Playpennies

Ever since Christmas I’ve been on a mission to lose weight. Who am I kidding? I’m always on a mission to lose weight! Anyway, I recently discovered that one of my favourite foods, the scrummy bagel, is available at less than 2% fat. That isn’t a low sugar count, mind you, so you still have to be careful.

The New York Bagel range has five flavours that sit at this low 2% threshold so you can have a tasty cinnamon and raisin bagel for breakfast without feeling utterly guilty. I went and got the wholemeal, the cinnamon and raisin and the plain bagels to see how they tasted and to try out some ideas.

The cinnamon and raisin New York bagels are divine. They are one of my favourites, especially when toasted with low-fat olive spread. That’s it. The wholemeal ones are, obviously, far better for you on a GI diet scale and are very nice when eaten with some cucumber and turkey breast as this will fit into most low GI diet plans easily.

I expected them to be a bit cardboardy if I am honest. Often the wholemeal variants of such tasty foods are a bit dry and tasty processed. I didn’t find this an issue with the New York dudes at all. Very nice. They also taste divine with soup.

The plain bagels are a special treat. They are made with processed flour, white flour, which is always more fattening and higher in sugar content than wholemeal. However, as an occasional treat they are divine, especially if you stick with a low fat topping.

The New York bagel Facebook site has plenty of recipe ideas for you and the cost of a pack of five is £1.35 – that works out to 27p a meal if you only have one. Great price and great taste. Winner.

Dulux is a paint, right, and I can never see one of those shaggy Old English Sheepdogs without thinking of Dulux – which is pretty great marketing. I’m sure the man or woman who first sat in an office and said, “hey, why don’t we make our mascot a shaggy dog” would be proud.

Dulux is celebrating their 50^th anniversary this year, and they’ve released a range of trinkets that you can buy to celebrate along with them.

They sent us a sampling of their goodies – the Dulux Dog Soft Toy and the Blue Spotted Dulux dog mug – to see what we thought of them.

Well, sort of…

I’ve been using the By Carla Mum And Baby Support Pillow in bed at night since around 25 weeks pregnant, and it is my constant bed time companion.

This is a pillow I can melt into. It is firm, but not rigid, and despite looking quite ‘solid’ in the pictures, it moulds into your body in a way that gives fantastic support.

It is quite a long pillow, which means that I can cuddle into it with my arms, but still have it between my knees, which is really helpful in keeping me on my left side as I tend to end up on my back through the night, otherwise.

Another exceptionally useful function is as bump protector – my toddler still ends up in my bed most of the night and performs a perfect windmill, often resulting in blows to my anatomy. With the By Carla Support Pillow firmly in place, the blows never come near me.

This pregnancy support pillow comes with a removable cover, and in a particularly forward thinking move, they’ve included a second cover, so while one’s washing and drying, the other can be in use and the pillow protected.

It also comes in a reusable zipped bag, so you can travel with your pillow, or store it when it’s not in use.

I’ve not used it as a breastfeeding or bottlefeeding support cushion yet, but it is firm enough that you could put your baby on it to protect them, and I think it would be perfect for letting them lie on too, belly on the pillow, to roll out wind and trapped air. I did that with my daughter  a lot but on a square pillow folded in half, so this is pretty perfect.

The covers are funky and the pillow is fantastic quality. I highly recommend this as a pregnancy sleep improvement strategy.

If you're of a certain age you'll remember the two Love Is characters - that cute little naked cartoon couple, whose modesty always remained intact, and were clearly very much in love with each other.  The love bird pair were very popular in the 1970s and earned their creator, Kim Casali, between £4 and £5 million a year - not bad for some cartoon drawings!

Well, the Love Is duo seem to be making a bit of a comeback and with Valentines Day just a couple of weeks away, a personalised book featuring the Love Is characters makes for a soft and smoochy gift for the one you love.

It's Your Story specialise in personalised books and invited me to create a personalised Love Is story book - here's how I got on from start to finish.

If there's one shop that really stands out on the high street at this time of the year, it is Clintons. The very open store fronts that all their shops have virtually pulsate with pink around Valentine's Day. It's probably the first place you think of to buy a card or pick up a little sappy trinket for a loved one.

So when Clintons asked us if I'd like to see a little bit of the new additions to their Valentine's Day range I said heck yes! Read on to see what they sent us, and more importantly, what I thought.

