When the old ways are still the best!

I always remember part of getting ready for school as a child involved polishing my school shoes on a Sunday night, ready for the week ahead. I used find it a real chore but as an adult with my own children, I see why my mum made us do it: spending what amounts to very little time and effort in using proper polish and a bit of elbow grease to polish up Sophie's school shoes each Sunday night ensures the shoes look good right up until her feet outgrow them.

It does make me feel somewhat old-fashioned, since I haven't yet met another school mum who does this: if they clean their children's shoes at all, they use the instant shine stuff! But doing it properly works! First day of school with brand new shoes and home she came with the toes all scuffed. And if your child is anything like my monkey then it's not just the toes that get scuffed but the sides as well from gripping any pole she can climb.

After ignoring Sophie's new shoes for the first few weeks and the toes getting worse and worse, I pulled out the good old Kiwi black shoe polish, rubbed a healthy amount all over the shoes and left them for ten minutes. A quick polish with the buffing brush and they gleamed like new.

So no matter whether it's old-fashioned or not, the very fact that it works is why the shops still sell proper shoe polish and shoe brushes and I'm not forking out every term for a new pair of shoes! And it isn't just school shoes that benefit from a bit of polish...

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look

Halloween ...

Halloween fell right in the middle of half term which was fun.

We decorated the house a little and Sophie drew lots of fun pictures which we stuck in the front window. I especially love the two below with the wonderful spelling and the fact that she thinks it's "tricle treet" not "trick or treat"!

I also carved a pumpkin and for the first time ever, I managed to keep the scrapings from inside (not sure if it was just a better quality pumpkin as it did come from Waitrose!) I saved and roasted the pumpkin seeds and steamed and pureed the pumpkin flesh to use at a later date; I will be searching out some yummy things to do with it in the next week or so. Sophie helped me choose a face online and I printed it and pricked out the design with metal cocktail stick before using the grapefruit cutter to cut the face out. It turned out suitably scary and I even used the cut out mouth to make a tiara/hair fixed on the top.

Our road is becoming famous locally for the great trick or treating and we made sure we went out nice and early before all the sweets were gone. It seemed like everyone in the street with children was out and half those without children took part with bowls of sweets which was great. Both Sophie and Justin have got enough sweets to last them to Christmas, though not as many as some teenage boys I saw with a supermarket carrier bag that was overflowing - obscene really!

I took some photos of my little trick or treaters - cute and scary ...

I love how the movement in the picture below turned them into ghosts - very scary ...

And finally, I just couldn't resist including this fab Halloween picture of Snoopy, still my favourite of all cartoon characters ...

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look