass Monkey and I frivolously threw  a wedding bash for ourselves in December, I kick-started 2017 with a plan to get my shit together.

There have been wardrobe overhauls, clear-outs, housework schedules, actual correspondence with the bank and even a request to PayPal to remove my mother’s credit card details from my account.

I mean, really, it was time.

A big part of my plan is to get on top of my digital life. Really, I’ve just been skimming the surface of my online accounts, my digital photos, my email accounts and apps.

My laptops and phones have consistently threatened to explode, resulting in my copying everything to an external hard drive about once every two years and then losing those digital hard drives.

In short, I’ve had no control or management over my online life. Which accounts for about 74% of my actual life, obviously.

But no more! I have a FOCUS now, ya see, and there are gonna be a few digital rules around here from now on.

Rules like;

  1. Get Over Yourself. The online world will not stop turning because you haven’t checked your phone for 20 minutes. The sooner you realise that, the less likely you will feel like live Tweeting about your Granny’s colonoscopy. Probably.
  2. No Phones After 9pm. If, like me, you check your phone for multiple social platforms, email correspondence as well as news and current affairs, the chances are your brain is fried come dinner time. Do yourself a favour and pick a cut-off point every evening. Mine is 9pm midweek when I put my phone down and forget about it ’til morning. Upside: I’m reading more books and sleeping a bit better. Downside: I missed really important updates about a road closure near our house last week that would have saved me a one-hour round trip. Them’s the breaks.
  3. Unsubscribe, Bitches. If, like me, you find yourself spending a LOT of time deleting mail-shots that you don’t even read.. then what’s the point of them? Just unsubscribe if you’re not excited to read them and save yourself some extra time back in your life. And Twitter notifications.. please jesus will someone tell me how I can stop all the Twitter notifications?!
  4. Clear Yo Shit Out. I cleared out 1000 emails between two accounts last week. I know, I should be ashamed of myself. But, ya know, I was keeping stuff to ‘read later’.. about two years ago. I have made a solemn promise to myself that I’m not allowed more than 20 unread emails EVAH. I have to open, read, delete. The end.
  5. Get The Pics And Vids Under Control. My iPhone is a disaster. It is constantly threatening to run out of storage despite my having paid for extra. It’s because I can’t stop with the photos and the videos, I know. So that’s a job for this week – upload them all to my laptop and then save them to an external hard drive so I can..

..oh wait, shit. Noooo… it can’t be done!!!

*Like this post? Why not try another, huh?!

Why ‘Damp January’ Is The Only Way To Start The Year – RaisingIreland.com

Maureen The Midwife Talks Vaginas (Or Does She?!)

One of my favourite things about working at HerFamily was bringing ‘Maureen The Midwife’ to life.

If you are or have ever been pregnant and attended an antenatal class at one of our nation’s fine maternity hospitals, then you may have encountered a ‘Maureen’.

She wouldn’t be great on tact, our Maureen, nor answering questions from nervous soon-to-be-in-labour mothers and generally speaking, would rather talk about the poor selection of madeira cake at the hospital canteen.

A ‘Maureen’ is an enigma in the Irish maternity services – one wonders why she’s allowed to be around expectant mothers when she clearly has no time for their nonsense nor questions surrounding where the actual fuck they might find their perineum.

Maureen would like you to give birth at the back of the green bin in your back garden if at all possible – whatever it takes for you to NOT RING THE HOSPITAL WHEN YOU GO INTO LABOUR.

You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?

Enjoy this comedy skit, my lovelies, there are lots more video to come!

*On a personal note, I LOVED my antenatal classes in Holles Street Maternity Hospital – especially when I went for a refresher day course when pregnant on Eva.

The lady who gave the class should actually have her own TV comedy show – it was around the time of the senior hospital staff salary ‘top ups’ scandal and she started the antenatal class with this;

“Welcome to Holles Street Hospital, where we are not allowed to ask for a coffee top up at the staff canteen any more. We must ask for a REFILL”.

I mean, you wouldn’t want to be heavily pregnant and in danger of breaking your waters, would you?

If you have any great antenatal class stories to share, we’d love to hear them over on our Facebook Page!

“WTF Is Mum’s Box?!” And Other Questions Answered..

So I’ve been quietly ferreting away with a project or two, trying to keep busy post-wedding and also trying to keep Raising Ireland as fresh and forward-thinking as I’d always hoped I would.

A subscription box idea came to me via my great friend Damon Blake who is not only full to the brim with great creative ideas but also filmed the Chitter Chatter video series for this site.

I did some research before Christmas and with the help of the technical wizard that is Sheila Pollard, quietly launched Mum’s Box in December 2016.

Here’s what we sent out in the very first Mum’s Box in January 2017

The idea behind Mum’s Box is to gift hard-working and often neglected mums with a monthly surprise box of treats. Those treats can be from a range of cosmetics, bath, skin or hair care, something delish to eat with a cup of tea or coffee, something to make mums laugh and (almost more importantly), a cheerleading squad via the Raising Ireland network that we support them for the great mums that they are.

These first few months are going to be a quiet testing ground between friends, family and supporters of RaisingIreland.com. We want to make sure that we have a product we can really stand over and be proud of before we launch it into the mainstream media and shout from the rooftops about it.

Getting the first box out was stressful! There were delays with product orders, the boxes arrived way bigger than we’d expected and there was lots of tail-chasing.

(Yes, my box IS too big – say nuthin’)

Peachy is an Irish-owned natural skincare range for mum and baby that we just adore

Anyway, that’s ok, because that’s the beginning of what I am sure is to be a very large learning curve, my favourite kind.

We have made contact with the most interesting and progressive businesses to curate really lovely treats for mums every month, with a big emphasis on Irish suppliers. A lot of them are entrepreneurial mums too, which is a bonus because we love to support other hard-working mammies!

So keep an eye on the Mum’s Box Facebook page as we chart our exciting little journey.

And if YOU are a mum with a product or business that you think would be of interest to us, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at info@raisingireland.com.

And as always ladies.. #loveyourbox

Want to subscribe to Mum’s Box? Click on the image below to take you to the website!

*Read this lovely review from Kellie Kearney at My Little Babog if you need more info!*