Going Home and a Giveaway!!

As you may or may not know we have booked our trip home for Christmas. I am so excited to go home and spend the holidays with family and friends I am literally counting down the days. 

We will be spending a total of three glorious weeks back in England and most importantly we get to celebrate Christmas Day with our families. 

Because I am so unbelievably happy to be taking a trip home I have decided to host a little giveaway, courtesy of me, for my followers and readers of A Day In The Life Of Calleigh Emma. 

I will be giving away a Girl's London Dress (size 2T).
If you remember I showcased it as Calleigh's Outfit of the Month in June.

The Giveaway is open Worldwide and will run for 4 weeks. To enter please fill in the rafflecopter form below. All entries will be verified and a winner will be chosen and emailed on the 18th October.
Good luck everyone! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Personalised Photo Mug Review

No one loves a good cup of tea like I do and what better way to enjoy it than in a personalised mug made just for me. 

I signed up for Shutterfly when we moved out here as I wanted to get some prints done. Since I have signed up I have received so may freebies through email- this personalised mug being one of them. Yes this was free, I just checked my email one day and there it was. I couldn't pass up on an offer like that. I logged on straight away and entered my code to claim my free mug. 

Designing my perfect mug was easy. You scroll through a picture list of their pre-made designs and choose whichever one takes you fancy. The next step is editing it to make it yours. Uploading photos is easy and then you can add all your photos onto your project and text as well if you want. I added the text "Mummy's Tea". 

Once I had my finished project I clicked order and all I had to pay for was the shipping. About a week later a lovely orange package arrived at my door. Inside was my lovely mug, it was perfect.

They have a sale on Photo Mugs at the moment so you can pick one up for 30% off. 

Goodbye Dummy

When Calleigh was a baby we made the decision to give her a dummy. A lot of people had told us not to do it because it will be difficult to get rid of it later down the line. Of course (being new and first time parents and all) we blissfully ignored the advice and gave her one anyway. She took to it really well and it helped her sleep like a champ (pretty much through the night from 2 months old). 

We figured it couldn't be that hard, I mean its just a dummy right? -Wrong. 

We thought once she was old enough she would pretty much just spit it out and wave goodbye - Wrong again. 

And so here we are, almost two years down the line, in the battle of our lives to try and get her to give up her dummy. 

It started a couple of weeks ago, looking back on photos of Calleigh and realising that in almost every picture she has a dummy hiding her beautiful face. And in the ones that she didn't she was frowning because I had just taken it out to take a quick snap. Not the kind of pictures you want to look back on. 

I noticed that when taking her to daycare not one of the other children had a dummy, most of them didn't need one anymore and the few that did got really upset seeing Calleigh walk in with hers in her mouth while theirs was stashed up on a shelf out of reach. I am also getting a bit worried about the effect it may be having on her teeth. She was a very late starter and still has quite a few teeth yet to make their way through and I don't want them to come in wonky. 

So Daddy and I have decided that it's time we did something about this. It's time to start project Goodbye Dummy. We knew it wasn't going to be easy as she has become very, very attached to her dummy. It is her soother at night, her comforter when she is upset and her best friend in the day. I pretty much think that if her dummy could feed her and change her we would not be needed anymore. 

Having never had a dummy when I was little (apparently I just didn't want one) I don't quite understand how she can be so attached to it, it's just a "thing". But I guess in Calleigh's eyes it is much more than that. 

I started last week, what I would do is sneak up while she was having breakfast and quickly swipe the dummy away. I had to do it sneakily otherwise if she saw me take it she would instantly start crying for it. I found that this way it takes her some time to realise it has gone and by the time that happens I am already prepared with distraction techniques. It might sound a bit mean but this is the only way I could see getting it away from her. 

It has been going really well so far, she can go the whole morning without her dummy and gets it back only when she goes for a nap. It's a bit harder to get it away from her in the afternoon, but we are getting there. 

The next step is to try and get her comfortable with going for a nap without it, at the moment she just wont sleep without it, although doesn't need it when she is asleep. This is going to be much harder and I'm not quite sure how to approach it yet so we will just keep going with dummy free awake time at the moment. I also don't think I'm ready to give up uninterrupted nights sleep so we wont be trying that just yet either.

I guess I'm just still hoping that one day she will just want to chuck it away herself. 

Outfit of the Month: September

Dance

And Pose

Who Me?

Top- Baby Gap

Jeans- Next 

Calleigh decided she was going to do a bit of ballet whilst we were taking our outfit photo's so we have a few good ballet poses here. Unlike last time it was very hard to get her to stand still and smile haha. 

Halloween Devilish Cupcakes

What you will need: 

• 1 box of devil's food cupcake mix 
• Water, Vegetable Oil and Eggs (for the cake mix)
• 1 bag of Dark Chocolate drops/candy melts
• 1 tub of Butter cream Frosting
• Red Food Colouring/Paste

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Place cupcake cases in a 24 regular size muffin pan cups. 
2. Make and bake the cupcakes as directed on the box. Cool completely. 
3. Meanwhile line a baking tray with parchment paper. Melt the dark chocolate using whichever method you prefer. I did it in the microwave using intervals of 15 seconds until completely melted. Place melted chocolate into a resealable sandwich bag. Cut off a tiny corner of the bag and squeeze the bag to pipe the chocolate into devils' horn and tail shapes on the parchment paper. Refrigerate until set. 
4. At this point you can make your own frosting if you wish, I took the easy route and brought pre-made butter cream frosting. Empty the tub into a bowl and add food colouring. Once mixed pipe or spread mixture onto the cupcakes. 
5. Place the horns and tail into the frosting on each cupcake. 

*Recipe from the Betty Crocker Halloween pops and cupcakes magazine*