Letters to my son - Christmas at Peppa Pig World

For those of you who read my blog will know I have a whole separate blog which is written specifically for my son, which one day I will send him the link to.  Sometimes I share some of the letters here.....



Dear Max,

Last week we went to Peppa Pig world at Paulton's Park as we had it on very good authority that Santa Claus would be there and that he would be there for 2pm.  So we set off rather late in the morning as you were milling around the house naked ... well almost naked, you did have daddy's hat on!

It was over an hour's drive so needless to say by the time we got there - you were snoring your little head off - yes baby, you snore.  

We headed off to Pippa area and it was great fun!  After having a little chat in the house with Peppa's family we headed off over to the cars which you love to drive - so daddy and I sat in the back :)

And that was it, after your first drive/ride you were off queuing for Mr dinosaur before we knew it - I'm not entirely sure which of you had more fun on this ride.

We had a photo shoot with green screens and then off for a train ride.

And to top off our rides before we went to see Peppa you guys went on the boats.

There was quite a queue to meet Peppa and George so you took daddy off to the play area whilst mummy waited in line for you, and I find out from daddy that you made a new friend and she shared her chips with you!

After giving Peppa and George a hug we went off to Santa's Workshop and to find out if you've been naughty or nice....

And yep, you've been a good lad.

We finished our visit off with a 4D movie then headed off home, cold but happy.

We really did love the place, but because it's winter the park only has a section open for Christmas, so we are going back in the spring for a full day of fun, I don't know about you, but I can't wait.

Love you little man, I'm so very proud of the boy you are becoming 

Love you always
Mummy
xxxxxxxx

Review: Infinity Crates - December Geek Box

Infinity Crates Might & Magic December Box

In my quest to find the perfect Geek box subscription (so found it).  I have December's Infinity Crates box to review.  This is my 3rd box (and won't be my last).  I do love Infinity Crates!  There is nothing in any of my boxes that I do not love!  I will continue to look at other boxes, but this one is going to be running alongside them unless something spectacular comes along!

When you sign up to Infinity Crates you create a profile with the programs, games and films that you love and with that in mind your box is created as best it can be around your likes.

The December theme was Might and Magic, a great theme as far as I'm concerned and it did not disappoint.  First up is the postcard above, I love these and apparently need to keep these in a safe place for future reference... no idea what that means - just a post from Infinity Crates on Twitter.

Along with the postcard, we have a poster with Guardians of the Galaxy theme, only fitting then that I have the film on whilst writing up this post.

Infinity Crates December Poster - Guardians of the Galaxy

No keyring this month, but when they do pop up they are fantastic so instead we have chocolate - can't complain about that, everyone needs a few buttons in their life.

Infinity Crates December Box - Chocolate Buttons

Next up is a rather cool vinyl sticker from The Hobbit

Infinity Crate December Box - Hobbit Vinyl Sticker

And then it all gets a bit exciting!!  I'd already seen the quote on my T-shirt as it was the first item out the box, but I had missed the supernatural symbols on the house in the postcard, but when I saw the magnets - oh hello!!!

Infinity Crates December Box - Magnets

Now, I very nearly put my POP before the magnets in order of awesomeness... but I'm not sure you guys, my readers share my love for the Winchesters so here is Ms Poison Ivy - thank you very much.

Poison Ivy POP Thanks to Infinity Crates December Box

Finally, the personal touch that Infinity Crates provides is how I now have a 'set' of Batman POPs and how I nearly peed my pants when I  opened the box and this was the first thing I saw!

Supernatural Awesomeness thanks to Infinity Creates December Box

So there we have it, my 7 fantastic items for December.  I also have the Christmas Boxes coming so if I get a chance I'll try to post them up too.

How to make a Christmas Elf Box

I was so excited to be creating a Christmas Elf box with my son, as he was too young to understand what it meant, and because of that, as he got older he believed the elves made the box for him!

Our Christmas Eve Elf Box

The first I heard about the Christmas Eve Elf Boxes was after my son was born.  They just didn't happen in m house when I was a child.

There appear to be various versions of what the Elf box is but the one I like the most and the one we will be going with for as long as I can get away with it will be this one:

On Christmas Eve the elves come along and leave a little Christmas Eve box on the doorstep at dusk, inside this little handmade box will be goodies to help little ones get ready for Christmas Day by snuggling down and getting cosy this Christmas Eve evening.

Getting the shoebox ready to turn into our Elf box

We actually started creating our box back in the summer.  I got an old shoe box and covered it with various Christmas cards and wrapping papers and then I let Max choose all the toppings - that way it gives the box the look and feel as if an Elf had decorated it.

