Board Game Club Review: Rory’s Story Cubes

I am part of the Blogger Board Game Club run by Playtime PR. Each month 50 bloggers are sent a new (or new-ish, or at least new to them) board game to play and put to the test. This month we were sent Rory’s Story Cubes, a game I am familiar with but have never played.

Board Game Club Review: Rory’s Story Cubes

Rory’s Story Cubes is a simple set of nine dice. Each dice is different and has a different image on each of its six sides. The idea is simple, roll the dice and make up a story based upon the nine images. It’s small, it’s simple and you can play it anywhere.

The game comes in a small magnetic box which contains the nine dice and a set of simple instructions. The only thing you need to supply is your imagination. The instructions are very easy to understand and include suggestions for developing your stories.

I’ve been waiting and waiting for my son (who has just turned seven) to be old enough to enjoy and understand this game. I was a little concerned he would think it was boring, but actually he loved it. He’s an imaginative little soul, so piecing together a story based on the roll of nine dice really floats his boat.

Board Game Club Review: Rory’s Story Cubes

Rory’s Story Cubes are the kind of game that could spark off a whole raft of really lovely developmental activity. The storytelling can help to develop creative ideas and improve communication skills; as well as give their confidence a boost too.

We really loved Rory’s Story Cubes. This is the basic set, but if you really get into it there are a variety of expansion packs to help you grow your stories. This is such a big hit for us, it’s going straight into the activity bag we take with us when we go out.

Rory’s Story Cubes is widely available from a range of retailers and costs around £12.99. It’s suitable for ages 6+ and would make an excellent after dinner game on Christmas Day!

We were sent the Rory’s Story Cube game for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Find other board game and toy reviews here.

Review: Kids Songs – a triple album for kids

Like most children my son is a music lover. He will happily listen to our grown up music and he loves Radio 2, but play him an album of kids songs and he’s in his element. We were sent a copy of the newly released triple album – Kids Songs from Crimson Productions to listen to and enjoy, but what did the boy think?

Kids Songs is a brand new triple album packed with original recordings of children’s favourite TV themes and songs. The album features some of the biggest names in kids TV, including Justin Fletcher and Chris and Pui; as well as theme tunes from popular CBeebies Programmes such as Go Jetters, Waybaloo, Tee and Mo, Boj, Rastamouse, Everything’s Rosie and lots more.

Review: Kids Songs - a triple album for kids

Kids Songs is the perfect album to listen to in the car, or at home for your own mini disco. It’s a habit of ours that when it’s bath-time I put a CD on and we have a listen and a sing along in the bathroom. It’s a lovely bonding thing, singing and dancing around together to some of his favourite music.

Kids Songs will be released on 17th November 2017 and is the ultimate Cbeebies soundtrack of the year and a must have stocking filler for all CBeebies fans. My son absolutely loved it, I think recognising most of the songs and theme tunes and being able to listen to them over and over if he wanted to made the Kids Songs CD very appealing to him.

Review: Kids Songs - a triple album for kids

With three CDs to listen to, it’s really hard to get bored of them, especially if you’re listening to them in rotation. It really is the perfect album to play on long car journeys or at kids parties.

The Kids Songs triple CD is available from a wide range of retailers including Amazon, where it is available for £7.09 or as a MP3 download for £6.49.

We were sent the Kids Songs CD for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own. Post contains an affiliate link.

Review: My Golden Ticket – A Beautiful Personalised Roald Dahl Book

I’ve been reading Roald Dahl books since I was a child and I’m keen to pass on a love of his stories to my own son. I’ve loved all of Roald Dahl’s books, but Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is an especially iconic tale. Who hasn’t dreamed of finding a golden ticket and being transported into a wonderful new world? Wonderbly have recently released a new personalised story book based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – My Golden Ticket.

