Category: Reviews

1. Why we love everything "little"

   Posted on 3:33pm Tuesday 9th Jul 2013

   

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   We were recently asked if we would like to review the new Little Us dolls and with two girls in our house, how could we say no? The Little Us dolls are a gorgeous range of rag dolls each with different personalities and we have had lots of fun with them creating new adventures for Amelia and Chloe.
   

   

   My eldest daughter may think she is too cool these days but she loves Amelia because she is a little bit shy, she likes to read my books and look after animals (well that's what we were told). Lots of dolls targeted at young girls are too sexy, too old and frankly too expensive but the Little Us dolls strike a happy balance of affordable and adorable.

   

   My youngest daughter loves blonde haired Chloe. We are told that Chloe likes singing and dancing all the time and when she grows up she wants to be a princess or fairy. (sounds like someone else we know). The Little Us dolls are designed for children aged 2+ and are super soft and perfect for sleepy cuddles.

   

   The Little Us dolls are sure to be high on the Christmas lists this year and when you can get them for less than £10 on Amazon, they would make perfect gifts for little girls. My mum always said that the best things come in little packages and the Little Us dolls stand testament to this!

    

2. Can you feed a family of four on £10? #cbias

   Posted on 8:55pm Monday 8th Jul 2013

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   For the avoidance of doubt, I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client. Now the formalities are out of the way, let me tell you about our £10 challenge!

   How often do we really think about what we are spending? I don’t mean in total, I mean when we are throwing things into our shopping trolleys or online baskets, are we really conscious of how it is adding up? My eldest daughter is now in Junior school and we have weekly homework on multiplication and division and whilst I may moan at her to do it each week, she actually has a good knack for maths, so when we were set the challenge to create a yummy family meal for £10, we put her in charge of the calculations.

   

   So off we trooped to the Asda store in Minworth, Birmingham, which despite being by my parents’ house, is actually quite a rare event for me when I do most of my shopping, including the groceries, online. I was pleasantly surprised to find ample parent and child parking spaces, as given the hot weather I was expecting it to be heaving with people buying BBQ food. Both children wanted to get in the trolley, which meant we needed a big trolley (although we didn’t have a spare pound coin for the smaller trolley anyway. It still baffles me why they have a coin release on those and the bigger ones don’t?) and so we entered the lovely cool store.

   Even upon entering, we were still unsure of what we were actually going to buy as our meal. It has been so hot over the last few days that we haven’t really felt like cooking or eating big meals so as we were browsing round, we thought a cooked chicken would be a good idea. We navigated our way through the busy aisles towards the hot food counter and my daughter asked the question "are these the same price as a normal chicken" and to her credit, she found that the fresh chickens were considerably cheaper, leaving much more of our budget to spend on other things.

   

   I am most definately not the gourmet chef in our house but with the weather being so scorching hot outside, the inclination to create a full on meal was fairly non existent. Thankfully both my girls love their veg, (which can sometimes be a challenge in itself when we dine out as everything seems to come with chips and beans) so we chose some seasonal veg to go with the garlic chicken and some garlic potatoes .... good job we are only kissing each other! They all came freshly sealed in ready to cook foil tins, which was not only handy but reduced the washing up too!!

   

   The chief estimator told us that we had just over £1 left, so she went off in search of something for dessert and came back with Moshi Monster cakes. It wouldn't have been my choice but she was so excited that she had found something in the budget, who was I to argue?

   So in the end, we had a fresh chicken, flavoured with garlic and herbs, seasonal vegetables including courgettes and aubergines, garlic potatoes and cabbage. Asda have a great range of "ready to cook" vegetables so it really was a case of popping it in the oven and waiting for it to be cooked. (now that is my kind of cooking). One thing I was really pleased with about our shop was that we didn't have to buy the cheapest or "budget" options, to meet our £10 challenge.

   

   I have to admit that the Moshi Monster cakes were a little more labour intensive but the girls really got involved in the mixing (and testing of the cake mix - obviously) and I had to get involved with the extra cleaning of the cake covered floor. They had a great time, with big sister assuming responsibility for reading the instructions (she is quite good at literacy aswell as maths! She must take after her mother!). In the end the cakes looked more like little green blobs than cakes but apparently that was the point and for £1, it certainly kept them captivated.

    

   Grocery shopping is usually a one man (or woman's) job in our house, usually by me ordering online late at night, so it was great to get us all involved with the meal selection and even the cake making!

   The savings in store are undeniable and as someone who doesn't shop instore on a regular basis, I can see the benefits. However, unless you bring your 8 year old (or a calculator), you don't really take account of the things you are adding into your trolley and with so many good deals on offer, it is easy for the shopping bill to mount up. Asda really do seem to have everything, including toys, games, sweets and everything else that entices children ..... not to mention the musical ride on's that are always so conveniently placed by the front door, so whilst we had great fun with our £10 challenge, it wasn't quite enough to stop me ordering (and budgeting) online.

