CK is our first child and so the whole 'Looking for a nursery' experience was a first for both of us. I wasn't quite sure what I should look for or what I should be asking when I looked around so I read blog posts by other mums including this post by the Frenchie Mummy, I looked on mumsnet and netmums and other 'mum forums' and I also asked some of my mum friends.

I came up with quite a few questions - some to directly ask the nursery and others that I asked myself when I went to have a look around. I've decided to collect them altogether and have created one comprehensive list of all the questions I think you should ask or need to know. It might be a bit over the top, but I hope it's useful. Here is my full list:

Are there any questions you think I've missed? If so please add them in the comments below.

Linking up with:

This is it. We're on the final countdown. We have received CK's nursery start date of Monday 5th September. In a little over 2 weeks CK will be taking this huge step and I have to say that I am starting to feel a bit nervous. We made the decision for him to go a few weeks ago (you can read more about this here) and I can't believe we're only a few weeks from him starting.

My main concerns are

• How will he react to his first settling in sessions?
• Will he love nursery or is he going to hate it?
• What if he doesn't want me to leave and won't settle without me?

This is a huge change for CK as he will be going two mornings a week (Monday and Thursday) and he is used to being at home or at the home of one of his two grannies who each have him for a day every week with CD covering the third day when I'm at work. 

Our current preparations:

I've been trying to prepare CK the best I can ready for nursery. We've been sent a list of things he needs - water bottle, lunchbox, bag etc. and so I made a really big fuss of taking him to Smyths Toys and let him choose a back pack (he chose Paw Patrol) and a matching water bottle (also Paw Patrol) which I've been training him to use (he 's fine when it's full but tips it up when it's empty so the straw isn't in the water any more and he cant get any out, bless him). I also went to the local library by us and the much bigger library in Stratford upon Avon and borrowed a few books about starting nursery/playgroup to read to him, along with some ABC books on the subject to try and teach him words he can use to communicate with the leader. He has enjoyed reading the books with me but I don't think he really understands.

Nursery visit

CK came with CD and I when we went to look around the nursery for the first time on their open day. He was really nervous initially and wouldn't walk in, he had to be carried around during out tour. But after a while he started to relax and wanted to get down, he played with the toys, particularly in the outdoor area, did some wet play, ran in and out of the garden 'den' and even started interacting and playing with the staff. This was great to see, but the minute we were out of his sight whilst speaking to the office admin (the staff member he was playing with stayed with him) he started getting nervous and came after us and this is still what worries me. He's fine whilst mummy or daddy are in the room but if we're not, that is when things start going a bit wrong.

I have another visit to the nursery lined up on Thursday this week to see the nursery 'in action' so to speak. I appreciate on the open day the nursery was on show but I want to see it when it's not on show. I want to see how the staff interact with the children and how they are treated, I felt really comfortable with the staff on the first visit so I'm not expecting any bad surprises but all the same I still feel this is necessary. The nursery is also on holiday club mode during the summer so things will not be exactly as they will be in September, but as CK is likely to go to holiday club next year I still think this will be interesting. This second visit is another opportunity for CK to visit the nursery before he starts and give him the experience of it with children in. It means that by the time he starts full sessions he will have had 2 visits and 2 settling in sessions and I'm hoping this will help with the transition.

Settling in sessions

One thing that does put my mind at ease is that CK has 2 settling in sessions before he starts attending his full morning sessions. These are an hour long each and the first is on Monday 5th September. The staff have stated that in the first session I stay with him for the whole hour and it gives him the opportunity to settle in with children who will be in his room (2 year olds) whilst I am there the whole time so he can have fun and enjoy himself without any concerns about mummy leaving him. In the second session which will be the Thursday that week, I stay with him to settle him but then am encouraged to leave by staff once he seems settled before picking him up at the end of the session and hopefully he will have had so much fun he will be ok without me - at least that's what I'm hoping.

