Apparently today is National Bug Busting Day and The Family GP is running a useful guide to eradicating pests – read all about what nits are (brown winged, the size of a sesame seed) and how to eradicate them here.

In my experience (I’m not too ashamed to admit that three of my four children have had nits. The baby I suspect is still immune as he’s as ‘bald as a boiled egg’ according to one of my son’s nursery teachers) nits are boring but can be got rid of. My favourite tool is the Nitty Gritty Comb. Jonathan Ross waxes lyrical about its ‘fantastic twiddly bits’ and it really pulls out all the ghastlies, often leaving them trapped between its teeth wriggling like butterflies on a pin. Which is fascinatingly gross and not behaviour that induces restful sleep. I’m less sure about their repellent spray, only because my sons resist being misted with it and scream like banshees. It’s the ‘cold’ and the ‘girly pong’ and frankly I spend enough time chasing the boys around the house as it is.

If you’re plagued with nits, good luck dealing with them. But do deal with them. I have a friend who refuses to get rid of them, saying it’s ‘nature’s way’ and they’ll ‘drop out eventually’. I now pop my sons in balaclavas whenever they go and play at her house.

You probably knew you could download Kindle free to your desktop. I didn’t. But I’ve now done so and am reading Michael Shevlin’s Insecure available for £0.77 (yes, that’s genuinely a ’0′ in the right, that’s to say the left, place) at www.amazon.co.uk.

He’s a funny man, that Shevlin. Hope he’s not feeling insecure about the size of the image, above. Having mastered downloading Kindle getting a decent image proved less easy. I also hope Insecure gets turned into a movie. If Brad Pitt is on the cast list (in fact, even if he’s not) I expect an invitation to the opening night.

They can’t wait to use it, and I’m all for it. It’s a National History Museum product, a small recycled box containing elephant dung manure and a sachet of sunflower seeds. We’re going to plant them all out for our annual sunflower competition. Perhaps I should do a control and see if elephant dung produces elephant-sized sunflowers.

I’m also going to try Grow Your Own for kids!, a collaboration between the Royal Horticultural Society and Chris Collins, the Blue Peter gardener. We tried growing a few bits in the garden last year, to mixed results. Squirrels got the strawberries, snails everything else, except a few small, but delicious, potatoes.

Squirrel pie is being sold nearby at the excellent weekly Balham Farmer’s Market (check it out every Saturday 9am-2pm, Chestnut Grove School, Chestnut Grove, SW12) by Little Jack Horner’s pies so perhaps I should ask him for the recipe. Little Jack Horner’s is fab, by the way. These gorgeously oozy, comfort food pies are made to traditional (sometimes with a twist) recipes. They’re available at selected London farmer’s markets or for home delivery and cost from £6.50. They’re served in blue and white enamel tins which you can keep for retro kitchen chic or return and receive from £1.50 per tin.

I’m a fan of Dressipi. I joined it last year when the site was being tested, and it’s a great way of finding out what clothes really suit you. Enter your measurements and Dressipi will reveal your exact size in different shops. I’m a size larger at TopShop than at M&S, and when you do a lot of online shopping knowing what is likely to fit minimises trips to the Post Office.

Dressipi also finds clothing choices for you based on your profile. It’s clever – click through a list indicating which of the photographed looks you like. This includes celebrities you feel most represent your ideal style, and the kind of occasions you need clothing for – in my case the school run, the occasional party and the odd business meeting.

It’s quite revealing. My ‘fashion fingerprint’ reveals that I should avoid high neck capped sleeve dresses and concentrate on A-line styles and straight leg jeans in order to concentrate on curves and avoid my broad shoulders. Oh yes, in another life I’d have been an Olympic swimmer. Or shot putter. You can even ask Dressipi’s online stylists questions to help you find fab clothes or solve dilemmas about what to wear to particular occasions.

It’s a good time to give Dressipi a go because they’re currently running a competition to give away a £10K styling session and £1K of clothes to the most deserving group of friends.

To enter click here (then click on the pink “enter here” button)

Read more about Dressipi in WIRED and the Daily Mail

The Tickle Book is the perfect read out loud book for a Reception class

Reading to a class of four and five year olds is surprisingly unneverving. I’ve done it a few times at my sons’ school. Your child gets to choose their favourite book, you get to read it to their classmates. The first time I did it I breezed in thinking it would be easy. How hard can it be to attract the attention of a rabble of Reception children? Wrong, so wrong. Or naive, so naive. Trying to keep the attention of an entire class turned out to be almost impossible for this rookie reader. Halfway through The Gruffalo most of the children were saying they’d heard it before and knew what was coming next. So now that I’m a veteran of at least six reading sessions, here’s what I’ve learnt.

Don’t make your book too well known. All the children will feel they know it already and might start getting squirmy. Even worse is when they all start yelling about what will happen next.

Equally, an obscure book is probably the wrong choice too. Something that was a favourite in your childhood might be irrelevant to today’s children. Orlando the Marmalade cat, alas, didn’t appeal to one bunch of four-year-olds.

Make sure you’ve read your book before. I turned up with a funny poem once, funny that is if you got the lines to rhyme. I was nervous (hey, scores of eyes staring up at you is a bit scary) and kept mumbling and missing the punchline.