Getting all our materials together to decorate our elf box

Our box is now complete and put away and I'm slowly purchasing pieces to put in it.  So far we have marshmallows and hot chocolate sachets, The Gruffalo DVD to watch Christmas Eve Evening and Spiderman PJs.  I plan to buy him a special Christmas cup/beaker for his hot chocolate and Christmas socks to go in the box too.

Started collecting for the Elf box.... so excited!!

 
My son, to this day, doesn't know that HE decorated the box.

This craft activity features in Twinkl’s Create Unique Christmas Gifts blog.

Review: Birds Eye SteamFresh and Getting in the Veg

#AD

We are big fans of Birds Eye in our household from waffles to fish fingers and our freezer is always home to these goodies, and now we have also tried Birds Eye's SteamFresh vegetable range which has been launched to showcase the taste credentials of vegetables, and they did not disappoint.

Now, many will have their opinions on frozen vegetables, frozen food and pretty much everything else when it comes to cooking and parenting, but as a working mum, I can not be going to the greengrocers every day for my fresh fruit and veg, cook and bake and clean and sing...... I work, and some days we have waffles, baked beans and fish fingers, some days we have a lovely pukka pie, mashed potatoes and steam fresh vegetables and it works for us and what's more - we are getting our vegetables in.

We always have fruit in the house as my son has a lovely taste for food so, unlike 3.5 million Brits this week - we have had our vegetables with the added bonus of having our fruit and 5 a day too.

I didn't just pick that figure out the air, Birds Eye conducted a UK 'Vege-nation' study and found 3.5 million Brits haven't eaten a vegetable in the last week while one in four finds preparing and eating veg boring...  This study was commissioned by Birds Eye to launch SteamFresh, to help transform vegetables from the duty to desire and I must admit whilst I'm not a fan of preparing veg - I do love my greens.

Also, with our festive season well and truly upon us, I found the SteamFresh range came in handy this weekend just gone when we had extra guests for dinner and these little packets were perfect little top-ups for whilst we had enough meat and potatoes to go around, I found it was the vegetables that were stretched.

So, with that in mind and the good range of Birds Eye products in the supermarket I will be making sure that we have some quick and easy meals to knock up should the mood take us... or the wine......or unexpected visitors.

Below, I've included a little snippet from Birds Eye which gives you an idea of the foods available this Festive Season.

Merry Christmas

Sponsored Post

Review: Tekstar T-Rex

If you have a dinosaur fan in your household then the Tekstar T-Rex dinosaur is a must buy this Christmas.

Tekstar T-Rex

This great toy uses cutting edge hand gapproxure technology ... (This means your new pet (yes he's a pet to me now) will respond to your voice, sounds and hand) currently retails at £60 in Debenhams and will definitely be a winner for any dinosaur fan.

Teksta T-Rex

When we received our T-Rex we added the batteries in his feet and away he went!  At times, I felt like I had a stroppy teenager in the house rather than a new pet...!  If not shown attention or his bone he starts roaring at you and stomping off - fantastic, you can just imagine a T-Rex with this attitude.

We quickly read the basics as every time I turned him off, Max turned him back on than with no 'training' he was quite naughty (the dinosaur, not my son).  So you can train your T-Rex to respond to your hand.  He will stop, do tricks and even almost softly roar when you stroke his face (my favourite part).

He will sniff what you put up against his nose (my son's favourite part) and as I mentioned above if he's ignored, he'll let you know.

Giving T-Rex a cuddle and a bone...

As you can see from the picture above, this is a good size toy and has a bit of weight to him too.  He also comes with interactive app options which work with both Apple and Android tablets which increase the play time your children will get out of this electronic toy.

Teksta T-Rex

So whilst this is a high-value item, I do feel the Tekstar Robotic T-Rex will be a well-loved hit in any household, a must for all T-Rex fans.  I've become rather attached to him myself, I think it's because he's a bit sassy!

Christmas Paper Baubles Craft with children

Christmas Craft with Bostik

December marks the final month of Bostik Family Craft Bloggers Network 2014.  I've loved being part of this network, receiving goodies every other month and spending time with my son looking through our craft box to see what projects we can create relevant to the season/theme holiday.

This month we received a wonderful array of goodies as always and because there are lots of glitters and shine we decided to make and decorate baubles.  I found this was a great way of adding anything and everything you want and it fits in perfectly.

