ManicMammy's Blog

Reviews, news, family, wine and me

4 year old fashionista’s heaven

Oh the anticipation, every morning waiting for the postman to call and at last, this morning they arrived. These are our 4 year old’s dream sandals: Since seeing the ad and hearing her cousin got a pair, its all she’s wanted. She’s big into her clothes and dressing up and so the glitter and glitz [...]

Rawk on in Bandon

This weekend’ll be hopping in Bandon as the annual music festival takes place. We’ll be away tomorrow night but are hoping to get to either Saturday or Sunday nights’ free gigs at The Shambles to see The Blizzards, Republic of Loose and the Delorentos. Plenty happening the pubs too as can be seen in the [...]

Fishy fishy

For Oscar’s first birthday my dad bought him an aquarium and some fish. He loved it. But since moving to Bandon 5 years ago, its just been stored as we never got around to setting it up here and restocking it with fish. All changed last weekend as for his ninth birthday, we decided to [...]

Found Out

This morning did not start well: the car broke down on the school run and it was raining. After all was sorted: the car fixed and kids dropped to school, I decided to call in to The Found Out Cafe in Innishannon. Its located on the Main Street, I pass it regularly on the way [...]

Watch those pennies and the pounds will look after themselves

A favourite saying of my mother’s which I believe she got off her father, my grandad Joe. photo credit: ArchiM What brought it to mind was a new website: FrugalIreland, recently launched by Deborah with contributions already from Maz. With tips on how to save money and ways to spend it more wisely and make [...]

Mango Outlet

I recently discovered this website by way of a link from the main Mango site. Its basically a discount site that has garments from previous seasons available for sale at greatly reduced rates. It suits me down to the ground as I’m not really a fashionista preferring to stick to shapes and colours that I [...]

The King and Castle

Whilst on our Legoland trip a fortnight ago, we decided to eat out in Windsor on the Saturday night. We had intended finding a family friendly Italian restaurant or similar and rather naively hadn’t booked anywhere. We arrived into Windsor around 7. It was a glorious Summer’s evening and the town was hopping. It was [...]

Swoon

Oisín, the 6 year old, is big into cars. So this weekend he was questioning myself and Conor as to what were our favourite cars and what car would we like to own and drive. My answer was a Citroen DS. I know fitting the 5 kids and husband in it may be a bit [...]

Weekend at Legoland

Where to start? We’re just back from the weekend away with Saturday and Sunday spent in Legoland Windsor. Despite the really hot weather, the queues, the amount of people there, we all had a brilliant time and really enjoyed it. After two days there our legs were sore from walking, we still hadn’t managed to [...]

Anyone for noodles?

photo credit: adactio After swimming earlier today, we decided to eat out en famille. Having been to Wagamama in Cork previously and having been very happy with that visit, we decided to return today. As always the staff were very friendly, attentive and efficient. Its a very family friendly restaurant: colouring pages and crayon to [...]