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
Ladybird Tuesday: What to look for Inside a Church
After looking at Saints in last week's Ladybird Tuesday we're sticking with the religious theme this week with What to look for Inside a Church from series 649, Bible Stories. Earlier today I finally made time to look at a little brochure that came with the April edition Country Living magazine - Reclaim the Weekend, 50 simple things to make, do and discover. This lovely little booklet has some lovely simple ideas in there and on which jumped out at me was number 16, visit a church. With antique pews, amazing stone masonry, beautiful stained glass and peace and quiet churches ... 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
Ladybird Tuesday: A First Book of Saints
I'm actually stupidly excited by this week's Ladybird Tuesday, mainly as this is the first book that I've managed to get my hands on from series 606A which is imaginatively called "Bible stories etc". The book in question is A first book of Saints and appropriately enough was a gift from Danny from Clouds in my Coffee who came across it when it was donated to his church's fund-raising sale. I believe there were nine books in total in this series, mainly based on Bible stories, and this one talks about "our patron saints and other great Christians". I ... read more
Two months into my Year of Thrift
Amazingly we're already into March and 2014 seems to be rushing past as quickly as last year did. I had been meaning to write something about the first month of our Year of Thrift, but time's run away somewhat. Two months in though there's a fair amount to say and catch up on. What's actually been the most successful thing, but the hardest to keep up, is writing down everything that I spend. For nearly all of January I managed to do this and it really did make me think about every single purchase and question whether it was absolutely necessary or not. I was also somewhat ... read more
Olly the little white van books
I find that most of the children's books I review here on Being Mrs C are aimed at Little Miss C's age, so it was particularly nice recently to get a book review package that appealed to both kids. Olly the little white van is the star of a children's TV show where we follow Olly's adventures with his driver Stan and his other vehicle friends in Bumpton. Olly is voiced by children's TV super star Justin Fletcher (does that man ever have time to sleep???) and he's incredibly energetic - much like Justin himself. Now, we don't actually have the right channels at home ... read more
Digital Postcard from Tanzania #lastingchange #iwd2014
It's hard to believe that it's over a year since I received a digital postcard from the amazing Team Honk girls (Annie, Tanya and Penny) when they went to Ghana to see the fantastic work that Comic Relief were doing over there. This week the three of them sprang a bit of a surprise on us when they announced that they were all at Heathrow about to fly off to Tanzania to see the #lastingchange that Comic Relief were helping to put in place there for some inspirational woman. Today, Saturday 8 March, is International Women's Day 2014 and it's therefore appropriate to see how Comic ... read more
A Darker Place – Jack Higgins
Ever since Master C came along I just haven't got back into the swing of writing about all the books I've been reading here on my blog and that's actually making me surprisingly sad. I love reading and I love keeping track of all the books that I read and I've found myself regularly going back onto my blog to look up a book that I can't quite remember the title of, or to see which ones by a particular author I have read. There's even a huge pile of read books next to my bed waiting to be blogged. One of the mums at Little Miss C's school is setting up a book group ... 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