Jen Walshaw | Mum In The Madhouse

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Author name: Jen Walshaw

Mum-in-charge Jen Walshaw runs the UK’s top parenting blog Mum in the Madhouse, and she describes herself as a “fat, feisty and over 50” Northerner. Based in North Yorkshire, she’s mum to young adults and a big believer that family life is messy, creative and fun. In 2009 a double mastectomy gave her the nudge to start blogging; with two boys under three she needed an outlet and a digital scrapbook to capture their chaos.Jen’s posts are a mix of crafts, kid‑friendly recipes and honest parenting, peppered with northern humour. She’s happiest when up to her elbows in tea, fabric and pizza dough – sewing and making homemade gifts – before sneaking off to write about it. As a proud Northerner she warns PRs that a “quick pop down to London” isn’t quick at all. Her blog has earned her a stack of accolades, including the Cision #1 Mummy Blogger title in 2024  and consistently topping Vuelio and Tots100 parenting‑blog charts. Whether she’s advocating for diversity and body neutrality or sharing tales of parenting teens, Jen keeps things chatty, real and refreshingly down‑to‑earth.

Win 4 tickets to the Fruit Shoot Skills Awards on 7th September 2013

This summer, leading children’s soft drink brand Robinsons Fruit Shoot, in association with Nickelodeon, launched Get Your Skills On, a campaign designed to give kids the chance to give kids the chance to learn the latest cool skills ranging from street dance to free style basketball to urban percussion. With the help of the Fruit […]

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Educational Things For Children To Do During Their Christmas Holiday

The school Christmas holidays are generally parents’ favourite school holiday because although they are just over two weeks long, at least one week is taken up with Christmas day, boxing day, New Year’s Eve and visiting family and friends which means that they only have around a week of boredom to fill. At Christmas time

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Do you go all inclusive?

MadDad and I have been on plenty of all inclusive holidays BC (before children), we enjoyed some fantastic experiences and the thought of icecream on tap really appeals to my children! I was discussing this with a friend today and we said that if we could guarantee the summer weather we have had here in the UK we would never go abroad again, but are scared that this year will be a one off.

Now both my boys are competent swimmers they look for a holiday with a pool more than anything else and they also want sports activities.

I want to be able to sit and actually read more than the first page of my book on repeat and that keeping the children happy makes me happy.

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Back to School Blog Linky

Can you believe that my scottish friends children have already gone back to school? Here in England we have three more weeks, so I thought it might be a good idea to host a blog linky for all things back to school from school uniform reviews to first day photo’s.

I would love you to join in and each week I will do a back to school post along with a round up including my favorite posts from the week before.

I am going to start things off by showing you how I record the boys first day at school:

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Crafting our Dream Car #DreamCarCraft

Carcraft are challenging people to craft their dream car to be in with the chance to win £50 worth of Amazon vouchers.

It is really simple to enter all you have to do is:

1. Help your child (or children) craft their dream car.
2. Take a photo – there is room for more creativity here!
3. Finally, tweet us your photo at @Carcraft with the hashtag #DreamCarCraft.

But get your skates on as it ends on Friday. To find our more take a look at the craft your dream car terms and conditions.

Today has been one of those days where we have all played hokey cokey with the weather (in, out, in, out, in, out) so we took the opportunity to work on our car drawing when it was raining.

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