Oooh, I love this freebie for the upcoming spring months! You can get a free RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch kit just by registering on the site and the pack includes all sorts of fabulous items to get you and the kids outdoors and spotting UK birds.

• Click here to get free birdwatching tips from the RSPB

The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch starts at the end of January so if you want to take part you will need to register now. The pack includes a free booklet to help you identify the birds in your garden as well as top tips on what to feed the birds and how to make your garden more wildlife friendly.

When you get to the site you can also download a free recording sheet so you can take notes about the birds you have found in your garden (we have already ticked off about 1000 seagulls – or the same seagull visiting very often) and you can join the local community to chat about your finds and get great advice.

Thanks to ettienem1001 at HUKD!

Tesco Magazine is giving away 10,000 free pedometers as of Friday 06 January as a part of their One Heart Health campaign and it is a most excellent freebie to start off the year. What better way to get you out into the world, pounding the pavements and burning calories than with a free pedometer?

• Click here to get your free pedometer with Tesco magazine

There are only 10,000 of these free pedometers to be given away so get in there as fast as possible so you aren’t too late! The pedometer is a great way to get your New Year walking plan kick started so you can start taking more steps towards a healthy life and a healthy heart.

One of the main focuses of the campaign is being more active which is a simple change we can all fit into our busy lives and will make such a difference to our health and energy levels. Do anything from climbing the stairs instead of taking the lift to getting off the bus a stop early. Anything extra will help your body and your health and this free pedometer certainly won’t hurt!

Thanks to stu1e at HUKD!

I recently read an article in the Economist that talked about how recent research has shown that people value things they make far more than they do shop-bought tat. The research was fascinating. They cited the case of instant cake mixes. When these were first launched the sales were dismal. Why? Because people didn’t feel like the cakes gave them any value, that they hadn’t really earned anything by making them.

So, what did the cake mix companies do? They changed the recipe to “add an egg” and the cake mixes flew off the shelves. While the article goes into far more detail on the where’s and why’s of how we value things we do and make ourselves, I have just stolen one simple idea – don’t spend this year, save and make it yourself.

Here are some ideas that I’ve come up with, that I’ve gleaned from other smart and sassy parents, and that I’ve uncovered with judicious research.

This is a stonkingly good milk&more voucher that gets you two weeks of free milk to the value of £10! What more could we possibly want from a freebie, I ask you this? I mean, milk not only tastes scrummy but it is excellent for growing bones and teeth – just what your little ones need this cold winter.

• Click here to use the milk&more voucher online

So, how do you get to claim your free milk? You need to visit the website (just click the link above) and enter in your postcode and meet your milkman. Then you need to register your details and your regular payment method.

Once you’ve done all of that, browse the shop and place your orders. In your basket, enter the voucher code MILKPPC and click GO. Confirm your order and you’re done! It is that simple. Your £10 discount will be deducted from your first invoice. There are the usual terms and conditions, of course, but there is free delivery and you don’t need to book a delivery slot either. Nice.

The offer is only open to new milk&more customers and the closing date is 31 January 2012.

Down from the usual price of £9.99 to only £1.50, you are saving a whopping £8.49 on this Gruffalo 2012 family planning calendar at The Book People. You can also get the item delivered for free using the code below.

• Click here to get planning with the Book People

The Gruffalo 2012 family planner is not for working out when you are having your next baby, although I am sure you can do that too if you like. No, this calendar is structured for the school year, running from September to September so you can stay on top of all school activities and events.

The planner covers a 17 month period until December 2012 and comes with bright stickers that can be used to flag up school fairs, sports days, parents evenings and other similar events. The calendar also comes with the adorable Gruffalo images and extras that we all love from the ace book. There is even a drop-down pocket for popping important paperwork into. The code you need for free delivery is DEC11FREE.

Thanks to Speculator at HUKD!

This is another excellent deal for those of you looking for a way to shed some Christmas pounds and get those svelte pre-Christmas pud bodies back. This particular series of fitness titles for the Xbox Kinect has had excellent reviews and delivers some fab workouts.

• Click here to get exercising with Play.com

Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012 includes new content and has also been modified to suit the feedback given by users to make it more intuitive and user friendly. I am using the first version and must admit that it can be a little convoluted to use and understand at first.

This game has over 90 hours of content with both improved content from the original and completely new exercises as well. Your instructor will now tell you what you are doing wrong and teach you how to improve your moves as well. This is a vast improvement on the original as you can genuinely work on getting your body into shape the right way.

Thanks to Bkzbiz at HUKD!

There is a new website on the block called Pinktimeline.com and its all about helping people who are trying for a baby. The site gives out free information and advice as well as letting you build your own fundraising page so that people can help you to raise money for expensive fertility treatments, a nursery and more.