   As for the £10 challenge .... I think we did pretty good!

    

    

3. End of Year Teacher Gifts

   Posted on 9:00pm Thursday 4th Jul 2013

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   There are some massively differing views on the end of year Teachers Gift, so before I go any further I need to confess something. I am THAT mother. You all know the type, the kind that happily does a collection at the end of term and the type that other mums either love or hate. I admit that I like or organise and co-ordinate, being a PA for over 15 years means this is part of my make up but when my eldest daughter was in Reception class at her new school, she had two teachers and two teaching assistants and I can tell you now, Christmas that year was expensive! So when one of the other mums suggested doing a collection, I thought it was a great idea and somehow assumed the role of organiser.

   Some of the mums at school don't contribute and arrange their own thing whilst some are just eternally grateful not to have to think about it. Whichever camp you fall in, either works for me.

   Over the years the teachers have had a variety of gifts, from handcrafted plant pots, personalised plaques to the trusted gift voucher and this year will be no different. The donation to a collection doesn't always mean that the gift loses its personal touch.

   When we were approached by Asda to review their range of teachers gifts, I was interested to see what a large supermarket chain could offer in terms of the personal touch, so when these items landed on the doorstep, I was pleasantly surprised.

   

   My daughter has a love of cuddly toys (her bedroom stands testament to this), so she absolutely adored the cuddly cow and we thought that the mug was a nice touch for their teaching assistant. The range is much bigger than this with pen pots, keyrings and sticky note pads but with all the items under £5, it won't break the bank.

   I firmly believe that a teachers gift should be a token of appreciation, whether that is a handmade card, a well thought out present or a gift card, every school and every teacher is different. I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Maggy Woodley a few weeks ago and managed to get a very personalised signed copy of her book Red Ted Art for our teacher, which will be part of her end of year gift from the class.

   So whilst some of us mums may not be as craft minded as others (or indeed as Maggy Woodley), the gift is always very personal, thought out and given with thanks.

4. Plum Baby : Little Foodies : Review

   Posted on 2:13pm Monday 24th Jun 2013

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   We are all about providing natural solutions on the Lilypad blog but as parents, we are realists too. With my eldest daughter, I remember cooking, steaming, pureeing food till it was packed into every possible container and space in my fridge and freezer as I wanted her to have the most natural, organic food choices but when my youngest daughter arrived, I realised that becoming a frenzied cook, this wasn't always practical and I found Plum Baby!

   I have loved the ease of their foods, how natural they are and ultimately how much my daughter loved them. So I was a little sad as we went through our baby led weaning stages that we moved away from these foods but delighted when Plum asked us to review their new range of products the "Little Foodies" range!

   The sales blurb tells us that; "When Plum polled more than 2,000 of their Plum parents online, they found  that 65% of them were concerned about the impact of early-years eating on a child's future health, and no wonder - studies have shown that what we feed little ones in the first few years can have a real impact on their eating habits for life. That's one big reason they decided to offer these super-nutritious meals for older tots, complete with at least two of a toddlers daily portions of vegetables - because the sooner our kids learn to appreciate the wonderful flavours of veg, the healthier their choices will tend to be later on. The Little Foodies meals are full of exciting flavours, from savoury ragu to tangy tagine, and are carefully crafted to encourage little ones to love their food. They come in convenient, easy-to-serve dishes to encourage tots aged 1-3 years to feed themselves, and the chunky texture (including chewy bits like whole raisins and peas) will help them develop the jaw and tongue muscles they need for good language development".

   So what did our tiny tester think?

   Well she definately has her Dad's taste buds for good flavour and has never been huge fan of bland foods, so the Little Foodies range has been a huge hit. The stronger the flavour the better. She generally turns her nose up at "baby food", much prefering to eat the same as her big sister, which ultimately goes towards helping her co-ordinatinon (and cleaning of the kitchen floor 3 times a day).

   There are four delicious flavours in the range but our tiny tester adores the Vegetable Biryani with Wholegrain Rice. You don't need to be meat free to enjoy it but it is perfect for young vegetarians as it is a gorgeous mixture of spinach, tomatoes, onions, raisins and chickpeas, flavoured with coconut and mild Indian spices. The good news for busy mums is that it also contains 3 of your toddler's 5-a-day portions of fruit and veg!

   The texture of the Little Foodies range means that the little one thinks she is eating "grown up" food and we have definately not had the plate pushed away once during our reviews. (this is a big achievement, trust me) and we have had shout for "more".

   Mums like me want food that is healthy, natural, not full of preservatives, quick and easy to make but full of goodness for our children. It seems like a tall order .... but sometimes it is about being "Little".

   The Little Foodies range get a big thumbs up from this mum and my tiny tester!