Playpennies

I really struggle to write reviews on nappies because they are so subjective. It's like writing a review on a pair of trousers. Just because they fit me doesn't mean they're going to fit you. I love trousers from M&S, but my sister thinks they hang funny on her, and they fit well around her hips and gape around her middle. We have different body types, so different brands work differently for us.

It's the same with cloth nappies and with disposable nappies.

When my oldest was in disposable nappies as a baby a friend recommended a specific brand, and they happened to be on sale, so we bought bulk - and I mean BULK. We had hundreds of nappies. And I had to change my daughter's outfit with every single nappy change, because they leaked everywhere.  We had to shop around a bit till we found something that really worked for us, and we found that in reusable nappies.

So, while I can tell you about our experience with Asda's Little Angels nappies, my advice would be to buy one pack and try them for yourself before stocking up in bulk, just because we're overall happy with them.

Have you ever wanted to send a little something to a loved one, but drawn a total blank on what to choose? Flowers don't last, not everyone will thank you for chocolates, and a bottle of something bubbly just isn't always appropriate.

If so, look no further than the Tea Gift Company - who can arrange for a small but beautifully-presented package with a difference to be sent to your lucky friend or family member, from as little as £5.75 plus postage.

Founder Pip Gorst explains the inspiration behind the Tea Gift Company: “In Brisbane the heat can be relentless, meaning traditional gifts such as flowers or chocolates just don’t last. As an alternative I created unique tea-related gifts. Everyone commented on the beautiful packaging and the originality of the gift. Then back in the UK I realised that tea gifts are the perfect alternative to flowers or chocolates – especially as we are such a nation of tea drinkers."

Pip selects only the finest ethically-sourced, quality teas (available loose or as pyramid teabags) from specialized Tea Masters. Each tea blend is chosen carefully for its individual characteristics relating to special events or celebrations. I love the Mr. & Mrs. tea caddy - perfect for newlyweds - which combines a fine Chinese speciality black tea blended with layers of rose petals. Or choose from a range of tea gift sets including: Mother, Birthday, New Baby, New Home, Thank You, For Him, and For Her. And for Father's Day look out for the Strong Man gift set (£19.95). Also new are the Baby Boy and Baby Girl gift sets.

Earth Friendly Baby, part of the Lansinoh family, recently re-launched its award-winning, eco-friendly range of natural and organic baby skincare products.

Made from all natural ingredients and free from artificial fragrances and colours, the Earth Friendly Baby range features an array of products to take you from bathtime to bedtime and beyond, including shampoos, bubble bath, body lotions and massage oil.

Suitable for babies with sensitive skin, the range can be used on the whole family, and all products are free from nasties like SLS and parabens. We were recently sent samples of the Shampoo and Bodywash (£4.08), the Bubble Bath (£5.49) and the Body Lotion (£5.10), all of which available in Soothing Chamomile, Calming Lavender or Happy Mandarin fragrances.

The shampoo and bodywash makes light work of bath night - I particularly love only needing one bottle at bath time, and unlike many other 2-in-1 products this actually works as a really decent shampoo. It became a firm favourite after swimming lessons in our house too, making for a quick and easy exit from the yucky pool showers but doing an impressive job of completely eliminating all those nasty pool chemical smells.

A little of the bubble bath seems to go a long way too, and it doesn't generate too many bubbles - always something of a hazard in our house. The shampoo and bodywash has a disc-top cap too, enabling you to keep one hand on baby at all times, and the all-over body lotion is so gentle it can even be used on baby’s face. The Happy Mandarain scent is the fragrance that most gets my vote though - I could sniff that stuff all day.

These probably aren't the cheapest baby bathcare brands you'll find, but the bottle sizes are more than generous, meaning the products last a decent length of time. And for eco-friendly, organic and natural ingredients from a trusted brand I think they represent fairly reasonable value for money.

Earth Friendly Baby products are available from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, John Lewis, Boots, amazon.co.uk, and health food stores.

I'd forgotten about camcorders. And digital cameras for that matter. Ever since I first got my smartphone, I just stopped using them. Why would you need to carry a separate recording device around with you when you have one on your phone, already in your pocket?

Panasonic showed me why. The company sent in the Panasonic HC-V520 full high-definition (HD) camcorder for us to review. Read on to find out more!

We have aMelissa and Doug Stacking Train (£14.99) that my daughter has played with since her first birthday, almost three years ago. It's such a great set though, that even though it's not new, I still want to tell you about it.

The Melissa and Doug Stacking Train is made up of an 'engine' and two carriages. They all interlink and connect through slotted in pieces, which is great because the carriages don't unhook during normal play.

