Review: Storm Bloc Socks – specialist sports socks

Storm Bloc socks are designed for strenuous outdoor and sporting activities. Whether you’re walking, running or down the gym, these socks have been designed to be comfortable and hard-wearing. My husband has recently taken up running and he’s out walking the dog several times a day; so he put these Storm Bloc Socks to the test to see if they were as good as they say they are.

Review: Storm Bloc Socks - specialist walking socks

These Storm Bloc socks have been made with BlueGuard – an industry-beating anti-abrasion yarn that has been scientifically shown to last 46 times as long as a standard branded sports socks. Sold by the Sock Shop, they are so confident that these socks will last the distance, that they offer a lifetime guarantee on Storm Bloc socks. The socks are perfect for sports, running, walks, hikes and camping.

The cotton rich Storm Bloc with BlueGuard Sports Crew Socks are terry cushioned for comfort. They’re designed to help absorb impacts and reduce fatigue. They have ribbed, elastic legs, reinforced toe seams, extended heel areas and a built-in arch support. Breathable woven panels are positioned help regulate moisture and heat during activity.

What did my husband think? They were certainly comfortable and well cushioned. He liked the ribbing and the seams which helped stop the socks from slipping and “walking off” his feet when he walked and ran. He said it was hard to say if they did absorb much of the shock of running, but he did feel they added a little bit of bounce.

Review: Storm Bloc Socks - specialist sports socks

They certainly look the part. They are warm and comfortable for walking and running without being too hot, sweaty and synthetic. The socks do wash well and haven’t gone baggy or anything after the few wears and washes they’ve had.

They cost £13.99 for two pairs from the Sock Shop, but they do come with a lifetime guarantee.

See the full range of Storm Bloc Socks on The Sock Shop website.

Note: We were sent these Storm Bloc socks for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

How to keep track of your Social Media Followers

Last year I made it my New Year Resolution to keep track of my social media followers. This was so I could (hopefully) see how my numbers have grown over the year. The tracking was really helpful. I used a spreadsheet which I shared on my blog for people to download and use too. I know lots of people found it helpful, so I’ve decided to re-work it and share it again.

In 2017, across all of my social media accounts I’ve managed to grow my following by a total of 5000. To me this is a really good number and I’m delighted. If I can do the same in 2018 I will be thrilled. Growing your numbers can be really hard work, keeping them engaged is probably harder though, but that’s a whole other blog post. We all already know that the key to social media success is the SOCIAL bit. But the best way to grow your numbers on social media is to always to engage and be engaging with your followers. It’s as simple and as hard work as that.

It would be easy to just change the date on my old spreadsheet and just re-share it, but as the year has gone on I’ve added a few elements and made it more fit for purpose. It’s still quite simple to use and I’ve included all the social media channels I use and can think of. If there’s one on there you don’t use, you can either delete that row or just put a zero in that box and it will ignore it. If I’ve missed any, please message me or leave a comment and I’ll update the spreadsheet.

I’ve set the spreadsheet up so that it will add up your numbers and give you a total number of followers. This will also appear in the chart below. I like seeing my numbers rising on a chart. I’m a very visual person, so a rising graph always pleases me.

Download my Social Media Tracking spreadsheet HERE.

One of the features I’ve added is a “To Go” column. This is entirely optional. This will show you how many more followers you need for each social network each month against your yearly target. You will need to change the code each month to make sure the sum is correct. If you’re not confident doing this then you can leave it out.

If you look at the spreadsheet you’ll see I’ve added an example number and target. The code =SUM(N4-B4) in the To Go column does the maths and tells us that with 50 followers and a target of 100 followers, you have 50 more followers to go. In February you’ll need to change the code in that box to =SUM(N4-C4) and so on each month. I added that column because I found it useful to see where I needed to have a bit of a social push in order to meet my target for the year.

I have also added an extra section underneath, which helps me keep track of the three things I was most interested in keeping a note of in 2017. For me these were my Domain Authority (DA), my total YouTube views and my Tots100 chart position. Obviously you can either delete that section or rename the rows so you can monitor whatever metrics you’re most interested in.

You might like to set yourself a target for the year. See how many followers you’ve got on New Years Day and then give yourself a target to work for. It could be an across the board total figure you’re working towards, or maybe you want to get to 10k followers on YouTube in 2018. Whatever your social media followers target for 2018, tracking your progress is the first step to success.

Let me know how you get on! Happy tracking!

8 ideas for what to do on Christmas Eve

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and the flurry of shopping for presents and food is all but over for another year. It’s a day we try to pause the chaos a little and spend some time together as a family. We will have some preparation and thing to do, but being together is a priority for us. If you’re wondering what to do on Christmas Eve, then here are our suggestions.

