Good morning all, I hope you all managed to survive through the bleak month of January and are ready to start enjoying the milder weather that is inevitably round the corner (ahem). It’s been another busy month here at Essex Mums, but a productive one!
New Forum
I finally got round to upgrading the forum so it’s now much shinier and with all sorts of fun new features. Come and take a look here: http://www.essexmums.org/forum/index.php and please do say hello if you haven’t been around recently. If you run a group or class, or have some sort of service that is of interest to our Mums, please feel free to post an update!
Things to Do
You may have noticed that the calendar and classes pages have had a revamp. They’re now in a new ‘Things to Do section’ here: www.essexmums.org/thingstodo.html. Everything is now listed by area (Chelmsford, Colchester, London-area and Southend, decided by postcode, so for example Basildon is included in Southend as it’s SS.) which makes it much easier to find things to do – the old calendars were getting a bit too busy!).
If you have anything that you would like to be added to the calendars, please send them to me. I’ll be doing a homepage listing of half-term events in the next few weeks, so make sure you get them to me in time!
Shopping Guide
The shopping guide is filling up and has some great shops on it now. Having bought too much from there already I can vouch for the quality of the products, haha. It contains all kinds of goodies, from great handmade clothes, to health and safety equipment for babies; from maternity clothes and nursing bras to party goods and wedding favours. Now that we’ve got over the broke post-Christmas period, why not treat yourself to something nice! www.essexmums.org/shoppingguide.html
Bake It Better
We’ll be having an Essex Mums Bake it Better meet-up at Monkey Bizzness on Tues 9th Feb from 11am in aid of Great Ormond Street’s Kiss it Better appeal for children with cancer. The kind people at Monkey Bizzness also suggested having some baking for the kiddies with a small charge of a donation to the charity so that should be fun and messy! Bring along some cakes to sell, or just bring some pennies for yummy cake buying! It would be great to make this a really good day, so please bring friends and spread the word!
Second Birthday Party
The Essex Mums Second Birthday Party is coming up at the end of March and it would be lovely to see as many as you as possible at this year’s party! We’ve got some great ideas in the pipeline for the celebration so watch this space!
The plan is to hold the event at one of our Mum’s parent and toddler groups in Southend, and it would be lovely to make this a really fun day. I’m thinking of holding a site-wide competition so if anyone has any goodies they could donate (whether it’s tickets for a day out, money towards class fees or actual products, that would be absolutely brilliant!) Likewise if anyone can come along and do any kind of fun activities such as face-painting, music… anything, that would be wonderful and please let me know! Once I have more info I’m hoping to get some local press interested as they were last year, and if course anyone who gets involved gets a big plug on the site, and would be specifically mentioned, with a link to their website, on the homepage. So please, if there’s anything you can contribute, get in touch!
New Dulwich Site
Essex Mums is branching out with a brand new site in Dulwich, run by the lovely Rose. It’s still in the process of being put together right now but you can see the beginnings of the site here:
www.dulwichmumsanddads.co.uk. If you are part of an organisation that has groups, classes etc. in this area please get in touch with either me or
rose@dulwichmums.co.uk and be a part of this exciting new site. Likewise, great deals for advertisers looking to get the word out in Dulwich. The shopping guide will also run across this, and any future sites at no extra cost, so means extra traffic for those of you who are advertising there.
The rest…
As always, there’s lots of great new information across the site, and lots of great chatter in the forum, so come and take a look!
Hope to see you at one of the events soon!
Kind regards,
Louise
So, call me mad but I’m feeling rather good about the prospect of Spring being just around the corner. There’s something lovely about this time of year – the evenings are lighter, the weather finally seems less bleak, and the possibility of actually getting out of the house without a million and one layers, emergency umbrellas is a real and inviting one. If, like me, you don’t drive, it’s a whole new lease of life to be able to walk everywhere without you and the kids getting soaked.