Family Adventures of Late

Wow what a busy first three months of year! We have certainly managed to pack a whole lot of adventures in both close to home and further afield. Despite its being fairly cold, life has been very colourful and action packed and we have made the most of every single dry day we have been given (as well as preserving in the cold and wet too). Here are a few highlights from the past few weeks. 1. We tried out a new cafe in Llandaff North called Coffee Rex , they make excellent Italian coffee as well as these delicious Waffles 2. Cotton Twist were kind enough to send some party bag fillers for my son's birthday, we had fun making the superman masks. * Review * 3. We spent time at one of our favourite places in South Wales - St Fagans Outdoor Museum . A unique family friendly museum that takes you through the history of life in Wales. 4. If you follow me on social media you may know that I recently spent a weekend exploring Manchester with Hotel Indigo, do check out my blog p......

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Slow evenings at Penarth Pier

The one thing I love about summer's is warm evenings which at times in the UK seems few and far between but when they do come we take them, we don't worry so much about the kids routine and instead head outside and enjoy the moment. When we had a mini heat wave last week that is exactly what we did, I bundled the kids into the car and picked up John from worked and headed to Penarth Pier for a cheeky chips and ice-cream on the pier. There was a lot going especially with the RNLI sea rescue doing training in the bay with a huge Helicopter hoisting people up from the water and all the lifeboats out and about. There was also lots paddle boarders, jet ski's and people whizzing by in speedboats waterskiing as the water was so calm and perfection conditions for water sports, which provided perfect entertainment for the kids. My eldest is also fascinated with the tidal cycles, when we arrived the tide was in but by the time we had left it was going out again, re......

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Calm before the storm

The last week before Christmas is always a bit of a hyper one for my eldest, the excitement simply becomes too much so we have been filling our days with activities and lots of fresh air. I have been taking my camera out a little less this week as baby carrying with a heavy camera slows us down but I have one or two little captures from our time. We have made it to the coast twice in the past week - once to the Pier in Penarth where we spent time looking for shells on the beach, digging in the sand and running along the pier before stopping for a snack. The second was a small part of the coastline near Barry which is perfect for fossil hunting and we have on a few occasions found some ammonite type fossils in rock. We also enjoyed a wonderful little forest walk with friends, splashing in a stream and making pinecone bird feeders and some scootering time of course. How have you been fulling your days in the run up to Christmas? ...

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Exploring Cosmeston with the Fiat 500L

If you read the blog you will know that we love spending time outdoors, exploring new places, travel and road trips which are all apart of the fabric that makes up our life. As long as it's fairly dry (yes we venture out in the rain as well) you will normally find us outside knee deep in mud. Of course as the pregnancy has progressed things have slowed down but certainly not stopped and the lovely people at  Fiat thought we would like to try out their new Fiat 500L Beats for two weeks, which are perfect for city or countryside adventures, especially since they are fitted with mud and snow tyres which means the winter weather will not get in the way of our outdoor fun. So we couldn't wait to jump in and make our way over to Cosmeston countryside park in Penarth, which is a wonderful place to spot newts, run among the reeds and get some fresh air. Mr A has taken a real interest in photography lately and can pretty much work my Canon 5D as well as his own littl......

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Free range fun and beach adventure part 2

Last week we had so much fun in all the glorious fun that I simply could not fit it all into one post and  since we had more than one visit to the seaside this weeks country kids post is about our adventure to Penarth Park and Pier. Whenever we go to Penarth we park near the town centre and walk through the park first before heading down to the beach and pier. It's a lovely park with wooden sculptures, a small bird avery, pond and little play park with a hedge you can climb behind and is always popular with children.  We then headed down to the pier and had a little bite to eat followed by a ice-cream to help cool the little man down after all that running and since he doesn't get ice-cream very often it's always a lovely treat. We had only been on the Pier for around 10 minutes when we heard a a loud noise and could see part of the cliff near the pier come down, fortunately no one was hurt but it was pretty exciting to see and within about 15 min ......

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Winter Sun Fun

Summer seems so long ago, the feeling of natural warmth a distant memory, but saying that we go out everyday no matter what the weather so when it is sunny it can be such a delight and with a recent spell of sunshine over what is usually rainy Wales made us smile, especially since it was Johns day off which meant some good family outings. The first place we decided to brave was the seaside, Penarth to be exact. First we had a lovely meal at the Ocho bar and then a walk through the park down to the pier. Little Mr A loved that the pier had been cornered off as they are doing restoration work and he told us he needed to go home to fetch his hammer and ladder as he wanted to help. On the walk back from the pier, we took a different root through the park looking at all the wooden owl and animal carvings and playing hide and seek.  Little Mr A rocking his Parker It's great to see the blue sky again The two boys on the Pier Our second sunny day was equally f......

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Folk and Fun

So winter is really on it way, time for the warm coats, scarfs and gloves. The sun graced us in Cardiff on Sunday and we thought this was a perfect time to take a nice relaxing walk in the bay over the barrage to Penarth. Also John wanted to try out his new Folk Jacket from OiPolloi . Please note this is NOT a sponsored post and John paid full price for his jacket John wearing Van shoes, Ralph Lauren socks, Albam jeans and Folk Jacket Add caption So every now and then I just feel like a change, alittle spontaneity and at the moment I am really feeling like getting a new tattoo - just something small, I really want alittle rockabilly diamond on my finger, since I love my moustache tattoo so much I am going to get this to go with it. Thats me! Rocking the Cazals and my finger tattoo I want! ...

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Penarth Pier

Yey to bank holidays, you have got to love a long weekend. On monday we decided to take a little drive down to Penarth, a little seaside town near Cardiff, in the Vale of Glamorgan. it has an amazing old victorian pier, which is in abit of state of disrepair but that almost adds to the charm of it. The weather was a little hit and miss with breaks of sunshine. We tried to get a seat outside the very popular figtree for a cup of coffee but being a bank holiday I think everyone else had the same idea. Which actually worked out to our advantage as we enjoyed amazing Tapas in the Ocho lounge, a cafe bar found in the centre of the town. It was a busy, bustling bar filled with people of all ages and the service was great. I had hummus and mozzarella with cherry tomatoes while John went for the pesto and chilli chicken - Arthur also joined in as he loves hummus. After a walk around there beautiful maintained park, that has hedges cut in the shape of birds, we headed back to the pier for an ic......

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