Family Things To Do

We put together a Christmas Eve box which arrives on Christmas Eve. It’s packed full of lovely things including new PJs, a Christmas DVD, some Christmas books and nice nibbles. We curl up on the sofa for an hour or two and watch the DVD and just chill out. It’s lovely and a great way to change gear on the Christmas chaos and just wind down.

Crosby Beach

Go for a nice long walk. On Christmas Day we are mostly busy busy and stuck in the house. If the weather is reasonable, a good long walk on Christmas Eve is a great way to tire the kids out. It’s good to get some fresh air and burn off a few calories in anticipation of the feast to come.

More organised people will have bought tickets to a panto or a Christmas show. Going to a show together can be a really special way to spend Christmas Eve as a family.

Christmas Eve is a time for singing carols and feeling festive. Every Christmas Eve we trot off to our local church to take part in the Christingle Service. The service is so popular at our local church that they now have three services to accommodate the hundreds of children and families to come along on Christmas Eve.

What to do on Christmas Eve

For older children and adults, the Midnight Mass service is a beautiful way to start off the Christmas celebrations. It’s a little moment of stillness and calm, and the perfect place to belt out some Christmas carols. I love it.

You can find information on services local to you here.

Christmas Wrapping

Sensible people will have done this days ago, but *waves* I still have piles of unwrapped presents taunting me from the wardrobe. I know this will be done in dribs and drabs throughout the day but SODS LAW dictates that I will either run out of wrapping paper or sellotape. This has happened before, mostly because my husband always insists we’ve got too much wrapping paper already and then it turns out we have none. This is always discovered at 4pm on Christmas Eve. This will not happen to me this year. I have bulk bought both of these items, so much so that we may well never need to buy them ever again.

Preparation Preparation Preparation

I know some people cook their whole Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve; plate it up and just re-heat it on the day. There’s a lot of sense in that, but Christmas Day wouldn’t be the same to me without juggling for space in the oven, carving the turkey at the table and steaming the pudding.

I do however like to do some prep the day before. I will be roasting the potatoes and parsnips in advance, then on Christmas Day I can just put them on trays in the oven for half an hour and they crisp up beautifully.

This year I’m making stuffing from scratch (a departure for me as I’ve always been a packet stuffing kind of girl). I’ll also peel and prep the veg ready to be cooked on Christmas Day. There is lots to do; but if you’re methodical and you do as much as you can beforehand then it’s very doable!

Treats For Father Christmas

The last thing we do before bedtime is leave a mince pie, a small dram of whisky and a sprinkling of Magic Reindeer Food for Father Christmas and the reindeer. We make sure our stockings are hung up and we hurry upstairs to bed, hopefully for an early night.

What to do on Christmas Eve

It’s a busy day and a busy night, but spending time together is what Christmas is all about isn’t it. Merry Christmas to you and thank you for reading my blog.

What to do on Christmas Eve

Recipe: Bifteki – Cretan Style Lamb Burger with Feta

They say that a Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest ways of eating. It’s certainly a favourite of ours and in the summer months especially we love throwing together a salad, cranking up the barbecue and eating al fresco. The grey skies of Manchester are sadly no match for dining under the Cretan sun, but what is?

In Crete their burgers are known as bifteki. They can be made from beef, pork or lamb and they’re usually stuffed with cheese – juicy Lucy style! Here’s my take on the traditional bifteki burger. It’s made with lamb and stuffed with feta, served with a fresh Greek salad and a generous helping of tzatziki. It’s so good!

Recipe: Bifteki - Cretan Style Lamb Burger with Feta

Cretan Style Lamb Burger with Feta

Ingredients (makes 4 burgers)
500g lamb mince
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or grated
1/2 a red onion, grated
75g stale breadcrumbs
An egg
1 tablespoon of fresh oregano, finely chopped
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
2 tablespoons of parsley, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
200g feta cheese
Salt & pepper
4 burger buns

Method
Slice your feta cheese into 8 pieces, they’ll need to be flat rather than chunky. Put them to one side.

In a bowl tip all of the remaining burger ingredients and knead together. A bifteki has a firmer texture than a normal style burger, so get your hands in and work the meat. Once it is all combined, cover and put the mixture in the fridge for half an hour.

Divide the lamb into four equal parts and taking a slice of the feta, mould the lamb around it so the cheese is encased. Do this with all of your four burgers. Grill your burgers on the barbecue until cooked through.

Alternatively if you are cooking them in the oven, pre-heat your oven to 200°c and cook for ten minutes, then flip your burgers and cook for a further ten minutes. You might want to put your remaining feta slices on top of the burgers during the last few minutes in the oven.