My Golden Ticket- A Beautiful Personalised Roald Dahl Book

My Golden Ticket is a beautifully illustrated personalised adventure that opens up Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory to absolutely everyone. This isn’t just a version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with a Charlie’s name swapped for your child’s name. Everyone gets a different personalised story; including their own unique candy, Oompa Loompa song and Wonkafied family tree.

When you order your copy of My Golden Ticket on the Wonderbly website there are a few questions you need to answer to personalise the book. Obviously there’s your child’s name, in our case Benjamin. You can also choose someone to go on the adventure with him. We chose Grandad who died last year; but he would have been the perfect person to go on this adventure with.

My Golden Ticket- A Beautiful Personalised Roald Dahl Book

You can also add your names to an inscription on the first page. Ordering the book is really straightforward and only really took me a few minutes to do. My Golden Ticket starts at £19.99, but there are a number of different options to choose from which can build the price. We chose a hardback book which took the price to £25.99. I then added a dedication and someone to go on the adventure with. With added gift-wrap and candy scent the final price was £30.99, but that really is the all singing – all dancing version of the book.

My Golden Ticket- A Beautiful Personalised Roald Dahl Book

My Golden Ticket is beautifully illustrated, rich with colour with a stunning golden embossed cover. If you add the candy scent (which is something I recommend for an extra £2) they slip a scented postcard into your book. This gently wafts chocolate smells at you while you’re reading. It’s very clever and is brought to you by “Wonka Smell-o-Vision”.

My Golden Ticket- A Beautiful Personalised Roald Dahl Book

This beautiful (and I can’t stress this enough, it is beautiful) personalised book would make a really magical keepsake for any child (or Wonka mad adult for that matter). It’s the kind of book which we will bring out to read time and again for many years to come. It really is a very special book.

Disclosure: We were sent this My Golden Ticket book for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Sweetpea Pantry – Do their boxed baking mixes work?

Boxed baking mixes are really handy to have in the cupboard for a baking emergency. This week we’ve been putting some of the Sweetpea Pantry range of baking mixes to the test.

In the days before I became I parent I wasn’t known for my baking. I was pretty shoddy at it and used to rely a lot on boxed baking mixes which weren’t that great. Once I became a Mum and it somehow became expected of me to morph into some kind of Nigella creature, I taught myself how to bake. But I still keep a boxed baking mix or two in my cupboard for emergencies.

The Sweetpea Pantry mixes are a little bit different to your standard range of sponge buns with Ninja Turtle decorations. They have a range of sweet and savory mixes which have a healthy twist, more of which later. Many of the mixes are gluten-free and have free-from options; for example their Super-Duper Brownie Mix contains flaxseed and teff, has no added sugar and is gluten-free! They say they are 100% natural, 100% honest and 100% fun!

Sweetpea Pantry - Do their boxed baking mixes work?

Sweetpea Pantry - Do their boxed baking mixes work?

The Sweetpea Pantry range includes mixes for cakes, pizza dough, pancakes, flapjacks and biscuits. They’re made with whole grains and nutritious ingredients for delicious, easy and healthy home baking. We were sent a selection of the mixes to try and I was impressed.

The first box we tried were the Super-Duper Brownies. I’m not usually much of a fan of brownies. I don’t really like chocolate cakes and desserts (yes I know I’m weird) but these were the right balance of not too sweet, not too stodgy but with enough brownie goo to please the crowd.

They were so easy to make and all I needed to add was some butter and honey. There is a list of suggested options so you can tailor your bake to meet your requirements, so if you’re vegan you can swap the butter for coconut oil for example. They took ten minutes to make and 12 minutes to prep and 3 minutes to eat the lot.

Sweetpea Pantry - Do their boxed baking mixes work?

In the interests of having a sweet and savory balance, we also tried the Playful Pizza Dough Mix. This contains chia and flax seeds and is vegan, vegetarian, dairy free and contains no added sugar. All I needed to add was a little olive oil and water, plus a bit of flour when I was rolling the dough out.

