My blog year in review: Part 2

Time to finish off what I started in Part 1 with the second part of the year from July to December 2011:


July


This was the month I spent an awful lot of time getting my benefits re-instated after they were incorrectly removed! I made good use of my MP Tim Farron to get a resolution - eventually... In contrast to this my children had some ideas for a future new husband for me. I also got a chance to showcase my grandparents in The Gallery.


This was the month of the first Cumbria Twitnic and I hope to repeat it again. There was a brief foray into a Saturday Recipe Swap and I ought to try that again. I also joined in the Love a Read Book Group a few times over the year. 

View from Loughrigg

My blog year in review: Part 1

It's been an amazing year for my blog which I started back in 2008. This was definitely the year that the blog switched from being purely personal to including reviews and actually started earning me some much needed income.  So much has happened over the last 364 days that I'm breaking this review over 2 days to make it more manageable. 


Part one is the first half of the year from January to June and how I saw it from my blog:


January


This was the month for resolutions and new challenges. These included:

1. 100 Books in a Year - hoping that if I add all the books I read to the children at bedtime I'll have completed this!
2. Fitness Friday - this was a great supportive blog hop that unfortunately dwindled as the year went on but it did help me do really well getting in shape at the start of the year. Lots more work to do! As part of this I became an ambassador for Change4Life
3. I also pledged to work on becoming self sufficient. I haven't 100% succeeded in this but things have improved
4. This was the month I joined Reasons to be Cheerful for the first time. A great blog hop that helps to focus on the positive not dwell on the negative.

The high point of the month was appearing on BBC Radio Cumbria. Amazing where blogging can lead you! The low point of the month and indeed the whole year was the loss of my Granny at the age of 98. A much missed lady she will never be forgotten:

February

I have really tried to use this year to showcase my photographs. Not only through The Gallery and Silent Sunday posts but through stand alone posts such as this one from Bowness. I carried on my great relationship with Treasure Trails Cumbria with their fabulous murder mystery walks.

Karin started a Flashback Friday hop which I really enjoyed taking part in. This was the month I started reviewing iPhone apps with a debut from Peppa Pig. I did also manage a rant about the National Health Service. After signing up to the Become a Mumpreneur course I was quite happy to promote it.

Haba Mums Club: Savoury Breakfast

Sponsored Post

The second item in our latest parcel as Haba Ambassadors was the Savoury Breakfast (RRP £18.99). My daughter had decided that this was her part of the parcel and quickly got the contents out and happily played by herself in a corner with them. The pack contains:

• 1 breakfast board 
• 1 roll
• 1 egg 
• 2 slices of ham
• 2 slices of salami 
• 1 slice of cheese
• a lettuce leaf

The breakfast board itself is made of melamine and appears to be very robust. It appears tough enough to actually handle a "real" breakfast or a cup of tea.


The set is pretty simple. You choose the fillings you want to put into the (magnetic) bun and if required crack open the egg (I can't for life of me crack it but she does it really easily!:

If you do have the egg in the bun then the magnetic bit doesn't work as the yolk is nice and thick! This was my daughter's favourite combination of simply bacon and egg:

Here she is pretending to eat it:

As with all Haba products this set appears to be very well made. Each piece of food is finely detailed with streaks of fat in the bacon and the seeds in the bun.

My daughter and I were very impressed with the magnetic bun as it ensures that the flat ingredients stay inside and don't slip out. This means that if a child was delivering the breakfast to mum or dad in bed then they are likely to actually receive it!

This is a small part of the available kitchen, grocery and role play range from Haba. It does stand alone quite nicely as an individual part. With children too young to bring their parents a real breakfast in bed its a great way to introduce them to providing little treats. They could then move on to using the board for carrying proper food.

Probably because of the board it's quite a pricey product. I have found it on Amazon for £14.85. If your children are really into food role play then it would be a great investment.

Haba Mums Club: Knuckling Knights

Sponsored Post

There is always great excitement in our house when the latest Haba Ambassador's parcel arrives! My children and I have really come to love the Haba brand toys. They always have to lay claim to whichever toy in the parcel they believe is theirs. On this occasion my nearly 5 year old son knew that the Knuckling Knights game (RRP £12.99) was definitely his.


