AD | Before School starts Prep & Back to School Shopping!
I feel like we have blinked and the school holidays are almost over! It’s crazy! But here we are! And I feel like every other parent on the planet will be in the same boat of before school prepping and back to school shopping! It’s brutal out there in the school uniform shops! And let’s not even start at the expense of it all! But this is the nature of getting our munchkins all ready for their new school term! So, I figured I would share with you what we bought, where we got them from and also share a few gifted items with you too.
Hype School Bag
Annabelle is obsessed with the colour blue at the moment. Everything has to be blue {or green as an alternative}. But, she spied this Hype Backpack in our local School Uniform store and gave me the whole nine yards! The begging hands, the doe-eyes, the cute pleading voice and I crumbled! She is happy and that is the main thing. Hopefully, this backpack will see her through her final years of Primary School.
In fairness, the quality is next to none. It feels great. It is sturdy, not waterproof but that’s OK. Bags like this are showerproof and rainproof to a point and that’s acceptable to me. They have a capacity of 18 litres, which is perfect for all of the books Annabelle will have for her Primary 5 journey. So all in all, it is a worthy backpack for her next school term and cost me £25.99. On the JustHype website, they have a free pencil case for each Hype Backpack you buy. So check it out if you are still looking for a schoolbag!
Peter Rabbit Tote Bag & Umbrella
Coming into the Autumn season, which is our favourite season ever! An umbrella is a must! This beautiful Peter Rabbit umbrella was kindly gifted from the Gift Giving All Wrapped Up. They have a beautiful Beatrix Potter section where this umbrella can be found and also this Beatrix Potter Tote bag.
The umbrella has this gorgeous Peter rabbit print and is perfect for any Beatrix Potter fan. Annabelle is a huge fan of the movies, so this is perfect to add to her Back to School accessories. The tote bag will be perfect for those days for visiting the library after school – which is a favourite activity for Annabelle to do! And the bag can store the books that we leave back and hire out to bring home.
The Gift Giving All Wrapped Up & Enesco online store have loads of lovely gift ideas and a fun range of Back to school items, too. So do give them a visit!
Bento Boxes & other School Lunch box bits
During the cold months of the years, which, in Northern Ireland can be November right through until Spring decides to bloom! We do a mix of cold and hot packed lunches. My eldest daughter is going into 6th form, so I assume it will be cafeteria meals for her, which is fine. However, for my other two, it will be a mixture of hot & cold pack lunches. You can check out my Warm & Easy Lunchbox Ideas for school post, here.
I bought this really cute Cookie the Cat Bento box from Rex London and I love it. It is really cute, fun to eat from and it’s great to giving Annabelle a range of tasty treats to enjoy during her school lunch break. It has two compartments, comes with a fork & a spoon as well as a red elastic band to keep everything together.
For any hot lunches that I make for Annabelle {my son Jacob prefers a cold lunch}, I use this Thermos Food Funtainer Flask. I bought this one from Amazon as the previous one we have, is quite old and was in need of replacing. These are amazing little containers to use, especially for those cold wintery mornings. And it’s so comforting to know that she is getting a warm lunch in her belly during her school day.
For any other lunch box bits, I like to use the nesting boxes from Smiggle. They are great to pop some sandwiches into or even a little trail mix of snacks if your child likes that sort of thing. My Annabelle personally loves it.
Water bottles
And lastly, we used to use plastic bottles for the kids every school term. The ones with the built-in straw etc. Now, we are using stainless steel vacuum-sealed bottles which are for hot or cold drinks. Which is very handy!
We opted for the 500ml bottles as they are a much more practical size for the children to carry about in their school bags. I picked ours up from The Range and they were £5.99 each – so very reasonable for the product you get. I actually didn’t pick Annabelle one when buying for the older two, but she later decided she wanted one, so I picked hers up from Amazon. The range of stainless steel water bottles on Amazon is huge! So have fun shopping for those!
Reading Books
It’s no news to the regulars of my blog that Annabelle had a speech delay. She is turning 9 in the new year and even though her speech has come on dramatically since 2019, she still has a way to go in some aspects. She has fallen in love with reading and with a particular genre – horror. My husband says that I baked her too long {he thinks he is funny!}. But horror is a favourite genre of mine and of course, she doesn’t read adult horror, but child horror and she loves it!
She was recently gifted this amazing 13 book collection of scary stories called Scream Street from Books2Door And she is obsessed with them. It is also amazing to hear and see her loving books, enjoying the stories that they tell and so much more than reading has to offer. This is a comedy horror series and hearing her laugh as she reads is amazing! She is forever telling me about this character or that, or randomly funny antics they have got up to! Either way, if your child is a bookworm, like Annabelle and like a little scare – then check out Scream Street!
Books2Door is a fabulous online book store with such a vast range, that there really is something for everyone. With selected age ranges and book sets galore, check them out if you have a book nerd at home.
Preparing for Cold & flu season!
Cold and flu season is not a fun time for anyone! Especially {and even more so} thanks to the presence of Covid. However, there are products out that can help fight the battle against developing the common cold. Or as a decent alternative, shorten the time frame that you or your child have it for.
Alongside the vitamins that I give my gang {and myself} each morning, I have also started using ColdZyme. It is a mouth spray, that gets administered into the back of the throat. Two pumps equal one dose. It is advised to give this every 2nd hour, up to six times a day. Now, realistically, this cannot be achieved during a school day. So I plan to give it in the morning before the school run and when they get home. As well as the usual strip down, steam clothes, sanitize hands, followed by a squeezy hug and a catch up of their day!
Lastly…
And I think that is it! We are reusing some items from previous school terms, such as pencil cases and things. But on a whole, thankfully, we didn’t need that much! School uniforms and things are expensive enough without buying everything new every single year – which I think is bonkers!
Are you all ready for school yet? We are…just about!
*I have placed AD on the title of this post because some items were kindly gifted for the purchase of this post.
