Mummy Treats and Treasures

As I ordered last months Glossybox so late it feels like this months has come super early! I actually uhmed and ahhed about opening it today when it arrived thinking that I should probably save it for later in the month, but I am weak willed and in need of a treat so that resolution lasted no longer than a few minutes! Being my second month into the subscription, money was automatically taken for this box on the 1st of the month with no intervention from myself (remember, if you order Glossybox make sure you do so before the 15th of the month and cancel by this date if you don't want to have to pay for next months as well).  Dispatch was reasonably quick, a week into the month, and delivery painless from Royal Mail - complete with tracking details which is always a nice touch. The box was well packaged with a strong cardboard outer postage box (it has glossybox written all over it so you can't really conceal what it is!) and a sturdy inner box.  This month is...

I can hardly believe it's July already, well 7th July as I write this! The months are really flying by this year and as they do my monthly treats are stacking up.  It was with great anticipation that my Spoilabox arrived again this week, particularly as it arrived amid a truly challenging day! This is the second month of my subscription to Spoilabox and also only their second month so I'm still very much surprised by what they contain.  It's lovely having absolutely no idea what's coming (bar the odd spoiler of course!) and, yet again, I'm thoroughly pleased with both the contents and the service.  The box was dispatched on almost the first day of the month and arrived without hassle via My Hermes who this time left it in my meter cupboard (a whole day earlier than they had estimated, bonus!).  Again the contents was well packaged with a sturdy cardboard outer shell and a pretty tissue paper wrap inside.  All the products arrived intact with no damage which...

Through a series of events I won't go into I got a chance to give Glossybox a try in June.  I've been eyeing this box up for a while.  On paper it looks similar, if not identical, to Birchbox, which you'll remember I wasn't too bothered about (but feel free to use my sign-up url if you want to give it a go!) and I'd pretty much decided I wouldn't bother with it.  Then June's box came up and I became a little more interested due to them featuring some products I fancied giving a try. Ordering was easy and the 50% off offer they're running in June an absolute bonus, especially as they've also bunged in a couple of other products for new sign ups!  Delivery too was fast and thankfully the Royal Mail delivery guy had no problem with leaving it in a safe place (unlike a recent DHL delivery which saw me trekking across the village to pick up from a random depot!) First impressions were also heightened by the considerably bigger box than Birchbox and a...

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...