This morning I went to something very exciting at Hoopers, Tunbridge Wells. I was invited to a Clinique brunch along with some other lovely ladies to talk all things skincare and some make up. Abi organised a wonderful morning and a delicious brunch consisting of granola with fresh fruit and yoghurt, pastries and more importantly Prosecco 😍 It was so interesting hearing about all the products and the products involved in make up removal and leaving your skin well cleansed. I’ve tried the take the day off balm before and it’s really impressive on how it removes make up so easily so I bought it again today. I really love this moisturising BB-gel. There are different cartridges to choose from depending on your skin type. It’s super smooth and silky. It apparently keeps your skin hydrated all day as well as a light coverage. One that I definitely want to try soon. What made the morning even more enjoyable were these lovely ladies. A great bunch of women who just got along and had a laugh. I came away with 3 products. I mean it would be rude not to with 10% off. I’ve tried the take the day off cleansing balm before and it’s really impressive. I wear quite a heavy foundation and I feel so fresh after using this to remove it. I also got the moisture surge which feels amazing. Finally, a few of the ladies were talking about this anti-blemish gel which is good for spots so want to give that a try. I’ve really let my skincare regime down recently, mainly because I think a mixture of laziness and cost but I’m not happy with my skin at the moment so I think it’s worth the investment and looking forward to the results.
Do you like Clinique? Any products you’d recommend?
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This morning was the first Tunbridge Wells Mum Club daytime meet up organised by the lovely Jess. Hosted by The Inside - a beautiful new cafe in Calverley Adventure Playground. It was such a lovely morning! Léon was at preschool so I went solo but it was a great turnout! Lots of mamas with their children who had bubbas as young as 4 weeks up to 4 years. A gorgeous space nestled inside Calverley Park. You can grab a hot or cold drink, cake and they offer lunch bites too! Plenty of entertainment for kids too. Love all the decor at The Inside. What a great way to display their hot drinks. All the bags are filled with toys! The lovely Laura (genius behind The Inside), she’s literally thought of everything! Hand warmers for you or your kids and gloves for your kids. Inside one of the toy bags. So creative and I imagine kids will love this. Their menu 😍 bites for adults and children. Their opening times are: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 10-2 and Saturday and Sunday 10-3. They are closed on Wednesday. There are some fabulous events coming up too so make sure you follow them for details. It was honestly the loveliest morning. I love meeting new people and it’s a great opportunity to meet new friends if you’re new to the area. Mums supporting mums is what it’s all about! Fantastic idea Jess! Can’t wait for more (especially some cocktails and dancing 🤣) Make sure you visit The Inside and come along to the next Twells Mum Club get together.
More details by following these lovely ladies: @twellsmumclub @the.inside.tw It’s been a while since I’ve written anything but I had so much fun the other night that it made me want to write about The Wine Rooms. Located in The Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells. The Wine Rooms is a stunning bar & lounge and they have 350 varieties of wine from around the world! Don’t let their name fool you though...it’s not all about wine. They also make delicious cocktails, mocktails and have lots of gin! My favourite cocktail so far is The Danish which is Kongsgaard Raw Gin, Apple Liquer, Butterscotch Syrup, Mint and Apple Wedge. There are many more to work through though 😀 Downstairs you’ll find more seating and 2 private lounge areas. The decor is amazing! Love all their lighting and furnishings. They have lots of small plates and nibbles which changes daily. As well as yummy cheese and meat boards! Not sure what the cheese is called but the one on the far left was so delicious and creamy. Also had Comte which is one of my favourite cheeses. A great place for a catch up and evening drinks 😀 Have you been to The Wine Rooms yet? Any other favourite places for a drink in the area?
Just what Tunbridge Wells needed! Central Market has arrived and situated in Ely Court. I personally think it’s a fabulous idea and I love the concept, it’s a foodies dream. Central Market is full of amazing places to eat. They have burgers, steak, hot dogs, pizza and then desserts like rolling ice cream and waffles. Basically, there’s something for everyone. They also have bars and live music. They’ve designed it and decorated it beautifully. All undercover with heaters. There’s seating in each individual eatery as well as seating outside. A little snippet of the inside of a Wok & Sushi. I’ve tried the pad Thai and gyozas and they are delicious. Here is what a bunch of us shared one evening. All reasonably priced and card payments only. This is food from the Argentinian Grill. Steak and chicken wings with lots of chips. Probably one of my favourites. The steak is so yummy and I love the idea of having lots of sharers with your friends. There’s a great atmosphere. I’ve mainly gone there in the evening and there’s music, a great crowd of people and its just a good evening out. It has proper food market feels. This is the cookie dough from Verve. Unbelievable! Very rich but if that’s your thing then this is a winner. I shared it with a friend which was perfect. Here’s me and Adam (goodfood_tw) having a snap in front of their Instagrammable wall 😀 This is the rolling ice cream from Rolling on Ice. It’s something like £3.75 for this! It’s huge. Definitely recommend! They have a great selection of wines, cocktails and soft drinks at The Wine Cellar (one of the bars). Overall, a big thumbs up from me!