Gorgeous pictures are a huge bonus, especially if they’re in a large format book. If you’ve time at the end you can hold the book up and ask the children to spot things.

It’s tempting, but don’t do what one mum did and hand out sweets at the end of your reading. It ups the ante for other mothers like me who can barely remember to turn up on time, book in hand. Plus some parents don’t like their offspring eating sweets outside of mealtimes so you’ll make yourself unpopular at pick-up.

If you need inspiration, take a look at Puffin’s 70 Best Children’s Books.

Set sail on the ultimate dairy-free chocolate cake

It’s a rare week that doesn’t have me baking something, where it’s butter cookies flecked with chocolate chips or a lemon drizzle cake given a tiny crunch with hundreds of poppy seeds. This probably sounds smug, but baking is more of an escape valve. It’s something I can do with the children helping, making it count as an educational activity that helps towards making tea. So all I’m really doing is indulging myself while getting out of another round of Play Doh.

One of my mother’s best ever recipes is a dairy-free chocolate cake. I blogged about it here.

And, though it might look more like an old-fashioned flat iron, the picture, above, is of a chocolate pirate ship cake I made using the recipe for my second son’s third birthday.

You think I’d be a natural to win a one-day cookery course at Leith’s Food & Wine School in West London. But, pah, I’m not allowed to enter, given that I compile angels & urchins blog. Go ahead though, it takes seconds to enter and you might just win. Don’t be put off by the competition being held in conjuction with Sudocreme; you don’t have to create a baking delight with the white stuff, the company just came up with research that revealed that quite a lot of mums would rather make a cake for their child’s birthday than buy one.

Enter here - good luck!

Nigella's Chicken Schnitzel with Bacon and White Wine

Happy New Year! Inspired by reading so many resolutions from other bloggers I feel that I might break my long-held rule to ignore using the new year to make a new start (why set yourself up for failure…?) and come up with a few ideas I might actually stick to. For the first time in seven years I’m starting a new January without being pregnant or waking up through the night with a tiny baby. Which means no excuses when it comes to starting an exercise regime. Saying that, even tidying a cupboard would be one up on last year. So here they are, my attainable New Year Resolutions.

One hour of exercise a week. Running along the pavement with the buggy because I’m late (again) for nursery doesn’t count. I’m going to dig out the old Davina DVD and get moving.

A new recipe once a week. There is so much inspiration out there, from Nigella’s gorgeously pastel website – I mean what’s not to like about her Chicken Schnitzel with Bacon and White Wine offering? And I love, love, love the Utterly Scrummy Food for Families blog. It offers tasty recipes, easy ideas and tips galore. Check out the double chocolate self-saucing pudding and you’ll be in glutton heaven too.

As well as the new recipe, no more eating the children’s leftover food. I don’t even like mashed potato, so what’s the point in hoovering it up. And while some cold pastas can be delicious, there are few more revolting foods than macaroni cheese from the fridge.

Sleep. No more dithering and reading just one more newspaper article or watching three episodes of Miranda on iPlayer before bedtime. Lights out, head on pillow, then I might actually wake up without baggage that Jordan would be proud of under my eyes.

I like the new government guidelines to have at least two alcohol-free days a week. I’ll probably have to invest in a few half bottles of wine though to prevent us having to finish the bottle every night.

Oh, and write a novel before the year is out. Got to have one thing on the to-do list to keep me away from the cold macaroni cheese.

Good luck if you’ve made some resolutions – any of them better than giving up booze two days a week?

It’s been a busy year for everyone at angels & urchins, not least because the magazine celebrated its tenth birthday. A huge, old fashioned tea party was held in the centre of London, with fun and games for all. Grown ups were treated to a mug – see below! – and it’s a beauty. The annual Christmas mug has become an angels & urchins special, with everyone on the team, plus lots of other contributors receiving one. This year’s was designed by Jane Hogben and features the magazine’s pair of boots and angel wings motif.

Hope you get some equally wonderful presents this Christmas, and angels & urchins blog looks forward to saying hello in 2012.

Happy Christmas - and Happy Birthday angels & urchins

I’m going to buy it and will love reading it to my children this Christmas. Not least because they’re so lucky, unlike so many around the world whom Save the Children is trying to help.

Most of the purchase price goes to charity – to buy, visit the Blurb bookstore. It costs £15.99 for a softcover version, £24.99 for a version with a dustjacket.

And a very Happy Christmas!

The Stig visited our elder son’s school yesterday. He created chaos (the Stig that is, not my son), with teachers suspending lessons and mothers trying to pull him into their cars. A pupil had won a prize of a lift home with Stig, and the entire school descended on the playground at home time to watch. My lot didn’t know who he was, not being Top Gear fans (or rather, their mother not being a Top Gear fan) but loved seeing someone in a racing outfit and helmet.

I took five children home that day, including two of my own. And here is what they knew about the Stig

• The Stig has never taken off his helmet. Without it he cannot breathe
• The Stig might be a girl
• The Stig’s best friend is silly
• The Stig is actually a cartoon
• The Stig is also an astronaut which is why he wears a space suit
• If you look at The Stig’s bare face then you will turn into The Stig

So there you have it. And I totally agree with all the statements, especially the one about his best friend being silly, as I’m taking that to mean Jeremy Clarkson.