• Click here to visit Pinktimeline.com

The site is offering the first 100 couples who build a fundraising page a lovely £50 prize. If you happen to be trying for a baby and need help in paying for expensive treatments, this donation from First Response will certainly be a step in the right direction.

Pinktimeline.com lets friends and family help you to cope with the financial pressures around a baby. It doesn’t just have to be expensive fertility treatments that get fundraising support, it can also be to build a nursery or help get baby clothes and more.

The site is brand new and there are plenty of free features to get people up and running. And if you happen to want support from family and friends as you tackle the world of babies, why not start your page today and get the cool £50 kickstart. Remember it is only for the first 100 couples.

Six years ago I only drank two kinds of tea – rooibos and normal. Then someone pointed me at Green Tea and I loved it and then I started experimenting with all different types of tea. So it was rather exciting to get in a box of Natur Boutique teas to review.

The first box was for Green Tea Blend Diet. This is a blend of green tea, Java tea and liquorice. The blend is designed to stimulate the metabolism, burn fat and help you lose weight. I didn’t actually measure the tea against any personal weight loss when I used it though; I just rated it on taste.

And this Natur Boutique Green Tea blend is delicious. Usually I am not a fan of liquorice but this hints at it as opposed to beating you about the head with it. It is very refreshing and works fabulously as a mid-morning hydrating drink and doesn’t leave you with the same bloated lethargy as yet another cup of coffee.

The next tea up was Artichoke Tea. After reading the info this tea was something I had to take regularly as it oozes health benefits and helps with things like indigestion, digestion and IBS. But artichoke? I loathe them. How could I bring myself to drink the tea?

After about two weeks I forced myself to make a cup. It doesn’t have that overwhelming artichoke taste, has a lovely flavour and is very moreish. I was very surprised by this. I now have one cup every morning and love it.

There are some other flavours on the Natur Boutique site and the tea’s cost around £2.95 for a pack of 20 teabags. You can get three for £7.95. They are expensive compared to Tesco type herbal teas but really delicious and I have noticed a health difference. My husband says my skin glows! These would make a lovely Christmas treat I think.

There I was, innocently collecting the post, when three Weight Watchers Hot chocolate sachets appeared. One was caramel, one was mint and the third one was plain. Seeing as it was cold out and I fancied something sweet, I thought I would start with the caramel.

The Weight Watchers caramel flavoured hot chocolate is alright. Just alright. It doesn’t suffer from a nasty chemical aftertaste, something very common to diet hot chocolate, and tastes nice but it didn’t shiver my timbers or shake my tree. I love caramel but found there wasn’t a very strong caramel flavour to it.

Next up was the Weight Watchers plain hot chocolate. Like the others, it is so easy to make. Add hot water, stir, drink. I add some cold milk to cream it up a bit (fat free of course!). Now this was more like it. In fact, I prefer it to the Options Hot Chocolate that I usually drink.

Years ago I gave up on instant hot chocolate, especially the diet ones, as they tasted foul. This was delicious. The Weight Watchers plain hot chocolate is creamy, chocolately and decadent. I loved it. It will be replacing my usual hot chocolate on my next shopping run.

The last sachet was mint. Now, I am not a fan of mint chocolate unless it is After Eights so I wasn’t sure I was the best person to test this. I gave it to weight watching hubby to drink instead. He is very fussy so I wasn’t holding out much hope for a good review. However, he liked it. He said it wasn’t too sweet and wasn’t too minty but was a nice blend of the two.

It costs around £2 at Tesco at the moment (on sale) and around £2.85 elsewhere. A good price for a scrummy hot chocolate.

This is such a funny, silly and yet clever idea that I couldn’t resist posting it really. Play.com sent me an email today telling me that they are having an 11 hot deals day that will be taking place today, the 11th of the 11th month in 2011. Possibly a lucky day? Who knows!

• Click here to get some deals with Play.com

The deals on offer for the 11% off all gadgets and gifts are only valid until midnight tonight, so it is probably best you pootle on over there if this is of interest to you. The code you need is ELEVENDOTD in order to swipe that 11% off the gifts and gadgets. Wahoo.

You get 11% off bestselling DVDs, blu-rays, box sets, games, albums t-shirts, sportswear and more. I have already eyeballed some items and compared their prices to others of their calibre online and the discount is pulling Play down further than many of the others.

This is a good deal for possibly nabbing yourself a Christmas boxset or DVD filler or three.

Christmas is approaching fast with under two months to go until the big day and, with all the belt tightening going on, there are many ways you can whip your home into festive shape without spending a lot of money. Here are some simple ideas for decorating the home this Christmas. 

