Posh new addition…part II

Written by Andrea on December 14th, 2009
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Not my bedroom!

It’s been an age since my last blog.

This has been due to the whole family having been struck down with a variety of illnesses which started with a projectile vomiting toddler. That was almost six weeks ago and since then both myself and eldest have had swine flu, middle son had his tonsils out and now we’ve gone full circle when Friday evening vomiting toddler started again!

Last night, my bedroom looked like a low budget zombie film as various children wandered in and out wailing, moaning and crying. Eventually OH had to make his way, yet again, to the spare bedroom in order to escape their escalating demands. I almost feel jealous that he’s going to work today.

It’s felt as though my only little ray of sunshine in amongst this sea of illness, have been the lovely things that I get sent to review. The most recent being a beautiful Dorma Boudoir cushion.

Unfortunately my bedroom is not very boudoir like. It’s currently without any decent furniture and has bare floorboards…though I’m on the case!

What I do have however, is a rather gorgeous, cream, high backed chair, which sits like a throne in the corner of the room. Inherited from my mum, it’s the sort that has a lift up seat so you can store blankets etc. It could probably be converted into a comode in the distant future!

In the meantime, I use it for the spare duvet and the boudoir cushion from Dorma’s ‘Belvoir’ range sits perfectly on it, looking very posh. My OH even noticed it when he went to bed, so it must be good!

I imagine that the cushion would be used for decorative use, though it’s certainly felt very comfortable when I’ve used it to prop myself up while using the old laptop in bed.

I’ve always loved Dorma bedlinen and their new products are quite gorgeous. Some of the designs look very sumptuous with deep, rich colours.  Personally, I’ve asked Santa for the Keira range which will go beautifully with my new bedroom wallpaper.

The website looks great too and is very easy to use. What I particularly liked was the ability to zoom in in on the designs to get a really good look at them.

Of course Dorma don’t only sell duvet covers they also sell duvets, towels, table linen and have an amazing selection of bedroom furniture. Bedroom furniture! That’s exactly what I need!!

Now where’s my christmas list.

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Posh addition to my kitchen!

Written by Andrea on November 19th, 2009
Not my kitchen!

Not my kitchen!

I recently agreed to write a review for an item from the simplehuman range of products for the home.

As always, it’s very exciting to find a parcel on the doorstep and this time it was one of the simplehuman slim cannisters.

The main reason I was keen to try it, was the promise of ‘fingerprint-proof stainless steel’. I couldn’t wait to see how it stood up to the sticky paw prints of my group of little monkeys.

The cannister comes very nicely boxed, and I was very impressed with how it looked when I removed it from it’s packaging. It was a real treat as I wouldn’t normally buy anything like this. I tend to use tupperware boxes or old ice-cream tubs for storage.

The cannister comes with a window on the lid where you can place a label and these can even be customised from the simplehuman website. As I only had one cannister I didn’t feel the need to label it!

I’d originally had the idea of putting cereal in it, but it was a little too small for that, so I put some fresh coffee in instead. Simplehuman sell the cannisters in 5 different sizes, so there is one large enough for cereal.

What I liked most about the cannister, was the push button opening. No fiddling with lids only to end up throwing coffee all over the kitchen! One of my aunties came over for a coffee and while chatting away to her, I got the cannister out, pushed the button and the lid gently opened. ‘Ooooh! I like that!’ she said. I felt very posh!

I’ve been using the cannister for around four weeks now, and have even got the kids to open and close the lid and do you know what? It really does have fingerprint-proof stainless steel.

My OH did have one negative comment to make. He felt the handle was a little too small and so found it hard hold. I have to add…he does have very large hands, but I see his point.

When I originally started to use the cannister, I did think it was an unncessary replacement for my battered old tupperware, but I really do like it. It looks great, has kept the coffee fresh and has made me consider buying one.

The slim cannisters are available from www.simplehuman.co.uk and range in price from £24.99 to £39.99


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Thank goodness for the Wii!

Written by Andrea on November 12th, 2009

millionpoundnote1I’ve been away from the computer for over a week now. It wasn’t deliberate, it was due to a huge order of £1Million notes. 10,500 to be exact!!

Each note has to be put together with a backing card, slid into a plastic wallet, sealed and barcoded. The notes are then packed into envelopes of 25 with ten full envelopes going into a small box. Four of those smaller boxes go into one large box…..yawn!!! You still awake?

I normally do all the packing with the help of OH and two reluctant children. The most I have done up until now was 4,000 and I optimistically thought 10,500 would be a doddle.