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Pregnancy. It’s like a trial run for motherhood, but without the little person. In this case it’s all the additional things you really don’t need, but that having just make your life that fraction easier. And when you suffer sciatica, PSD and general ‘can’t-get-up-ness’, one of those fractions is something that makes sitting more comfortable and getting up easier: a maternity pillow.

Theraline’s Plushy Moon is my sofa pillow. It is a crescent-moon shaped pillow with fluffy material on one side and filled with micro-beads which are meant to conform to your body to make you more comfortable.

I haven’t been using it as a breastfeeding pillow yet, but it’s small enough that you can place a newborn on it without having masses of bulky pillow around you, which I think would make it a perfect nursing pillow. It tapers to the end, meaning you have the bulk in the centre, but don’t have your elbow up at shoulder height while you’re trying to hold on to your infant, which I remember being a problem with my previous nursing pillow.

The Plushy Moon comes in a zipped plastic bag which is easy to get the pillow into and out of, and makes it ideal if you’ll be travelling, or if you’re storing it away between babies.

The main negative for the Plushy Moon maternity and breastfeeding pillow is the fact that it doesn’t have a removable cover. You can pop the whole thing into the washing machine, but that means that while it’s washing and drying, you’re without a pillow, so if your baby sicks or messes on your pillow, or your toddler uses it to ski around the patio (for example!) you’re pillow-less for a while.

We have really deep sofas, and I have found the Theraline Plushy Moon particularly helpful as a back support while I suffer pregnancy niggles. It forms a perfect mould between me and the sofa, and is the right width that I can get off the sofa without having to push myself up, if that makes sense, which means it’s relatively painless.

Theraline Plushy Moon pillows retail at around £23.95, and can be used for sleep, to protect or support your bump and back during pregnancy and to support your baby while you breastfeed, so as far as pregnancy and newborn items go, they have a pretty good lifespan.

BabyBlooms are a “new baby” gift company with gorgeous ideas for spoiling parents and their little ones.  We were sent a baby clothes bouquet to review and tell you all about.

When my daughter was born, we received a baby clothes bouquet from my husand’s company and I remember sitting on the bed nursing my newborn, and trying to unwrap with one hand what I thought was a really unique presentation and gift idea.

Instead of flowers that die, a clothes bouquet looks like a bunch of flowers, and gives you the same ‘Ah! Flowers!’ feeling, but they actually have a practical application: the flowers are made up out of baby clothes.

Bath time has always been a favourite play time in our house, and I’m not convinced that it plays part in the ‘bed time routine’ as it seems to be massively invigorating if anything! We also have more bath toys in the bath than toiletries, and we’ve recently added to them with the Natural Rubber Bath Toys from Hevea.

The Pond is a set consisting of a duck, fish and frog, and they’ve been great fun at bath time as we’ve talked about the animals they represent, had great fun splashing as the frog leaps and made bizarre noises that I’m sure the critters themselves would be proud of.

I was initially unconvinced that these would go down well. They have only natural rubber colouring, don’t squeak ad don’t spray water. I just didn’t see them being much entertainment. My two year old saw it differently though. In fact for the first week of having them in the bath, none of the other toys even got a look in.

Personally, I love that they are PVC and phthalate free, and have no nasties leaching into the water and it’s fine if they go in her mouth.

They’re made from sustainable rubber trees and produced in Spain,  and they won’t be in landfill decades after we’re gone – in fact as a natural product they probably won’t outlive us.

As a mum, I love that they have no hole in the bottom, so they don’t suck up water, meaning if they’re left unplayed with for a few weeks, I’m not going to find gross green water in them.

The packaging is recyclable, and can even be used to make cut outs, so there’s another activity in the box itself.

I’m really pleased with the Hevea Natural Rubber Bath Toys. They have a nice smell, are natural, good for the environment, and have no negatives for my child.

My view is that if you're going to say anything on Valentine's Day say it with chocolates. Well that might just be me, but I can't be the only person who loves nothing more than cuddling up with a chocolatey treat?

Personally I think that all chocolates are pretty much right for Valentine's Day, you don't actually need to make a special range with that as the theme. Especially if you're a chocoletier named Thorntons. But no. It would seem that not satisfied with making some of the most delicious chocolate treats known to mankind, they also have to make some stuff specially for this one particular day of the year.

