Ready for the show!

The Entertainment Centre was buzzing with excitement and full of kids dressed up as their favourite Disney character all ready to watch the show.

When the music started, Sophie was into it! Dancing and wiggling her little bum. Unfortunately when the music stopped at the talking started she wasn’t as keen, but she is only 15 months old. As soon as the music started again she was dancing and clapping!

Checking out the seats.

Dancing with Minnie!

The Grandma a couple of rows in front us was also having a ball. Clapping and singing along to all the words!

The show really was great. Very colourful and exciting. I have to say, I think the highlight for me was Sebastian the crab from The Little Mermaid doing Beyonce’s Single Ladies!

Sebastian does Single Ladies!

Sophie's 1st Icy pole!

Clearly Mickey and Minnie Mouse were Sophie’s favourites. As soon as they were on stage she was mesmerised!

Hopefully they will be back again when Sophie is a bit older, so I can take her again!

Sophie sit still for this? I don't think so!

Motherhood is challenging. Some challenges are easy to overcome and some reduce you to tears. But this latest challenge with Miss Sophie rivals climbing Mount Everest. As in climbing Mount Everest would be easier. Easier than what? Well I’m glad you asked. If you asked Sophie, and if she could talk she would tell you that her father and I were trying to amputate her little chubby fingers and pull her little toes out one by one from her little chubby feet.

But no my dear friends, this isn’t what we are trying to do at all. We are simply trying to cut her fingernails and toenails. It’s such an ordeal that we have given up many a time. But it’s now getting to the point where we could enter Soph into the Guinness Book of records and give that fingernail lady a run for her money.

We’ve tried while she’s having her bottle, while she’s munching on food, while she’s chilling out playing with toys. But no luck. I think at this rate if we get one a week cut we’re doing well.

I’ve contemplated cutting them in her sleep but once she’s asleep I daren’t wake her up so I chicken out!

My next brainwave is to cut them while she’s asleep in the car. So all we need to do is plan a big drive where she’ll fall asleep, I’ll sit in the back and chop away and problem solved. Now we just need to find the time!

I’m hoping as she gets older she’ll understand what we are doing!

How do you get your little one to stay still while trying to cut their fingernails and toenails?

Don’t forget to enter the Disney Live ticket giveaway!

You could be watching Disney Live! soon...!

It’s easy peasy to enter. All you have to do is leave a comment on this blog post, (you’ll see the comment button at the end of the post) telling me who your or your kids favourite Disney character is. Then ‘Like’ Puff Pieces on Facebook. Just click the ‘Like’ button on the Facebook box to the right or head HERE to my Facebook page. Yep, it’s that simple!

You can only enter once, and the competition will be open for 2 weeks, closing on Monday 12th December 2011 at 7.30am. The winner will be chosen at random by www.random.org and will be announced here on Monday 12th December 2011 at about 9.30am, and also posted on Puff Pieces Facebook page and notified by email.

So what are you waiting for… start ‘Liking’ and commenting away! Good luck!

Abu the monkey!

Growing up, Aladdin was one of my absolute favourite movies. I thought Abu the monkey was the cutest thing I’d ever seen and Princess Jasmine the most beautiful. I wished that I could have a pet tiger and sing like she did. A Whole New World was my favourite song and I’d belt it out off tune all the time. Their adventures looked like so much fun. And who wouldn’t want their very own Genie and magic carpet!

The best thing now about having kids? It gives you the perfect excuse to relive these memories, watch the movies and introduce them to the wonderful world of Disney.

Watching Sophie bop around, wiggling her bum to the beat of any music, including ad’s on TV often has me in hysterics, so I can only imagine what she’ll be like when we go to the new Disney Live! show in January! The all dancing, all singing cast full of all our favourite Disney characters will no doubt have plenty of tiny little feet tapping and little bums wiggling to the beat of the music. I’m so excited and can’t wait. I mean Sophie’s so excited and can’t wait. Ok, so she doesn’t even realise she’s going yet, so I’m excited enough for the 2 of us!

Disney Live is coming to Newcastle Entertainment Centre on January 17-18. Tickets are already on sale through Ticketek. Follow the link HERE.

The whole Disney Live! gang

And don’t forget to stay tuned for a very exciting Disney giveaway next week! Yes I will have 4 tickets to give away to one of the Newcastle shows!