There is a little bit of construction needed to put the game together as you have a tower which slots into the board and a trapdoor which slides out. They are all made of tough cardboard (although my son managed to tear the folding bit of the tower slightly) with great graphics on them. The game board also has a couple of extra holes in it for catching the knights:

The game was designed by a 7 year old boy called Benjamin and is therefore pretty simple to pick up and play. Each player has a different set of wooden knights and they take it in turns to roll the dice. There are 3 options on the dice:

• 1 - place one knight in the tower
• 2 - place two knights in the tower
• Door - open the trapdoor

It is nice and easy to understand even for a young child as the game is for ages 4 to 99!

My son's favourite part of the game was pulling out the trapdoor and making the knights tumble down:

Some will fall down the holes but others can be returned to the players. The person who opened the trapdoor gets to capture one each of their opponents knights that are left on the board. The rest are returned to each player. There is a way to rescue a knight back from your opponent with a little rhyme when you roll a door but the tower is empty.

A round ends when a player doesn't have enough knights left to put in the tower to fulfil their dice roll. The player or players with the most knights left are awarded a coin. The game then restarts and carries on until one player has won 2 coins and is overall winner.

We liked this game as it was quick to set up and easy to learn how to play. It was also quite a short game to play so didn't test the patience of my young son too much. He was keen to play the game lots of times so I'm sure we will get lots of use out of it.

Tuesday Review: Haba Fliffix Catch

Sponsored Post:

This is my fifth product review as a Haba Ambassador and my family are really having great fun trying them out. This one was for the Fliffix Catch which is our first outdoor toy to test it claims to be suitable from 5-99 years of age! Both my children were keen to try it out and when I took the nets and ball in their drawstring bag to the park after school several different children had a go.

The basic concept is that you have to catch the soft ball in your net. There are variations that you can do. The first is to play solo and hit the underside of the net yourself and then try to catch the ball:

You can also have someone throw the ball at your net and try to catch it. The advanced game has both players with nets and taking turns to flick and catch. My 7 year old could manage most of these versions of the game but my 4 year old needed to stick to the simpler versions.

One of his favourites was to get a net lodged into something and play a version of basketball with it:

I loved the fact that the ball and nets are quite soft and light weight. This means that 1) if accidents happen it won't hurt much 2) when you are off on a trip out they are not adding too much to the load. I think that as a family we will get a lot of use out this as a game and it will certainly packed to go camping this summer.

As my daughter discovered you can also have fun not playing the game correctly:

Friday review: Haba Ball Track Sounds Starter Set

Sponsored Post

When I was told that the second batch of toys for my family to review as part of the Haba Mums Club I was really excited as to what it would be. My children and I had loved the previous lot of toys and were hoping that these would give as much pleasure. I have to say that my 4 year old son's facial expression when he saw the ball track box gave me a good idea of how much he was going to enjoy it.

The Ball Track Sounds Starter Set is part of Haba's wooden building blocks and ball track sets range. It can stand alone as a toy or be used in conjunction with other sets. With an RRP of £81.99 it's not the cheapest toy on the market but it looked and felt really high quality.

With my son we had an experiment to see how we could use the different parts to make music with the marbles. As he is only 4 he needed quite a bit of help to work some of it out but I'm sure that over time he will become quite adept. He did manage to incorporate one of our little wooden stools into a run to make it more exciting. The fact that the marbles "played" the musical instruments added to the fun:

A xylophone and drum effect

We enjoyed working together to problem solve getting the marbles to run effectively and to make the most noise! It was a good educational experience as he had to choose different sized blocks to raise the runs to the required height.

My daughter at 7 was keener to have a go without any adult assistance. I persuaded her to first try and copy the picture on the box as I thought they wouldn't have photographed a run that didn't work. My theory proved correct and the children had great fun running the marbles  down the run:

My daughter then went on to experiment more and try her own variations to see what she could do:

She was happy for quite some time experimenting with various combinations some more successful than others. As a starter pack there are a limited number of combinations but a variety of pieces such as a mini tunnels and differing lengths of slide. I can see that having additional sets of wooden blocks would make this a much more versatile toy. There are certainly plenty of tempting additional sets that are available on the Haba web site. If you got this set for your 3-4 year old it would be a good investment for the future plus you would have plenty of chances to add to it when money allowed.

Haba Toys: DIY Benny

This is the third of the Haba toys my family and I have been sent to review. For the technical details please look here. 