I received three items from the range for review, and I have to say I gave them a thorough testing! What I found interesting is that these are not expensive sweets or chocolates. In fact, they were all priced at less than a fiver. A nice way perhaps to add that little bit extra to your day when you're on a budget.

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I still have flat packed shelving I bought when my son was born six years ago that I haven't put together. This doesn't bode well for a flat packed toy! Which is what the playsets from Kroom Toys are. I really did have to try these out though, as they are absolutely everything I have ever wanted in a toy. Joy of joys, they're not made of plastic.

Kroom make products that are eco-friendly. Everything is made from 60% recycled card and all the products are also fully recyclable.

There's a whole range of stuff for children, including storage boxes, play sets and toys. Importantly, the toys look like they're a lot of fun. The toys are distributed in the UK by Little Helper, and you can also buy them directly from their website.

I received the Noah's Ark and Dylan Fire Station to try out. The Noah's Ark playset has an RRP of £24.99. The Dylan Fire Station also has an RRP of £24.99. Delivery on the site costs from £1.99, depending on the size and weight of the items.

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Sometimes a product comes along that just makes me sigh with delight and the Skeanie Skirtle is one of them. The idea is simple but the execution is just lovely. Picture a pair of thick stockings, almost leggings, with spots on the legs and cute (and very subtle) frills on the ankles. Then add a skirt that frills with piping to match the spots. Yes, that’s the Skirtle.

The skirt and the leggings are one item so they are easy to put on and take off, keep those cute little bottoms covered, and are brilliant for everyday wear and, as we discovered, dancing. The Skirtle we got is brown with white spots and white piping along the skirt ruffles. My daughter took one look at it and refused to take it off.

This is how we discovered that it is ideal for dancing class as the fabric is stretchy and soft and moves easily. The skirt part also doesn’t ride up as much or as often as I’d thought it might either.

I have really put the Skeanie Skirtle through its paces. We have worn it to dancing, to rollerskating, to three playdates and to the beach. It has been washed about six times and has not shown bobbling or beading, hasn’t demonstrated any visible loss of softness or colour quality and the fabric hasn’t gained that faded/rubbed quality that these types of fabrics are prone to.

The only really big problem that I have with Skeanie Skirtle is that they don’t make it for kids over the age of five. You get them from 0-5 and in pink, blue, fawn and chocolate. I am gutted that my child will soon outgrow this item and wish they made bigger sizes.

The Skeanie Skirtle costs about £19.99, is very well made, looks fantastic and is worth every penny.

By Carla do a Bib and Splash Mat Set that’s currently in pride of place on my living room floor.

The 70x70cm splash mat is ideal for use when painting, colouring, cutting and other crafts, as well as for messy play or playdoh and even for snack times – or meal times when you’re weaning. It creates a fantastic easy to lift up and dust off, then wipe clean surface.

The bib is a long sleeved, flat fronted bib making it ideal for play time when you don’t want the clothes the get dirty – especially with paints or a chalk board – and it has a pelican bib that you can fold out to catch food during meals.

The splash mat and bib are made of plastic, but rather than being PVC they are something called  PETA, which is apparently a chlorine-free vinyl that’s starting to be used in lots of products as a replacement for PVC. It’s not a perfect substance as it’s still a petrochemical product and not entirely tested, but it’s already better than PVC.

It’s nicely finished off with a binding to keep the edges reinforced, and the bib has a Velcro tab at the top to keep it in place.

There are two designs, the Nougat, which is zebra-like black and white stripes , and Playtime, which are simply gorgeous newborn-ish sized hand and foot prints in a variety of colours  - pink, purple, blue and green – with yellow binding. I would say both are pretty unisex in appearance.

The Bib and Splash Mat Set come in a carry bag made of similar materials, but undecorated, and it’s a perfect storing place for when they’re not in use.  My daughter also loves carrying them around in their ‘handbag’.

She loves the set and often asks to wear her ‘apron’.   We were also really surprised by the price. We guestimated the price at £20 - £30, but Amazon are selling them at £12.99.

Like most of us, I really enjoy pampering as much as possible. I specifically love that where ten years ago organic, natural products were expensive, exclusive and elite, today it’s easy to find decent products at completely acceptable prices – sometimes even cheaper than mainstream alternatives.

