Mums will be familiar with the ability of babies to hone in on their mobile phones, utterly fascinated, or sometimes just using it as a teether.  My Toddler Life incorporates this fascination by babies into its narrative.  The book follows a small child through the eyes of his mother, or more accurately the frame of her phone […]

Gorgeous and I are doing a first for us at the moment.  We are both reading the same book. Its’ Dracul by Dacre Stoke and J. D. Barker. I picked it because it is a prequel to Bram Stokers Dracula which is one of my most favourite ever books. He read the blurb and thought […]

I find that one of the hardest things in my life should be one of the easiest. That is to stop. If I’m not at work, I’m preparing for work. If I’m not at home, I’m planning the time I have with my children and husband. I don’t just go home at the end of […]

For some reason I had a bit of a stereotype of Lyme Regis and thought it would be dull.  But when I heard it was a key stop on the World Heritage Jurassic Coast and was famous for fossil hunting, I had to include it in our Dorset trip. It turned out to be a […]

I’m 38 weeks today and counting down the days to my due date. The last few days have been challenging with strong Braxton Hicks contractions, sleeplessness and quite severe back pain. I’ve been up every hour or so the last few nights and the back pain and my heaviness are messing with my sleep. I’ve come to […]

Forseeing a day full of sunshine, hubby, his brothers and their friend piled into the car to head to the boot fair at Dunton. After about three hours we had still sen less than half and gave up and spent another hour at the Barleylands boot.You know when you have one of those moments that […]

I took the Babies to my friends house at the weekend to visit her children’s new kittens.  They were ready in a shot as soon as they heard the word “cat”. They turned out to be the cutest, friendliest little kittens: This one got into my lap and refused to get out. Every time someone […]

Despite my families grumbling I have tried to keep our iftars as simple as possible with the rule “no fried food” (this is followed by a filling meal after maghrib salah). It’s not easy to get away from samosa’s to open your fast, as my neighbours’ teens said when she tried to ban them: “If […]

We managed to make it to one or two boot fairs in July. The best one being Boreham boot fair in Essex. On this occasion there were a lot of sellers, not many buyers and a lot of bargains to be had. We went late and before long people started packing up, so we grabbed […]

Clear goal-setting for Ramadan Some practical suggested activities you can undertake now, a month before, a week before and during Ramadan, with space to include your own actions and thoughts. Space to plan ahead for the month of Dhul-hajj and the Sacrifice The Sunnan of Ramadan and both Eid’s The beautiful and inspiring Ramadan Sermon […]

I often have this little pipe dream, that I go to work one day and my family invite over one of those TV programmes that do up your house or garden wonderfully, you then come home and get a big surprise. As lovely as he is, I would never have thought my husband would attempt […]

One of the things that has become apparent to me in the last few years, and reared its ugly head again very recently, is the question of caste. You may be thinking “we are Muslim’s what on earth has caste got to do with us?” South Asian Muslims, certainly Muslim’s in Pakistan and I am […]

You recite slowly, taking the time to relax into each posture of the prayer. You try to keep Allah (SWT) as your focus throughout, sometimes losing focus, but always struggling to come back. You ignore the noise and chatter around you and try to fade out the distractions from the children. You slowly descend into […]