Review - Laser Pegs light up construction set

Harry has been having fun recently playing with Laser Pegs after we were sent the Laser Pegs 8-in-1 Helicopter Construction Set (affiliate link) to review. Laser Pegs are a construction kit, a standalone set that can be expanded with other sets in the range, and are also compatible with most similar brick based construction toys. They come with a battery powered base plate, and when you connect your finished model it lights up and flashes.

The pieces look very cool when you take them out the box. You have a triangular base piece, several clear electrical pieces, and a big pile of translucent coloured bricks in different shapes, sizes and colours.

This particular set can be used to create 8 different designs, although the box only includes the instructions for one model, the helicopter. The rest of the instructions can be downloaded online and printed which isn't ideal, it would nice if the instructions for at least a couple more models were included. Harry (6) had no problems following the instructions once he'd got started, but he did need a bit of help clicking some of the bricks together as they were a little stiff. We found it was a good idea to sort the pieces out by size, as the instructions are in black and white and pieces of different sizes are the same colours.

Harry soon finished his first model - the large helicopter - and he was thrilled with it. He was pleased enough even before connecting it up, and when we'd plugged it in to see the model light up he was thrilled. The triangular base takes two AA batteries (not included), and you can press the button in the centre to scroll through a few different settings, with different types of flashing and non flashing lights.

Next Harry was very keen to start building his own models, and he soon had the method of connecting the bricks to the power source worked out and was able to build a little car. The bricks are fully compatible with his Lego bricks which is fantastic, and offers all sorts of further opportunities for imaginative building.

We received this set in exchange for a review, Amazon link is affiliate.

Our first trips camping at Ashurst in the New Forest

Several years ago, Ram and I bought a small tent, with the intention of making camping a regular thing. We spent one night in the New Forest in late September, then it was winter. Come spring I was pregnant with Harry and didn't really fancy it, and camping with our up-all-night-screaming-babies-and-toddlers was out of the question. The tent has since been used for nights with Harry in the garden, but with the lovely weather we've been having lately we decided that it was finally time to give family camping ago.

So a few weeks ago we bought a smaller pop up tent and second airbed, loaded up the car, and headed off to Ashurst in the New Forest for a night's camping. It's where we stayed before, one of the closest campsites to us and has good facilities. When we arrived we drove around the site a couple of times looking for the perfect spot, finding a great space at the far edge of the campsite with a view out across the open land behind us and forest in the background.

We split up with an adult and a child in each tent. The children loved setting their beds up with their pillows and sleeping bags, and getting all their teddies ready. We let them go running off by themselves across the field, and they absolutely loved the freedom.

There is a footpath that leads from the campsite, and a short distance away there are fallen trees to play on and walk across. We spent ages here, and also found a geocache.

For dinner we headed to La Pergola in Lyndhurst just down the road. It was perfect for us, pizza to eat and a playground to keep the children entertained. It's very popular though, we arrived soon after six and the only seats were outside, but I can see why, the food was delicious. Then we had a quick drink at the pub next to the campsite while the children played in the playground there, before heading back to our tent.

We got the children ready for bed and then headed out for a pyjama walk with our torches. In retrospect it wasn't the best idea as Harry managed to step into a puddle and soak the bottom of his onesie, meaning that he had to sleep in his clothes as I'd only brought one set! They really loved the experience though. Then we finished the evening playing football in the open area behind the tents while the sun set, it really was quite idyllic!

The next few weeks we couldn't stop thinking about how much fun we'd had, but we knew that our tent set up wasn't really practical. The airbed didn't really fit into the smaller tent, and it has no inner lining meaning that everything was wet in the morning. Ram is always keeping his eyes open for a bargain, and was delighted to find a family tent at a reasonable price - we snapped it up, and found ourselves the new owners of an Urban Escape Atago 5 man tent. We were a little daunted by its size at first, but we practised putting it up and then chose another weekend when the weather was looking good (I'm afraid that we are fair weather campers!) and headed back to Ashurst. 