But there’s a few more things that change, including our attitude towards things like, staying up late and having clean clothes…

You know you’re a mum when…

• Your baby dresses better than you do.

• You never leave the house without some form of milk/food stain accessorising your clothing.

• Mini cupcakes are a good enough breakfast for you because you forgot to eat, are starving, running out the door and haven’t done the groceries.

• If you’re still awake at 8.30pm you’re cheering, 9.30pm must be a special occasion, 10.30pm whoa hold onto your hats, that’s like 3am in pre-mummy speak.

• A 20% off kids clothes sale at Target is the highlight of your day. No week. No, actually month.

• You enjoy going nuts at said Target sale and would rather shop for kids things than things for yourself.

• Drinks at the pub are replaced with picnics at the park.

• Dinner parties are replaced with daytime BBQs.

• You talk far too much about poo.

• You celebrate bubs every burp, and fart, the relief so great you might as well have done it yourself.

• Your boobs become part of everyday conversation.

• You’ve never had so many random people talk to you.

• Having a baby is by far your greatest achievement.

• The only place you want to be in the whole world is at home with your little family.

What would you add to my ‘you know when you’re a mum list’…?

When we decided to turn our single garage into a kids rumpus room I was beyond excited. Finally, I thought, I can get my hands on one room in the house and go nuts on the decorating. Turned out hubby had other ideas. You see, remember all those white walls I mentioned? Well it seems my darling husband is allergic to coloured paint. So painting the rumpus room was a no go. I should have known, we had the same argument over the nursery.

Instead around the house hubby has caved and nailed holes in the wall for canvas photos.

So after the paint dream was yet again squashed I decided to turn on my negotiating skills. Wall Stickers I thought! Fun, removable, changeable, perfect for a kids play room and perfect for the architect who I’m sure deep down misses his museum. (Not that he’d give us up for anything!)

Hmmm, which wall stickers shall we choose?!

So after I did a review on Bright Star Kids great name labels, I mentioned that I’d be back on their website later in the year to choose some wall stickers. They very generously offered me a discount to try the wall stickers out so I could then tell you all about them!

I already had my eye on the one’s I was thinking but decided to peruse the website again just to make sure. There are so many to choose from, some lovely and girly, some perfect for the boys, but I needed something in between. While it’s just Sophie’s playroom at the moment, when we decide to have another baby, you never know we may have a boy and I didn’t want him to be stuck hanging out in a fairy playroom because his mummy went nuts on the girly stuff!

YAY! My wall stickers are here!

I wanted something fun, funky and colourful. And that’s exactly what I found with the gorgeous Polka Dots. I chose the bright colours pack for the playroom, but they also come in beautiful pastel colours too. So I hopped on the website last Monday to place my order. Once again the online ordering system is easy peasy. And on Wednesday, yes Wednesday our wall stickers arrived!! Clearly my excitement was contagious as you can see Sophie in the pic when I showed her when they arrived!

I was itching to put them up straight away but we didn’t have the toy storage furniture yet. But as soon as we got home from Ikea on Saturday and hubby had put all the furniture together and Sophie was tucked up in bed, I was straight into the stickers! They were so easy to apply. To be honest I was a little nervous about things like air bubbles but as soon as I’d applied the first, I was away. The stickers themselves feel lovely, they’re like a fabric, and you just smooth down as you go.

The finished product!

We opted for the random squiggly line look as you can see and we’re so happy with the results. They look great on the white wall and match in perfectly with the colourful Ikea toy tubs! Apart from the pink car and tea set, this playroom could definitely be for a girl or a boy. Exactly what we wanted!

Matching height chart!

I also purchased a matching height chart for when Sophie is a bit older, or will stand still for more than 2 seconds! I highly recommend reading the instructions before putting it up, it made it a lot easier. And you’ll definitely need 2 of you. I’m blaming the slight crookedness of our’s on my impatience to get it done after a long day and it was getting late! But once again, it felt lovely, not cheap and sticky and it comes with these gorgeous little height markers so you don’t have to draw on your walls or doors. We used the height markers to position the chart as recommended and when we removed them, not one bit of paint came off the door. (A relief as I had assured hubby no paint would be damaged in the making of the playroom!)

