ManicMammy's Blog

Reviews, news, family, wine and me

Best boy’s birthday party evah

Time is really flying and Oisín turned 10 years old a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately its not the best time of year for a birthday weatherwise but he’d been to his mate Brian’s birthday party in West Cork Secret during the summer and was fairly insistent he wanted to celebrate his birthday there too. [...]

Virginian Jailbreak

Sunday May 1st at 10am saw myself, 3 of my siblings and other pals running through a forest in Virginia, Co. Cavan. Why? I hear you ask. Well, it was the first Jailbreak 10km trail run. We were going to be up and about early anyway as our Dad’s anniversary mass was taking place at 8am so [...]

Groovy Grandmother’s Day at Hosfords

Slow Food West Cork and Slow Food Cork City present the third annual International Grandmother’s Day at Hosfords Garden Centre on Sunday 17th April from 2pm. photo credit: subewl The day includes: Demos of Traditional Skills such as baking and sausage making Horticultural Talk on Fruit Trees by John Hosford Kid’s Colouring Competition – themed “In [...]

Once upon a time

Santy had some hits and some misses this Christmas but the Vtech Storio was definitely the surprise and biggest hit of them all. Fionn, who is 5 years old and in Junior Infants, has just started learning to read and he loves it. Santy brought him the Toy Story 3 ebook as he had recently [...]

A couple of interesting taster days

Happy New Year to all! Lately real life has gotten in the way of blogging. I hope everyone had a lovely festive season. Our children are still off school but we’ve returned to Bandon after visiting Kilkenny and Cavan, both of which were without running water at times due to the icy weather and its [...]

If you go down to the woods today

It looks like the Irish Natural Forestry Foundation (INFF) have lined up 2 fun family Hallowe’en activity days at INFF, Manch, which is located just outside Ballineen, Co. Cork. Running on both Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st of October from 10am to 5pm. photo credit: shawncampbell Hallowe’en events are as follows: Pumpkin Olympics Come and [...]

DIY Paper Sundial

Via @sabrinadent. This looks like a fun project for kids and adults alike and its free. How to make your own cutout paper vertical sundial. This page is about Sundials. Sundials are instruments that tell you the time with the shadow of the sun. To design a sundial you need to know exactly where you [...]

Superb SuperSea Summer Camp

Oscar has just completed this summer camp and is raving about how good it was and how much he enjoyed it. It took place on Garrettstown beach. We were fortunate that the weather was relatively good this week and there were some waves. All equipment was supplied by the surf school. The children were kitted [...]

But how can they teach me to run faster? *

The beginning of the school summer holidays saw my middle three children eager to do something energetic. Some of their pals were doing the Bandon Athletic Club Summer Camp so that’s the activity they selected. It was held in the Bandon Grammar school grounds which was great as in addition to outdoor running track and [...]

Super Sugru Scissors Repair

This is a guest post from Oscar, our 11 year old son. He eagerly awaited the arrival of Sugru in our house as he had seen the demos on its website. He repaired a broken scissors handle with the wonder material. Now nothing is safe Take it away Osc: Today I did an experiment with [...]

keep looking »