A tale of 2 sleepovers

I was looking for inexpensive birthday parties for my children this year so agreed they could both have sleepovers. They turned out to be very different affairs! 

12 year old "Hunger Games" sleepover

My daughter helped to create individual district invites for her 5 friends with the use of the Internet. She wanted it all to have shades of the book series. The sleepover was mostly outside (thank goodness for a mild October) and they pitched tents in the garden:

They did have sheepskins to keep them nice and snug overnight! I had hidden the food and drink around the garden in containers and they had to hunt it all down before they could eat. It was all cooked by them on the BBQ and I was able to let them get on with it.

After eating they came inside for a while to watch one of the Hunger Games movies before heading out to the tents. They did make use of the WiFi to watch YouTube videos for quite some time and there were giggles until about 1 AM. In the morning they were up bright and early and being obviously sophisticated they even made a pot of tea:

#CountryKids at Kendal Castle Fireworks

We have lived in Kendal for 5 years but had never walked up to the castle on Bonfire Night as it was just not practical. Now we live only 20-25 minutes walk away I had no excuse! My son and I put on warm clothing and waterproof coats, donned our hiking boots and headed over...

Of course we forgot our torches so it was a spooky walk through the cemetery and pitch black the route my son chose up to the castle. It was also rather slippery under foot.. We reached the viewing point and there were already plenty of folks standing around waiting:

My son was wandering around and excited by the fireworks going off around town plus the large bonfire on another hill. He reckoned it was a meteor strike! The weather wasn't at all promising and quite a few folks had their umbrellas in use:

I bumped into a boy that I have been teaching and he let me experiment with taking photographs of his spinning light toy:

Fitness Friday: An adventurous run

Today was the only day this week that I could get out and do a really long run as marathon training. Typically this meant that the weather was the wettest we've had all week too! Undaunted I walked with my son to school to warm up and then headed out of town along Brigsteer Road so that I could get up onto Scout Scar:

This is open access land so there are lots of informal paths and I just followed random ones with the hope that I would end up in the right direction! It was pretty miserable up there and I saw only a couple of hardy dog walkers for the entire fell section:

It really felt like proper trail running with paths like these:

Reasons to be Cheerful: November is here #R2BC

I have handed the baton back for the month to the lovely Jo at Ojo's World she will be taking care of us all until December! Please do pop over to her blog and say hello. Meanwhile here are my reasons to be cheerful this week:

1) Family fun

For some reason we didn't get up to much over half term but saved it for the Saturday with our fun morning at (full post Fell Foot):

2) Halloween Fun

Living in a new area its a bit worrying on Halloween not knowing what happens. Turns out both children went out with friends for hours and gathered loads of goodies and I had plenty of polite trick or treaters that I freaked out with my makeup:

3) A beautiful Autumn

We have had a glorious autumn so far and the colours are fantastic:

4) Blogfest

Oh and I'm off to Blogfest thanks to sponsorship!

Why are you smiling this week?

Blogfest '15

Due to a combination of lack of money and childcare I have been extremely limited as to which blogging events I have been able to attend. So when I was offered a chance to be sponsored to attend Blogfest 2015 in London I was of course going to say a big YES!

I will be heading down to join in with a breakfast symposium organised by Coca Cola before attending the biggest blogging conference in the UK. This means I am:

1. excited about meeting some of my online blogging friends for the first time
2. excited about listening to speakers who can help me build my blog
3. excited about meeting some amazing brands who are sponsoring the event
4. nervous - what do I wear? will I come across the same in real life as on the Internet?

Watch the space to find out! If you are going drop a comment and let me know..