Serve your lamb burger on a burger bun smeared with tzatziki and a pile of Greek salad. Delicious!

Recipe: Bifteki - Cretan Style Lamb Burger with Feta Copyright Jane Arschavir HodgePodgeDays

Recipe: Bifteki - Cretan Style Lamb Burger with Feta

Crafts: Make Your Own Christmas STEM Toys

Christmas is a time for crafting and creating with the kids. We love doing Christmas crafts and we were excited when we heard that ex Blue Peter presenter and craft queen Konnie Huq, had partnered with the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) to create a selection of homemade STEM toys for Christmas.

Crafts: Make Your Own Christmas STEM Toys

Konnie Huq has put her Blue Peter powers to practice for a good cause, making Britain’s most popular Christmas toys at home for a fraction of the cost. The Christmas STEM toys she has created include –

Dissolving egg
Magnetic slime
Icosahedron bauble
Marble run
Balloon boat
Bouncy balls
Smartphone projector
Living gingerbread house
Kaleidoscope

Konnie has put together a set of free to download how-to instructions for all of the above crafts.

Konnie, who spent over ten years craft-making on Blue Peter, is supporting a campaign by the Institution of Engineering and Technology to inspire more children to consider careers in engineering. The toys are designed to make learning about science, tech, engineering and mathematics (STEM) more accessible and affordable. These handmade STEM toys – which include a dissolving egg, magnetic slime, a kaleidoscope and even a smartphone projector – are educational, as well as fun.

Making your own slime is so popular right now, but we thought we would try something a little different. We really liked the idea of building our own living gingerbread house.

Crafts: Make Your Own Christmas STEM Toys

Make your own living gingerbread house

You will need:
A number of plain sponges
Scissors
Toothpicks
Small plate
Seeds
Spray bottle (clean)

How to make a living gingerbread house
Choose one or two sponges to be your base. Fix them together with a cocktail stick, remember these are sharp so be careful of your fingers.

Choose more sponges to be the walls. Cut one sponge in half across the longest
side (i.e. make two regular rectangles, not two long strips) and fix those onto the shorter sides of your base with cocktail sticks. Fix two sponges onto the longer sides of the base.

Crafts: Make Your Own Christmas STEM Toys

Take two sponges and cut them down their long side on an angle so that they fit together to form the apex of a roof. Fix them together with cocktail sticks, put on the top of your structure and fix into place with more cocktail sticks. You should now have a house shape made of sponges. Put your house onto a plate.

If your house is a bit wobbly, you can secure it using a glue gun or some craft glue. If you have used glue, allow time for the glue to dry and set before you move on to the next stage.

Next, you need to cover the house with seeds. You can use mustard or cress but
there are many fast sprouting seeds, so the choice is yours. We chose cress.

Crafts: Make Your Own Christmas STEM Toys

Dab some water onto the roof of your house and spread the seeds onto the roof.
Pour a little water onto the plate so the sponge base can soak it up. Check the
sponge is nice and moist. Then sprinkle the seeds onto the base.

Leave your house in a warm, bright spot for the seeds to germinate. Spray the house with water using a spray bottle each day, and pour a little water over the house if it feels dry. In a few days the seeds should start to sprout, in a week they should be thriving.

Crafts: Make Your Own Christmas STEM Toys

It’s so easy and lots of fun to make too!

Disclosure: We were sent a shopping voucher to buy the materials for this craft.

Christmas: Make your own Candy Cane Hearts

I love a bit of Christmas crafting and I’ve found a really simple, festive and delicious craft which will delight the whole family this Christmas. I’ve been making candy cane hearts to hang on my tree.

Christmas: Make your own Candy Cane Hearts

Candy canes have long been a symbol of Christmas. They were originally white sugar candy sticks made in Germany around 250 years ago. No one really knows how they ended up with a stripe and in the distinctive J shape, but some say they were shaped to look like a shepherd’s crook, to remind us of the shepherds that visited the baby Jesus on the first Christmas. Whatever the real story, all I know if they’re delicious and we always have a candy canes hanging from our Christmas tree.

You can get candy canes in all sizes, but I picked up a box of Swizzels Mini Candy Canes from B&M Stores for £1.99 and I knew exactly what I was going to make with them.

Make your own Candy Cane Hearts

You will need –
Candy canes
A baking sheet
Baking paper
Ribbon

Method –
Place your baking paper on your baking sheet and arrange the candy canes into heart shapes. The mini candy canes are the right size for this, but if you’re using larger ones you can trim them down if you need to.

