Well, I have loaded up a bowl of funsize chocolate in case we get any “visitors” this evening, although I shan’t be encouraging with doorlights or pumpkins. Hopefully we won’t get too many and I can scoff the remains later.

I hate Halloween. It is not a tradition done well here in the UK. I could see the point of it if I lived in the US – from all accounts it seems really fun there and everyone seems to get into the spirit of it. I love reading the sites with creative suggestions for costumes and DIY haunted houses.

Here in the UK, though, Halloween is groups of teenagers knocking on doors, occasionally buying a cheap “Scream” mask from Tescos and mumbling “Trick or Treat” unenthusiastically before putting their hands out for cash. All with the underlying threat that with lack of co-operation your property is likely to be floured and egged. (They’ll also be back for “penny for the guy” in a few days time (Bonfire Night) and in a month with a crappy rendition of “Good King Wenceslas” again expecting monetary reward) Understandably, many vunerable pensioners in particular find this a frightening time of year – effectively a license for doorstep mugging.

Unsurprisingly, I will not be taking my two boys out begging for sweets, although they’ll both be getting a funsize treat after dinner and maybe when they’re older, a Halloween party – but only to minimize the peer pressure.

I guess that makes me a killjoy.

Half term is over. Thankfully.

Having half term completely at home, with rainy weather and potty training was never going to be a relaxing break. Both us and the boys were bouncing off the walls by the end, although we did have a very welcome weekend away at my inlaws. Li’l Bhaji managed a 3 hour car journey both ways without accidents, so is doing well (we’ll conveniently ignore the frequent changes of clothes as he was distracted by the excitement of being at his grandparents house though, shall we?)

Other than that, we’re in the midst of another shall we/shan’t we try and move back to London dilemma. I talk myself around to the other point of view about every half hour currently, so I can’t see it being resolved any time soon. We’re having the house valued on Wednesday, though, just to stretch out the circular argument for a bit longer.

So what have you lot been up to?

I’ve been a bit quiet recently. Half term, potty training and NaNoWriMo preparation have all taken their toll, but I’ve also found a new toy to play with: Yahoo! Widgets.

What is it? Well it’s an engine that allows you to run mini-programs on your desktop – calendar, news feeds, daily cartoon, weather updates, etc – all customisable content to the information or fun stuff you need.

It comes preloaded with 20 popular widgets, but there are over 3000 different ones you can choose from and download.

I currently have a widget linking to my Google Calendar, a savings goal reminder, a desktop organiser, a clock, a picture frame, current weather, Daily Dilbert and the latest headlines (okay, so I might have got a bit carried away).

Permission to look smug for a bit?

I made my first ever homemade play dough today, and it came out absolutely perfect – so much nicer than the greasy commercial stuff you buy in tiny pots that cost a small fortune considering their short shelf life once opened. Feeling particularly smug as it kept both children entertained for over an hour and a half while we’re still stuck inside for potty training purposes.

It’s a recipe I nicked from Li’l Bhaji’s nursery, but I’m sure they won’t mind me sharing it:

Play / Modelling Dough

Ingredients

1 tbsp cooking oil
1 cup plain flour
½ cup salt
1 cup water
2 tsps cream of tartar
1 tsp food colouring of choice

Method

1. Chuck all ingredients into a saucepan and mix well over a low heat.

2. Take out of the pan JUST before it looks ready – i.e. it’ll look slightly too moist (as it dries out a bit while you’re waiting for it to cool).

3. Give it a good kneed through. Will take about 10 minutes before it’s cool enough to play with.

And there you go, really quick and easy – you get about double the size of a normal commercial pot, so plenty to share.

I’m not sure how long it will last – probably not as long as the stuff you get in a tub, but it should last a while if you keep it wrapped in clingfilm or in some sort of airtight container to keep the moisture in.

Best of all, the bits that get ground into the carpet crumble when dry, so it’s really easy to remove when your toddler treads it through the rest of the house – that’s DEFINITELY an improvement!

I’ve gone off a lot of fast food recently. Mainly because, having cut out a lot of additives in our diet, the food now taste flavourless and over salty to me, but also because the takeaway restaurants near us aren’t particularly good quality and the meat is often cheap and fatty – it annoys me that these expensive meals are so poor and unenjoyable.