I won’t bore you with all the details, but we started packing at 4pm Monday and finally finished at 11:30am Sunday! I went to bed at midnight each night and was up again at 5am each morning. I roped in my cousin, my uncle and two friends to help, plus bribed the kids to get them to stick bar codes on. All this in between OH jetting off to Baltimore, me taking the kids to their many social events, coming down with a cold and forcing myself to watch the Michael Jackson Seance with Derek Acorah!!!

Phew!!! I did my upmost not to moan or complain, after all I wasn’t down a mine, working on a hospital ward, cleaning public toilets or doing any other genuinely demanding jobs…but it was blummin’ hard work!

With the boxes all nicely packed, I spent Monday driving for 6 hours to Lowestoft and back to deliver them before flopping in front of the telly with a curry and cuddle from OH who’d just got back from Baltimore. While we were watching TV, I suddenly realised I hadn’t been anywhere near the computer for a whole week!  No emails, no blogging, not even a tweet….and I hadn’t even missed it!

After that revelation, I made a pact with myself not to spend unecessary amounts of time on the computer…the Wii on the other hand!

BonsaiBarberscreenshot11.jpg-thumb-500x303-21290I love the Wii, probably more than my kids do. I love it’s simplicity and how easy it is to use. By the way Santa, if you’re reading this, I’d really like a wii-fit for Christmas!

A couple of weeks ago I was sent a game to review called Bonsai Barber. As expected, I was more excited than the kids. The game is aimed at younger children, so my 13 year old wasn’t that impressed. Then again he’s a hardened PS3 gamer who plays games with horrible titles like ‘Modern Warfare’ and ‘Assassins Creed’.

I sat down  with my 8 year old and we started to play. The idea is a little strange. You’re a new barber in town and have to cut the hair/leaves of various fruits and vegetables. You get given a style template and you have to cut around that template, gaining stars for accuracy with 5 stars being the highest you can get for each cut.

Simple enough. The wii remote becomes either a pair of scissors, clippers or even a paintbrush so you can colour the foliage.

After we’d styled about 6 different vegetables, the game suddenly wouldn’t let us go any further? We were both feeling a little frustrated until we realised that you only have a certain amount of  appointments to complete each day.

The following day we were keen to turn the wii on again and see who was queuing up at our virtual barber shop. This time we had new customers and the styles were clearly getting harder.

We played Bonsai Barber every day for around two weeks and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. Even my step-daughter who isn’t remotely interested in gaming, started her own story mode. It’s certainly not taxing and you don’t have to be skilled with a game controller. For that reason it isn’t suitable for older children who are used to more difficult games consoles. However it’s perfect for younger children and 39ish mums who want to spend some time playing a game with their kids that they actually have a chance of understanding!

Now where’s that Wii remote gone?

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Review of KidsRooms.co.uk

Written by Andrea on 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

Written by Andrea on 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

Written by Andrea on 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!

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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.

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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!

Written by Andrea on 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!!

Written by Andrea on 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

Written by Andrea on 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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The Day-After Pie

Written by Andrea on September 28th, 2009

Continuing in my occasional ‘How to feed a Family of 5 on £20′ series, I’m going to introduce you to a recipe that is so easy to make, even your kids or Other Half could make it! To prove this I asked my OH to make the pie and see what he thought of it.

Full credit for this recipe goes to Carolyn Humphries of The New Students Veggie Cook Book as it is she who set me off on my quest to feed my family healthily and well on a limited budget.

This was the second time we’ve made the pie and this time we used genuine leftovers from a rather large Sunday dinner the day before, though you can easily cook up some frozen veg to go in it.

The Day-After Pie:

Cooked leftover veg.

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1 can baked beans (Sainsbury basic 29p)

3 slices of bread crumbed

2tbsp Marmite

30ml Boiling water

1/2 tsp mixed herbs

Salt and Pepper

1lb Mashed potatoes

Knob of butter

1. Mix the veg, beans and bread in an ovenproof dish.

2. Blend the Marmite with the herbs, Salt and Pepper and boiling water

3. Top with the mash and dot with butter

4. Bake for 30mins at 220 C/gas mark 7 until golden brown.

It’s so incredibly easy and tastes fab!

If using left-overs the cost is minimal. Easily less than £2 per pie and it fed all five of us plus baby and I had some the following day for our lunch.

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My OH’s verdict. He thought that it was incredibly easy to make, though he admitted to adding some extra spuds in the mash and would top it with cheese next time before putting it in the oven.

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