7 essential Family Travel hacks to reduce stress

Before I had kids I did a lot of solo travel, working in a variety of hotels, bars and backpackers across Europe, I could come and go as I pleased and when I felt like a change of scenery or simply wanted to move onto another city I could. I did learn a lot about making budgets stretch, staying safe while travelling, packing minimally as well as picking up a few hacks on saving money and making travel less stressful, these hacks I apply to our family adventures, even though they are vastly different experiences. While we all have the dream of picking a destination on a whim it is a little tricker (although not impossible) with kids bit if you don't do some preparation and research beforehand it could end up being costly. 1. Research your destination Yes this is an obvious one but you would be surprised how many people don't do the basic research of what there is to see and do as a family. Now we don't particularly go to "family" focused destinations as ev......

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8 Ways to naturally combat stress in the Modern world

National Stress Awareness Day took place this week and it's something I feel it's important to talk about as stress is something I have certainly struggled with over the past few years and it can cause real havoc for both your physical and mental wellbeing. I think we are more aware than ever that more and more of us suffer from things like stress and anxiety and it's easy to see why life has become increasingly manic and busy as well as more expensive with longer working hours and less free time. Living in today's world is massively different to our parent's generation and even when I was younger, it wasn't really until I was in my teens that mobile phones were even accessible to the masses (anyone remembers beepers?). In today's busy times we find ourselves having to navigate real life, online life, social media, heavy workloads, lack of support, kids, family and everything in-between and it's exhausting I find it's really important to know......

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Glamping in Cwmcarn Forest

Over the half term I decided to take my boys on a last minute glamping trip to Cwmcarn Forest as I had come across their stylish pods on local instagrammer Hayley's feed  and was inspired to check the Pods out and see what they were all about. If you read my blog you will know we have done a fair bit of glamping from vintage caravans , tipi's, medieval tents to even a horse box we have pretty much done it all except these wooden style pods. Cwmcarn Forest itself is only around a 35 min drive from where we live which made it a great base as I was doing this solo parenting and with little phone reception as the pods are located at the base of a forest meant we felt secluded but not isolated. There are a few options when it comes to these Pods as you can go very basic where you bring your own airbeds or mats and sleeping bags and use them simply as "wooden tents" or you can opt for a few more luxuries and go for the furnished option which is what we......

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Small changes that make a big difference

Think about it, you walk into a major store or supermarket for your weekly grocery trip for you and your family. You walk around, pick out all of the items that you need for the month and head to check out and let's be honest most of us at this point are giving more consideration to the amount of money that it is going to cost you, than paying attention to the amount of plastic being used to wrap the items you have picked and on top of that you may have forgotten your reusable bags (it's an easy mistake to make). The thing is we really do need to implement some changes as most people will be aware that now more than ever we are seeing first hand the impact our disposable ways are having on planet earth, our only home. According to the  Environmental Protection Agency  in 2015, 34.5 million tons of plastic were land-filled in the US alone. Of that, 100 billion plastic bags are tossed away each year by and it takes 300 years for each one of those little bags to go away!......

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