Pink is the new black and white!

It’s been three months since we launched our new range of colour nametags and it’s clear that you can’t get enough of pink! Our nametags have even been used by one mum for her baby’s christening.

From hot pink to baby pink that’s the colour many of you love best. We’ve discovered our customers (and their children) are a creative bunch. Hearts are the most popular closely followed by ladybirds. With 8 font colours, 16 backgrounds and 85 designs there are now 65,000 options to choose from.

We’d love to know if there are any colours you would like us to add and we’ll see what we can do. Click to give us feedback and join in on our colour discussion on My Nametags’s Facebook page.

One Mum designed the prettiest nametags to personalise her homemade Favours for her baby’s christening. Ruth, mum to eight-month old Sarah says: “The My Nametag stickers are just the ideal size and a good price. They are pretty tough too.” Ruth doesn’t make wedding/party Favours for a living but says “if anyone is interested then why not?!”

Do let us know if you are using our nametags for anything unusual and you could win a free set of labels.

Adding colour into your life doesn’t cost the earth either. Our colour nametags cost £9.95 (plus £1 postage and packaging) for a pack of 56. Just choose either iron-on or stickers.

PS Don’t worry we are still selling our popular, great value black and white nametags too!

6 habits of fit, slim people

With just 2 months to go until the summer holidays, getting fitter, slimmer or getting rid of that ‘mummy tummy’ for those who’ve had babies (however long ago) is upper most in many women’s minds. We asked Wendy Powell, specialist pregnancy/postnatal personal trainer how to get the figure you want. And keep it.

Founder of The MuTu® System, a 12 week online exercise programme and mum of 2, Wendy says she is often asked: “How often do I need to exercise?” “For how long?” “How hard?”… For it to really WORK?

To make any significant changes to the way your body looks, you need to exercise for around 20 minutes, at least 4 times a week, AS WELL AS eating clean, unprocessed food and not eating more calories than your body needs.

The exercise you do must be intensive enough for you to working on about an ‘effort’ level of 7/8 (if 1 is sitting still and 10 is running flat out as fast as you can). And you need to this consistently, week after week after week to both achieve results and maintain your condition.

But if you continue to eat more calories than your body needs, you won’t lose any weight, even though your exercise will be increasing your fitness and muscle mass.

The key really is consistency. People who maintain their health and fitness and have a lean and toned body shape have certain things in common:

• Exercise and eating well are part of their lives. They don’t go on and off diets, they don’t leap from one quick fix to the next or join a gym and then stop going after the novelty has worn off. They do it because it makes them feel and look better. So they keep doing it month in, month out. Regularly and consistently.
• They enjoy exercise. You may think this couldn’t apply to you, but find what you love! Go to a class, use a DVD, dance, swim, cycle, run (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, many mums find running life-affirming, stress relieving and a great way to take a little me-time!). Our bodies are designed to move and they become soft and weak when we don’t, so let your legs do what they were built for!
• They prioritise exercise. Fit people would no more cancel or miss their exercise time, as they would not show up to a dental appointment or a meeting at work.
• They like themselves. If you ‘cut off’ from your body and don’t like the way it looks or makes you feel, then you disconnect emotionally and lose respect for it. Why take care of something you don’t respect or even like looking at? You need to get back in touch with your body to change it.
• They like food. Healthy people aren’t hungry and they don’t skip meals. The food they eat does their body good, and so they eat plenty of it.
• They sleep well and understand the need to relax and avoid stress. We all live in the real world and stress cannot realistically be avoided, but the more stress we have in our lives, the more we need to take some time to relax and breathe. Stress makes you ill and it makes you fat, and just 10 minutes a day of *still* can reap enormous benefits!

Wendy’s MuTu System is as concerned with your self confidence and finding your Mojo, as it is with finding your waistline. If you’d like to book a free consultation with Wendy by phone or email to discuss your own situation, just go here! (www.mutusystem.com)

Day in the life of #1 Mummy blogger

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a Mummy blogger? Perhaps you’d secretly like to write one too? We asked #1 Mummy blogger, Tara Cain to tell us what it’s like to write her ‘Sticky Fingers’ blog.

When I tell people I am a blogger their first question is: Why? When I explain this to them it’s usually followed by: How on earth do you fit it all in?

For as well as writing my blog, I am married, a mother of two primary school-aged children and run my own business from home. I am not exactly brimming with free time!

Up until three years ago I was a features editor on a regional daily newspaper; a job I loved. When my editor asked me to start a parenting blog for the paper’s new online edition I readily agreed, thinking it would take me an hour at most every week to update it. How wrong I was!

First of all, back then in 2004 I had no idea what a blog actually was. So I did my research and what I hadn’t reckoned on was the amazing community of people out there; ordinary men and women like me. Parents with the same issues, different issues, fascinating stories, heartbreaking stories, parents offering real help and advice – the stuff you don’t read in the magazines and books I lapped up when I was pregnant with my first child.

It sounds utterly ridiculous to me now writing this down; meeting people online through writing a blog? How silly. But the people who write these blogs are sharing their lives. Sharing their parenting highs and lows, their joys, their sadness, their children’s milestones and achievements. And I read them and relate to them. I read them and think ‘my goodness, it’s not just me then’.

It’s like an online coffee shop almost where you can chat to people who really know what you’re feeling; and that is a very powerful thing when you become a mother and don’t know all the answers.

So when I left the newspaper in 2008 I set up another personal blog called Sticky Fingers www.stickyfingers1.blogspot.com and it has become a journal of my life as a parent and my children’s childhood.

I write about the day they started school, the funny things they say, parenting issues that trouble me, what we do in the school holidays, a bit of rant here and there etc.

And yes it takes up a lot of time. After dropping the children off at school I probably spend an hour looking at some of my favourite blogs – rather like flicking through a magazine I guess and then I will probably spend another hour in the evening when they’ve gone to bed reading and writing. And as for the writing, well I do that all the time. I make notes on scraps of paper all over the house, jot things down on the computer when I have ideas of things I’d like to share and have even been known to use the dictaphone on my phone while walking around the supermarket if something comes to mind!

For me it is about having the freedom to write what I like to an audience of like-minded people. I never run out of ideas for things to talk about – that’s what having two young children around the place does to you!

I guess you could compare it to writing a diary, except you use a keypad instead of a pen and you share your thoughts with others instead of keeping it all to yourself. And you connect with people who understand you; connections which for me have led to some of the best friendships I have.

I do look back on things I wrote a year ago and smile. Smile at how much my children have grown up in that short space and how I’ve changed as a parent. And I hope that my blog will serve as a memory piece for my children when they grow up. Something for them to look back on and think ‘I really had quite a fabulous childhood’. I hope they’ll think that anyway!

So, if you’re reading this and thinking ‘I just don’t get it’ why not visit a couple of blogs and see what they’re all about? Or just dive right in and start one yourself. I promise you will never look back . . .