Rosie Scribble

The faulty gardening gene

In our house there are some things we are exceptionally good at.

Brilliant, in fact.

I'm certain of this because we're totally rubbish at cooking, crafting and gardening, so somewhere we have to have some exceptionally good talents to balance this out.

Once I've discovered these you'll be the first to know.

In the meantime we've been at it again.

We've been attempting to do something we our garden. 

Sponsored video: Avon foundation and Alesha Dixon

Not a lot of people know that I used to be an Avon lady. I'm not sure I portrayed the right sort of image for the role cycling round the Surrey countryside in all weathers with a rucksack full of Avon catalogues on my back. I’m not even sure if they are called Avon ladies anymore, but for a few months the job kept me busy each evening and surrounded me with endless boxes of hair and beauty products, which was no bad thing.

It was a thankless task at times but it did give me a small income, which I then spent on Avon products. It also gave me my first taste of hard work in the real world after just leaving university.

So I have a soft spot for the brand. I had to stop selling it when my landlady objected to me running a business from her house. I think her main objection was to the vast number of Avon boxes that used to arrive at regular intervals. She thought they were a fire hazard. I thought she was being deliberately difficult. But no matter.

My thoughts on the Vodafone Guardian app

IJ received her first smartphone this week courtesy of the Tots100 and she absolutely loves it. She has spent the majority of her time texting me, usually when she’s in the same room as me and often simply to say hello. The novelty of this is yet to wear off. 

We received the phone to try out the new Vodafone Guardian App. It’s a free Android app that’s basically designed to help keep children safer when using a smartphone.  

The app does of course keep children safer as applying parental controls to a phone is better than nothing at all, but the main problem I have with the app is that the settings are too easy to override.  

Within minutes of downloading the app and adjusting the setting to block Internet access completely, I was able to log on to Google, enter the word sex and bring up a list of porn sites. So it failed at the first hurdle.

Why I'm hiding our Cath Kidson mugs

What you can’t see behind this shot is that we currently have no kitchen. It’s gone. It disappeared in a puff of smoke never to be seen again.

Or rather, the workmen currently working on our property have removed it. The puff of smoke was wishful thinking. It would have been a lot quieter and would not have demanded the presence of a large yellow skip on our drive, and endless supplies of hot tea, if it had indeed disappeared in an instant.

There will be a brand new kitchen installed over the next few days. In the meantime I’m imagining clean surfaces, dust-free floors and all things neat and tidy. It makes the scene in front of me slightly easier to cope with.

Sponsored video: Walkers, The Wanted and Gary

I simply couldn’t pass on the opportunity to feature a video of The Wanted on my blog. Well I could have of course, but IJ insisted. As soon as she got wind of this video she suggested that it would be the sort of thing readers would be interested in watching. Apparently writing about parenting and products just doesn’t cut it anymore, this is far more hip and happening. 

This is what happens when you have an eight-year-old daughter in the house. Anyone who is yet to reach this stage, be warned. It’s an education in itself. You suddenly go from being the best person in the world ever, to being a little out of touch, bordering on embarrassing. As well as that, eight year olds know everything. Their parents, so they seem to think, know absolutely nothing. It makes for a number of interesting conversations.