The three carriages have 15 building blocks which can be mixed and matched and played with in a number of different permeation.

There are a couple of great things about this set for your 1- 4 year old child. At a very young age, just stacking the blocks are fantastic for fine motor skills, and building towers are a good developmental milestone. As they get older, children can build colours together, shapes together, like by like, then later following the pattern to create the train on the box,  so this whole set really provides a myriad of learning opportunities.

The colours are great, bold and bright, and my kids love the train. It keeps them engaged.

Melissa and Doug are  normally great toys anyway, but this one has really lasted very well. It's been beaten and battered and abused in the care of two little girls, but it is still in pretty much as new condition.

Finally, the bricks are a great size because they fill up little hands, but are by and large too large for little mouths.

The Stacking Train by Melissa and Doug is an all round favourite for girls and boys.

Proviz, the high visibility sports wear specialists, sent us a bicycle helmet and 'buglights' to review. Proviz provide a range of safety gear for sporting activities for both adults and children.

The helmet was too large for my daughter, so we're a bit non-commital about it at the moment, but the BugLights are fabulous. 

My 1st Years are no strangers to PlayPennies. We have in the past reviewed their apron, booties, and mother's day bear, all of which has been loved by reviewers.

Today we will be reviewing their personalised Teddy Bears, which are sold for £14.

My 1st Years has been around as a company since 2010, when they started making personalised baby gifts and clothes that were both stylish and affordable.

For my baby's first Christmas, I bought her the Daisy Pull Along Cow from Orange Tree Toys. As it happened, she took her first steps on Christmas day, and within a few weeks was toddling around confidently. For £13.61 Daisy the Cow is a really good buy.

Initially you can remove the rolling wheels which are held on by Velcro loops, and half of the pull string, turning Daisy into a soft toy. Add the two sets of wheels and the other half of the pull chord, and you have yourself a pull along toy. It's really very lovely.

The only thing that annoys me about this pull toy - as with a couple of others we have - is that the chord isn't actually long enough to do much with. You have to add another bit of string to it for my children to be able to hold onto it and have it touch the ground at the same time, which I think is a bit weird.

The other bonus of the removable wooden wheels is that the soft toy part can be washed, which is a huge bonus for a cuddle-slash-pull-along toy.

There is a little bell or something inside the cow so it has a slight jingle and it is very soft and extremely cuddly and friendly and both my girls have enjoyed it, but it is essentially a soft toy and now that my daughter is walking properly, she's less excited about pulling things behind her. It's a lovely little gift though and I don't regret buying it, and would happily give it to someone else as a gift too. There are a lot of other similar themed pull along toys to choose from too, if cows aren't your thing.

I've never really understood why men don't use more facial products. Wouldn't it make sense given how much time they spend every day scraping a really sharp piece of metal over it?

My other half has always been firmly in the camp that uses ordinary soap lathered over face and neck, followed by a splash of water and nothing else.

He can't see the point of spending money on gels, creams and mousse when a bar of soap costing a few pence will do the job. Does he have a point? Or is there more to it than even he realises? Could we change a 20 year habit?

Dove sent us three products from their Dove Men +Care range to try out. So we did. Read on to find out how we (the royal we, my husband and I!) got on.

Oriflame is a Swedish, natural, innovative beauty brand that is sold through consultants and online. It's my favourite of all the bath, beauty and baby skin care products we've reviewed so far this year, and it is a surprisingly affordable product too.

We were sent the Baby Talc, Baby Hair And Body Wash and Baby Moisturising Cream to review, so read on to see how we got on with this still highly unknown brand. 

This body butter from Soap & Glory called The Righeous Butter has to be my favourite all time body butter in the history of forever. And I happened upon it entirely by accident. It was on sale in Boots, along with a couple of other products including a wash poof (that fell apart within a month) and the body wash (which was nice).

This product sells for £10 on their site, but can often be less at Boots* so take a peek there first if you happen to want to try it out after my review.

Wow. What a smell. I cannot tell you why the smell of this Soap & Glory Righteous Butter is so utterly intoxicating to me, but it is. It reminds me of fields, and skin that’s warmed by the sun, and freckles, and happiness, and giggling next to a campfire on the beach.

It has also won the Woman & Home best in beauty award. I am clearly not alone in this love affair. It also does what it should, it moisturises. My skin suffers in the winter with the constant changes from hot to cold and back again, and this does the job. It doesn’t rub on thick and oily only to feel all thin and useless and papery ten minutes later. No, you get proper moisturiser with this Soap & Glory product.

The only negative I would give the Soap & Glory The Righteous Butter is that the smell could be, for some, a little too overpowering, especially if they are heavy handed with their moisturiser. This is a sentiment shared by others on their site but I must say that it isn’t something that would stop be from buying this. Ever. I may just stock up for life, just in case.