First full session

He will then have his first full session the following week and I'm really hoping that as he will have been 4 times to the nursery he will be ok with being left. CD will be dropping him off that Monday morning and then as a one off (I'm trying to book the afternoon off work) I will pick him up afterwards but in future CD will be dropping him off and picking him up on a Monday whilst I do the same on a Thursday.

I'm really hoping it all works out and we don't have any problems but our experience at Center Parcs in June is adding to my fears as CK did not take to the creche at all and whilst he stuck it out the first day he refused point blank to go back the second day. I really am hoping I won't have a repeat of that at the nursery.

Can you give me any further tips, advice for getting him ready and settling him in? I'd love to hear about your own experiences too about settling your little ones into nursery. Please comment in the notes below.

I know how much you all loved my post the other day on fairy gardens so I thought I'd do another post on my latest addition to my fairy garden - a mini clothes line. Read on full the full tutorial or if you want to create your own fairy garden first click here to read the original tutorial

It was actually a very easy and straightforward activity to do and is a lovely activity you could do with older children.

Here's how I did it...

You will need:

2 sticks (or 1 stick cut in half :-P) 3-4" long for each is best
Wool or string
mini pegs - mine were £1 from the works for a large bottle
Felt - I bought a pack for £2 from the works but only used half a sheet

How to make a mini clothes line for your fairies:

1. Take your sticks and push them into the soil on your fairy garden with a gap of about 6" between each one.

2. Tie your string or wool around one of the sticks a few times and knot it firmly and then do the same on the other side and then cut leaving a small tail.

3. Now for the fun - make your fairy clothes by cutting small outlines out of the felt ensuring they will fit on your fairy line. You could also embellish them with buttons, sequins and other pieces of felt - go with your creative juices and see what you and your children can come up with. Alternatively you can just cut out some simple outlines as I did above - I think they still look good.

4. Peg your 'felt fairies clothes' to your washing line

5. Admire your work!!!

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial. My fairy garden plants are looking a little worse for wear right now due to lack of watering and warm weather (and my lack of greenfingers) but I still think this looks cute.

I do have some more ideas for things I can add to my garden - why not like me on Facebook, or follow me on bloglovin' and twitter (@cotswold_mum) so that you are the first to know when I upload my next tutorial.

If you've made your own I'd love to see them and you can either post on my Facebook page or tweet me the link.


What else do you think a fairy garden needs? - Comment in the posts below and you never know you might inspire a future tutorial ;-)

I had an accident Friday night.

Stock image (my nails aren't this nice)

I tripped over the stair-gate near the bottom of the stairs (stupid I know), landed awkwardly on my left foot rolling my ankle completely outwards (ouch!) and severely spraining it.

Cotswold Dad and I had just put the kid to bed at 7.45pm. He'd bathed and dressed him and I brought up his bottle. We were walking downstairs to spend a rare evening together and maybe watch some netflix when I had my stumble.

I landed in a heap in the bottom of the stairs but had 'flicked' out my legs as I fell so that my legs weren't tangled (I'm tall so I have time to think as I fall). I swore loudly when it happened and then somehow got onto the sofa but it hurt like hell.

I thought it was a sprain - chucked on some ice, reclined the sofa foot rest and hoped it would be ok. It was really uncomfortable and after a bit we turned in and I stupidly put on a compression sock (which also hurt to put on).

By 1.30am I was still wide awake and the pain was awful. I tried to go to the bathroom and couldn't put weight on my foot without screaming. I somehow made it to the bathroom and removed the sock and also took paracetamol before crawling back to bed (no joke).

Half an hour later the pain was still awful and I was close to tears. Cotswold Dad and I talked about what to do and we decided to ring the NHS helpline who told me to go to hospital within the next hour.

We got dressed and I crawled down stairs, hopped through the conservatory and CD helped me into the garden and to the car. He then got CK and put him in the car (in his vest) who was not happy about the late night wake up call.

We got to the hospital at 2.50am and CD got me a wheelchair and wheeled me in with the kid on my lap. It was quiet and we were seen quickly by triage and a doctor who sent me for an x-ray.