Christmas: Make your own Candy Cane Hearts

Making sure the two candy canes in each heart are touching; put them into a warm oven and watch very carefully. It should take about 5 minutes for the candy canes to warm up and start melting a little at the ends. At this point remove them from the oven and carefully push the ends and the joins together on the heart. Remember this is hot sugar and you don’t want to burn yourself.

Once the joins have been pushed together, leave them to cool for 15 minutes. Once they are cool, tie ribbon around them and hang them on your tree.

They’re so simple to make and they do look super-cute on the tree. I think I’m going to make a batch for the table on Christmas Day too.

How would you use your candy cane hearts?

Christmas: Make your own Candy Cane Hearts

Check out my other craft tutorials here!

Crafts: Easy Chinese Drum Craft for kids

This month I have decided to try my hand at making a ‘Bolang Gu’ which is also known as a Chinese drum or pellet drum.

Chinese drums are small drums with two pellets or beads on the sides. You twist the long stick and the beads swing forward and back, rhythmically tapping the drum. They’re quite easy to play once you’ve got the hang of it and they’re really run instruments for kids to play too.

Crafts: Easy Chinese Drum Craft for kids

Easy Chinese Drum Craft for kids

You will need –
Two paper plates (I used small side plate sided ones)
Red paint
Two beads
Some wool or thick thread
One stick, I used two chopsticks taped together
Decorations – I used gold paper, but you could add sequins, stickers, words, whatever you fancy
Sticky tape
Bostik White Glu
Bostik Foam Pads or Glu Dots

Crafts: Easy Chinese Drum Craft for kids

Method –
Paint the outside of your paper plates with red paint and leave to dry (overnight if possible).

Take your beads and your wool or thread and knot the beads so they are secure and won’t fly off when you’re playing your drum. Make sure the threads are long enough for the beads to be able to swing freely, but not too long that they could take someone’s eye out. Once you’ve done this, securely tape the threads to the inside of one of the plates at three and nine o’clock positions.

Crafts: Easy Chinese Drum Craft for kids

Tape your stick to the inside of the plate at the six o’clock position.

Using Glu Dots or sticky Foam Pads, stick the plates together and press so they don’t fall apart.

Decorate your drum however you want. I found some lovely gold paper and cut out “Happy New Year” in Chinese writing and stuck that on the front which I though looked quite nice.

Your Chinese drum is now complete and ready to play!

Chinese New Year is a real time for celebration. Here in Manchester there is always a big parade and there are lots of wonderful, colourful celebrations. It’s a welcome splash of warmth and colour at a very drab time of the year. Will you be celebrating Chinese New Year?

Check out my other craft tutorials here!

Crafts: Easy Chinese Drum Craft for kids

Pokemon Christmas Presents – Gotta catch em all!

Pokemon is as popular as ever; with both big kids and little kids collecting cards, chasing down the characters and playing the games. I know the big thing at the moment is collecting and swapping the cards with friends at school. It is a fun, sociable activity for kids to get involved in. If you’ve got a Pokemon fan in the family, I’ve picked out some Pokemon themed presents which would delight any keen collector on Christmas Day!

Snuggle up with your own Pokemon plush toy. Made by Tomy, this officially licensed 8” plush features one of the most popular characters from the series – Popplio. This lovely Popplio plush is about 20cm tall, and is very soft and cuddly and well made. As well as the popular Popplio, you can also collect Jigglypuff, Eevee, Riolu, Banette, Hoopa, Sylveon, Togepi, Pichu, Psyduck, Litten, Rowlet and Zygarde.

Pokemon Christmas presents

Keen collectors need a safe place to store their cards. This Pokemon Tin includes a starter collection of 50 Cards including holograms and rare cards. It’s the perfect gift for anyone starting out or for those who would like a 50 card boost to their collection and a handy tin to keep them in. Pokemon Christmas presents This Pokemon Shining Legends Collector Chest Game is a treasure trove of Pokémon goodies! This sturdy metal case contains more than a dozen special treats. The Pokémon Shining Legends Collector Chest includes five Shining Legends booster packs, three foil promo cards featuring Pikachu, Latinas, and Latinos! Plus a cool Pokémon coin, two colourful sticker sheets, a collector’s album to store your favourite cards, a Pokémon notepad and pencils.

Pokemon Christmas Presents - Gotta catch em all!

Whatever you buy for the Pokemon fan in your life, I’m sure they’ll love it. You could stuff a stocking with collectors cards maybe. Or if you’re buying them a soft plush toy from Tomy; a collectors tin or a whole case full of exciting Pokemon themed goodies; they’re bound to have a great day collecting them all.

Pokemon Christmas Presents – Gotta catch em all!

