Toyologists 2011 - Box 1

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay it's finally that time again and box number 1 has arrived. As last year Chick is allowed to keep this box and then we'll give away as much as possible to the local hospital! This is Chick opening box one :-)

Catch up with all the reviews from this year's Toyologists here.

Precious Memories - Sterling Silver Name Pendant Giveaway!!!!

The lovely Glenda, who is also a fellow Toyologist, runs the most amazing business called Precious Memories which she set up in 2005. Her company makes fabulous keepsakes including baby hand and feet castings, jewellery and baby bump casts......I really wish that I would have had something like that done when I was pregnant with Chick.

I am running an awesome competition courtesy of Precious Memories and one of you lucky readers could be fortunate enough to win this:

A sterling silver pendant, with a name of your choice engraved, which can be hung from a necklace or bracelet worth £20.

Soooooo what do you need to do to enter???? 

Just visit the Precious Memories Facebook page and leave a comment telling them that I sent you. Then come back here and let me know that you've done so. Simple, right?

Closing date is Friday, 24th June at 5pm. 

Good Luck.

Speedo Sea Squad

The first time that I took Chick swimming I think she was about 8 weeks old and just looked sooooo cute in her little tiny swimsuit. I'm not sure if it's because she started so early but she's always loved swimming even though she was never overly confident. Swimming lessons are mandatory at school and actually her confidence has grown a lot since she started with the lessons, which is fabulous.

Recently Speedo have set up a new Sea Squad learn to swim project, which is obviously aimed at getting parents and children to learn to swim. The website is full of useful bits and pieces and has a section just for kids where they can play games, print off posters and door hangers, join the Sea Squad themselves or learn all about water safety. Rebecca Adlington (Olympic gold medallist) also lends her support and gets involved with the site. Chick and I love that it's so bright and colourful.

As part of the learn to swim site Speedo can e-mail you advice about teaching your children to swim depending on what stages they may be at, from babies onwards. There are three levels starting with 'Start Splashing' and then moving onto 'Start Swimming' and finally 'Get Confident'.

To help with Chick's confidence, Speedo sent us a kick board and some cool dive sticks which we've been using at the pool. I did try and get a sneaky shot at the pool but the lifeguard saw me and told me off (whoops!!) so we had to take a picture at home instead:

More information can be found over at the Speedo website.

HP Virtual Focus Group - Week 5 - Decision Time......

So I'm aware that it's taken me more than 5 weeks to get all these reviews written and for that I would like to thank HP for sticking with me and being ever patient. For the last challenge it's time to embrace my creative side. I love making collages and have been doing these more and more. What I liked from the HP photo creations though was a collage cube. All you need to do is upload the pictures, the system places them for you and lets you edit them if necessary and you print out this:

Cut around it, follow the very simple instructions that print off at the edge of the template and you end up with this nifty little photo cube:

I still need to stick mine together and tidy it up but I'm sure my Mum & American Mom would really appreciate these as gifts or just to keep on their desks.

As it's now the final week I also get to decide which printer I want to keep and I have to say that it hasn't been an easy decision. 

The Kodak printer is unbeatable for the picture quality and the ease of printing the pictures off. 

The HP is smart, good looking and pretty much all touch screen and the only down side for me is that the pictures aren't quite such high quality as the Kodak. 

If I'm honest I probably wouldn't use it for printing pictures as I take so many it's much cheaper to have them done professionally. Therefore the HP is the winner for me and I'm very happy that I get to keep this little baby:

Please feel free to ask any questions as usual :-)

Book Review: The Sweetest Thing by Cathy Woodman

Jennie Copeland thought she knew the recipe for a happy life: marriage to her university sweetheart, a nice house in the suburbs and three beautiful children. But when her husband leaves her, she is forced to find a different recipe. And she thinks she’s found just what she needs: a ramshackle house on the outskirts of the beautiful Talyton St George, a new cake-baking business, a dog, a horse, chickens…

But life in the country is not quite as idyllic as she’d hoped, and Jennie can’t help wondering whether neighbouring farmer Guy Barnes was right when he told her she wouldn’t last the year.

Or perhaps the problem is that she’s missing one vital ingredient to make her new life a success. Could Guy be the person to provide it?

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I'd never heard of Cathy Woodman before but this sounded just like my kind of book and I'm always interested in discovering someone new! As the blurb above says the book is about Jennie starting a new life after a divorce with her 3 kids. She moves to a gorgeous house in what sounds like an idyllic village in Cornwall....jealous much? She also has a very gorgeous and rugged neighbour to make friends with.