When I was given this Arm & Hammer My Way! Spinbrush for my daughter I was extremely sceptical. An electric toothbrush for a five-year old? Really? I was willing to bet that she would cut and run the moment she felt it vibrating against her teeth.

The My Way! Spinbrush isn’t entirely standard fare. It’s very gadgety and has been rather cleverly designed to attract a child’s attention. It can be customised with stickers. And they give you a LOT of stickers in the box. We still have three sheets of them floating about the house.

The stickers for the “girls” toothbrush consist of rainbows and pinks, purples and flowers, unicorns, princesses and castles. The boys get footballs and cars and other such exciting things. You have enough letters to write most names on the brush.

The sticker part was a hit. She spent absolute ages painstakingly sticking them onto her brush and getting them right. Then she spent some time getting used to the switch to turn it on and off by brushing my chair, the lounge suite and the table. Obviously the brush needed cleaning…

She has been a lot more focused when it comes to brushing her teeth since she started using this. I was completely wrong about her hating it. She loves the vibration, loves the way her teeth feel afterwards, and now I don’t need to nag nearly as often. Bonus.

So, those are the pluses. And the negatives? Well, you can’t change the brush. The batteries, yes, but not the brush. So, if you are one of the Good Teeth People you will have to bin it after three months which is bad for the planet. However, it costs only £5.99 at Boots or Tesco which is marginally more expensive than a standard brush, and does clean more efficiently. Overall, I have to admit, this is a surprisingly good product.

Winter has popped its head around the corner and is inching across the ground. The nights are drawing in and the wind has a bit of a bite. What better time to learn how to make soup and to whip up cheap and cheerful recipes that can be eaten for lunch or frozen for a cold and snowy day.

A classic soup is, of course, tomato soup. Tomatoes have been proven to have preventative power over cancer and are high in Vitamin A, Vitamin C, calcium, potassium and Lycopene. And, one of the best ways of eating it is in a lovely, fresh soup. I went and hunted for a recipe that tasted good and didn’t cost a bomb.

We’ve been really blessed over the last two years to not have any particularly noticeable or memorable colds or coughs in our home – that is till this month.  My daughter woke up with one awful cough, so bad in fact that on two occasions she had nose bleeds from the violence of it.

Of course, during a coughing fit like that, she really struggled to breathe, which – in pure mum and slack writer terms: freaked me out!

The cold itself had to be taken care of, but I decided we needed a little added help at night to keep her chest open, decongested, and make her breathing a little easier.  I dug out a Karvol Vaporiser I’d picked up along the way somewhere and plugged it in.

I was worried that there wasn’t enough vapour in it as it’s been standing for well over two years, and the packaging says that each refill lasts three nights. It definitely lasted longer than that, be we also didn’t use it all night long as in a small closed room we found it rather overwhelming.  The vapour definitely is very strong, and it certainly clears your airways in much the same way as Vicks, without being on your skin.

The Karvol Vaporiser combines pine, cinnamon and menthol and I’d say its definitely the menthol you’re most aware of, which is also I think what makes it so overwhelmingly strong.

Apparently the Vaporiser is also useful for sinus problems and hayfever, which I’ll try to remember for the spring when the pollen attacks my family.

The Karvol Vaporiser is suitable for use from 3 months of age and is safe in a child’s room due to a child lock feature which stops them from pulling out the liquid bit.

If you have offspring, then it is likely that you also own at least one scooter. You are also used to the following: carrying scooter and child home, carrying scooter home, putting back out dragging child on scooter while child yells, wanting to throw scooter in nearest bin but can’t as it cost you a fortune.

Sound familiar?

HA! Well, Scoot ‘n Pull is this rather ingenious solution to this very problem. You attach it to the scooter and you, um, pull. Yeah, that’s it. Sounds utterly and completely ridiculous yes? But my goodness has it saved me.

You see my back goes out at the drop of a slipper. I actually put it out putting slippers ON, that is how cranky my back can be, so bending over to drag a scooter and a screaming child was always a bit hellish. With this I just plonked it onto the scooter, and pulled.

There are a couple of teething things to be warned about though…Firstly, your child needs to steer while you pull and, if your child is like my ditzy little thing, they may forget to do this. Somehow the psychological transfer of pulling power has her neglecting to point the scooter in the right direction. However, with a bit of practise it gets easier.

Second, it is a little bit too short for me. I would have preferred a longer lead. Still, this is hardly an issue and the bright colours and well made stitching more than compensate. Oh, and did I mention that you can loop the Scoot ‘n Pull over the scooter so you can carry it home like a backpack? Clever eh?