You can stay updated via Central Market's Instagram by clicking here. Have you been yet? What did you think? I hadn’t given much thought to escape rooms but when my lovely friend Adam invited me to try out the brand new escape room at The Shuffle House, I was intrigued. The escape room is located at The Shuffle House and is run by a company called Clue Cracker. It has a great location because you can make a night of it and have some drinks and food before or after going to the escape room. Probably don’t drink too much before as you don’t want to be shitfaced...you’ll never escape 🤣 unless you’re sharp under the influence. We were greeted by the lovely Clue Cracker team where they ran through what we might come across. I felt like a bit of a spare part and didn’t really know what to do but luckily I was with others who just got it. It was so exciting when we found something. It really encourages team work and communication and we all worked so well together. It really was a fab evening and I recommend everyone do it!
We escaped in 58 minutes!! Can you beat our time? *this was a gifted experience. This review was my choice to write because I genuinely had a great evening and my opinion wasn’t swayed because it was gifted. The lovely Adam (goodfood_tw) organised a fabulous evening for a bunch of us to try out dishes and look around The Shufflehouse. The Shufflehouse is a new restaurant located on St Johns Road owned by the same people behind Saint Johns Yard. I love Saint Johns Yard so I knew The Shufflehouse was going to be amazing. The Shufflehouse serve South American small dishes and pizza. Sorry, not the best photo of the outside. I was conscious of getting run over 🤣🙈 My first thought when I walked in was LOVE the decor. It’s really spacious with cool tables, chairs and lighting. You can see the pizzas being made 😋 Told you the decor was cool! Lots of neon signs dotted around downstairs and upstairs. I imagine they’ll be Instagrammed a lot. Downstairs toilets have super funky wallpaper. Another downstairs toilet with baby changing facilities. Some upstairs seating. Love the open brickwork and quirky artwork everywhere. The coolest sign on the ceiling upstairs. The games room where you can play shuffleboard. I had never played before, it’s actually pretty hard but I’ll keep trying every time I go back which will be often. Again, the coolest wallpaper! I had the Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am cocktail which actually comes with a Wham bar. Absolutely delicious! Their cocktails are £8. We started with these amazing pork belly chicharrones, just stunning! Lamb neck fillet, also so tasty. Spinach and cheese parcels Deep fried manchego cheese 😍 Peruvian chicken skewers. If you like spicy then this is for you. Chorizo with caramelised red onion Four cheese pizza Rucola pizza Buffalo pizza Small dishes menu Pizza menu Upstairs toilets, again beautiful decor. The best dartboard 🤣 This was our table last night. Love the fishtank and the neon signs. I’m already planning my 30th birthday because I think this would be the perfect venue. They have a fantastic outdoor area both upstairs and downstairs. It’s going to be an amazing Summer 🙌 Here we all are. The lucky group who got to try lots of delicious food, drinks and meet one another. Thank you so much to Adam and The Shufflehouse.
There’s a new cafe in town! Tunbridge Wells has really needed a place like this and it’s now open 🙌 Babycino is located in Chapel Place, Tunbridge Wells. I love the decor! The furniture, the colours, everything has been so carefully thought out and it looks just so inviting and warm. Hannah has created a gorgeous family friendly cafe spread over 2 floors. They offer an array of savoury food as well as lots of cakes 😍 I had the mozzarella, tomato and pesto panini which was delish as well as the chocolate cake 🙈 It’s details like this which make it such a lovely cafe. Book shelves both upstairs and downstairs to entertain your kids. and downstairs... More seating and the most stunning play area 😍 Hannah has selected gorgeous toys including a wooden kitchen, market stand, fresh mart till, work bench and lots more. Léon definitely approved! He had a play with everything 😀 Another big positive for me are the highchairs. You can properly strap baby in. Léon has a tendency to try and escape and succeeds with other highchairs but there’s no escaping from these ones. The changing facilities are so pretty and clearly thought out well as more than one bubba can be changed. We’ll definitely be visiting Babycino often!
