Mummy Treats and Treasures

Let's talk teeth shall we?  One thing you hear about a lot when you have young babies are teeth.   The go to question whenever you mention upset is "is she teething?" "Is it her teeth?" "oh those silly toothy-pegs!"... You quickly learn to put every sniffle, every cough, every grumpy day down to those annoying white things popping through your poor childs' gum! And then, with the questions, come all of the advice, and boy is there a lot of advice surrounding teeth!  The thing is though, when you're faced with a screaming, miserable baby, you'll take any advice you can get!  Which is why, when a BzzAgent campaign was launched recently in association with Calpol , offering tips to ease teething pain, I jumped at the opportunity to sign up! My BzzKit arrived yesterday and I was eager to look through it.  It contained a large dribble bib (actually a little too large, it swamps my monkey, but is useful all the same, drool city right n...

When it comes to toys in our household we've always tried to keep the number we own down.  Don't get me wrong, we have a lot of toys!  Many of these have been inherited from an older cousin and others, like the lego collection have grown because we get just as much enjoyment from it as the six year old does!  With the baby I'm trying to make more of a conscious effort to limit what we get her, specifically the plastic tat.  She has a lot from the boy obviously, but most of her new toys have been chosen to stimulate imagination rather than directed play with flashing lights and limited functionality. I'm also more conscious these days of the impact throw away toys have on the environment and also on their effects when children are exposed to some of the nasty chemicals they can contain.  With this in mind, recently most of our toy purchases have been of a wooden nature: peg dolls, balls, eggs, puzzles... you get the idea. Unfortunately, a lot of these ...

June is here, how did that happen?!? Half way through the year and month five of my subscription box journey. This month I decided to take a punt on a brand new never seen before box called Spoilabox . A bit of a risk as you can never quite be sure if the quality is going to be worth the hype but I was reassured slightly by the partnership the owner had with a Facebook group I'm in. A post shared by Amy Collishaw (@binksbzz) on Jun 3, 2017 at 1:00am PDT I wasn't disappointed! First I think I should mention the fantastic customer service which I think is just as important to these things as the contents, if not more - a box can be the most wonderful box in the world but if you don't have a good experience dealing with the company when you have trouble it can seriously tarnish your whole experience.  Due to a slight mishap with the address my box went on walkabout during delivery.  I feared the worse, that not only the delivery service had stuffed it some...

When it comes to technology we tend to be a household of early-ish adopters and one area we've really been exploring recently is home automation. Sonos and Hue feature throughout our rooms and are certainly put through their paces at times - even more so when you factor in our dodgy broadband! I guess it stands to reason really, both my husband and I work in the computing sector, him at an international software house, me, on a smaller scale in a secondary school IT department. Therefore we find it much easier to purchase technology than all those more mundane household expenses we really should be looking into! So when a colleague of mine reminded me about the MagPi magazine and drew my attention to their home automation edition my interest was piqued!  Even more tantalising was the fact it was out of stock!  We ended up spending a couple of weeks waiting for more to come in and having a mad scramble to order one before they all went again before we finally secured an iss...

So, in my quest to find the perfect subscription box, this month I decided to give a little known box called Artemis and Xena a go. At first glance I'd dismissed this one as it appeared to be aimed more at a younger teen market and, sadly, I'm very much not in that demographic these days! However I kept coming back to it as it looked like it might meet my desire for a little bit of everything. My experiences with Treatbox and Birchbox had taught me that I don't like just getting makeup (which rules out so many boxes!) but do like getting a bit (which rules out Treatbox); I like getting a little something to eat, a bit of jewellery, a bit of stationary... Yeah, I'm pretty fussy really aren't I?!? A & X looked like it might have this heady mix. It didn't disappoint! At the beginning of the month I have to admit I got a little nervous, my box was late despite a prompt dispatch notice on the first of the month and I began to wonder if I'd been draw...

As I headed back to work after maternity leave with my daughter I decided a monthly subscription box would be a great way to reward myself for the effort of getting us all out of the house on time each day and keeping the house in an (almost) fit state to live in when we returned!  My first subscription was to Treatbox , a lifestyle box centred around well-being and taking a little time out for yourself.  Here are my thoughts: My First Treatbox - February 2017 When the first box arrived I did wonder whether I'd made the right choice :-/  Whilst the items were nice: a dish to pop your jewellery in, a bracelet (which is actually really cute and I'm still wearing several months later!), a keyring, some lovehearts, a rose garland, some rose wipes and some motivational cards, at the time it felt like a bunch of things I didn't really need.  I did however post the dutiful " I love this box " photo on Instagram, I think partly in the hope of winning a small subscripti...

Like most mum's, I found the run up to going back to work after maternity leave with my little girl a huge wrench on my heart. The bittersweet mix of wanting to get back to a job I love tinged with the guilt of having to leave my baby for several hours a week. There was also the dread of having to juggle everything (although my husband keeps reminding me I really shouldn't be juggling the kids ;-)) getting everybody out of the house on time in the morning and tea on the table of an evening, tackling the ever growing washing pile, making sure we were all clean and well turned out.  The list seemed endless and I was mindful that I needed to remember to take time for myself and part of this was to reward myself for all I was achieving. I heard about subscription boxes a while ago but had never really looked into them properly as they seemed a bit frivolous - paying a chunk of money every month for something just for me. However, they seemed a great idea a this point in my life,...