Before I let Max loose with glue and stickers, I cut out several bauble shapes on both patterned and plain cards and pierced holes in the top ready to hang once complete.

Infinity Crate - November Review

I am loving Infinity Crates!  I know, I know I said this last month but I do, I think this may be the one!  But, I will continue my search for the best geeky subscription box (for me), so for the second month now I have an Infinity Crate - Animation theme!

Last month the theme was Doom and I LOVED it, this month I love (but no caps) Animation, and-and just a wee bit excited at next month's Might and Magic box - let alone January's Heroes v Villains!

So, what's in my box?  Well as with last month and unlike My Geek Box I've put the images up in preference with my favourite being last.

First up is the postcard image above, must not forget these and they are really quite fantastic, and to compliment the smaller poster there is the larger animation poster.

Infinity Crates Animation Poster

Next up is a TMNT badge - Leonardo (favourite is Raphael, but that's mainly because its similar to my name and red, but hey, Leo's still a hero in a half shell)!

Infinity Crate TMNT Badge

Homer Simpson Socks - Classic!  I can't believe Simpsons has been running for 25 years!

Infinity Crate Homer Socks

This one is a new one on me.  It's Jake from Adventure Time.  My boy loves this key ring, so we found Adventure Time on Cartoon Network and now we appear to be hooked (yeah, both of us will sit and watch it!).

Jake Key Ring

5 items down and 2 to go, in true Infinity Crate style the last 2 items will be a T-shirt and a POP Vinyl.

Holy Smokes Batman, quite possibly my favourite DC T-Shirt I've seen in a long time!  This went down very well, in fact when I passed it over it went straight on!  Must admit, this is a pretty cool T-Shirt - and not black for a change.

Infinity Crate Animation T-Shirt

And finally, who doesn't love a minion?  Carl is now with our other minions pride of place on the mantelpiece!

Infinity Crate Minion POP!

So there are my 7 goodies from November.  I have every faith my December box is going to be fantastic, so much so I may have ordered the Christmas specials......

To summarise, my top geek box is still Infinity Crates at £16.99 per month
Based on boxes received I'd put Nerd Block 2nd at approximately £21 per month
3rd would be the newly received My Geek Box at £14.99

From my original post, you can see I have many more boxes to sample, but I'm going to struggle to cancel this one!

Good call on the POP! this month @InfinityCrates :D #minions pic.twitter.com/LbxLhff8kM

— Rachael Jess (@RachaelJessBlog) November 25, 2014

Pop in a box

In my quest to find out which of the many geek boxes I would like to finally settle on and subscribe to, I have found Pop in Box monthly subscription!

Oh yes!  From my Infinity crate review, you may have picked up on the fact I am LOVING POP! vinyl!  I received Jack in my Infinity Crate, Batman & Deadpool in my Nerd block boxes and Sheldon from my lovely partner who is just a crazy as me when it comes to collections.  So, imagine my total excitement to find a subscription that sends out just that - a Pop Vinyl!

Jack Skellington Pop Vinyl from the fabulous Infinity Crates

It really is quite a clever system.  You create an account on 'PIAB' and if you already own any Pops you can add these to your account.  Once you've done this you can then add to your Wish List (my favourite bit) and each month for £8.49 (before delivery charges) the peeps over at PIAB will send out a POP to your door - that you don't already own! And, may even be on your wish list - but will definitely NOT be one that is on your dislike list.  That is pretty smart is it not?

I received my first POP from PIAB today and I got Robin - to go with my Batman - how cool is that?

My first POP from Pop In A Box

Now I'm not a die-hard collector of anything and by that I mean I don't keep my collections in boxes! And to me, this is where it goes wrong.  My Robin has slightly green legs, I let this go as it's only slight.  But when I ordered Spider-man his paintwork was .... well shit!

After speaking with PIAB it appears they do not offer refunds or returns because their supplier does not offer this option to them, and therefore would go bankrupt as Funko apparently are renowned for poor paint jobs!

I'm so disappointed with this fact, I upcycle projects and do not sell them for that very reason, that they have flaws, they are not perfect and to hear that a company as large as Funko do not take responsibility for their poor paint jobs before they leave their factory, is quite disgraceful in my option.

For that reason, and that reason alone, I am going to try and source my 'more complicated' POPs in the high street rather than rely on the image portrayed on my Funko box, and therefore sadly, means cancelling this Pop In A Box Subscription.

Turtle Mat's Christmas Jumper Challenge

Turtle Mats Christmas Jumper Mat

To celebrate the new Christmas Jumper mat from Turtle Mats, they are running a bloggers competition to create a Christmas jumper on a budget of £5!  Now I do like a challenge and this one - jumpers, sewing, textiles... oh this is definitely a challenge for me!

