The Two Fairies

The two M&S fairies, Magic and Sparkle, are flying up and down the UK this Christmas to help spread kindness.  It has become a bit of a Christmas tradition in our house that Father Christmas sends a fairy to stay with us during advent to encourage the girls to be kind and helpful, the two Marks and Spencer fairies are on the same sort of mission - to encourage random acts of kindness.

The two fairies are encouraging children across the UK to make a Christmas decoration onto which they place a little tag that tells the world about an act of kindness that they have done for someone else recently.  Once they've made the decorations they can take them along to their local Marks and Spencer store where the decorations are being collected for the two fairies to perform a very special act of kindness.

Lara has made a whole host of Christmas decorations.  From these two peg-doll fairies of her own, to a long paper chain.  She has painted, cut, stuck, sewn until our entire house has been covered in glue and glitter.  This week we will take all of the decorations into town.

Lara has taken the acts of kindness very seriously, knowing that Father Christmas is expecting her to work hard to appear on the 'nice list' this year.  Her acts of kindness this week included inviting Father Christmas to a picnic so that he could take some time off, donating some of her books to the school fair and offering to help her teacher tidy up after school.

You can #FollowTheFairies on twitter for small ideas of acts of kindness or to find our where they will be visiting next.

Minnie Mouse Polka Dot House Review

Both Lara and Holly very much love Minnie Mouse (there will certainly be some Minnie Mouse Christmas presents arriving in our house later this month!) and they were both instantly taken with the Minnie Mouse Polka Dot House, part of the Minnie Mouse Bowtique range of toys from Fisher Price.

The Minnie Mouse House is chunky and bold with four main colours - pink, purple, turquoise and yellow.  I think it really stands out.  The house comes with 16 different household accessories from a fridge freezer (with opening door) to a sunlounger for Minnie to chill out on when she is catching some sun in her little roof garden.

The Minnie Mouse Polka Dot house is primarily intended for Holly as the pieces are nicely sized for smaller hands; the toy reminds me of the Barbie Malibu house that Lara owns and it certainly encourages the same sort of role play with Minnie and her pet cat Figaro getting a chance to relax on the sofa, go to sleep, make a meal or rush up and down the stairs depending on what sort of mood Lara and Holly are in.

In terms of simple role play, this house has all of the features that a 2-4 year old needs.  Holly enjoys using the front door to let Minnie and her friends (from other Minnie playsets) into the house.  They also both enjoy pretending that Minnie and her cat are going upstairs to bed.  It is a fairly simple toy with simple pleasures - a bath, a toilet, TV, bed and even a cat bed and cat bowl are all colourful accessories that help your child to create an imaginary world.

The Minnie Mouse House is nice and compact.  I'm not entirely sure if the staircase is intended to come off so easily as I find it does, but it certainly helps when I'm packing the toys away at the end of the day because the house can take up less space this way.

The Minnie Mouse Polka Dot House is available from Smyths Toys, Toys R Us, Argos, Hamleys and ASDA for around £30.

Disclosure. We were sent the Minnie Mouse Polka Dot House to review.

  

My Home-Moving Timeline

The moment we moved into our 1st house

At the weekend, I told my folks about our grand plan for restructuring our house. Walls knocked down, extensions built... that kind of thing.  They looked a bit shocked at the scale of things!  We have lived in our house for just over 4 years and our plan is slowly but surely coming together.  When we bought our house, we knew that we were in it for the long-term and that, even if it isn't our 'forever' home, we certainly plan to be here until our children are most of the way through school.

Because it was a long term commitment, we were prepared to wait and work through the long process of moving house... and for us, it was a fairly long time!  This is the second house that we have owned as a family, therefore when we moved house, there was always going to be a chain - here is how our home moving timeline panned out.

#1 Sell the house
This was the easy bit. Ten days on the market and we had an offer we were happy to accept.

#2 Find the home of your dreams
Also easy.  We had been driving the local streets for months looking for the perfect place and we were ready and waiting to make an offer on our intended home within 24 hours of finding a buyer for our own place.  All going to plan. The very first thing that the sellers asked was for proof that we could get a mortgage for the house (an indicator to them that the sale would go through).

#3 Get a mortgage quote
Still easy.  We had made a couple of appointments with mortgage advisors earlier in the year (one independent, one linked to a local bank branch.  We did plenty of research and knew where we wanted to apply.  Within a few hours of having made an offer on a house, we had submitted an application for a mortgage and had a piece of paper to prove that we were going to have a mortgage approved to the value of our house.

#4 Find a solicitor
For us, still very easy.  We have a family solicitor who we had used for issuing a will in advance.  After having bought two houses, I would strongly recommend finding a solicitor local to you that you can go in to visit, and take your documents to them rather than having to rely on the phone and postal service (in my experience, this is what makes for a looooooong house purchase)

#5  Arrange a surveyor
Theoretically, simple.  Most mortgage providers will recommend (or require use of a specific) conveyancing surveyor. After having had some issues come out of the woodwork (literally) in our last house purchase, we paid for a thorough house survey during our most recent house move.  The survey will detail the state of the building and any threats that may impact the decision made by your mortgage provider.

#6 Agree on the details
Fixtures and fittings... that kind of thing.  Why don't people ever list the random pile of junk they plan to leave in the loft?

#7 Transfer the deposit
Your solicitor should be able to manage this for you

#8 Exchange contracts and agree a completion date
The tricky bit.  This, dear readers, is where you are entirely in the hands of other people's solicitors.  Contracts can't be exchanged until after all of the 'searches' on land registry and council lists are complete. Chasing these can be stressful.  At this point you will be very glad to have spent money on a solicitor who is worth their fee!  Your mortgage company will communicate with your solicitor to handle all of the funds for the big day.

#9 Book a removals expert
This time around, we had too much STUFF to be able to move house unaided.  We got lots of recommendations from friends for a local removals company who were awesome from the very moment they entered our house to start packing, to the minute they tucked us into our new house.

#10 Completion Day
Hallelujah!

For many people, the entire process of moving house from offer, through mortgage application to completion can take as little as a month.  For us, it took 6 months... most of which was spent at stage 8.  Sigh.

But it was worth it.  We love our house and each year we make it just a little bit more "us".

Disclosure: This post has been created in partnership with TSB