October, 2009

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Review of KidsRooms.co.uk

Friday, October 30th, 2009

roses_lifetime_swapI  recently saw a request from Rainbow PR for bloggers to review www.KidsRooms.co.uk. I was keen to take a look as it can get kind of boring when the only furniture option is Ikea!

Being totally honest, my first thoughts were not positive. To begin with the logo was way too small and surely a Kid-Inspired site should have a fun and funky logo? Overall I thought the website looked uninspiring. However, as I had agreed to review it, I made the effort to delve deeper.

What I found was a website crammed with some of the most fun, unusual and exciting children’s furniture that I’d seen in a long time. My particular favourites were the Tea Party bed and the amazing Treehouse bed which my middle son would just love.

Using the website was easy enough. The categories down the right hand side are self-explanatory and very easy to navigate. Once I’d clicked through, the images were rather small and it wasn’t until I clicked again that I saw a larger image.

The furniture carries a 5 year guarantee but that wasn’t immediately apparent. It would have been good to see this stated more clearly as I think it’s a great selling point.

I’m no web designer but as a Mum looking out for child-friendly products, I would love to have seen a site more reflective of the quality furniture it’s attempting to sell. The products looked great once I started digging through all the prose. I just think they could do with a better showcase.

Don’t let the website put you off. The furniture looks amazing and certainly worth more than a cursory glance. I’m sure they will do great business with what are unique, fun and functional products.

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Cheap and cheerful fruit crumble

Monday, October 26th, 2009

A bit of a strange one this as it involves Weetabix, which is fine, except it makes the whole crumble taste like…well Weetabix! However, it’s  cheap, easy to make, satisfies sugar cravings and makes great comfort food on a cold winters evening.

DSC00387 (1) 2 cans of fruit of your choice. (I used prunes and  pears..weird but nice)

4 Weetabix. Sainsbury’s basic 75p per box

500g Porridge oats

4 Tbsp brown sugar

1tsp mixed spice

100g melted butter

Place the fruit in an oven proof dish

Crumble the weetabix and add to the porridge oats, melted butter, sugar and spice and sprinkle over the fruit.

Dot with butter and place in the oven at 190 degrees/ gas mark 5 for 15 minutes.

I serve it with custard or Greek yoghurt..tastes yum and the kids love it!

The whole dish would cost around £1.50 to make depending on what fruit is used.

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Review of PlayMais

Monday, October 19th, 2009

At the end of last week a little parcel was left on my doorstep. I don’t know about anyone else, but I love receiving parcels and this time I was even more excited as this was going to form my first ‘proper’ review!

I’d offered to review some toys, or at least get my kids to try them out and then write up their thoughts and opinions.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect other than I’d been told that the product was called ‘PlayMais’ and was like ‘Playdoh but without the colours merging’.

The weekend that it arrived, I had my 7 year old step-daughter staying with me who is incredibly creative and I knew that she would be an ideal candidate to try it out. What I didn’t expect was my middle son wanting to get involved. He’s also 7 and would rather be outside kicking a football than…well….than anything else!

x-playmais-med-250

I have to admit that I was surprised by the look of the product as it appeared to be a cross between multicoloured cheesy wotsits and polystyrene packing.  The pack itself came with a small cloth that you make wet and then dab the ends of the coloured pieces onto it so that they are also wet. (Am I explaining this properly?) Once wet the coloured pieces become sticky and ‘Hey Presto!’ stick together like cheesy wotsit building blocks.

At first, the kids couldn’t gauge how much water to use and the pieces quickly became soggy with the colours coming off onto them and their hands. Once they got the amount of water correct, they were sticking the pieces together with no problem.

Once they had been playing for a while I asked them their thoughts. They both agreed that it was incredibly easy to use and was better than normal plasticine or PlayDoh. It wasn’t long before they had created a river scene with boats, sunshine and swimmers in trunks. As you can see from the picture, they did a pretty good job.

DSC00392

My middle son said he couldn’t think of anything that he didn’t like about it and asked if we could get some more!!

Personally I was impressed by the colours which were bright and vibrant and by how sturdy it was once it had been stuck together.

It’s an innovative product and as it’s made from cornstartch once you’ve finished it’s easily recycled.

Overall they loved it, and so did I because it was the quietest they had been in a long time. I would definitely recommend it, the only downside being that once it’s been played with, it can’t be used again.

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Halloween will always have a place in my heart!

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

1805678264_000912327bI know that probably sounds like a pretty weird thing to write but Halloween has a special meaning for me as 8 years ago on 31st October I gave birth to my middle son.

He had been due on 26th October and as my eldest had been early, I assumed that he would be the same. As the days went on I clearly remember making really stupid jokes about him being a Halloween baby as well as saying on at least more than one occasion that I would be absolutely horrified if I gave birth on Halloween. Well, you know what they say….’What you think about is what you get!’

I went into labour at around 3pm on 30th October confident that I would have a new baby way before the stroke of midnight.

I couldn’t have been more wrong! I was sent back home and that’s where I stayed until 3am the next morning at which point there was no going back. I was having a Halloween baby whether I liked it or not.

Back to hospital I went and 3 hours later  I found myself lying on a labour ward bed. As I tried my hardest to pull the midwife’s arm out of her socket, I looked out of the window to see a huge full moon.

Oh no!! As if having a Halloween baby wasn’t bad enough, there was a great big full moon…was he about to emerge howling!

A couple of pushes later and my little boy was born. It was a huge relief to see that he wasn’t a werewolf!

Every birthday since middle son has had a Halloween party and this year will be no different. Half a dozen 8 year olds will be descending on us this year dressed as skeletons, zombies or Dracula. I’ll drag out the decorations, fill up a huge bowl with sweets and three exhausting hours later the little monsters will leave happy if not a little hyper active!!

I love halloween!!

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Wordless Wednesday: Gertcha!!

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

Channel 10 TV Australia 1983

I went out with my girlfriends to an achingly trendy bar.

Inside were some gorgeous young men dressed in the latest fashion of  flat caps, boots, jeans, shirts and beards!

They thought they looked great, we thought they looked like  Chas and Dave.

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Gift of life-Unicef and Pampers

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Claire at Dandelion lounge (who may or may not have had her baby by now!) sent me this very specialpampers Gift of Life meme.

As you probably know, Pampers and Unicef have been joint forces for a number of years now in their “Gift of Life” campaign to eliminate maternal and newborn tetanus.

It’s a sad fact that tetanus kills 128,000 mothers and babies each year in the developing world.  Thanks to the UK’s vaccination programme which starts when babies are 8 weeks old, it’s something that we don’t need to think about and possibly take for granted.

How Pampers supports Unicef’s programme is by donating the cost of a vaccine for every one pack of nappies sold to Unicef. They have been running the campaign for three years and have so far donated the funding for 200 million tetanus vaccines.

You can read more about this on the Unicef website.

If for whatever reason you don’t buy Pampers  you can still support Unicef directly by clicking here. Supporting the cause and raising awareness of the issues and Unicef’s work is priority.  Whatever your views, I ask every reader of this post to click here for a free song download which will donate a vaccine to the Gift For Life campaign at no cost to you.

Claire asked me to keep the meme going and pass it on to other bloggers.

Here are my chosen ones and all you have to do is this:

1 Open the virtual Gift For Life by going here
2 Write a small post on the campaign
3 Pass on to at least 5 other bloggers
4 Add the campaign badge to your sidebar
5 Feel incredibly proud that you are helping to make a difference!

So I’m passing this onto you:

Tums2Mums

icklebabe

MummyWhisperer

rachelpattisson

myfunnybunny

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