The Real Life of a Wannabe Superwoman
Things we’ve used and what we thought of them
If you’re going off on holiday and need to stock up on some new games for the journey, the Spiders and Spouts mini game set from Orchard Toys is one to add to your travel bag.
One of a selection of mini games from Orchard Toys – there’s Crocodile Snap, Build a Beetle, Little Bus Lotto, Penguin Pairs and Dinosaur Dominoes, Animal Match, Animal Families, Little Bug Bingo, Llamas in Pyjamas, and more – Spiders and Spouts is a take on the classic Snakes and Ladders, but in travel size.
My girls love role play. If 20 years from now they’re both actresses, I’d not be in the least bit surprised. They can spend their days lost in play, if I don’t pull them away to do something ‘more constructive’. So when I saw the Character Options Easy Braids machine, I knew it would be one they’d have fun with.
The Easy Braids machine is a plastic jobbie with three funnels through which you thread the hair you want braided, then you press the button and just like that, lovely braided hair.
Another game review today as I’ve been really slack in getting these games online, even though we’ve been playing them for weeks! Today’s game is super for anyone who loves word building games – the game is Word Has It! by University Games, and it’s best suited to those who can actually read.
The idea of Word Has It is to build the longest word you can within the given time limit, the given starting letter and the given category. So to start, you choose a category card – say ‘something that grows’ – then you spin the spinner and get a letter – say “F” – then hit the timer and you have a few seconds to come up with a word, find the letters and stack them to create a word. The winner is the person who has the longest word in the given time.
Read more: “Word Has It!” Game Review
Sunday is National Unplugging Day and one of the ways to go gadget free as a family is to stack up a bunch of board games and spend the day lazing about playing as a family. One of the games we’ve been loving recently is a Ravensburger game called I Found It.
Eye Found It is a fantastic game!
Read more: “Eye Found It” Game Review
We’ve had three camping trips, visitors, sickness and all sorts over the last couple of months, and while it’s been fun (and not) one of the things that’s suffered a fair bit has been any sort of ‘blog schedule, and with it, some of the things I’ve been promising to write about – like the BABYBorn Interactive Bath Tub my girls received months ago now!
Read more: Water & Bead Play With The BABY Born Interactive Bath Tub {Review}
Rubbing Alcohol for kids? Well, yes, indeed! The new series of ‘party dolls’ as my 7 year old calls the latest range of Project MC2 dolls, all dressed up for the Maywood Glen art opening, involves dressed up characters with a new range of experiments to try out and enjoy.
We received the Camryn Coyle doll with the Tie Dye experiment.
Camryn comes with a handbag (with a much better design than previous ones, as it’s a bit larger and so easier to open) and shoes. Her dress is two parts – top and skirt – and the box contains three coloured permanent markers and a pipette.
To make the experiment work, you have to provide the Rubbing Alcohol or Surgical Spirits, and the item to be designed – they suggest white canvas shoes, but we used a white blouse.
You can see how the experiment worked in this video, or read on!Read more: Getting Creative With Project MC2, Camryn Coyle and Rubbing Alcohol
Since discovering Gel-a-Peel last year, we’ve been having lots of fun with it, so when we were sent the Gel-a-Peel Sparkle Bead Station I knew it would be popular.
The first thing I’ll say about the Gel-a-Peel bead station is that despite the big box, it’s all quite small and compact, which is I think is great for storage and putting things away!
The second thing is that like with many new tools it takes practice to get it right, or at least anywhere near what the beads on the box look like. But that’s part of the fun.
In the box you’ll receive the bead station, the beading rods, the gel, string and the fittings for jewellery and three sparkle gel colour tubes – enough to make around 100 beads.
Set up is very simple: my 7 year old had it set up by the time I finished reading the instructions. Simply place the beading rods into the bead station, and one at a time, use them to make your beads, then move them to the opened tray to dry.
There’s one rod that’s larger than the rest – you can use this one for creating pencil grips or larger beads.
The Gel-a-Peel gel is kind of like working with icing when doing a cake – it takes a little practice and the main thing is to make sure that it has plenty of other gel to attach to. Make it nice and thick and make sure it’s touching other gel on parts of the same bead so that it will stick together once dried. It’s important to leave the beads to dry long enough otherwise they just fall apart. I’d say leave them overnight.
Another tip is to not put the gel too close to the edge as you need to have a bit of room to click the rods out and that can be a bit tough.
Left to dry over night, the beads can be carefully loosened and then sort of ‘rolled’ off the rods and used in jewellery and other decorative occasions where you’d use beads.
Another bonus of the Gel-a-Peel Sparkle Bead Station is that you can use other gels from other kits, as well as other accessories from other kits, so there’s lots of creative freedom.
The Gel-a-Peel Sparkle Bead Station is available on Amazon and other leading toy stores.
Continuing on the theme of what’s turned out to be a crazy amount of dolls lately, we recently received a Mini Jewel Sparkles Lalaloopsy doll, and since we only received (and expected to receive) one, there were tears in the house!
Lalaloopsy dolls were once rag dolls who magically came to life when their very last stitch was sewn, taking on the personalities of the materials that were used to make them, so since Jewel Sparkles came to life on the 13th of March, she seemed a perfect fit for Aviya, who was born on the 13th of March.
In January this year, Lalaloopsy launched a Netflix Original Series, an animated series featuring all-new original music that brings to life the popular Lalaloopsy line of dolls.Read more: Lalaloopsy Mini Jewel Sparkles Review
This week I took my girls camping. We’re not camping newbies, but we normally kick the camping year off with Feast in the Woods. This year we had some new kit to try out, however, so we grabbed a short midweek stay at Whitecliff Bay on the Isle of Wight.
The new kit in question was a four man tent made for people like me. It’s called the Urban Escape 4 Man Quick Up Dome Tent if you want to get all technical about it, and it pops up in under a minute. If you have a 7 and 5 year old hammering in the tent pegs it takes about 10 minutes from taking it out of the bag to moving your bedding in. 
To set it up, you lay it out on the ground and unfold the corners. Grab the middle of the tent and pull it up – where the centre pole would have been – and it clicks up and into place. There’s a cover square that you then lift over to make sure it’s all water proof, and then there are guy ropes and pegs to knock in around the tent to keep it in the ground.
It’s really that simple! (And if that doesn’t sound simple, don’t worry, there are pictorial instructions attached to the bag. )Read more: Super Simple Camping With An Urban Escape Quick Up Dome Tent
I don’t know about where you are, but here in my little spot of the world, there are definite signs of warmer weather in the air, and while I’d love to say about how I’m having dreams of ice creams and lollipops, that would be a lie, as we’ve been having them for almost a month already! I’ll be sitting wrapped in a blanket wearing long sleeved everything and an oversized scarf draped over my shoulders and still have to blow into my hands to unfreeze my fingers from time to time, and my girls will be begging for ice cream! Obviously they inherited this from the Celtic side of the family, not from my Southern Hemispherian self! But it did give us a good opportunity to test out the Chillfactor Pull Pops we were sent a few weeks ago.
Read more: Chillfactor Pull Pops Review