For the past week now, Gus and I have dreaded putting Léon to bed. Something changed where our poor bubba is just so upset when we lie him down to go to sleep. The first night it happened, we were like “what the ***k is going on”. We’d gotten into a routine where Léon would just go to sleep like 5-10 minutes after putting him down. So the first night it happened, one of us was going back into his room every 5 minutes or so to try and settle him. He was just so upset until we picked him up and we noticed that he was burping or farting when we did. After an hour of on and off crying, he eventually went to sleep but then woke up around 1am and then again at 5am. This then continued for a week.
I was racking my brain to what I may have done to make Léon so windy. I asked my NCT girls for help (naturally) and I think the culprit is ONION!! I batch cooked a bunch of meals a few weeks ago and did put more onion than usual as I was cooking for all of us and just portioned out Léons stuff. That’s all I can think that we’ve changed. So for the last 4 days, I’ve cut out onion (or given meals where’s it’s definitely not much onion). The last 3 days have been the same with taking an hour to settle, but tonight so far....has been fine. Today I bought some gripe water and given that to him and I’ve also massaged him belly more throughout the day and cycled his legs. I’ve no idea though if I continue to give him gripe water with every meal? He’s never suffered like this before with wind and find it strange that it’s happening now as he’s older but I guess their tiny little bodies do go through a lot. I’m also still breastfeeding so was also trying to think if I had changed anything in my diet but I haven’t. I still eat crap 🙈🤣 I really thought Gus and I had finally crushed it. We had figured out our boy and nailed this bedtime routine and sleeping through the night but then a sickness bug hit, teething hit and now the bloody onion 🤣 We can do this 👊🏻 Léon loves bathtime! We couldn’t give him his first bath until he was around 4 weeks old because his cord just wouldn’t bugger off. We then just gave him a bath once a week and now we do it every night as part of his bedtime routine. Baby Towel Here’s Gus giving Léon his first bath, 12th November 2017. I chose the Cuddledry towel as my sister recommended it and we’ve loved it. It’s really soft. You can wrap it around your neck for support and it’s held by poppers so easy to pull off. It also has a hood 👍 Baby Bath Seat Simply put, my sister wasn’t using hers anymore so we borrowed it from newborn till around 7 months. When doing research, this was a very popular choice. Also comes in handy when you need to pee as you can pop baby in it 👍 Now that Léon is more sturdy when sitting up, we now use a bath mat. He clearly much prefers this and splashes around. I got this one off Amazon for £8.99. Baby Sponges Boots Ramer Ultra Soft Baby Sponges. They come in a pack of 2 and are £2.19. Not much to say here as they’re sponges. Very soft sponges and I felt many sponges for research 🙈 Baby Wash I had heard good things about Aveeno and it was on offer in Boots so thought we’d try it. It smells so good and can be used for hair and body. Baby Shampoo You’re probably wondering why do we use a different shampoo when the Aveeno can be used on hair too. To be honest, I’ve no idea. I probably didn’t even notice that the Aveeno said for hair and body and picked up this Dove one. It does smell really good and it’s good value. Bubble Bath We’ve only started using bubble bath. We were in Boots and thought that Léon might enjoy bubbles so we chose this one. Purely based on the scent really. Moisturiser Gus moisturises Léon with this every night since we’ve started bathing him every night. He has incredibly soft skin so it must be down to this moisturiser. It’s not cheap at £8.50 but I use the subscribe and save on Amazon which brings it down to £6. The NCT girls also use it and rave about it. Toy Storage We’ve accumulated a large amount of bath toys now so I bought this mesh toy storage that sticks to the wall. It was £1.99 off eBay.
Toys We have the obligatory duck toy for the bath which Léon loves to chew on. Otherwise, I haven’t yet invested in specific bath toys. He’s quite happy with this plastic measuring spoons and ducks. I started introducing solids to Léon at around 5 months. My sister gave me some good advice where if you start weaning a bit before 6 months then you can go at a slow pace and won’t feel so rushed and I’m so glad I did.
Léons now 7 and half months and he LOVES food. He’s on 3 meals a day as well as boob milk and water. A typical day consists of: Breakfast Aptamil 7 months plus cereal Some fruit purée (homemade or ASDA) Some yoghurt (Ella’s kitchen or ASDA) A biscotti stick Lunch 1 or 2 cubes of homemade food or half a cow and gate jar Some fruit purée Some yoghurt Ella’s kitchen melty sticks Dinner Same as above I’ve no idea if this is too little or too much but he’s really enjoying it all and I can tell when he doesn’t want anymore. |
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