Our local children's centre has some amazing toys, and they've inspired many of our toy purchases over the last year or so, and this Noah's Ark from Orange Tree Toys* was one of them. Actually the children's centre's one was huge, and this is just a small version for £11.25.

The set is made up of 18 pieces, including Noah and Naamah (his wife), seven pairs of animals, the ship itself and a ramp to get onto the ship.

The seven pairs of animals are identical zebras, giraffes, elephants, bears, and crocodiles, then two monkeys with their arms in different positions and a male and female  lion. Noah and his wife are clearly different genders too. The hull of the ship opens for putting the animals in, and there's a small amount of space on deck.

Actually I find the size of the ship very frustrating. It could do with being a few millimetres wider so that when the ship is 'floating' you could put the ramp on it. At the moment, you just have to leave the ramp behind. Also, it's just big enough for all but two of the animals, so when it comes to storage, you can fill all the animals inside lying flat, bar two. It would have been ideal to be able to store the animals inside, but alas.

Another minor annoyance is that Noah and Naamah have faces printed on both sides of them. It would have been better to have a head of hair on one side and a face on the other.

Quality wise, however, they are really good. My daughter bangs Noah against the ark while he is 'building' it and so far no paint has chipped or wood chipped either. It's one of the cheaper Noah's Ark sets on the market and if you're not too worried about the details above, it's a pretty good buy, and my daughter loves the animals and loves pretending a flood is coming.

The sun is shining, prising the last icy fingers of winter from its grip on the great outdoors. Thank goodness. I do not remember having a winter as long as that one before. Starting in August and running all the way through to April.

Normally I don't worry too much about things like vitamin supplements. A good, balanced diet is all any of us need. And there's no clear evidence that we can actually get all the vitamins we need from these supplements anyway.

Right now though I don't want all the vitamins either myself or my children need. What I want is to get a boost, a little bit extra. I think we're all feeling a little run over by the winter of 2012/13.

This is where Seven Seas is hoping its new Haliborange range of vitamins for kids, with their 'softies' appearance and texture, will come in. A much more palatable format, in theory, for children. So do they work?

For better or worse, brand recognition is a big part of Western consumer society, and our children are as much a part of that society as we are.

That's the thinking behind Logo – What Am I? (£24.99), a children's version of the adult Logo game that takes a more activity-based approach to brand identification aimed at children aged 8 and up.

The child-friendly version of Logo steers clear of direct questions making it easier for little ones and instead players have to draw or describe well-known products or brands to make their way along the game board.

There are three different board squares that correspond to the three different challenges on the 250 double-sided game cards. One side of the card has Draw and Describe challenges, which involve having to draw pictures of a number of well-known products or logos, or describe them without saying their names out loud, all within a set amount of time controlled by an egg timer.

The other side of the card, and the third type of board square, is the Guess challenge, in which players ask yes, no or maybe questions to try and discover the item pictured on the game card, again within the time limit.

One definite plus is that correct guesses or answers see both the player whose turn it is and those who get the answer right move forward, so there's always an incentive to do your best, and games can move quite quickly. On the flip side the fact that there are two winners is a bit 'nobody's a loser' for my liking. Nothing wrong with a fair competition in my book!

What isn't quite as convenient is the fact that cards are double-sided, so after a few times playing all players will inevitably see a lot of the products and logos they might come across next time unless special effort is made to keep the other side covered.

Other than that, Logo – What Am I? is a decent enough board game for adults and children of a certain age to enjoy together – if you're OK with effectively indoctrinating your kids with all the biggest brand names and their logos from an early age, that is.

We sat on the patio, bathed in warm sunshine, and sipped deliciously cold sparkling bottlegreen Elderflower. It tickled the tongue, and made the the last lingering remnant of the bone achingly cold winter disappear.

That, was just five minutes ago. A friend popped around, and we spent a very civilised half hour chatting in that golden yellow stuff the rest of the world knows as sunshine. Bottlegreen sent me some samples of their new Elderflower range to try, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

E-cloths are a completely new idea to me. Cloths that you can use to clean, with just water. And nothing else.

I'm not too keen on using chemicals for cleaning. There's the environmental impact, and also I worry about the chemicals we ingest either through our food and drink, or through skin or the air. I read once that on average, most humans in the UK have 14 man made chemicals lurking in their systems. Most of these from cleaning products.

When my son was born, I really went off chemical cleaners in a big way. Most of my cleaning is done with vinegar, lemon juice, and various oils like eucalyptus and tea tree. Plus I use cleaning products like Eco-Over and Method.