Kadria is a new product  - to me at least – and I’ve loved being lucky enough to test it.

The set consists of five products – Belly Balm, Balancing Face Oil, Baby Body Oil, Labour Oil and Baby Balm. I was sent four of the products – we didn’t get to try the labour oil – and have been using them religiously.

It was Boxing Day and I was emerging from a truly nasty bout of the flu, a flu that kept me in bed and completely out of it for about four days. While I was lying on the sofa I noticed that my daughter was scratching her head, a lot. Oh boy, that can only mean one thing. Lice.

Ever since I started using Vosene, I’ve had no problems with lice but we ran out about a week before the end of term and the lice leapt onto her head with glee. Great. Now I had to rush out and buy some lice treatment and get us both deloused as fast as possible.

As I was still feeling really tender, the Hedrin Once Liquid Gel that only takes 15 minutes to kick in seemed like the perfect solution. This extremely thick and oily gel is easy to apply but it doesn’t really work. Sorry.

When we first used it, I left it on for about half an hour and then washed it out as per the instructions. I also combed both our heads with the Nitty Gritty Nit Comb while the Hedrin was still in our hair. A double whammy. A week later we were both still infected. So I had to do a treatment again and redo the entire washing and cleaning of every item in the house.

When you are really manic, having to wash everything you own is more than a little frustrating. I also found that the Hedrin Once left the bath extremely oily and slippery in spite of frequent cleaning with bathroom cleaner. It took several applications to get the slimy sensation off the bath, not great when we stand in it to shower and run the risk of slipping.

For the heavy, heavy price of £17.99 (at Boots), this is not a good choice for the removal of nits. Instead I would recommend their original product that is more labour intensive but really does the trick.

Nature Shop are an online clothing and footwear shop who, and I quote, "sell premium 'nature inspired' brands and products that are kind to your body and to the environment."  Awesome.

When my name was picked out of the metaphorical review hat to receive some products from Nature Shop, I duly mooched over to their website to have a look around - it's a nice site; I know 'nice' is a pretty bland description but fabulous, amazing and other such words don't fit either.

Natureshop.co.uk is easy to navigate, the pictures are very clear, the product descriptions equally so and it has a 'clean' feel to it - it's simple and straightforward and doesn't try to be clever or something it's not.

Nature Shop also say they 'are committed to making a positive difference to the world that we all live in with a specific focus on preservation of the natural environment and in helping the lives of children.'

These aren't just empty platitudes - in 2010 Nature Shop introduced a policy which saw, and will continue to see, them give at least 10% of their net profit to environmental and social initiatives including charitable donations to the World Wildlife Fund, donations to kids charities and carboNZero certification.  They've had that independently verified which you can check HERE, if you feel so inclined.

If that's not enough for you, Nature Shop are also corporate sponsors of Canteen - a charity supporting  young people with cancer and @Heart who support children born with heart defects.

This week I have mostly been making Whoopie! Unfortunately that sentence isn't quite as exciting as it sounds. Although it isn't un-exciting either. What I've been doing is making whoopie pies. Specifically Betty Crocker Whoopie Pies (£2.15 from Tesco Direct).

You have been able to buy ready made Whoopie Pies before, or so I'm told. I've never actually heard of them myself. This is a new addition to the Betty Crocker line, with a mix that you make yourself.

The selling point is that it is a fun activity for you to do as a family. Well, both my son and I love cooking, but our baking is done from scratch. It would take a bit to sell me on using cake mix. Here's how I got on.

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I’m a very sentimental person, and I’ve kept all sorts of bits and pieces from my daughter’s gestation, birth and early months, including her first outfit and a lock of hair from her first hair cut. I imagine her first tooth will go into her memory box, along with other bits and pieces – like the first picture she ever ‘painted’.

Now I’m due my second baby, I’ve been on the lookout for a memory box for him or her too and my most recent discovery is the Baby Keepsake Boxes from Freya Designs.

These boxes are really beautifully made. The workmanship on them is faultless and I can’t complain about anything. The paint is finished off nicely, the inside of the box is smooth, and the toppers are gorgeously made.

The box I received has a large pram on the top, and a plaque on the side with the text ‘My First Memories’ painted on it. Inside is a similar plaque with the text Name, Date and Size, with space for you to write those on with a suitable pen.