Our new tent is fantastic! It was so nice to be able to stand up inside and there was loads of room for all our things. The tent has two bedrooms inside, and even the smaller one easily fitted the double airbed. Our camping experience was definitely improved! 

We had another pleasant evening watching the children run about, this time very much enhanced by our fold up chairs and some Pimms from the Co-op down the road. It's such a nice time of year with the long summer evenings, camping is a great way to make the most of them. We'll definitely be back, and we already have a few more possible weekends pencilled down in the calendar. Perhaps next time we might even manage to stay for two nights!

We paid £23.20 each time for a night's camping at Ashurst Campsite in the New Forest. Ashurst Campsite is run by Camping in the Forest - you can find out more information on their website. 

Making a Space Snack with Miles Kelly

To celebrate the release of the three new Miles Kelly's 100 Fact Books, I was invited to come up with my own space themed snack inspired by the 100 Facts Space Travel book. Eating in space is of course quite different to eating on earth, not only do astronauts have to contend with eating in zero gravity, so they can't eat anything that will break up into tiny pieces, the food also has to be easy to prepare, capable of being stored for long periods, light in weight and mustn't need to be refrigerated. Most of the food is served in packets, to which water is added before eating.

To inspire us, we were sent the ingredients to make our very own Space Pudding to enjoy while looking through the books. All you need is some Angel Delight, powdered milk, water, a syringe and a re-sealable plastic sandwich bag.

Harry very much enjoyed making the Space Pudding. First you need to add two tablespoons of Angel Delight and two tablespoons of milk powder to the bag, then add the water using a syringe. When all the water has been added, you squish the bag in your hands to mix it all together, leave it to stand for a couple of minutes, then eat by cutting a corner off the bag and squeezing it into your mouth - great fun!

We watched a few videos to learn more about eating in space, and discovered that instead of bread for sandwiches, astronauts prefer to eat tortillas, because they don't make any crumbs which are annoying to have floating about the space station. They are also light, don't take up much space, and can be stored for a reasonable period of time.

So for our own Space Snack recipe we came up with a tortilla based snack. I had a think about what other foods we had in our cupboards that would travel well and would be sticky enough to stay where they were put in zero gravity and my thoughts turned instantly to our favourite family food - pizza!

So here is our recipe for a Tortilla Space Pizza Wrap:

Tortilla Space Pizza Wrap

One tortilla wrap
Tomato ketchup or tomato puree in a tube or sachet (about three tablespoons worth)
A bag of grated cheese with herbs already added (a large handful). In space this would have to be freeze dried grated cheese as there is no fridge!

We put the grated cheese into a re-sealable bag and added a sprinkle of herbs and a couple of big squeezes of tomato ketchup. If we were really making this in space, we'd need to add some water too, to rehydrate the cheese. Then Harry squashed it up with his fingers to make sure that it was all mixed in. I cut a corner off the bag and Harry squeezed it onto the tortilla. I hope that the mixture would be sticky enough not to float away. Then Harry wrapped up the tortilla ready for eating, making sure that the bottom was secure enough to contain the filling.

We ate it cold, but it could easily be warmed up in the microwave. I think it tasted pretty good! I'm not a big fan of ketchup myself, but if the food was being prepared for space it could easily be made with a more tasty and healthy tomato sauce, perhaps with the herbs or other flavourings already added. I loved this challenge, and it really encouraged us to think creatively, as well as learning a great deal about everyday life in space. It would have been a great activity for our Space Day!

Harry is very interested in space (he even has a space themed bedroom) and he couldn't wait to get his hands on these three fantastic 100 Facts Books from Miles Kelly. As you would expect, each book in the series contains 100 facts about each topic, with each double spread forming a chapter on a different theme.

100 Facts Space Travel talks about the history of space travel, what space travel is like now, and where technology could lead us in the future. Each page is a mixture of photographs and cartoon illustrations. All the facts are explained and expanded upon, and there are a few little quizzes and extra "I don't believe it!" facts added in.

