Billy Bean and Co.

Last week we had a fabulous day out in Chester – a trip to the Roman museum, for BB himself great shopping for MummyJ and a delicious lunch in Moules A Go Go on Watergate Street who are just wonderful with children – great children’s menu / prices, high chairs, friendly attitude and good food and drink for the grown ups too! Highly recommended.

After lunch we watched one of the best celebrations I’ve seen in a long time the Chester Midsummer Street Parade.  The costumes were amazing and beautifully made there were pirates and mermaids and giants on stilts, local schoolchildren and brass bands – just fabulous!

But who can believe that it’s Mid-Summer already? And only three weeks until the Summer holidays!!!

Around this time every year I usually start panicking about what on earth I’m going to do with two kids full time for six weeks but this year I have loads of ideas…

Check out the activities section of “play” and you’ll see that there are now beetle barns and ant hill habitats in addition to our popular butterfly gardens and stick insect kits.  These are SO great you just buy the kit and inside is a coupon to send off for the live bit e.g. with the beetle barns you send off for the mealworm that eventually grow into darkling beetles.  The children get to watch the entire lifecycles which are just fascinating then release them into the wild at the end of the process (great opportunity for fostering a caring attitude towards living things!)

With keeping little people usefully occupied foremost in my mind at the moment I’ve increased the number of arty crafty activities and put in a section under “play” for rainy day ideas. Someone has thoughtfully put together large tubs of sticky foam shapes in different themes - Genius!  My son had four friends round for the afternoon last week and I swear other than providing them with copious amounts of food and drink I was surplus to requirements. Instead they spent TWO AND A HALF HOURS with a tub of creepy crawly stickers and a load of scrap paper and card and when their interest finally waned they made them into false eyebrows and moustaches! the best £9.99 I’ve ever spent!

Also new is a fantastic sunglasses / glasses case now in the To Wear / other accessories section.  I have found it so hard to find something stylish and practical so I was thrilled when I discovered these.  They are fantastic value for money and they go with the funky sunglasses that we sell – could life get any better?

Enjoy the sun!  Sarah

Just wondering if anyone out there is as psychotic about trying to gain some semblance of control over their lives as me?  In the last couple of years I have bought myself every type of organiser, diary, planner and calendar on the market, then two weeks ago, a celestial banana skin! I put the baby’s buggy into the boot of the car after the school run and bust my back.  Despite the obvious appeal of three weeks of guilt-free enforced rest and copious amounts of prescription drugs, the actuality of lying flat whilst being clambered over by a 14 month old and trying to be “fun Mum” to a boisterous five year old who likes to bounce on the bed like a trampoline (God that hurt!) is not all that! And control over my life – forget it!

Being physically inactive I’ve actually had little choice but to spend my time thinking and amazingly it actually feels like the first time that I’ve had to really think for literally months and months and months.  Sometimes it seems like a luxury I just can’t afford.  I’ve thought about loads of things life, love, the universe (as anyone who knows me well knows this can be a dangerous thing) but how funny, it has only just occurred that the reason that I can’t make my life “work” with lists and calendars is actually fairly obvious I simply need more time and less to do – duh! With that thought, I am determined to abandon the “job” of filling in my lists (perhaps I’ll just keep one), chilling just a bit more and just learning to laugh when it all goes pear-shaped which is often in our house!

I need to say a big THANK YOU for all of the amazingly generous, genuine practical and emotional help that’s come my way despite your own busy lives (you know who you are and that I love you) and thank you to all my fabulous customersfor their immediate patience and understanding - you rock!!

Sarah

My mother belongs to a generation of women who believed they could have it all.
I belong to a generation of women who have a sneaky suspicion that having it all
actually means doing it all and that although the rise of feminism has given us an
inordinate amount of benefits it has brought its own problems in some measure.

This morning I have been Crappy Mummy again. I bellowed at my 5 year old for
having a bad aim when he weed on the bathroom floor, we were late for school,
careering up the drive as usual with reading bags, coats, lunchboxes and buggies,
skidding to a halt as the bell rang and I managed to teach my one year old the f word
when white van man pulled out on me on the way to drop her off at Grandmas.

Like so many other women that I know I continually struggle with the work / home
balance. Ive done it all ways full-time Mum, full-time work, part time work with 2 days
of quality time. In the words of the great Sheryl Crow - No-one said it would be easy
but no-one said it would be this hard!

With Billy Bean & Co I want to offer good quality products at reasonable prices
sourced from ethical manufacturers. Above all I try to think of lots of ways in which
I can offer good customer service which I hope might make someone, somewheres
day easier in some small way. If you need to buy gifts and are looking for inspiration
or have comments, encouragement or ideas about the site I would love to hear from you.
Sarah