Competition Wins August 2017

Ok so I recently got back into my old comping hobby!

I used to do VERY well on it and really missed the prizes but didn't have the time.

I restarted comping properly on August 25th and have already had some wins!

So here are my august wins!

August 28th - Fabletics outfit of my choice! I chose this one! rrp £110 - This was from a twitter comp

August 29th - a note block - like a post it not block but branded with the companies logo... twitter comp

August 30th - Valkyrien dvd - twitter comp - amazon price £19.99

August 31st - Sunny D lilo - Facebook comp!

So not a bad start considering ive only been back into comping for a week now! I have already had 2 great wins for September too but more of that next month :) 

Peppa Pig one of the main causes Autism??

Today I read an article online that a group of "experts" at Harvard University had done a study and concluded that peppa pig is "one of the main causes of autism among children".

That is a pretty strong statement to make....

As a mother of an autistic child who attends a special needs school I call total bullsh*t on this

I believe that peppa pig can and does encourage bad behavior in children - Peppa bullies her little brother, is stubborn with her friends, is not polite and generally acts inappropriately getting away with her poor behaviour with no consequences. This is behaviour that may well be copied and has some characteristics of autistic traits however this is just learned bad behaviour that can be over come with good parenting and changing the TV channel. Autism can not be "cured" in this way....

Autism is so much more than the naughty child often stereotyped and the behaviour that can be learned from this TV show.

I would like to question how much time these "experts" have spent with autistic children during their study.... if the children showed more than just behavioral issues, did their social skills start to decline? did their communication come to a halt? did they start to experience ANY other autistic traits other than the stereotyped bad behaviour? Whether there study also showed that when peppa pig was removed from the childrens TV schedule if they returned to having the same behavioural skills of a neurotypical child within time - as of course there is no cure for autism, it is a lifelong condition switching the TV channel wont take that away.

From my own experience and struggles with getting my sons diagnosis if a childs only trait is bad behaviour they will not get an autism disgnosis - they are not handed out to every child who is more naughty than the average child and you really have to fight for your child.

I would love to invite these "experts" to spend a few days with my son and tell me if my sons incontinence, sensory processing disorder, poor communication/ verbal skills, lack of socialising skills which are all his autistic traits as well as his behavioural issues could all be caused by a TV show.

My opinion is autism is one of those things - you either have it or you don't. There is nothing as a parent you can do to prevent your children being on the spectrum, certainly not by banning a TV show!

Cosatto Ooba - 15 Months on Review

Cosatto Ooba longer term owner review

When I purchased my pram I had seen a few reviews from people who had owned it for maybe a month or 2. So after owning mine for 17 months and using it for 15 I have decided to post a review of my thoughts.

I purchased my Ooba on a payment plan with it being paid off in September 2015. I got it through JollyTots on Facebook who were great with random payment amounts and me just paying off what I could afford and when. It cost me £599 and it included a free car seat as it was on promotion at the time.

When it 1st opened I remember being soooo bloody excited! I have had a fair few prams in the past but this was the 1st one I had got brand new! I set it straight up despite baby not being due until the end of November.... I still remember my 1st impressions - they were just wow wow wow I'm in love! The fabric both inside and out were bright, bold and beautiful!

Xanders 1st outing in his pram

My little boy arrived 6 weeks early in October and came out of hospital on November 1st. The 1st photo is of him on his 1st ride on November 2nd, As you can see he was a dinky little man!

My 1st thoughts were that I preferred the front wheels unlocked for more freedom of movement. I love that you can adjust the handle bar for height, My self and my husband are tall so it is nice to be able to adjust it to a comfortable height for us both. You can fit a lot in the shopping basket. I have had 4 bags of food shopping from Sainsburys under there at some points.

One thing we got a lot especially in the early days when we used the carry cot was people stopping us to say how much they loved the pram. No one ever bothered looking in to spy on baby they were too distracted by the pram! The lining and outer complement each other very well and it stands out from the crowd.

While it is such an unusual pram I have found it is not a common one. In my town I have only ever seen one other ooba and that was only on a couple of occasions. I think the main reason for this is that the price is quite high compared to others and few are willing to spend such an amount on a pram. I also think that the more mainstream cosatto giggles are the main and quite more common branch of the cosatto brand.