100 Facts Stars and Galaxies looks at deep space, beginning with the formation of the universe, with facts all about the different types of stars, black holes and constellations, finishing by taking a look at the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. There are little activity suggestions added in, like exploring how the universe is expanding by blowing up a balloon, and creating your own constellations by using a torch shining on holes pricked into a piece of cardboard.

Finally, 100 Facts Solar System takes a closer look at our own Solar System. It features each planet in turn, with a fact file, information about what the planet is composed of, and information about their moons.

All three books are laid out really well, with a mixture of fact boxes, diagrams and images, and different sizes and styles of text makes the information fun, and easy to dip in and out of. The books contain a huge amount of information, and I know that they are going to be both an interesting read and a useful source of reference.

We were sent these three books to review, as well as the ingredients for our Space Pudding.

Cardboard tube monsters craft

These colourful monsters are made using cardboard tubes and a variety of odds and ends from the craft box. They make a great Halloween craft for little ones and make for some fun Halloween decor.

To make these monsters we used some products supplied to us by Bostik as part of the Bostik Craft Bloggers club. Our box of materials was stuffed full of wonderful bits and pieces that we could use to make our monsters. Included was a lovely big cardboard cone that I thought would make a great monster body. I raided our junk modelling supply for some extra toilet roll tubes, and set Mia loose with a paintbrush and selection of different coloured paints.

Then we looked through our crafty bits to see what we could use. First we worked on monster hands and feet. Mia threaded the colourful beads onto pipe cleaners, which was really easy for her to do and satisfying because the textured surface keeps the beads firmly in place. I cut out some feet from glittery card, and laid out lines of Bostik White Glu for her to stick pom poms in place. The Bostik White Glu was really easy to apply to small areas using the nozzle at the top of the bottle, and once it was dry all the pom poms stuck really firmly.

Mia and I had fun gluing all the bits together to make our first two monsters! We finished them off with a feather and some googly eyes. Again, the Bostik Glu worked perfectly for this craft, easily sticking all the different types of embellishment that we used.

Then after school Harry joined us and we completed our Monster Family, using lots of different scraps and embellishments, and the children were so pleased with them! It's a really fun craft for children of all ages, and easy to do with all the crafty bits and pieces that you tend to collect when you have small children around!

If you enjoy crafting with cardboard tubes you might also like our cardboard tube owls and minibeasts and bugs made from rubbish.

The box of craft materials was provided to me free of charge by Bostik as part of the Tots100/Bostik Craft Bloggers Club.

Things are actually growing in the garden!

I was quite busy over the weekend so I didn't get out in the garden much, although my parents were here on the Friday to look after the children while I was away at BritMums Live and I notice that they did do a bit of sneaky weeding! The tomatoes are looking nice and healthy now, and some of them have started to get flowers, I just need to remember to keep pinching out the side shoots.

I had a big cull of all the pots that we had in the garden, all inherited from the previous owner. I was hopeless at looking after them properly and they were mainly filled with big, dead plants. Most of the large pots were given away on Freecycle, and the rest were filled with new compost and bedding plants from a big pack of petunias that I bought. This planter had been at the top of our drive for the last three years with something dead in it, now it's looking much better with some flowers.

Amazingly out of the 24 plants that I bought only one has died so far, the poor thing was eaten by slugs so I've been putting pellets down now. We also inherited a lovely strawberry planter, the strawberries are sadly long gone but I've planted it up again with the petunias and I'll try it again with strawberries next year.

I did keep some strawberry plants alive though, and this week we harvested our first - the children love picking and eating them. As long as I look after them I do seem to have a reasonable success with growing strawberries, so I'll definitely be getting more plants.

The apple tree in our front garden is also looking good this year. Last year something must have gone wrong, perhaps it didn't get pollinated or something, because we had no apples at all. But this year we had loads of blossom and now I can see plenty of apples growing. I'm not sure what variety the apples are but they must be cooking apples because they aren't very tasty to eat raw. In the past though I've made some delicious apple cake and apple crumble from them, so I'm looking forward to trying that again this year.