Turtle Mats sent out the jumper and I had to source materials that made up to £5 to decorate it.  Now we all know that sewing and baking are not my friends - and the temptation to get a bit of tinsel and glue it all around the jumper was very great......

But I figured I'd challenge myself as we know I like to do this often and sometimes it can turn into epic fails..... other times I do surprise myself.  So I got out the needle and thread (ok, first challenge complete - find them!).

I saw this lovely snowflake jumper in Next a while ago, I would show you it but now I can't find it so I either made it up or it wasn't Next!  Anyway, that was why I chose a snowflake - and not any snowflake - Queen Elsa's snowflake - yes, I'm going all out to challenge myself on this one!!

The materials that can be used for up to £5 are as follows:

Jumper
Needle & Thread
Fabric Glue
Pom Poms £1.00 per colour
White Felt £0.59
Blue Felt £0.59
Glitter £1.58

After getting over the shock that I was actually going to sew something!  I found an Elsa snowflake online and printed it off as my template - and that took FOREVER to cut out!

Once cut out, I then pinned to my white felt and did it all again!

Queen Elsa's Snowflake

That was enough for that night, I'm not ashamed to say this jumper took me the best part of a week to do - I needed several tea breaks......

When I put my snowflake on my jumper it was a wee bit lost, so that's when I decided to add the blue felt and I used this as a backing / edging for the snowflake for a couple of reasons, one to make the snowflake bigger and two to give a base to glue this snowflake on to (yeah cutting that out twice, no way I was going to sew around it too!).

Backing felt for the snowflake

I sewed... yeah this is such a shocker for me!  But I did!  I sewed the blue snowflake onto the jumper directly - took all evening, bearing in mind I only have the evenings to craft... so that was that night done!  The next day to get over the shock of sewing I chose to cover my white snowflake with glitter, a couple of colours to try and match the printout I had of Frozen's snowflake.

My son loves glitter so we already had the silver colour!

Before glueing my glittery snowflake on to my blue felt, I added some pom poms to the jumper - these are fab!  I loved doing these (I know right!), I thought it was going to be a bit daunting but it wasn't and it's amazing how it changes a jumper!

Adding Pom Poms

Finally, with the pom-poms added I used the fabric glue and placed my shiny snowflake onto my jumper and thus creating my Christmas Jumper 2014 ;)

So there it is, my Christmas Jumper!  If the judges at Turtle Mats think it as spectacular as I do....... then I get to win the Christmas Jumper mat and a luxury Christmas hamper!   The competition closes on 11th December so I've managed to get my jumper design in just in time.

So what do you think? Have you ever attempted to create your own Christmas Jumper?  I'm not sure I could take the stress again....

Review: Gro-Clock - The hunt for a good night's sleep....

Gro-clock

Forever on the hunt on trying to keep my son in his bed, we have a new room, new mattress and now we have a fantastic new clock!  I must say, I am rather excited to be reviewing the Gro clock as it comes highly recommended from friends who have recently experienced their son wondering in their room as soon as the cot sides came down!

The Gro-clock is designed to teach children to understand when it is time to get up with 'Stay in bed until you see the sun', so when we received our clock I got my son to 'help me' set it up and explained to him at the time what we were doing.

Seeing the sun is time to get up

When we went to bed I showed Max the sun and explained again that the sun was now going to sleep and pressed the buttons at the bottom.  With this, the sun gave a wink and went into night mode, a lovely blue glow and the stars come out.

I do like the glow as a night light, it works perfectly in my boy's room.

Gro-Clock

We've had our clock a week now and we are still getting used to using it.  Each night I inform my boy that the sun is now going to bed, and when the sun comes up it is time to get up.  I don't expect this to happen overnight, and as yet we haven't quite got to the stage of staying in bed, but we have made steps in the right direction, when my boy calls out in the night I go in with him and explain the stars are still out and stay with him until he falls back to sleep and then he doesn't get up again until he sees the sunshine.

With patience and a few more nights of explaining the clock, I do feel we will finally crack this and he'll understand when it is time to get up.

The Gro-clock can be purchased from the Gro-Store which is currently on sale at £24.99 and has some great reviews online and I'm sure if you speak with friends and family like I have you'll find someone who has one of these great products too.

In my opinion, the Gro products are a great brand to own for any family.

Disclaimer: I received a Gro-Clock to review.

The above wording is all my own and not influenced over the product received.