No more scooter bumping on sensitive shin bones, instead it bumps gently on my plentiful bum. Grin.

It only costs £6.99 which is not that cheap really, but as an investment in parental sanity it seems worth every penny.

We’ve all noticed how mad the weather has been lately. Scorching summer weather in October (not that I’m complaining, mind) and tornados in Africa. This is not normal. So, in honour of the planet here are some ideas on how you can go green this Halloween as well as this Christmas and over the school year. Try it, you may be surprised at how easy it is and how much better it is for your wallet too.

Click here to read more...

This is a really, really good deal here. You get these ace new trainers in a box and in a variety of different colours for only £14.99 including delivery. This is a great price, especially if you’re keen to get fit and get in shape over winter.

• Click here to get toning with The Hut eBay Outlet

Avia crafts walking shoes with the athlete’s performance in mind apparently. The cantilever technology is proven to increase performance for all runners and foot types as the cushioning system adds stability and shock absorption.

The shape of the cantilever design delivers maximum energy back into the runner’s stride. Don’t know why that sentence amuses me, but it does! So, apparently what this all means is that the shoes are very comfy for people who like to run or do aerobics or go to gym or have a walk.

They are good looking shoes actually and I’ve gone ahead and bought myself a pair because my old shoes are looking quite scary. At this price you can’t really go wrong, can you?

Thanks to sigma at HUKD!

I’m a huge fan of rooibos (redbush) tea. I’ve been drinking it since I was a baby as I grew up in South Africa where the native shrubs grow and it was used to keep me soothed as a baby, hydrated as a teen, and detoxified as an adult. In short, I live, love, adore rooibos tea.

Now, the phenomenon that is rooibos exploded several years ago due to its impressive list of health properties, and an American company tried to steal the name. It all got very complicated but, needless to say, the South Africans won and the shrub is now a national resource.

Rooibos only grows in certain soils at certain temperatures and in specific areas of the Cape. It’s a pretty demanding fellow. However, it tastes amazing. Like green tea, the flavour will be something you either love or you hate and if you are in the former category, you will probably have strong views about how it is brewed too.

I drink it neat with a splash of cold water. Milk and sugar are sacrilegious! So I was a bit sceptical about Tetley’s Redbush Tea with Vanilla. I love vanilla. I love rooibos. How was their relationship going to taste?

I poured myself three cups of tea. The first was a teabag from the original manufacturer in SA that I import, the second was Tetley Redbush and the third was the vanilla variant.

The taste and flavour of the Tetley Redbush was almost identical to my SA version barring a slight bitterness (a preferred taste) on the latter. Tetley’s version was not quite as acidic but still a really good flavour with excellent follow through.

The vanilla was surprisingly delicious too. While the redbush flavour was slightly to the left of the SA version, the combination is fabulous. A refreshing, bright and tasty drink for the upcoming winter. No doubt in my mind at all, and a cheapie at £1 a box from Tesco!

The sniffle and sneeze season is here again and kids are dropping like flies as they get sick and huddle up at home. My little one is wrapped in blankets and is sitting and staring at the TV like a small miserable parcel and so I decided to hunt down home remedies to make her life better.

Not only do natural home remedies generally mean no weird additives or strange side-effects, but they can be whipped up in an emergency, late at night and whenever they need a boost. They can really come in handy if you have run out of medicine and it is too late to get to a chemist.

We recently reviewed two different scooters from Micro Scooter and they got rave reviews. Sadly this is not the case with the Micro Scooter lock. This extremely expensive piece of kit is a complete waste of your money and here’s why…

To start with you will pay around £15.95 for the Micro Scooter lock if you go via some of the affiliated stores, or around £10.95 from a store called Hop. The lock is the original manufacturer make by Micro Scooters themselves and is designed specifically for the Micro Scooters unique (ahem) design.

We decided to go ahead and stick with the branded lock because we figured it would be of the same quality as the scooter. How wrong we were. To start with the combination lock will reset itself if you depress the side buttons simultaneously. However, thanks to the lock being so small, doing this is way too easy. Risky too, you can’t reset it to zero if you screw up, oh no, you have to get wire cutters and bin it.

The second problem was that when you pressed the button to release the lock, the wire sprang out at a speed that was faintly worrying for an adult, much less a child. While I am sure that younger kids wouldn’t be playing around with a combination lock, the risk is there for older kids. Also, if you depress both buttons when the lock is released, the wire shoots back into the hole really fast. It whips around and spins back. This is NOT safe at all.

The final straw is that on the second day the button on the left of the lock, the one you need to release the wire, jammed.  On the second day. The lock cost us around £14 to buy and lasted a grand total of two days. And our scooter had to sit outside for three days while we tried to locate a wire cutter…