The carrycot itself is VERY roomy. Xander stayed in his until he was 6 months old. He did start out as a tiny 4lb 9 baby but he didn't stay that way long. He was in 6-9 month clothing by 4 and a half months and became a chunky baby quickly <3  As you can see in these photos Xander managed to sleep just fine in his carry cot and was never bothered by and bumps in the footpaths or road.

The brake on the pram is very easy to operate. Unlike all other prams and buggys I have owned it is not operated by foot but is a little trigger on the right side of the handle bar which is easy to put on and just as easy to take off when you are ready to go again.

 Next I will briefly write about the hold car seat which came with the pram. The adapters for this to be attached to the pram came with it and it is just as easy to click on and off the frame as both the carry cot and seat unit. We are at present a none driving family and it has only been used on very few occasions, leaving the hospital at birth, up and down to the hospital with his meningitis stay at Christmas 2015 and registering his birth. The nurse on scbu at discharge commented on how the chair positioned his head perfectly to stop his chin from dipping to his neck dangerously which left me feeling very confident in the quality of it. I don't really have much more to say about it as it has been so lightly used.

Xander moved into the seat unit of his pram at 6 months old. The 1st thing we noticed was just how much space he had and that we thought it would be lasting him a very long time. 

The foot muff is very warm and snug and perfect for winter months. It pushes just as easily with the seat unit attached as to what it does with the carry cot!

One of the things you can do with a simple flick of a switch is move the handle bar over the top of the seat with out having to move the seat to switch the pram from parent to world facing. While I do think this is a great feature I do not like how it feels pushing the pram with the small wheels by my own feet and the big wheels further away. I find it very difficult to push this way so the only time I use this feature is when we are places like picnic benches and we want to swing the handle out of the way so we can push the pram closer to the table.


The seat unit can be easily removed from the frame and placed back on the frame so that the wheels are in the best placement for a world facing stroll! I have to admit I still at 15 months much prefer Xander facing towards me as we chat away constantly when out and about but when the time is right it he will be able to be comfortably turned to face the world.

 Please note in the next couple photos I havent got the bumper bar cover on that matches the pram... some silly person (me) took it off and lost it for a few months!

As Xander grows the seat has remained roomy and comfortable for him.

We did buy a stroller at one point to use but decided we still much preferred having him in the ooba for now. For one thing the seat is actually bigger than a stroller one.








I anticipate that Xander will be in his Ooba until spring 2018. He still fits very well in it and I am sure he will next winter too so I think we will be looking at moving him on from it in around a year when he is wanting to be in and out of his buggy more to walk around.

The Ooba comes with a 4 year warranty from cosatto.

I have heard of people also using their warranty to have things like the brake checked out and to have it looked over to make sure it is in good enough working condition to use for another baby after lots of use.  From what I have seen myself and heard from others Cosatto are great at honoring the warranty for the full 4 years.

My over all thoughts on the pram is that it is a stunning and practical baby item and one that will hold its quality for many years. While the price does seem high for a pram it is in line with other leading prams and in fact lower cost than many. It is a unique pram that you wont see 20 other people pushing around town when you go for a walk and it is always highly complimented by others. It pushes beautifully and folds quite well too, although wheels may need to be removed to fit into some car boots. Both the carry cot and seat unit are roomy and will allow great comfort for any baby. The warranty is a huge selling point on it and something that allows for you to know that it will be suitable to use for more than 1 baby in time.

Simply perfect!

ActiDerm 7 Day shred Review

I recently discovered ActiDerm through a friend and after seeing a few good results on her facebook profile I decided to give it a try.

I ordered through her weblink and it cost £25 plus £4.50 postage. I ordered late on Tuesday evening and it arrived by courier on Thursday morning :)


1st impressions - The packaging looks pretty (yes a bit sad to take note of this but it was is scratty packaging and didn't look pretty I would have mentioned that haha)






What was in the box?

7 Sachets of the shake - I chose banana. A bottle of hydra slim and a leaflet which explains how to follow the plan.

How do you do it?

Right its pretty simple - you start the day off with a 100 cal breakfast (I tended to have a couple toffee weightwatcher yoghurts at 55 cals each) you have a shake for lunch and a 500 cal dinner. You cant have fizzy drinks or alcohol and you need to drink as much water as you can manage (I had around 2 litres daily) Also you put 20mls of the hydraslim into 500mls of water at the start of the day and sip it through the day until you have finished it.

