Little Miss C loves watching Ben and Holly on TV and since buying a magazine with free Ben and Holly toys on a while back has regularly been acting out Ben and Holly stories. When I received an email about the new Ben and Holly Magical Playground Playsets that were being released I just knew that she'd love to help me review them. There are three Magical Playground Playsets, a slide, a roundabout and a swing, and we were sent the roundabout and swing ones to review. Each playset comes with a Holly figure, which appears to be fine, but LMC's first questions was "Where's Ben?" When I ... read more
Hugger Bags Holiday Review
As much as I love my husband there are just some things that men just don't seem to understand. A woman's need to have several bags is one such thing. Yes, the kids did already have perfectly adequate rucksacks, but having a new bag to try out is an exciting thing so when 1 Two Kids asked if Little Miss C and Master C would like to try out a Hugger bag each over the summer holidays the female half of the family certainly jumped with joy. With the strap line "... feels like a hug" Hugger bags are slightly different to your normal children's backpacks. Rather than being stiff in structure ... read more
Review: Pop Goes Your Name
As a parent there are times that I just find myself marvelling about how my children can find something relatively simple so, so amazing. I have a friend that is a DJ on our local community radio station and whenever he's on air and I've got the radio on in the car or the kitchen Little Miss C is always amazed that it's the same person that we've been out for coffee with. When she once heard him play a request for me she was all "Mummy, mummy - it's you. He's talking about you. The man in the radio knows your name and your favourite song. Wow." It was a very similar reaction when she first ... read more
JML Ceracraft Ceramic Pans
When I went to the Product of the Year Awards back in January I happened to be on a table with some of the JML team who were there to collect the award for the General Household category with their Ceracraft ceramic pans. I was lucky enough to be sent one of their ultra non-stick frying pans (the 24cm model) from the Ceracraft range to review a couple of weeks later. Ceramic pans are bit of a new invention, especially appealing to people who want to avoid the PTFE toxic chemicals that are used in many other non-stick pans. These ceramic pans are described as being ultra non-stick so that you ... read more
Imaginative play with Schleich
Here in the C household we've been huge fans of Schelich ever since Little Miss C received her first animal as a gift when she was about a year old. They really are the most amazing quality animals and beautifully realistically decorated. Even the undersides of them are given the same attention as the upper surfaces - something that you definitely don't see on other makes. Our animal collection has seen hours and hours of play. They've been thrown around the living room, covered with dirt in the garden, pushed down the garden slide, bathed in puddles and chewed on as teething toys ... read more
Telly when you want it with YouView
How much TV do you watch? And how much of that is what is actually being broadcast at the time? I know that in our household the answer I'd give to those questions are very different to if I'd been asked them a couple of years ago. It's rare that Mr C and I watch a TV programme live - only on the rare occassion that there's something specific that we want to watch and it happens to be on at the time we want to sit down and watch it. Most of the time we use one of the many TV catch up services - iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD etc. The Internet has really changed my viewing habits, ... read more
Philips SoftPal – Children’s Night Light
Sleep. It's the holy grail for many parents and at the moment Master C is certainly putting us through sleep deprivation training of the sort that I think the SAS must go through before missions. It's tough going and I therefore jumped at the chance to talk to a sleep expert in a recent BritMums Google Hangout on solving children's sleep problems. Baby sleep expert Chireal Shallow was on hand to answer our questions and she certainly gave us some good tips to help Master C. This hangout was sponsored by the new Philips SoftPal lights and following on from this we were sent a ... read more
New Titles from The Wonderful World of Simon Abbott
The children and I are incredibly fortunate that we get to review lots of fantastic children's books together. To date though the majority of these are fiction books so I was particularly interested when TickTock (the children's imprint of Octopus Books) asked us to review some of their new non-fiction titles. The Wonderful World of Simon Abbott series is designed to put the fun back into children's non-fiction by creating a bright and colourful witty presentation of all the information they could ever want to know about their favourite subjects, aimed at 5-7 year olds. The two latest titles ... read more
Bigjigs Weaving Loom
I'm always excited when a new Play Patrol package arrives from Bigjigs and the latest one looked like it was perfect. For Little Miss C they'd included their Weaving Loom and the French Knitting kit. With a crafty mum it looked like these couldn't have been chosen better as LMC is always wanting to do knitting, sewing or just "making with wool" with me. We started off with the Weaving Loom as I thought that the larger size would make it a bit easier for her to use - after all she is only three and a half and the loom has a recommended age of 5+ on it. To see how to use ... read more
Helping Fussy Eaters with PaediaSure
We're having what I think you would call a few "issues" with the kids at the moment when it comes to meal times. Little Miss C (who is now three and a half) is becoming increasingly fussy over food and Master C (now near enough 17 months old) seems to prefer throwing food rather than eating it. Needless to say it's driving me mad and making mealtimes rather stressful for everyone. When Netmums got in touch saying that they were looking for bloggers to review PaediaSure I jumped at the chance. I'm constantly worried that Little Miss C is not getting the balanced diet that ... read more