I loved the main character and as the story is all told from her point of view that's probably a good thing! It's an easily readable book and flows very nicely and gently through the move and the setting up of Jennie's cake business. Each chapter is named for a completely delicious cake or dessert most of which made my mouth water at the thought....not sure it's such a great read when you are on Weightwatchers ;-)

The picture that is painted of the family is all very pleasant and the two girls sounds like absolute sweethearts. The only downside of the book for me was the son Adam who starts misbehaving and being generally horrible and I didn't like the way the situation was dealt with.....having said that I don't have any teenage boys so it may be true to real life!!

To celebrate the publication of The Sweetest Thing, Cathy is running a 'bake off'. The prize is £100 worth of Lakeland vouchers. To enter you just need to post a picture of your baked goods to  this Flickr group......again not very helpful when you are trying to slim.....yum!!!

So grab yourself a copy of the book for some inspiration and then get baking!!! Good Luck!!

Review - Photobox.co.uk

I may have been a little bit excited when the peeps from Photobox contacted me and asked if I would like to review their service. I absolutely love photos and am one of those sad people that still likes to have actual prints in my hand as well as photos all over the house.

The deal was that Photobox would give me£40 credit to spend on whatever I wanted from their site. Well.....therein lies the first challenge. Did I want a photo book, prints, cards, mugs, canvas or pop art.  It took me about a week of looking through the site to decide which product to choose and then once I'd chosen the product how on earth was I going to choose a picture that I loved???

In the end I decided to have this picture made into a canvas:

It was one that I took when I started doing Project 365 last year and remains one of the best photos I've ever taken. So I uploaded it to the site at the push of a button, ordered the canvas I wanted on Monday and then waited.

They e-mailed me immediately to confirm my order and then yesterday I got another e-mail saying that it had been despatched already!! At 8.30am this morning a lovely Postie dropped off my canvas and it is fabulous!!!

It already has pride of place on my shiny new red wall:

I can't thank Photobox enough and I am amazed at just how easy and efficient the service was. I'll definitely be using them again!!! Another great thing that I noticed whilst I was ordering the canvas is that when you are paying it tells you if there are any special offers or discounts on the site that you may benefit from so I had a look and ended up getting a bigger canvas for the same money I originally had to spend! An extra brownie point to Photobox for that!!!

*Disclosure - As stated above Photobox gave me a £40 credit for their site for me to spend as I wished.

Book Review: The Making of Us by Lisa Jewell

In a hospice in Bury St Edmunds, a man called Daniel is slowly fading away. His friend Maggie sits with him every day; she holds his hand and she listens to the story of his life, to his regrets and to his secrets. And then he tells her about the children he has never met and never will, conceived with women he never even touched. Four of them, apparently, two boys, two girls. His legacy, he calls them.

Lydia, Robyn and Dean don’t know each other. Yet. And they are all facing difficult challenges. Lydia is still wearing the scars from her traumatic childhood and although she is wealthy and successful, her life is lonely and disjointed. Dean is a young man whose life is going nowhere. Robyn is training to be a doctor, just like her father – a man she’s never met. When she falls in love with a man who is like her in every way, she needs to be sure. It's time for her to open the envelope her mother gave her on her eighteenth birthday.

And Daniel’s children slowly find their way into each other’s lives…

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I’m sure that most of you remember my terrific excitement last year when I was invited to a blogging event at Random House and I actually got to meet Lisa. At the time she said that she was looking to move into writing darker characters and to maybe take her writing in a different direction and I have to say that she has done 

and this is definitely my favourite book of hers. She should write all future books in a similar style.

I can’t tell you how quickly I read this book....well actually I can.....it took me four and a half hours! I just couldn’t put it down. Now because I had a preview copy it didn’t have a normal cover and so I didn’t read the blurb above before I got stuck into it and for the first few chapters didn’t see where the book was going! (In my defence I read most of it laying on a blanket in the park in the glorious sunshine and didn’t have the info sheet with me J

The characters have so much depth and the story just races along leaving you eager to read the next chapter to find out how it will all end. I found also that it threw up some really interesting questions about the circumstances surrounded the conception of the four and what this would mean in a real life situation. There was a twist that I didn’t see coming which kept me on my toes and I love that the book shows how 

dysfunctional all families are even when they look normal from the outside!

The book is released on the 12^th May and I suggest you pre-order your copy now......I can’t recommend it highly enough and am now going to thoroughly read it for the second time to see what I missed out on whilst I was speed-reading through it!!


If you are a fan of Lisa's you can find her on Facebook too :-)