Not that these are strictly speaking chemical free. They just use more natural chemicals that won't harm the planet. Vinegar, for example, has acetic acid in its make up, which is a natural antiseptic.

So it was with great interest that I received a couple of E-cloth samples to try out. Read on to find out how they worked, and to see some before and after photos.

Right. So as human beings become increasingly focused on oral hygiene and on the various things that can affect it, weirder and weirder devices are appearing on the market to help us out. I got the TePe TongueDetox device in to review because a) I am a sucker for cool oral hygiene stuff and b) this is just too weird.

Just look at the instructions:

Rinse the TongueDetox thoroughly under cold water. Extend the tongue. Place the TongueDetox at the back on the tongue with the thumb grips facing down. Gently press down and pull forward along the surface all the way to the tip. Rinse the TongueDetox under warm water and repeat as necessary.

So, cold water to start, warm water to end, and some pretty serious instructions considering this is a glorified tongue scraper. To review this I started out with an 11am tongue. I had drunk coffee, eaten breakfast, had more coffee, an orange, lots of water and one lovely truffle. My tongue was bound to be a cesspool of germs and bacteria – the cause of bad breath and the formation of plaque on the teeth.

I went to the bathroom and followed the instructions on the card. Right, so before you worry that I am about to go into horrific detail about weird stuff dripping off my tongue scraper I can reassure you. Nothing happened. My tongue just feels, well, rather scraped. I don’t think I feel any different at all.

So what is my verdict? It says it has a mint aroma, I didn’t notice it at all. The two handles make it very easy to use. One scrape does it all and you don’t activate the gag reflex. There is no way to prove that it has improved my breath or sense of taste so I cannot tell you if this genuinely works.

I like it. I like the fact that it makes my tongue feel all tingly, but I probably won’t use it as religiously as I do other oral hygiene products. I like the range of colours and that it takes away germs. I also like the fact that it is made from environmentally friendly materials and costs only £3.35. It gets 7.10, losing points for the fact that the mint is barely detectable and there is no way to prove it works.

We've been trying to make our garden more child friendly, and add a few things to it to make it more appealing to little ones than being indoors, and one of the additions to our space this year has been the Chad Valley Inflatable Activity Centre*.

This multi-activity blow up bouncy castle has been a huge hit with both our three year old and our one year old.

The RRP for this activity centre is £32.99, and it's certainly been worth that.

We love the fact that it has three sides to it, making it pretty secure for a little one who is still a bit unstable on her feet on this type of surface. She can fall about without getting injured, so long as she doesn't fall hard, since it's not a huge 'castle' and she could technically fall to the ground, but so far that's not happened yet.

Despite mention of a slide on the Argos website, it doesn't have one, as you can see from the image.

It does, however, have ring toss with three rings on one side, a basket ball hoop up the top on the front, with an inflatable basket ball and an inflatable soccer ball (I think). Additionally there's a boxing punch bag at the back. All these accessories are inflatable.

The description also says that it blows up in five minutes. Perhaps if you have a pump of some description, yes, but it doesn't come with one, and we did it by mouth, so it took a fair bit longer, but we still managed it in one sitting.

All the components are inflatable, and it does retain it's fullness quite well. We don't have to inflate it every day or anything like that, though it does need a top up from time to time.

We've put some flattened boxes underneath the bouncy castle since it lives outside and we're conscious of something puncturing it underneath, and so far so good!

Overall it's a nice bit of fun, it doesn't cost a fortune, the children love it and return to it daily, even if they only play for a few minutes, and it's not a monstrosity that takes over the garden, nor does it require constant air with the sound of a running pump, so in all, perfect for a standard sized garden and two toddlers.

A couple of weeks ago we reviewed the Tesco Loves Baby Newborn items from Tesco. Today we're reviewing some items for slightly older toddlers.

I'm not a huge supermarket shopper anymore, so I've asked a few friends recently about their experiences of Tesco Loves Baby, and overall, the comments have been positive. They've mentioned things like good quality at a cheaper price, and consistently reliable products. Some felt some things were hit and miss, especially with the nappies, but that can be said of absolutely any brand of nappy, whether disposable or reusable. 

You can't have missed this strange phenomenon. Actual, playable games based on video games. Jenga have picked up on a wonderful trick, in my opinion, by taking a new spin on their traditional game using Angry Birds.

The game is pretty much the same as what you play on the screen, except you're doing it in real life. My son got a few of the Jenga Angry Birds games, but this one is the best of the lot and definitely the best value for money. The Angry Birds Star Wars Death Star game is £23.49 including delivery at Amazon. Read on to find out more about what this game is really like, and what you get for your cash.