I just want to add here that I am a serial ankle-sprainer (if such a thing exists), but this pain was the worst I'd ever encountered I was literally screaming in pain everytime I put any weight on my foot which made me think I had broken something.

The x ray showed no broken bones. The doctor thinks it is just a severe sprain for which I am very relieved and I have been given co-codomol. She also told me the "R.I.C.E" (Rest, Ice, Compress & Elevate) advice for treating a sprain has now changed. No compressing and heat is more effective. Also that I should be as active as possible (so no crutches then?). Home we went and I've been doing my best to follow the advice ever since.

Almost 2 days later I can now walk on my left foot although the pain is still not great (thank you co-codomol) and my foot is really swollen. Really hoping I'll be ok to drive tomorrow (for work) and I'm probably going to do a quick test tonight although the real test will be the 1 hour (min) commute to work tomorrow morning.

The worst effect of all this is that CK is really confused bless him. He doesn't understand why Mummy can't chase him around the house and garden, can't carry him up the stairs, is crawling up the stairs and takes ages to get anywhere. He doesn't understand why I'm limping everywhere and why I cried out in pain yesterday when he grabbed my ankle and had to be extracted by his godmother because it was too painful to shake him off myself. Service has also gone downhill in his eyes as it takes ages to get food and drink (when Dada's not here) and mummy doesn't have the patience when he tries to play the 'I'm not letting you have my nappy game'.

I'm really hoping that I can be fully 'operational' in the next day or so. The timing is awful, I'm going on a dancing weekend in under a fortnight, I'm running errands (shopping, prescriptions etc.) for my Nan whilst my Mum (her carer) is on holiday for 2 weeks and I was supposed to be seeing my friend with the new baby (from my FB post the other day) today for a playdate with CK and her oldest now postponed :-(

Oh well... these things are sent to try us.

Who needs Pokemon Go when you have the option of a free scarecrow trail in a local village and Olympic Scarecrows at that?

The nation has gone Olympic's crazy in support of our competitors in Rio. I don't know about you but I've managed to catch a few of the sports on the television and news coverage and whilst I'm not particularly sportive and neither is CK we wanted to get in on the Olympics action.

For us that meant going to see the Scarecrow's of Brailes. The Scarecrow trail is part of the village's 'Brailes Show' which is taking place this Saturday 13th August and in addition to the typical summer fete activities and competitions (best flowers, cake etc), there is also a best scarecrow competition. In support of this the local community has really 'gone to town' with 37 entrants in all and what is even better is that the theme for this years Scarecrow trail is 'The Olympics'.

So today CK headed off to the village on our hunt for Olympic Scarecrows. There is a full map of the trail showing all the locations throughout the village and you can download this here but CK and I decided that the ones on the main road through Brailes were enough for us today (although we will probably go back with CD and find some more another time). The voting for the best scarecrow takes place at the show on Saturday and I shall be very interested to find out which one will win (although I think they are all fantastic).

I was also thinking this would be a great activity for kids to make (as a smaller version) - a couple of bunches of straw would be all you'd need to make a doll sized scarecrow. I might have a go at this with CK when he's a bit older.

Here are some pictures of our favourites - which one do you like best? Let me know in the comments below.

1. Archer

2. Gymnast (rings)

3. Fencing

4. Pole Vaulting

5. Equestrian

6. Diver (Tom Daley) - located above a brook in the village

7. Gymnast

8. Trap Shooting (clay out of sight in image)

8. Cyclist

10. Gymnast

11. Olympic hurdler

12. "Walter Vaulter"

13. Archer

So you've seen our favourites - which is yours? let me know below in the comments.

CK and I went to Countryfile Live at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock yesterday. I'd been seeing the signs for weeks as our town and the area around it is on one of the main routes to the festival but I was initially put off as it was a bit pricey for a ticket. At the last minute on Wednesday I decided to go as there were quite a few activities for kids and I thought CK would enjoy it.

JOURNEY

It's normally 35 minutes to Blenheim from my house and I wanted to get there for 11am so we'd have a good couple of hours to look around everything before heading back for naptime at 2-3ish. That plan went completely out the window as I spent over an hour queuing on the A44 to get into the Blenheim Estate and then queued for another hour slow crawling all the way into. It was 1pm before we got in - not a good start.