I followed the instructions on the box, left it to prove and then rolled the dough out to make four different pizzas to feed four fairly fussy people. Here is my pizza, cheese, tomato, chilli and egg. It actually worked really well and I loved the pizza base which was crisp and held the toppings well. We all really enjoyed the flavour of the base, which had a lovely slightly nutty flavour.

Sweetpea Pantry - Do their boxed baking mixes work?

We loved the pizza dough, it was so easy to use. I tend to use a pizza dough mix rather than a bought base these days as they tend to be lighter. I liked the crisp, slightly nutty base and I’ll be buying more to keep in stock for our family pizza and TV nights.

The Sweetpea Pantry baking mixes are available from Ocado, Sainsburys, Booths, Marks & Spencer and a range of other retailers. Each mix costs £2.75 and from what I can tell, they’re delicious, family friendly mixes with a healthy and nutritious twist.

For more information about Sweetpea pantry, visit their website.

Note: I was sent a selection of mixes for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Crafts: How to make lolly stick Christmas decorations

Now it’s mid-November, I’m really starting to get stuck into some Christmas crafts. I made some beautiful button decorations at my craft club last week and over the weekend I had a root through my craft stash to see what we could make. I discovered a large and colourful lolly stick collection which were crying out to be turned into Christmas decorations.

Crafts: How to make lolly stick Christmas decorations

Crafts: How to make lolly stick Christmas decorations

You will need:
A selection of coloured lolly sticks
Bostik Glu Dots
Assorted embellishments – glitter, stars, sequins etc
Bostik White Glue
Scissors
Sticky tape
Ribbon

Crafts: How to make lolly stick Christmas decorations

How to make your lolly stick Christmas decorations

To make a Christmas tree, select some green lolly sticks and another stick for the trunk of the tree. With a pair of scissors carefully cut your lolly sticks to different lengths (see the photo). Using Glu Dots, stick a star to the top of your trunk and then stick the green branches across the trunk. Using white glue decorate your tree with sequins, stars and other embellishments. Leave to dry.

Crafts: How to make lolly stick Christmas decorations

Once dry, carefully attach a loop of ribbon to the back of the tree using sticky tape. Your lolly stick Christmas tree is now complete.

To make a Christmas star, select some colourful lolly sticks, I chose pink. Using Glu Dots, stick the lolly sticks across each other to make a start shape (see photo). Using white glue decorate your star with sequins, stars and other embellishments. Leave to dry.

Crafts: How to make lolly stick Christmas decorations

Once dry, carefully attach a loop of ribbon to the back of the star using sticky tape. Your lolly stick Christmas star is now complete.

My son and I really enjoyed making and decorating our Christmas tree and star. It’s a lovely craft to do with kids and they can really use their imagination when it comes to decorating them. These lolly stick crafts are a simple but effective craft to do in the run up to Christmas.

I am a Bostik craft blogger and I was sent the materials to create this lolly stick craft from Craft Merrily. 
Check out my other craft tutorials here!

Crafts: How to make lolly stick Christmas decorations

A letter to my son on his 7th birthday

Each year on my son’s birthday I like to write a blog post for him to look back on in later life. Today my son is 7 and growing up fast. He’s changing in a thousand different ways each day and each week. It’s hard to capture all the changes and all of our adventures in a few paragraphs, but I’ll try.

Dear Ben,

Today you are seven years old and growing up fast. I couldn’t be prouder to be your mum. In the last year we’ve had some grand adventures and I hope we will have many many more.

A letter to my son on his 7th birthday

Being six hasn’t always been easy, we’ve been learning to live without your Grandad and we’ve said goodbye to a few special people who I know you miss. You’ve been brave at hospital appointments and you’ve taken everything in your stride. You are a star and I wish I could take every needle and test for you, but I can’t.

Seven. I can’t believe my tiny baby is now a seven year old boy. You’ve grown tall, you’ve grown strong and you’re growing into a funny, charming, chatty boy. You’re working hard at school and I can’t ask for anything more than for you to try hard and listen to your teachers.

