Mummascribbles – Mummascribbles meets…Monkey and Mouse – Mummascribbles

This week we meet the lovely Jenny from Monkey and Mouse. Thanks so much for taking part Jenny 🙂 

Tell me a little bit about yourself and your family
I’m Jenny, wife to one muscly tree surgeon and mum to two gorgeous little boys, aged 4 and 2.

My husband and I met at university and actually started ‘dating’ (I use that term loosely as we sort of bypassed ‘dates’…) on the last day of our exams. He came back to my flat for coffee, but as I didn’t drink coffee and had none in the house, we decided on something else instead. We fell in love after few months and got married in the most beautiful Perthshire woodland 4 years later. Life has changed since then and with two small demanding children it can be quite difficult and tiring, but it still has it’s rewards too. I love my little family and all the time we spend together.

What do you like doing to be you, when you are not parenting, working (if you do), or blogging?
Most of my spare time is spent blogging! I very occasionally manage to get out with friends for ‘drinks’, although I am not a drinker, I would much prefer a slice of cake or tasty mint dark chocolate. I do love to craft though, any type of crafting is good with me, I have a cupboard full of supplies which I need to start using more!

What is your biggest achievement to date?
I will have to go for the obvious, my children. They are my everything and I am so proud of my little boys.

From your own experiences, what do you find the hardest part of parenting and what is the easiest/most rewarding part?
The hardest part is the lack of sleep, there’s a reason that waking people frequently is used for torture…

Parenting in itself is no mean feat; how do you juggle everything you need to in order to get everything done on a daily basis?
In short, you don’t get everything done. You have to decide what is not so important. For me it’s the cleaning up constantly after kids and tidying, forget it, I could spend all day doing that and the house would still be a mess! Instead we enjoy having fun together and spend a lot of time outside.

Why did you decide to start blogging?
I started blogging years ago, well before children. It started off as a crafting blog, ‘Buttons, Ribbons and Other Things’, but then I had my eldest and life went a bit haywire and I didn’t find the time or motivation to blog. About a year after littlest was born I decided to try again and start a parenting blog, I loved the blogging community and found it had moved on since my previous blog and was all about social media, so it was definitely an interesting development!

Tell me a bit about your blog?
Monkey and Mouse is a parenting and lifestyle blog which includes a whole range of topics from parenting, clothing posts, kids crafts and travel. At the moment I seem to have a lot of outdoor play and travel blog posts, simply because it’s summer and that’s when we are out most! I love that it’s my blog and I can include anything I would like to.

What do you want your blog to achieve and where do you hope to see it go as it grows?
I’m not sure, I never set out to achieve anything in particular. But it would nice to be able to make enough money through blogging to make it a viable second income.

What advice would you give someone who is thinking about starting a blog?
Research, research, research. Check out all the amazing blog posts already out there about starting a blog from scratch. There is so much to consider from which platform to use, what to call your blog (changing the name is hassle at a later date) etc. I would also recommend reading different blogs too, then you can get an idea for what kind of style you are going for and start chatting to other bloggers on social media.

If you could have dinner with three people (dead or alive), who would it be and why?
I would love to have dinner with a Pict, a Scot and a Viking. It would make for an interesting dinner and a little historical education!

Tell me three random facts about you

1. I once tandem skydived from 10,000 feet.

2. I have Synesthesia, which for me means I see letters and words in colours (i.e. ‘J’ is always red and ‘E’ is always green). I didn’t know this was a ‘thing’ until my husband pointed out that it wasn’t normal to see words and letters in specific colours..

3. I have always wanted to fly and even tried to fly down the stairs as a child, it didn’t work. Hand gliding is on my bucket list.

Along with her blog www.monkeyandmouse.co.uk, you can also find Jenny over on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest