I had to laugh…we received a selection of toys from WOW to try out and no word of a lie the first thing that came out of Madame’s mouth when we opened them was WOW!
We received Danny’s Diving Adventure, Robin’s Medical Adventure and Pippa’s Princess Carriage. She absolutely loves them all. She’s just starting the stage of imaginative and role play. I have to say it’s one of my favourite stages so far. I love eavesdropping on the conversations between her and her toys, really makes me smile. I really need to catch some of it on Audioboo.
The toys are durable (I dropped one on the slate floor) and don’t require batteries. Apparently, the ambulance uses some type of friction technology to make the Nee-naw sound. It’s so much less annoying than a battery operated one and can’t be accidentally left on. Keep an eye out for some of the Magical Features.
The only negative I found was the packaging, every parent’s nightmare. This isn’t specific to WOW toys but most toys in general. It took her dad, a builder, me and a pair of needle nose pliers to free them from the cardboard.
I’m so excited I can barely contain myself. It’s a friend of mine’s 40th this weekend and we’re off to Norfolk to spend the weekend in a Barn. No partners or kids, just 10 crazy women!!! I anticipate a lot of carnage. I first met my mate back in 1997 in a hostel in New Zealand, she was loud and obnoxious so I was obviously drawn to her and we’ve remained good friends ever since. We’ve had some mad times.
She’s laying on all the food and booze. The only things I need to do are pack my bags, drive to Norfolk and buy her a pressie. My first instinct was to buy her something funny, the last gift I got her was a blow up doll called ‘Mustafa Shag’, but my practical side took over. Joke gifts are only funny for the first 5 minutes and then they get relegated to the loft.
The folks at www.15gifts.com, contacted me and asked if I would try out their new service. It’s a search engine that takes the guesswork out of giving; it asks you a few questions (age, sex, likes) about the person you are buying for and then suggests, you guessed it….15 gifts! If you don’t like what it suggests you just delete the choice and it suggests something else.
What I liked about it is it offered practical, good quality gifts that I wouldn’t have thought of in the first place. It had some lovely wine accessory kits, cheese boards with groovy knives, good quality pots and pans and some cool gadgets. However, in the end, I went for the Free Trade Alpaca Slippers. It seemed fitting for a 40th. Fingers crossed they arrive in time. I can’t wait to see her face.
They’ve also asked me to let you know about their launch competition they’re running to find the “worst Christmas gift ever”, the winners will receive a gift with a value of up to £200 worth, and the competition closes the 26th Nov 2010. I’m an ex-primary school teachers so can totally relate to it. I wish I had some photos that I could enter.
Disclosure: I received the Alpaca Slippers in return for writing this post
We went to see Father Christmas on Saturday courtesy of the lovely people at Hop Farm in Kent! I know, it’s only flippin November and Christmas Comes Far Too Early! However, it was absolutely brilliant and worth the 70 mile journey with a 3 year old in the back alternating between ‘where is Father Christmas’ and ‘are we nearly there yet’!
In the past, we’ve been to a local Santa’s Grotto and we also went on a Santa’s Steam train but neither of them compared to Santa’s Magical Kingdom. It was a bit of a trek for us but once we got there it all ran very smoothly. I was impressed by the whole set up. You make your way through 9 checkpoints, with naughty elves to entertain you along the way.
Our journey began at the 4D cinema, that’s not a typo, it’s a 3D cinema but they pump in the smell of chocolate and bubbles. It was absolutely magical watching Madame trying grab the 3D objects that came flying past.
Then we made our way through the Enchanted Forest, with a little something for the dad’s, a drop dead gorgeous Snow Maiden! I love the smell of pine trees.
We had to make a quick stop at the Post Office to write our letter to Santa and post it up the magical chimney. Madame has asked for all the Toy Story Characters and a Fish in a Bowl?? Hubby has vetoed the fish as he says that water and electrics don’t mix. He’s such a party pooper.
We then wandered through the North Pole to meet Santa’s Reindeer, including two new babies born this year? I wonder what their names are. Can you name all of Santa’s Reindeer?
We were greeted in the Craft Workshop by Mother Christmas and we busied ourselves making a decoration to take home.
Mrs. Christmas then read the children a story in the Story Room and can you guess whose daughter kept shouting out during it??
Madame got up to a bit of mischief with one of the naughty Elves on the Ice Walkway! Parents are treated to Mulled Wine and Mince Pies in the sweet shop.
Don’t miss my favourite, the singing and dancing Yeti! What a scream!
Then it was time for the Grande finale, Father Christmas! Once my husband stopped making jokes about the hallway looking like a brothel in Amsterdam, not sure how he knows this, we made our way into see Santa in cosy, private study. I was truly impressed and he was a good looking Santa, if you know what I mean. He took a good 5-10 minutes talking to Madame and then gift tumbled down the chimney for her. It was a pink and white stuffed puppy that she hasn’t parted with since.
Thanks to everyone at Santa’s Magical Kingdom for a brilliant day out and one we won’t forget!
Disclosure: We received 3 tickets compliments of Santa’s Magical Kingdom
I used to love building dens as a kid. According to my mum we used to spend hours doing it. My sister and I would use every sheet in the house and any piece of furniture we could move.
After dinner tonight we set about building a den with Madame, using EZ Fort. It was brilliant fun. The only thing I would suggest is never build a fort with someone who has an engineering degree or you will get comments like this….
‘Doesn’t have a positive enough fixing’
‘If you want to build a box structure to make it stronger you always need diagonals, you know crane jibs…’
‘You need multi-angle points on the joints or you can’t put them in at right angles…’
For goodness sake, we’re just building a Fort not the Eiffel Tower!
For the most part the construction kit was great, easy to assemble and we could construct it indoors, which is a must here in the UK. However, if I was going to purchase one for myself I’d probably opt for the Toobeez Life Size Building Set, the next model up, as it looks sturdier. We found once we constructed it and draped a few blankets over it, it collapsed. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a light weight sheet big enough.
All in all, it was great fun. I’m going to let you in on a little secret….this isn’t the first time I’ve built a den since my childhood. Look what I built in a 5 star hotel a few years ago! Weirdly room service didn’t bat an eye! I’m just a big kid.
Ready for Bed Week, where kids lifestyle company, Worlds Apart, encourages parents and kids to get their bedtime routine on track, couldn’t have come at a better time for us here at the Mediocre House as my daughter’s bedtime is turning into a bit of a nightmare. My daughter used to be brilliant at going to bed. Well that’s a bit of a lie as she didn’t sleep through the night until she was six months old. Luckily though she would just wake up feed and then go back to sleep. However, once she started sleeping through the night she was brilliant. It was a bit of a party trick, we’d say time for bed and she would toddle off to the bottom of the stairs wanting to go, people were absolutely amazed.
But, that has all changed recently; we’ve always been sticklers for routine, bath, milk, stories and bed as we value our adult time in the evenings. However, now when we put her to bed she doesn’t stay there and has worked out how to get out of her room. We did the rapid return thing taking turns, briskly taking her back and it usually worked after a while. However, she’s starting to wear us down. She now she sneaks downstairs and sits at the bottom behind the door. You may not approve but we’ve taken to ignoring her and we’ve found that she’ll eventually take herself back up to bed. Result!
On the other hand, she has taken to sleeping with the light on, well her illuminated globe and we have to sneak in, hoping not to wake her and shut it off. We find if we don’t she gets up in the middle of the night and starts wandering around the house getting into all sorts of mischief. So, we were over the moon when we were asked to review the lovely new Disney Princess Go Glow Story Projector. It’s a 3 in 1 rechargeable night light, torch and projector. It just arrived yesterday but she loves it. She toddled straight off to bed armed with her new torch to show daddy and didn’t come down once, bliss! Plus, we didn’t have to sneak in and turn it off!
More information about the Ready for Bed Week can be found here www.readyforbedweek.com. It features tips and advice on bedtime routines and the more families they get to download the bedtime reward chart from the site, the more help Worlds Apart can give to the Sleeping Children Around – the global charity which provides bed kits for children who don’t even have a
comfy place to sleep.