Of course, it doesn’t actually stop me craving a really good chicken korma or a large portion of fish and chips though, I just find that the thought of a takeaway is so much nicer than the actual reality. So stumbling across these Fast Food recipes on BBC Food might just be the answer – at least I’ll know the exact quality of the ingredients going into them.

So, here we go again. You’d have thought I’d have learned from Akra Jr, but no… here I am again, taking a child out of nappies before they’re old enough to vote. DOH!

However, I don’t like to waste a convenient half term when Akra actually has time off (a whole week too, well… at least until Monday morning when work is BOUND to cave and phone him) and said toddler has been begging to use the toilet for weeks.

The method is straight forward:

• no going back, no quitting allowed
• nappies only go back on for sleeptime no matter what
• don’t just ask… TAKE them to the potty every thirty minutes
• performance gets rewarded (started with sticker and a fanfare – although tomorrow I think we’re going to cut the middleman and go straight for the chocolate buttons)

All sounds good, right? Can’t fail with that plan, no siree…

It started out well enough. After a couple of trips to the potty, first pee hit target and fanfare duly ensued. Yay, this time round with my superior knowledge and experience is going to be EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAZY!

Well, Li’l Bhaji is in bed now. Final tally: Potty 1 – Accidents 11. My carpet had only just recovered from the baby reflux … [sigh].

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go sulk while washing eleven sets of Thomas the Tank engine pants, 6 long sleeve tops and a towel.

Given hours of unproductive hunting for all the teeny tiny pieces of a lego model in a HUGE tub (frustrating mother and child alike), just how anal would it be to get rid of the large tub and sort out all the pieces into their respective colours, storing each colour in a separate clear plastic container instead?

I.e. just how many hours of therapy will my kid need later in life because his mother didn’t allow him to be creatively messy?

Can I offset that against the fewer hours of therapy that I’ll need… ?

I have vowed (this time around) to keep my gob shut about my latest writing project – the novel plan for this year’s NaNoWriMo. I have this horrible habit of talking so much about my ideas that all the enthusiasm and creativity evaporates before I get to pin it down into actual black and white words. I’m determined not to make that mistake this time.

This is all very well, but it’s just so hard to keep schtum. The last couple of days all I’ve been thinking about in my spare moments (well, apart from Scrubs… thanks again for getting me completely addicted just as I had so much to do, Tiger Feet) has been plot planning. I’ve got just over a third of the way through in my section sheets and I’m having to bite my tongue on the walk to school this morning so I don’t blurt out “oh sorry, bit distracted… I’m writing a novel and I’m just trying to work out my subplot…”.

And I’m obsessed. I have my subplot muddled in with my main plot and my viewpoint characters just aren’t behaving. I haven’t even started writing the damn thing yet and they’re already being opinionated and stubborn. I’m just DYING to talk over all the nuances with someone so I can get it straight in my head, but I daren’t. The ideas might fall out.

I now fully appreciate the origin of the phrase “to have lost the plot”. I think mine went to Bournemouth…

… I hope it gets back in time for November 1st.

Yes, I think I may be clinically insane.

After a lot of deliberation, I’ve decided to give NaNoWriMo 2006 a proper go – worse case scenario I can only fail spectacularly.

I realise I only have 14 actual days left where I can do some planning. Fortunately, I already have a stalled novel project where the first 7 sections are outlined. Only 33 more sections to plan before November 1st. ARGH!

Anyway, consider this advance warning that November might be a bit blog-lite here at the Prattle.

Where is it exactly that uSwitch get their figures from? I ask, because I’m now fairly certain they don’t get it from the suppliers.

We got our quarterly dual fuel bill recently, along with a notice that our monthly direct debit was going to increase by 15% so like any good money savers we popped onto the popular comparison site to check we were still with the most competitive electricity and gas supplier.

Imagine our surprise when plugging the figures in for our exact yearly usage, that while our current plan is still the most competitive tariff by far, it turns out our annual bill should be half what the company themselves are projecting and what we have actually paid over the last year.

Phone calls ensued. Over the phone it was discussed until we were blue in the face with calculators in hand, but what the bottom line comes down to is that the tariffs and standing charges the utility provider use have no correlation to those uSwitch seem to have in their databases. So, beware.

Now we’re just looking for ways to save energy. We reckon we could rig something in the garden to generate a bit more too – we know enough engineers after all. Surely there’s something we can make using an energetic toddler and a rotary washing line?!