Manchester Blogmeet

There are plenty of iconic Manchester landmarks, the sky scraping Beetham Tower, both of the city's football stadia, the fairy lit anemone domes of the shopping mecca that is the Trafford Centre.

There are also landmarks of a Manchester childhood of course, the llamas at the farm at Heaton Park, the excitement at sitting in the swivelly bit in the middle of a Metrolink tram and, my personal favourite, Stan the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the pride of the Manchester Museum.


T is a longtime fan of the giant dino skeleton but C has yet to be introduced to the big man, so when we were invited to a Manchester blogger's coffee morning at Manchester Museum last week of course we had to go.

The event was great fun. It was lovely to meet fellow North West bloggers including Amy who'd brought the gorgeous little F along with her, Sandy and her boys Presley and Cash and Claire whose little H was very taken with my C. In fact the feeling was mutual. What is is about children who are much more keen on other people's siblings than their own?

The whole thing was organised by Warburtons to mark the launch of their fab new range of snacks. I've posted about my own quest to lose weight, but as a long-time grazer it's really hard to go cold turkey and ditch the crisps. Warbie's new ChippidyDooDas might be the perfect solution, they're wholegrain pieces of pitta which are baked rather than fried, giving them 60% less fat than crisps. Result! And who can fail to fall for a snack which such a fab name? I (cough) might have eaten (cough) one or two bags full. The salt and vinegar were my absolute favourite and the bags had just the right amount of tart flavour to make them very, very moreish.

After covering the floor of Cafe Couture with snack crumbs Daisie and I took the children for a quick whizz round the museum highlights. Our two pre-school boys were of course very taken with Stan's spiky little toothies and scary little nails (as an aside, if you have a small person who loves dinos this is a fantastic story) whilst the tired smaller ones had a sling around. C didn't look particularly impressed by Stan although of course she has years of school trip visits ahead to hone her love for him.

Warbies gave us bloggers a lovely goodie bag to take home, including of course some more of the snacks. My husband, who's a chilli afficionado declared the Sweet Chilli Snackadoodles to be really good, which for someone not obviously drawn to low calories treats (only 84 in the whole bag!) is high praise indeed.