We’ve done such fun things while you were six. Penny the crazy puppy burst into our lives and we’ve watched her grow up. We had that brilliant holiday in Ribby Hall, just the two of us, remember? We went to Lapland UK and met Father Christmas. We’ve been rock-pooling, we’ve met sharks and otters, we had that great break in Blackpool where we saw the circus, danced on the prom, rode a donkey and just had a brilliant time together. Shall we do that again?

Keep having brilliant times, keep making brilliant memories and keep being brilliant.

A letter to my son on his 7th birthday

We’ve got so many hopes and dreams for you this year my love. We want you to work hard and try hard at school and to carry on reading and learn to love books as much as I did at your age. We’d like you to recognise how special you are, how kind, caring, lovely and funny you are. We want you to be confident and happy in yourself. We want you to know, really know that you are loved and adored by us.

I want you to be happy, I want you to love life and enjoy everything about it. Enjoy being seven Ben, it’s a great age to be and I hope you’ll let me join you on a few of your adventures this year.

Happy birthday my beautiful boy!

All my love, Mummy xxx

The BlogOn Xmas Jumper Linky - Who am I?

Premier League Writing Stars Kids Poetry Competition

This month I’ve been finding out more about the Premier League Primary Stars programme which is currently being used in over 10,000 primary schools across England and Wales. Primary Stars helps to develop literacy, numeracy, PE and PSHE skills in the schools, with all participating being linked up to and supported by their local football teams. My son’s school has had several exciting visits from Manchester City FC players to help motivate and encourage pupils.

Premier League Writing Stars Kids Poetry Competition

Primary Stars has recently launched a fantastic kids poetry competition, with winning entries being published in a book. Other prizes include author-led writing workshops and Premier League Trophy school visits, as well as poems being read aloud by football stars.

Premier League Writing Stars is open to all primary schools in England and Wales and aims to get pupils writing poetry in different creative forms, whether it be in a rap, song lyrics or haiku.

The great news is, the first 1,000 schools to enter the competition will also receive a bespoke “Book Bag” of poetry which is great for expanding school libraries and encouraging a love of poetry.

For more information on how to enter Writing Stars click this link.

The Writing Stars competition invites schoolchildren aged 5-11 to write around the theme of resilience; what does it mean to you to try and try again? Have a look at this brilliant advert from the Premier League Primary Stars campaign, where footballers and children recite the William Hickson poem “Try, Try Again”.

A few famous faces have had a go at writing a poem on the try, try again theme and they’re brilliant. Take a look at the poetry of Alan Shearer, Ben Shephard and Alex Scott (female footballer who has played for England and Arsenal).

All Writing Stars entries will be read by a panel of judges including former Chelsea midfielder and children’s author Frank Lampard; Lauren Child, the author-illustrator of the Charlie and Lola series and Waterstones Children’s Laureate; Yannick Bolasie, the Everton winger and lyricist; and Young People’s Laureate for London, Caleb Femi.

The closing date is 22nd December.

How can you get involved?

Primary Stars is a fantastic scheme for primary schools to get involved in. They have a huge range of free resources for teachers to use, so it is worth checking with your child’s teacher to see if they are using Primary Stars already.

Get writing! I’ll be showing my son the advert and talking to him about resilience and how try, try and trying again is the secret to success in all things. We will also be having a go at writing a little poem at home.

Reading and writing poetry at home is a great way to encourage a love of the written word. Poetry doesn’t have to be hard work. You can write a limerick, haiku, sonnet or song. You can even write a rap. It doesn’t matter what you do, the goal is to enthuse children and encourage them to love learning!

Toy Review: Chocolate Egg Surprise Maker

My son is addicted to watching those egg opening videos on YouTube, which means he gets pretty excited when he’s given a chocolate egg of his own. Give him a Kinder egg and he is one happy boy. I wondered if his enthusiasm for opening and eating chocolate eggs would translate into enthusiasm for making them. There was only one way to find out, we put a Chocolate Egg Surprise Maker to the test.