The kit comes in a tough cardboard toolbox which looks pretty robust. The box contains quite a comprehensive little tool set (saw, screwdriver, spanner, hammer and drill):

My son's favourite was the drill which you can pull a handle on the back of and it vibrates like a real drill:

All the tools are covered in a soft velour which makes them a lot safer for younger users. I know from experience that small boys tend to turn just about anything into a weapon but it wouldn't hurt too much if one of these hit you. 

At 4.5 my son enjoyed playing with this for a while but hasn't asked to play with it again as he isn't majorly into this particular kind of role play. There isn't much serious DIY done in our home and he hasn't got a daddy around to copy. If you had a 2 - 3 year old who was keen on being a builder this would be a great and safe way to start them off.

I like the way that is neatly contained in the case and it looks like it would stand up to heavy usage by a toddler. Once they get a bit older the tool kit would be a bit more limited as the soft tips can't do as much as hard plastic or wood ones. 

Update: we passed this on to my friend's 1 year old son and apparently he absolutely loves it!

Haba Toys: Discovery Puzzle - Knight's Castle

Sponsored Post

This is my second post as one of the UK Ambassadors for Haba Toys. It's such a pleasure to be able to try out such lovely toys with my children.Today's review centres around the Knight's Castle Discovery Puzzle. This is a jigsaw with a difference and says that it encourages:

• Close observation
• Fine motor skills
• Eye-hand co-ordination

As it is aimed at the 4+ age group I tested it out with my 4 year old son. Sometimes he likes jigsaws and others not but luckily he was keen on this occasion! Once again there is minimal packaging with the puzzle being hard cardboard which is placed inside a cardboard frame to complete it. It was wrapped in plastic to protect it on the shelf and has a paper insert with the look-closely story written on it.

The pieces come out easily and I noticed that the cardboard frame has the shape of the pieces on the base to make it not too difficult for younger children to complete:

Around the edges there are also shapes to assist the children in getting the right pieces in the right places. This made it easier for my son to work out which piece he needed to choose next:

He did some help and encouragement with completing the puzzle but that is partly because he hadn't noticed the shapes on the base of the frame! When his big sister had a go afterwards she used this to complete the puzzle much more quickly. Knights and castles are some of my son's favourite things so he was very pleased when it became more obvious as to what the final picture was going to be:

Once completed I then persuaded him to try and solve the puzzles from the story on the insert. He didn't want me to read the actual story but was good at finding the answers in the puzzle. It does say in the story that your child may not be ready for some of the questions and to just miss them out. He wasn't keen on spotting too many of the picture clues from around the frame on the actual puzzle but I'm sure at a future stage he would do.

One problem with the puzzle was that when I picked it up the puzzle pieces fall out when tilted too far. This could be a bit of a problem when storing it and I may need to get a little bag for the pieces before they go missing.

I will let my daughter properly try out the puzzle and write up her own review for an older child's perspective.

Haba Toys: Charlotte Doll

Sponsored Post


I am delighted that my family has been selected as one of the UK Ambassadors for Haba Toys which are made in Germany. They have traditionally made wooden toys and furniture but are now also working in textiles and porcelain. I have been sent a parcel of toys for the family to try out and review and this is the first of them:

The first thing I liked was the minimal packaging the doll came in. So many toys have such excess packaging its pretty off putting. She was a very attractive doll and my 7 year old instantly wanted to claim her for herself and play with her. On the box it says for age 1 1/2 years upwards so it is intended as a starter level doll.

The doll was nice and soft to hold but nice and firm to play with. She is very made with an embroided face. Her clothes are removable which was an instant attraction to my daughter:

When everything was removed my daughter discovered that Charlotte has a stitched belly button which she found very cute. One problem we found was that it was hard for my daughter to put the skirt back on as it was pretty tight across the doll's bottom - this should ease as the doll is played with for a while. The shoes proved impossible for her to do herself and I had to do them. With a younger child they would need plenty of help to put the doll's clothes back on.


Her clothes are beautifully made and the hat looks like its hand knitted. Details such as pockets on the waistcoat are a nice touch. The clothes supplied allow for a couple of different looks. Looking at the web site there are a couple more outfits you could purchase if you wanted to.


This doll is definitely high quality and feels like it would have a long life as a child's toy. Judging by my daughter's reaction it could bring many years of pleasure. The only downsides we could find was the trickiness of putting some of the clothes/shoes on but this may well get easier with time.


I have a couple more toys to review from this initial bundle over the rest of the week so watch this space!