It's nearly the end of term, the summer holidays are almost within touching distance and kids everywhere are looking for the perfect gift to give their teachers to say thank you, it may be that they're just going up a year or that they're moving school but if you are buying for more than 1 teacher it can become prohibitively expensive, it cost me an absolute fortune when Looby left her primary school last year, we didn't begrudge those gifts one bit though as we'd been parents at the school for 15 years, I think I may have cried more than Looby saying goodbye to all of the wonderful staff who'd been such a big part of our lives.  Now being the canny shopper that I am I've put together a quick gift guide for you with 8 of my favourite gifts for teachers and support staff at schools that won't break the bank.

1. This Teacher Jolly Ginger Biscuit card from Biscuiteers is only £6, plus it's a card and a yummy biscuit so both money saving and totally tasty!
2. The You Are Wonderful Teacher print from Not On The High Street is only £8 and it's personalised, so in a world where teachers get a bazillion boxes of chocolates why not be the one to get something completely different?!
3. I love this wooden flower and tag, something which will last forever and only £12.50, the tag is personalised too.
4. If it does have to be chocolate then make sure it's good chocolate, Hotel Chocolat have a great selection with some starting at only £1.95
5. If you are going to buy flowers then make them local, I love the flowers from Diana Kaye at Fenwick in Newcastle, they are always so fresh and colourful and they often sell little posies for less than five pounds.
6. Ok, so the male teachers are a little harder but I managed to find these socks on Ebay for only £3 and they're available in both teacher and assistant teacher design, they're also personalised! For £3, bargain!
7. I love this little thank you for being my first teacher plaque, it's only £3.49 on Amazon and it's really a very sweet little gift.
8. Finally, this voice recording mug is the ultimate quirky and lovely present, you can record your own message guaranteed to make teacher feel all warm and loved every time they have a cuppa, and it's only £9.99

So there you go, it is possible to find great unique gifts for special teachers, why not let the kids choose which gifts they want to buy?!

I use affiliate marketing to facilitate the feeding of my children, Holly Bobbins and my cats but I put together this gift guide to make your life easier.

Alien Day

It's creativity fortnight at school and on this last day before term it's Alien Day so after a hasty trip to the shops yesterday we put together the following outfits:-




This is Princess ninny noo na of the hydroplexus galaxy





and swishy loobukin of planet laalaaloolaaa



Look at those strange alien expressions.



They might look cute but beware!



Teeheehee, they were also covered head to toe in glitter!!



Well thats all for now, happy weekend, 2 shoots tommorrow and then it's Amys wedding on Monday!! So excited, I love my job!

Lots and Lots to Tell....

I really have been so very busy I've hardly had time to draw breath!

So on Saturday we really got down to starting the total renovation of our house, not an easy task considering the size, we were pretty certain that as long as we could get the Livingroom done we really could cope with the rest of the house until after Christmas. For pretty much 3 solid days we decorated (baring in mind that I had a photoshoot in that time as well!) at at 1am this morning we finally had a room we love.

Gone is the hideous carpet and we welcome with open arms the painted Chocolate Brown floorboards, gone are the peach walls and we welcome the wholemeal walls with our accented Autumn Red wall!

We now have a contemporary fireplace, I've never had a fireplace before so thats probably one of my most exciting things! Wanna See?
Thats my fireplace and my new wholemeal walls.

I won't bore you all with too many photos but this afternoon after spending the day with Abigails Year 1 class at Whitehouse Farm having a festive animal frenzy we decided that on the way home we would buy our Christmas tree, a beautiful 6ft Nordman Fir decorated by the children (although they were banned from using anything that wasn't gold or red!!) all we have to do now is buy a new angel as our current one is Silver and doesn't go!


There's still one thing missing from the livingroom and thats all the family photos, I need new frames and new photos as well as a couple of canvases so thats my project for the next couple of months!

You know what, I think it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!

First Day of School

Yes it's that time of year again, Abigail moves to year 1 and Iain is moving to year 6, his last year of juniors and a change of uniform to black and white instead of the yellow and blue. Looby, my baby starts Benton Park Nursery and even though she's a very capable nearly 4 I'm still going to miss my baby when her full time place commences on the 21st. She starts this afternoon and will do afternoons up until then.

She was quite excited about packed lunch so I had to make her a special one which we've popped in the fridge for lunchtime, couldn't leave her out of the packed lunches really could I?

I suppose that the upside of all of this is that I'll have more time for family photoshoots and more time for wedding photography clients, oh and hopefully a little less time where I have to worry about the childcare elements!!

In true Charlton tradition the boot light got left on in the car and this morning when Paul went to start the old dear up she plainly refused so he's had to go on the bus!!! It's funny that things like this always seem to happen to us, needless to say Mr C isn't a very happy bunny at the moment and I'm going to be doing my level best to keep out of his way!!!!

Only 320 days till the next summer holidays, I wonder how life will be then for Mandy Charlton Designs and indeed for Meandering Gardens!!!!........

Not doing very well....

At this blogging thing of late am I?

This is though we're just so busy with work and day to day life that there doesn't seem much time left for other stuff and I'm overwhelmed by just how much time I'm spending on my forum of late, there's been so many new members including one famous one I spotted yesterday Brenda Pinnick, now that has to be a scoop, for anyone who doesn't know Brenda Pinnick Designs was the manufacturer of the last QVC TSV and very much what brought us the good luck of Having Nigel Merry of Crabapple crafts join us.

Anyway if you want to be a member of a forum which is large enough to have a buzz about it but still small enough to make you feel like you're part of the family check out Craft.

Paul has an appointment tonight for his first Gardening Job as Meandering Gardens, this is so exciting and I am so proud of him, looks like all that leaflet delivery he and the children have been doing nightly is staring to pay off.

Hopefully it won't be too far into the future before we can both think of working soley for ourselves instead of for other people. I'm already in the position of course and loving it, I have a brand new concept that I'm bringing to Mandy Charlton Designs, I don't want to give too much away but it's to do with little Princesses and should be live on the website by the end of the week so do look out for that.

Iain has SATS this week and despite feeling very anxious and stressed at the beginning of the week he says he's not finding them so bad as he thought he would, still he says he can't wait for it to be Saturday and them all to be over.

Much excitement awaits for the next couple of weeks as the school has it's annual Creativity Fortnight. This year it's thrilling for me as I'm being quite heavily involved, I'm going into do a couple of class talks about photography, 1 with Iains class and then at the end of the fortnight I'll be taking Victorian Sepia portraits to interact with their Blaydon Races theme, this is so exciting because I get to use my talents to help raise money for the school, School is planning on selling copies of the prints to any families who wish to purchase them, so exciting that I get to do something so useful and hopefully we'll raise loads of money.

Back into the Swing...

3 weeks since the kids have gone back to school and they've both settled in incredibly well, Iain did his literacy homework last night with no complaining at all which must surely be a first and Abigail, well what can i tell you about Abigail, she rushed home today to do homework which wasn't even homework, she adores learning although I'm not sure the same could be said of reception class as there's hardly a day goes by without her not wanting to go to school, I'm pretty sure that this is just derigeur for a four year old!!

I had to buy a new printer today which hurt a lot but if I'm going to run a photography business it's not like I can do without one. I've had to make some hard decisions and even sold some of my beloved scrapping stash, the thing is that no one else is going to help so I have to just grit my teeth and get on with it, thanfully I have my lovely Hubby who supports my every decision, you can pop over and see him HERE but don't love him too much, he beat me on battle of the blogs earlier today and he's had a smug look ever since!!