This day I love.......: blogs up north

After the excitement that was Britmums live, I have been eagerly counting down the days to the next blog conference, Blog on. Blog on is the baby of Laura from tiredmummyoftwo and the wonderful community that is Blogsupnorth.

My friend Lisa, from Hollybobbs, booked us a hotel to stay at on the Saturday night so we could attend the pre dinner for blog on. It was a really lovely evening and a great chance to chat and get to know some really great people. Lisa could not have chosen a better hotel as it was opposite the venue, yes we could walk there in less than 2 minutes.

The venue for Blog on was MOSI, Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. I have visited MOSI in the past and am a bit of a fan. The engineer in me loves it, and I hope to take the girls there soon to have a look around. I actually really like the sound of one of their upcoming events, Brains : the Mind as Matter and am hoping I manage to get to go.

We arrived early after a wonderful lie in, yes I got more than 2 hours sleep! We had a great space to mingle and talk to all the other bloggers as they arrived. We had all been allocated different coloured badges, red, yellow or blue, which meant we all attended each session in turn and we got to meet new people. It gave use a great chance to widen our blogging community.

I really enjoyed how each session was run. Informal and yet very informative. We could chat and bounce ideas off each other. Ask questions with no question feeling like a silly question and because the groups were kept small this encouraged people to take part. I could not say which of the sessions I enjoyed most because I enjoyed each of them equally but for different reasons. although I have been a little poorly for the past few days I am now starting to think about what I have learnt and how to put it into practise. I do need Actually Mummy's Fudge recipe, yummy!

I wanted to make the most of the brands in the brand den and build some relationships. The lovely ladies at Black sheep wool have inspired me to have a go at crochet, I am not promising its going to be fantastic but am going to try so watch this space as I will post my attempt soon. I loved talking to Soda Stream again, already owning a soda stream and having had a long chat at Britmums it was great to say hello. I am really glad I went to say hello to Kaleidoscope. I did not realise that they did home and garden ware too, I always assumed they were on line / catalogue clothes. I fell in love with this rug and am currently measuring all rooms to work out which one it will fit in best. It was also great to finally meet the essential one. I have spoken with them for a while and was over the moon for Lisa when she announced they were her Britmums Live sponsors.

One of my all time favourite brands were also present, Swizzels Matlow. I love my sweets, I probably have one of the biggest sweet tooth there is. At the age of 8 we ran a class project at school and we had to write to companies to ask about their recycling. I wrote to Swizzels Matlow, I still have the letter they replied back with. I loved chatting with them and I am already a huge fan of their Squashies range. I finally found out where I can buy the big bag of Drumsticks Squashies, they are my favourite.

As if it could not get any better than great sessions, great brands, great people, there was free cake! I do love my cake. Oh and if that was not good enough there was also a lot of sweets, and when I say a lot I mean a lot, just look at my goody bag I came home with

For me that really sums everything up, great friendly people, cake and sweets, I could not have wished for more, a perfect blogging conference!

This day I love Keep Calm and Blog on

20 comments

Blogs up North, which I am a proud member of, had its monthly meet up today. I was particularly excited about this one as it was taking place at the Legoland discovery Centre in Manchester. My girls have a huge assortment of building bricks, including Lego and Duplo, and both my husband and I love Lego.

The girls and I set off on a very windy journey across the Pennines to Manchester. I managed to avoid the traffic cones which kept flying into my path by the strong winds and the bus which got caught in the wind and blown across several lanes of the M62 only to over correct and end up drifting back onto the hard shoulder. Needless to say when we arrived I was feeling a little stressed. My apologies go to anyone I spoke to and may have come across grumpy.

We posed for our picture when we arrived but never did manage to see what it looked like. I am guessing not that great as I was still shaken from the journey and the girls had just woken up from the 2 hour journey across. We went into the Lego factory. My eldest watched the tour of the factory and saw how the Lego bricks are made from Legoo.

After our tour we set about rescuing the captured princess on the Kingdom quest ride. My eldest was unsure what to do with the laser gun, my youngest however managed to get the highest score of the whole car.

It was very busy, I'm guessing due to the poor weather outside, plus weekend and I think its still school holidays meant there were lots of children. As it was just the girls and myself, I could not let my eldest go on either Fire academy or Construction site as she still likes me to go with her and I could not manage both girls and the bags and coats. For future one child per adult is a good idea. Both girls were also a little too young for the 4D cinema, which was a shame but there is always next time.

My eldest really wanted to go on Forest Pursuit but she was too little, which resulted in a few tears as it did when she could not go on Merlin's Apprentice. As it was busy we could not get near the Lego Friends or Lego racers, but after a short wait we did get to play on the earthquake tables

My eldest loves building towers and this was so much fun, using the controls to shake the tower to test its strength. Both girls enjoyed playing in the Duplo play village which had lots of soft large bricks to play with

They helped each other to build towers.

I enjoyed looking at the models in Miniland and would have gone to watch the Master Builders talk about how they make the large models but thought it unfair for the girls, as they would not have understood what was said.

I think the favourite part for my girls was the Lego pit

My youngest kept trying to eat all the Lego bricks and loved crawling to the table in the middle and back again. The girls loved playing with each other and my eldest got to build lots of towers. I think they would have both spent all day in there. My eldest did lie down and start making a 'Lego Angel' but unfortunately another child took a dislike to this and she stopped part way. She soon forgot and went back to playing.

Although the girls were too small to go on many of the attractions, the ones they could use they thoroughly enjoyed. They have both had a wonderful day out, thanks to Blogs up North for organising and we shall return to Legoland discovery centre in Manchester for another day out in the future.

This day I love Lego.

8 comments

About me

Follow Us

Popular

Brands