The shakes I had were really nice and I enjoyed the taste. They are mixed with water and you can make it thicker or thinner to your liking my adding more or less water. I found that 250mls was perfect for me. The hydraslim was ok too, it didn't taste bad to me but obviously different people have different tastes :) - on the subject of hydraslim it would probably be useful to say what it is - it helps to speed metabolism, boosts energy, supresses appetite, cleanses the body and rids of toxins, helps with water retention and gas elimination.

How did I do?

I wont lie, I found the 1st couple days really tough. I usually drink a lot of diet coke so the sudden caffeine withdrawals did give me a headache but it soon passed. I did great every day until after tea when I started really wanting to raid the fridge for any thing and every thing so after the 1st 2 days I cut my dinner down to 400 calories and saved 100 for a pack of snack a jacks later on in the night when the munchies kicked in. This worked great for me. I mainly had varying salads from chicken, to fish and prawns but I did have a stir fry one night too with lots of vege.

At the end of the week I lost a grand total of................. 11lbs!! I also went down a jean size which is fab.
I now intend to repeat every 4 weeks and stick to a 1200 cal diet in the 3 weeks in between. I have quite a lot of weight to lose - 4 babies worth actually but I'm hoping I will feel comfortable enough in my own skin by the summer to be able to wear dresses this year.

Hopefully In a couple months my before photos wont be so hideous that I will be able to update this post with some before and after photos :)






If you would like to order or see what the current shake flavours are you can do so here

January 2017 update

I thought I would add in a quick update on this post as I have noticed there seems to be quite a lot of views coming in at the moment as it is on page 2 of google search results for 7 day shred. I am now an extra 3 stone 1lb down since this post was published. I have been following the slimming world plan since april last year and have done an additional 7 day shred when my losses started to slow down in the summer. On my 2nd shred I lost 6lbs and this was after already being on a healthy eating plan for quite a long time so I was very impressed with that after already losing a significant amount of time. 

Im hoping to lose a further 2 stone this year and will be doing a post christmas finally getting back on the wagon shred in a of couple weeks time! Im hopeful to lose 7lbs if not more on it this time as I have been eating far too much rubbish recently so im hopeful that the loss will be bigger than the one i had when i was already being healthy! I am told that the shred is now £27.50 and new variations and a bigger bottle of the hydraslim are now in it. I will do an update next month with my latest results









Please note I have not been paid for the review or provided with any free products, I purchased the shred myself and have given an honest review of my own experience.

10 months later....

I have a terrible habbit with this blog. I post for a while then I dont post for a very long while..... any way 10 months since my last post and things have all changed again!!

Lexi is now 8, Logan is now 6, Dexter is 3

and........

Meet Xander

This gorgeous little boy arrived on October 16th, 6 weeks early. I had a difficult pregnancy with him from bleeding, slow growth, tacycardia and lack of movement. He had a difficult start and was transferred away from Scarborough to York Hospital within a couple hours of his birth due to breathing difficulties. He came home on November 1st. That wasnt the end of it though the little monkey ended up spending a week in hospital with viral meningitis coming out 2 days before christmas. He is healthy now though, keeping his mummy and daddy busy and awake at all hours :) 

Im going to make more of an effort from now on to blog daily with reviews, family things and any thing else I feel like annoying the internet with :) 

xoxo 

 

Logans turn for a youtube video

Logan is now 5 and a half and was in January dianosed as being autistic. It had been obvious to us for a couple of years but the diagnosis did take a long time. Logan wanted to make his own egg opening video for youtube as he is totally obsessed with them :) Here he is :) Im sure you will be able to tell he has a significant speech delay this is something that we are getting help with but speech therapy isnt easy to get help with in our area at the moment.

Editing to add that Logans youtube hero has commented on his video - Logan is now a very happy chappy x

Yankee Candle Review - Are they worth the money?

For Christmas this year I received a large yankee candle from my husband. I had never had a yankee before as I always thought that they were way over priced. I got the cinnamon stick scent and I have to say  do love cinnamon. He knows me well! Any way the 1st time I lit the candle Lexi decided "It smells of salmon and baked cheese" Trust her to think of that of all things?! I on the other hand thought the scent was fantastic, it made the house smell festive some how and more homely. On a night when going to bed I could smell it in my bedroom at the opposite end of the house and up a set of stairs, it truly did follow me around the house. 