The boxes come in two sizes and this is the smaller of the two boxes at 27x17x14cm. It’s quite nice and deep, so while it’s roughly shoebox sized, it will contain quite a few odds and ends.

The box also arrives safely packaged in bubble wrap and inside another box, so there’s no damage in the mail.

The only negative for me is that the range is limited, and you only have the choice of pink and blue in the baby range, so if you want to steer away from gender-related colours, or if you don’t know the sex of your baby, you have no alternatives. Also, the designs are very stereotypical with all but the photo-box having designs of babies in cribs or prams.

The box itself is a stunning new baby gift for a mum-to-be, or to keep for your own baby’s memories, but I do think they could expand at least the colours a  little.

We’ve written about the Rainforest Jumperoo often enough here on PlayPennies that I honestly can’t believe I’ve never written a review on it before. Well, here it is.

After having my daughter I was pretty certain we’d only ever have one child. The Rainforest Jumperoo is the one item I packed up and stored “just in case” we have another – and worst case scenario, I could pass it on to my sister if we didn’t. That’s how much I love this thing.

The Rainforest Jumperoo is an activity centre with a bouncy seat. It isn’t like those that hang on the door frame, and doesn’t put the same kind of pressure on the child’s spine.  It’s bounce comes from four ‘corners’ that are decorated with forest decorations.

The activity centre includes a spinning lizard with beads that for us was the first thing my daughter ‘discovered’ and she’d spin that for ages. As she grew older the spinning sun and pop-up tiger captured her imagination, and alter on the music and animals in the musical toy provided lots of entertainment.

Unfortunately the butterfly that stands up bent down with all the pulling and now hangs kind of limp, but it’s still a good teether, and much later on she suddenly discovered that there were a toucan and frog hanging above her head. We finally put the jumperoo away when she was 12 months old, but that was only because we went abroad for a few months.

The seat is nicely padded and is removable, which makes it great for washing and keeping clean.

The only down side to the Jumperoo is that it is quite large and takes up a fair bit of space. It can be ‘folded’ for storage, but it’s in no way compact.  Fisher Price have recently brought out a new version too, but it’s even bigger than this one.

This is the only thing that would keep my daughter entertained for up to 20 minutes at a time. The bouncy chair, Bumbo, and door bouncer never worked and she’d cry almost as soon as she was put into it, so apart from wearing her in a sling all day, the Fisher Price Rainforest Jumperoo was the only way I could cook dinner or hang washing without a babe in arms.

My child makes me sound like one of those parents I used to roll my eyes at. I’m pretty certain other people roll their eyes at me. I’m okay with that. My child is that awesome. She came out the womb holding her head up. She started crawling at four months and walking at eight. She was talking by 15 months and at 27 months holds full conversations with full sentences, inferences and uses adjectives and adverbs correctly. The child is a genius. Who refuses to use a potty or toilet.

Everyone’s got their faults, right?

I love things that change colour or glow in the dark. Clearly this is something I’ve never grown out of! Anyway, you can imagine my excitement when I got a Cuddledry colour changing bathmatto review. I think I was more excited than my daughter, the real target market.

To start with the mat comes packaged in lovely packaging that is brilliant to use as storage for other items like towels or, as I do, duvet sets. The bathmat is predominantly green in colour and doesn’t have a non-slip base. As we have a tiled bathroom floor, this was a problem for me. I dislike risking my neck.

So, the solution was to place the Cuddledry colour changing bathmat on top of my usual bathmat. It worked a treat. As do the colours. The bathmat changes from the aqua green into bright neon yellow with body heat. When my daughter got out the bath and saw her footprints magically appear, well, that was IT. She was beyond excited.

Cue many hours of her wetting her hands in the sink and making handprints, shapes and even doing writing on the Cuddledry colour changing bathmat. The colour changing is, I can assure you, very cool indeed.

The mat also washes up a treat. No mess and no fuss. You don’t need special temperatures or washing powders. Just stick it in and go. This got high marks in my book.

There are only three things I found to be a problem with the Cuddledry colour changing bathmat. The first is the lack of grip for slippery floors. The second is the price - £19.99 is steep, even with the cool factor. And finally, I never, ever got a footprint like the one in the picture. Water slops everywhere when you get out…

Would I get these? Yes. They are enormous fun, last for ages and ages, wash well and would be astonishingly brilliant gifts.