TRACTORS

The first thing we went to see was the 'Farming in Action' display - It featured lots of vintage tractors and hay baling (I think that's what they call it) demonstrations which included various agricultural machines of all ages, each of which had its own task. I found it really interesting - I pass hundreds of fields a week and in the summer regularly getting stuck behind various tractors on the country roads in the Cotswolds and lorries full of hay but never fully understanding the process behind it. Watching the process in action gives me a new found appreciation of how it all works - take a look at some of my pictures.

You are probably wondering what CK's reaction to all this was. Was he interested? Bored? Did he care? See for yourself.

He absolutely loved it - we must have stood watching for 20 minutes and from at least 2 different positions. He really enjoyed it and his eyes lit up watching it.

More Tractor Fun

The fun didn't end there for CK as in the 'Farming in Action' display also included a huge number of the latest (I think) in tractor technologies and even better still. Children were encouraged to climb all over the tractors and they were. CK also had a go and loved it. Here he is on one of the tractors (I love this photo).

Animals

This being a 'Country' themed event there were a lot of animals around and even Adam Henson (Cotswold Farm Park) was there with his farm (although we did not see the man himself) - his petting farm was fairly busy and CK didn't seem to interested in joining in. It didn't help that the moment we entered the tent the heavens opened for one of the brief showers of the day and everyone flooded in to the nearest dry spot (our tent) filling out the petting area we were in. But he did enjoy watching the baby rabbits racing around. I'm actually thinking of going to Cotswold Farm Park in a few weeks so he will get another chance.

He did get to see some of the animals very close up.

The goats...

The Ducks

The Sheep

And even a donkey

I think he enjoyed it. 

Children's entertainment

In fact there was a lot of entertainment there for children and quite a bit of it was free. We didn't get to see a lot of things due to the time we had, so we missed the opportunity to take part in maypole dancing and the Punch and Judy Showing ended just before we got to it. But there was free face painting, the village green had free vintage village green style games (shove h'penny) (and a few others I didn't recognise) there was a small children's playground, mini diggers and a digger den full of plastic soft play balls.

There were also a few options if you were happy to pay - a vintage fun fair which you might have seen in the background of my farm display pictures. Here is CK on the kiddie carousel (£2.50).

My very own 'Sterling Moss'

There was also tractor ted ( a bouncy castle with slide) which was a £1 a ride but CK hasn't been too interested in bouncy castles so we gave it a miss.

For the Adults

They also had some craft stalls and food stalls in marquees scattered across the site and we came across some great artisan products which would have made great Christmas presents (with a bit more forethought and planning). There were also plenty of stalls scattered around outside which were interesting. Here was one of my favourites:

Also for those of you who loved my fairy garden feature last week and who are looking to buy the perfect fairy house centrepiece for their garden - you have to take a look at this website - Dingley Dwellings. They do the most gorgeous items for your garden - my eyes lit up at the sight at them although I didn't have the budget to make a purchase on the day.

Food and Drink

I had a great carvery pork bap and pork scratchings (shared with the little man) for £10 total which is about normal for these kinds of events and it was really lovely - I think the bread was proper bakery bread which made it taste even better. CK and I were still nibbling the scratchings in the queue out (a good half hour to the gate). 

There were plenty of ice cream stalls and also plenty of bar type stalls but after CK finished his drink of squash I really struggled to find child friendly drinks on the site. I could get soft drinks, champagne, prosecco, coffee but a fruit shoot? No luck. In the end I spied a Cotteswold Dairies stall (we regularly have their milk) and saw they were selling milkshakes - that'll have to do I thought.

I think CK enjoyed it.

After a few initial hesitant sips - he guzzled his banana milkshake down fairly quickly only struggling when he was down to about 1/4 (he wasn't very good at tipping the cup up without spilling it all over himself) - he absolutely loved it and for £1.50 I would have happily bought another if needed.