So there you have it folks, Sophie’s funky playroom. By far the coolest room in the house! Head HERE to Bright Star Kids to check out all their awesome stuff for yourself!

Disclosure: I received the wall stickers at a discounted rate thanks to Bright Star Kids. No financial payment was offered nor accepted for this post. All opinions expressed are my own.

So when I was approached through this blog to jump on the latest Disney show promo bandwagon, I was of course tickled pink!

And this just isn’t any old Disney stage show. No siree, this is Disney Live! Mickey’s Music Festival!

The whole Disney Live gang!

Mickey Mouse and his band of friends, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy, will perform in the musical extravaganza these summer holidays, and the show is coming to Newcastle! Joined by Disney favourites, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story, this fun-filled concert experience will entertain the whole family!

Disney hits are remixed to the hottest sounds of today featuring hip hop, pop, swing, reggae, rock, country and much more! The line up of performers including, Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy, Ariel, Sebastian and Ursula; Jasmine, Aladdin and Genie, Woody, Buzz and Jessie are among the more than 25 Disney stars featured in this jam session!

You won’t be able resist dancing, singing, playing your air-guitar and laughing with this band of characters!

To get your foot tapping, check out the video below!

This awesome show will hit the Newcastle Entertainment Centre on January 17-18. Tickets are already on sale through Ticketek. Follow the link HERE.

And just to top it all off, Puff Pieces will have 4 tickets, yes 4 tickets to give away to one of the Newcastle shows! Stay tuned…!

1 today!

The day you find out you’re pregnant all you can do is think about meeting your little one. For me, I felt like I was pregnant FOREVER. Even my sister in law commented she felt like I had the longest pregnancy in history! But then once you have that tiny little newborn in your hands, time does something totally cruel and decides to speed up. That newborn stage is scarily quick. Blink and you’ll miss it. Blink again and your baby will be turning ONE!

One minute she’s rolling for the first time. Then next she’s sitting on her own, then all of sudden she takes off crawling down the hallway at a million miles an hour, starts understanding what you’re saying to her and happily obliges to a cuddle request, pulls herself up on her feet desperately trying to reach her puppy dog Jack snoozing on the lounge and then starts scooting around the furniture on her feet! And while I watched and encouraged her with excitement and pride I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t genuinely shocked at how fast everything kept happening!

And now today, our tiny little squishy gorgeous chubba bubba with the big blue eyes, ringlets framing her beautiful little face and her Daddy’s big chubby cheeks turns ONE.

A whole year since we welcomed Sophie Grace into the world on that very special date 10.10.10.

Miss Sophie you have bought more smiles, laughter and joy into our lives than we ever could have imagined. Happy 1st Birthday beautiful girl! xxx

Soccer Girl Softies

Once I got on their website I was faced with the very difficult task of choosing from all the gorgeous little designs! So I decided to hand it over to hubby. Of course he picked something not super girly, but thankfully still pink! So he chose the Soccer Girl Soft Sole pair, placed our order, thankfully the website ordering system was a no brainer and very easy to use.

Within a couple of days our little package had arrived and I was so excited to try them on Sophie. She wasn’t entirely sure at first what was going on as I put the shoes on her chubby little feet. I’m sure she was thinking, hmmmm these are different to my usual boring pair of socks! I soon figured out that putting shoes on babies is easier a) if you make your husband do it, or in the event that is not possible, b) sit them on your lap and do it that way rather than have them laying on the change table.

The great thing about the Softies is they have this great elastic bits on the sides that make it nice and easy to stretch them onto chubby baby feet, but then once they are on you can’t see the elastic and they go straight back to their proper shape.

We were then in business and Sophie’s little outfit was finally complete! The shoes are so lovely and soft. Basically like little baby ballet jiffy’s. They move with her feet when she crawls and they are nice and secure for when she stands up. She’s not walking yet, but I’m sure she will taking off in her Softies in no time.

Softies Baby Shoes in action!

You can check out all the gorgeous baby shoes that Softies Baby Shoes has to offer at www.softiesbabyshoes.com. But be warned, you’ll have a hard time choosing! Oh, and they also have gorgeous T-shirts, leggings and socks.

Disclosure: I received the pair of Softies Baby Shoes complimentary, and no financial payment was offered nor accepted for this post. All opinions expressed are my own.