Toy Review: Chocolate Egg Surprise Maker

The Chocolate Egg Surprise Maker came with everything you need to make your chocolate eggs, except the chocolate, so we used some organic chocolate from Indigo Herbs as I’d been making chocolate that day.

The instructions are long and a bit too complicated for my six year old to process, so I sat down and read them through twice. You get two plastic pods and four egg “shells” which you put your surprise in before you make you egg. The kit also includes some small bags to melt the chocolate in, foil to wrap the finished eggs in as well as the egg maker.

The process is fairly simple, but we found the whole thing quite messy, so be prepared for that. Each plastic pod had a small hole in, presumably to ensure excess chocolate squirts out, but unfortunately when I spun the chocolate maker to make sure the egg was evenly coated, melted chocolate oozed out of the holes and flew across my freshly painted kitchen.

Toy Review: Chocolate Egg Surprise Maker

There are many stages to the egg making process and I’d heartily recommend that this should all be done under adult supervision. You put your surprise in the plastic egg, grease your pod, fill the syringe bag with melted chocolate. Clip your pod into the chocolate maker and squirt your chocolate into the pod. Turn the handle on the chocolate maker several times to ensure that the egg has been covered by chocolate and then put the pod in the freezer to set.

I’d heard that the eggs could be tricky to remove from the pods once they’d set, so I sprayed each pod with cooking oil, which did help them pop out. To set them I put the eggs in the freezer for the recommended half an hour, but they still weren’t set so I left them for a couple of hours.

I was disappointed when we removed the eggs from the pods as the eggs weren’t evenly covered with chocolate, which on closer inspection seemed to be because the chocolate had leaked out of the little hole. But we had made some chocolate eggs, so I wrapped them up in the foil and offered them out that evening for pudding.

Toy Review: Chocolate Egg Surprise Maker

My son was very excited to be opening his own Chocolate Egg Surprise. Unfortunately (and this could have been because of the chocolate I used but I couldn’t be 100% sure) the chocolate eggs didn’t crack open into two distinct halves and had to be scraped off the plastic egg with a spoon.

The Chocolate Egg Surprise Maker is aimed for children aged 6+. My son enjoyed the process and the thought of making his own eggs, but was ultimately a bit underwhelmed that they weren’t as impressive or as easy to eat as bought chocolate eggs are.

Toy Review: Chocolate Egg Surprise Maker

I think if I had lots of time on my hands to experiment with different kinds of chocolate for this, it might have improved the outcome a little. It’s worth remembering that this is a toy and not a piece of kitchen equipment. If you’ve got a patient child who enjoys process heavy activities and likes cleaning up after themselves, then they would probably quite like this.

The Chocolate Egg Surprise Maker is currently available from Amazon for £19.99.

We were sent this Chocolate Egg Surprise Maker for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own. Contains an affiliate link.

Me Too: I was the victim of sexual assault

I think everyone, or almost everyone must have a Me Too story. I know men and women who’ve been touched up, harassed, stalked, assaulted or raped. It’s never been a case of asking for it, or dressing provocatively; it’s about power, intimidation and a distinct lack of understanding about boundaries.

I have several Me Too stories, but the one which affected me the most and gave me PTSD happened in 2009. At the time I was working in a hospital. I was assaulted by a mentally ill man who I was trying to get to a different hospital where he could get the help he needed. Instead he trapped me in a clinic room and put his hands all over me, whispering filth and intimidation into my ear. My flesh crawls just thinking of it.

It was a couple of hours of my life I’ve tried very hard to forget. I speak about it infrequently; it’s not a secret but it’s an incident I tend to talk about in a nonchalant way, to try and make the horror of that afternoon much less than it was.