The ladies on the stall were also kind enough to refill his squash cup with water (no charge) which was really good of them and was very much appreciated.

Day Over

That was pretty much everything (I think) that we saw and did. After 3 hours CK was not doing to good, he was tired and getting very grouchy and to be fair I was shattered as well with a headache (not helped by sitting in a car for 2 hours with a bored toddler). We missed quite a few activities and all the shows - I had wanted to see the Essex dog display team but it wasn't to be this time so we headed back to the gate and after a 20 minute search found the car (I knew it was by a tree somewhere - and it was) before queuing out through the estate for another 20 minutes until we got to the main road.

Verdict 

I have two questions I've been asking myself, 1. Was it worth the £30 it basically cost me to get in (including fees & car parking charge) & 2. Was it worth the 2 hour wait to get in.

In answer to these 2 questions, I think it was worth the £30 - we had a really lovely time, saw some really nice things, got to see and do a lot for the money and had a generally nice afternoon but it was not worth the 2 hour queue to get in.

If I went again or if anyone else is thinking of going this time, I would suggest going for 9.30 when it opens (or earlier if you want to), take plenty of drinks with you and be aware the loos here are portaloos with very limited baby changing facilities. I took our travel system and I'm glad we did as I think the buggy would have been harder to navigate on the long grass surface. Cover is limited so bring a mac and sun cream, also be prepared that all of the vintage rides are £2 - £2.50 each if you have little ones that will want to go on. I'd also try to pre-plan a route around the place - I found it very confusing and I don't think we saw a lot of things and missed the shows - I had looked before we left but I was looking at timings from 11-1 and hadn't factored in the late entry.

One very happy baby (waving his free colouring in flag with free crayons)

If you are going I hope you have a good time and have more luck with the traffic then we did. If you have any questions please post below and feel free to comment.

A few weeks ago I was looking for ideas for my fairly small garden on Pinterest when I accidentally stumbled onto the concept of a fairy garden. It was what I didn't know I was looking for and I decided there and then that once I'd tidied up the garden a bit I would have a go and finally this weekend I created our first fairy garden.

I thought it turned out rather well and it's not finished yet. I intend to add bits to it here and there over the next few weeks - mostly furniture but I'm also on the look out for the perfect plants as well.

I've been gathering things together for it for a few weeks now. The windmill I bought from a stall at a home and garden show in Stratford Upon Avon a few weeks ago - and CK absolutely loves it (he's stolen it a few times from the garden already and has damaged the bottom by breaking it.

I originally started this as something we could do together but unfortunately at 20 months he is too young at the moment so I've just been doing this for my own enjoyment and I hope he can join in when he is older. (He has a thing for dinosaurs so maybe we can make a dinosaur garden in the future).

Most of my ideas and inspiration for this project have come from Pinterest and if you'd like to take a look at my full pinterest board you can view it below.

I'll also just add that I am NOT greenfingered at all. That gene has well and truly skipped me and I can't guarantee how long the flowers will last, but this was very easy to put together and anyone can do it.

Items I used for my fairy garden:

1. Garden Plant saucer
2. Compost
3. 'Fairy House'
4. Plants
5. Gravel
6. A Fairy

My full tutorial:

1. Take a Garden Saucer and fill it with compost

2. Add your main feature - in my case it is my windmill but this could also be a fairy house

3. Add your plants - make sure the plants you choose don't have too deep a base. I chose bedding plants 'celosia' which fit my whimsical theme.

4. Add a footpath - I used gravel from my garden but any kind of small stones or tiles would look good. My stones were laid 3 or 4 in a row from front to back.

5. Almost finished - this is what I have so far

6. Add your fairy folk and any other smaller items - my fairy is an old ornament.

7. All finished! - For now. I'm hoping to add more things to this - a toadstool, picket fence, furniture, a river, more fairies.... The options are unlimited.

As you'll see from the Pinterest board, a lot of the items are made out of polymer clay so I've bought some along with paints to see what else I can make.

Do you have a fairy garden or is this going to be your next project? Let me know in the comments below.