Will you catch em all?

25 great ideas for filling your Christmas Eve Box

A Christmas Eve box is a relatively new tradition for us. I’m not even really sure where it came from. We’ve always done the Elf on a Shelf thing and for the last few years the Elf has delivered a Christmas Eve box to our house from Father Christmas.

I think the idea of the Christmas Eve box is to give little ones something to tide them over until Christmas Day. Something that will help to calm their excitement and enthusiasm for not going to sleep or for waking up incredibly early. We’ve usually been quite lucky with the early morning wake ups, but the going to sleep on Christmas Eve is always a bit tricky.

To us, our Christmas Eve box should be filled with nice things we can do together as a family, things that’ll keep us cosy and things we will just enjoy. We have a small personalised sack we use for ours, but in previous years we’ve used boxes we’ve decorated. You can buy special boxes, but if you have the time and inclination, it’s nice to decorate your own.

18 ideas for filling your Christmas Eve Box

Your box can be as simple or as complicated as you want. If you’re struggling to think of what to put in yours, here are some of my suggestions.

25 ideas for filling your Christmas Eve Box

New Christmas pyjamas
New Christmas slippers
A Christmas book to read at bedtime
A DVD to watch together as a family on Christmas Eve
A Christmas mug, hot chocolate and marshmallows
Family snacks – popcorn, chocolate whatever you like!
A special Christmas decoration to hang on the tree
The Santa plate to leave a snack out for Santa
Reindeer food
Christmas crafts to make together
A magic key if you need one
Christmas cookie baking kit
Nice list certificate (which you can download for free here)
Christmas colouring or activity books
Letter from Santa
Novelty Christmas socks
Christmas bubbly bath, for Christmas Eve bath-time
Your Christmas stockings to hang up for Santa
Christmas colouring or activity books
Christmas socks
A Cuddly toy
Gingerbread House decorating kit
Candy canes
Some fun Christmas crackers for kids
A novelty Christmas jumper

Obviously you don’t need all 25 of these ideas, pick and choose what works for you and create a box which suits your family. What will be in your Christmas Eve box this year?

25 great ideas for filling your Christmas Eve Box

Updated on 16th November 2020.

Discovering our Blue Planet at SEA LIFE Manchester

I don’t know about you, but Sunday evenings are Blue Planet time in our house. We all snuggle on the sofa and spend an hour being wowed by the wonders of the deep. With SEA LIFE Manchester virtually on our doorstep, we decided to take a trip and discover some of the amazing creatures who live in our oceans.

Discovering our Blue Planet at SEA LIFE Manchester

SEA LIFE Manchester is our nearest SEA LIFE Centre and as such we tend to go there quite a lot. It’s great to spend a couple of fairly chilled hours there. We’ve met most of the creatures in the centre before, but this time there had been a couple of changes.

I have my own favourites, namely the jellyfish, this time they were much smaller, so I think these were new to the centre. It was quite interesting to see their relatively small bodies floating and undulating in the water.

Discovering our Blue Planet at SEA LIFE Manchester

Te other big change was that Ernie, the huge green sea turtle has found himself a lady friend – Cammie. I think the hope is that they will find love and produce some baby turtles of their own.

Despite us being regular visitors to SEA LIFE Manchester, we did manage to experience a few things we’d never seen or done before. The boy felt brave enough to touch a starfish in the Rockpool Zone. Then I put my hand in to say hello to a shrimp. I was told the shrimp would nibble my fingers, taking away dead skin and it found a nice meal and gave my finger a bit of a tug I wasn’t expecting. I may have squealed in a most unnecessary way.

Discovering our Blue Planet at SEA LIFE Manchester

We also spent quite a lot of time talking to some of the Jurassic Rangers who were on hand to talk about fossils and show off some specimens. The boy is a massive dinosaur fan, so this was a bit of a treat for him.

Best of all, towards the end of the day we managed to catch the Ray Talk. We watched them being fed while a very knowledgeable man told us all about them. There are three species of ray at SEA LIFE Manchester including the lovely Blue Spotted Stingrays. The Ray Talk is well worth catching if you’re interested in these graceful creatures.

Discovering our Blue Planet at SEA LIFE Manchester

The boy went all around SEA LIFE pointing out creatures he’d seen on Blue Planet and telling us a bit more about them. The same is true when we’re watching the TVseries; every so often he pipes up “I’ve seen that at SEA LIFE”!

If you’re a fan of Blue Planet then a visit to your local SEA LIFE Centre is a must. It’s really helped to connect the dots for my son. Seeing things in real life that he’d seen on the TV suddenly made everything extra wonderful and real for him.