The incident was very much brushed under the carpet. He was whisked off by security and deposited in an ambulance, never to darken our door again. I was made a cup of tea and told to fill in a report. Nothing was ever done about it, I was encouraged not to take it further. I was told things like this happen all the time to nurses so I was making a fuss about nothing. They told me to put it to one side and get on with my life.

I tried to forget but I couldn’t.

Over the next few weeks and months I developed PTSD symptoms. I swallowed them down, ignored what I could and tried to normalise the rest. All of which were the worst things I could have done.

When my husband and I got pregnant some months later, every instinct I had to protect the life inside me kicked in and my PTSD and anxiety went into overdrive. I’d walk through the corridors of the hospital measuring my breath to keep the panic down. I’d be physically ill at the thought of being duty manager that day and putting my unborn baby at risk if I was attacked again. I was hyper vigilant and scared the whole time at work.

I sometimes wonder what I could have done differently. Was I dressed inappropriately? I don’t think so. My work wear would usually make Pauline Fowler look glamorous. Did I encourage him? No, I was friendly and helpful but it was my job to be friendly and helpful. I stepped back, moved away, did what I could to indicate his attentions were unwelcome. I said no, I said stop. He didn’t.

It was not me, it was him.

Did he do it because he fancied me? No, I don’t think so. He did it because he could and because I was new and unsure and easy prey and he was very ill. I can almost forgive him. Almost.

Ultimately it was my employers responsibility to protect me and they didn’t. It was their job to give me aftercare and make sure I was ok. They didn’t. There was a lot of wrong and not much right about the whole situation, which is a shame.

There should have been a slightly happier ending for me, but there wasn’t. After I finished my maternity leave I went back to work. The daily panic attacks returned but were much worse. I went off sick with stress and knew working there would be impossible. I had an incredibly unsupportive new manager who bullied me out of my job, and that was it, my once promising NHS career was over. Over because a man put his hands on me and triggered a course of events I couldn’t control.

So yes, me too.

Me Too: I was the victim of sexual assault

Meal Planning Monday – Costly Convenience Foods

This week, despite being organised and strict with my spending, I’ve still ordered over £100 worth of food for us. Our house is currently the house of the plague, so I’ve planned a few convenience food meals to make mealtimes a bit easier this week. That’s almost certainly helped bump up the cost of mealtimes.

When I sit down and plan our meals for the next week or so, I also write a shopping list. This makes me feel really organised. When I shop online I tend to use MySupermarket because I feel like to helps me to shop in a more pocket friendly way. If I need tinned tomatoes and I’m not fussed about the brand; then I can easily find the cheapest or what’s on offer. I feel like a super savvy shopper when I do this.

You’d think with me being very careful about what I buy it would mean I had a fairly modest shopping bill. Not so, somehow I’ve just spent £100 on about 9 days worth of food for three people; not including the dog. Admittedly this week I’ve bought more convenience foods than normal, because I’ve got a chest infection and I’m feeling quite poorly. I don’t have the energy or inclination to stand in the kitchen cooking from scratch every night.

Despite this, I think I’ve put together a fairly wholesome menu for the next seven days. What do you think?

Meal Planning Monday - Costly Convenience Foods

Admittedly I’ve bought in the kofta, meatballs, pie and burgers, but the rest will be cooked from scratch. I’ve tried to offset some of the convenience aspect by adding healthier sides and not beating myself up about it.

I’m veggie and I know I need to eat to get well but my appetite isn’t great at the moment. Where the boys are eating meat I’ve planned a veggie substitute. I’ve treated myself to a Linda McCartney pie for on Friday and I’ll have chopped up Quorn sausage instead of meatballs. Incidentally the Quorn meatballs are the best in the business, but sadly not yet available from Morrisons.

So that’s our menu for the week. It’s not exactly adventurous, but it should be fairly easy to prepare and keep us going until we’re all at the other side of the various bugs we’ve got.

What do you think of our menu?