I lit the candle every single night for 3 hours from Christmas eve until 5 nights ago when it finally. Yankee do reccomend not letting it burn for longer than 3 hours but I did on a few occasions let it go over. So it had around 200 hours burn time in total. 

When you think of the price per hour burn time with the average large jar being £20 I don't think 10p an hour is bad going at all! 

I did feel sad when the candle would no longer light and I found myself desperate to get a new one. So I have now bought a few others to try out. I got 2 medium jars pink dragon fruit and vanilla cupcake, and 1 small jar icicles. 

Now I have to say as much as I love the scent of icicles I wont be buying another small jar. I can see it is going down quickly and value for money wise I would rather put a few extra pounds towards the next size up. It is very small, I only paid £5 for it but if I paid the average retail price of £7.99 I would feel quite disappointed. I would maybe consider getting one for a gift to pad a present out if it was on offer but I wouldn't go out of my way to get another small jar.

I ordered the jars and hadn't smelt them before purchasing and when I 1st had a sniff of the vanilla cupcake I wasn't too keen and did regret buying it. I thought it was quite heavy going and smelt very sickly. However since lighting it the scent is growing on me. It isn't quite as strong when lit and smells more sweet than sickly.

Pink Dragon fruit smells delicious obviously it smells very fruity and just like cinnamon stick I can smell it every where in the home. If you are thinking of buying a yankee but cant decide which to try out 1st this is the one I would highly recommend. Its beautiful, strong but not over bearing and the colour is pretty too :) 

Icicles is another lovely scent. I got it purely because of the robin on the label and that it looked pretty. Im sure I wont be the only one that got it for these reasons. It does seem to be a wintery scent but not as festive as cinnamon stick. If I was to describe it I would say that it is slightly minty, with a touch of cinnamon and forestry. A lovely smell.

All of the yankees can be smelt all around the house, I do think cinnamon stick had the strongest effect with this. Also the candles do have a slight warming effect too :) I wont say you will save any money off the gas bill but it is nice to have a tiny bit more heat in these chilly months.

So to answer the question are yankee candles worth the money? My answer would be yes for the large and medium jars and probably not for the smaller ones. 

I am already planning my next purchase which will be black cherry although I have been dropping lots of hints for mothers day so who knows :)

World book day 2015

For world book day this year only Lexi wanted to dress up, Logan wanted to go to School in his uniform and Dexter is too little to really be bothered this year. So we decided to have a bash at making Lexi a unique outfit :) Here is our very unique interpretation of the mad hatter :) 

We made the hat from a card box that Dexters train table came in and covered it with some old fabric and added feathers :) I made the tutu too just to add a bit more uniqueness to the outfit :) Lexi loved her out fit and its the 1st time we have made a proper effort for the dress up days. We usually just send her in what ever we can find in her wardrobe!







Best of all, the crazy child also won best dressed character for her class :D She is a very happy hatter tonight :)

DextersPlayTime - Youtube videos unboxing and playing

We have started a little youtube channel for Dexter. We are going to do a few review videos on there but its mostly for videos of Dexter playing and unboxing toys etc :)

We got Dexter a new toy today and here is his 1st youtube video :) Very happy little chappy xx


Dexters 1st video

3 and a half years later....

Wow I was setting up a new family blog today and instead thought I would just continue on this one that I had already started :)

Any way.... A LOT has changed since my last post back in Oct 2011. 1st of all Lexi is now 7 and in Junior School and Logan is now 5 and has been diagnosed as autistic and is attending school full time with a 1 on 1 helper. The biggest change though is the arrival of Dexter back in July 2012. He is an adorable little charmer.

Well the reason for restarting this blog is that all 3 kids are obsessed with youtube toy review videos and Lexi asked if she could do some videos to go on youtube to show people so I thought why not I love doing reviews and it will be fun to get the kids involved again and do it on the blog too.

We will be doing our 1st review video on Monday where Dexter will be showing some of his favourite toys :)

Thanks for reading we are all looking forward to doing our 1st video :)