Britmums Live 2015

This year was my third year at BritMums Live, and once again I had an amazing time! This year was a little different for me as I was invited to speak in a session all about Pinterest - definitely well out of my comfort zone but I'm so glad that I was involved and it was such a confidence boost.

I arrived early at The Brewery as I had been asked if I was able to help out with registration. I eagerly accepted, as it saved me having to worry about walking in by myself, and I loved the chance to see behind the scenes. It was a bit daunting at first when the doors opened and people started rushing in to grab their lanyards, but it was a great way to put some faces to names and I really enjoyed it. I was also very excited to see my badge with the word 'Speaker' on, and to find myself in the agenda!

It did mean that I missed the initial opportunity to find people to chat to, but luckily my fab blogging buddy Swazi saved me a space for the Welcome and opening Keynote talks. Victoria Wright in particular was excellent and really inspiring. Then came the highly anticipated and closely guarded secret event - an Ice Breaker Guinness World Record attempt. A fellow table member spotted the toilet rolls that were hidden underneath our table so we had a bit of a clue as to our task, which was to wrap as many people up as mummies as we could within three minutes! It was great fun, and we all beat the record by one mummy, wrapping up 51 people in total!

During the tea and coffee break I found my way to The Hub which is the central area populated mainly by brands. Apart from briefly popping out to check in to the Travelodge down the road, this is where I spent the next couple of hours - not really talking to the brands but mostly taking advantage of the biscuits and free wine from Lindeman's and socialising! In fact I only attended one session over the whole two days which is very different from my previous BritMums experiences. I'm not sure why, there just weren't as many that jumped out at me as before, and because I know now quite a few bloggers I was just having too much fun chatting and meeting people.

One area that I wished I had spent more time in was the Craft Lounge, hosted by Lady Sew & Sew and Make it Coats. It was new this year and a brilliant idea for crafty people like me and people that just wanted to sit down quietly for a bit and occupy themselves with something creative. There were three tables - knitting, crochet and sewing - and you could take a seat at one of the tables and either someone would be along to give you a hand or you could just sit there and work on your own project and chat.

A lovely lady tried to teach me crochet, and I managed a few sad looking rows, but I just can't get my head around it which is a real shame. All the other bloggers on the table were producing some wonderful granny squares! So I tried out the sewing table and had much more success over there, I made a couple of patchwork hexagons and would have loved to have spent more time here sitting and sewing away. There were also performances from Elle & The Pocket Belles who were wonderful, three glamorous ladies singing away and giving it their all, I really enjoyed listening to them.

There were some fun stands in The Hub with brands to chat to, I particularly enjoyed the SuperSavvyMe stand where I created a magnetic moodboard, and the ladies at Parragon books were super friendly as always. Every attendee also received a gorgeous keepsake bracelet from Merci Maman which is engraved BritMums Live 2015, what a lovely memento. I'm looking forward to trying out my tortilla goodies from Santa Maria, and as I've mentioned already the Lindeman's wine stand was also very much appreciated!

We went out for dinner at Wagamama's and then finished off the evening in the Travelodge bar, so when I got up on Saturday I wasn't feeling that great - partly due to the drinking but also feeling a little overwhelmed after the hectic day on Friday and of course nerves due to my session which fell in the last group of the afternoon. Every time I was in The Hub I couldn't miss the sign at one end announcing to the world where to find us speaking about Pinterest! The day went quickly, especially as I found myself joining a group of bloggers for lunch at All Bar One down the road - I've never got on very well with the BritMums lunch before and have found myself wandering aimlessly around with a box, nowhere to sit, and no-one to talk to, so I'm so glad that they invited me along.

Our session went really well I think, I did my introduction and then Jen Stanbrook and Helen Neale had some brilliant tips to share about using Pinterest to grow traffic to your blog. I hope that we gave some useful information and people felt able to ask us questions. If you have any other questions please do feel free to get in touch and I'll try to help, I'll also be posting some of my notes from the session shortly.

I think that this was my favourite BritMums yet. It felt quieter somehow than previous years, and I felt much less overwhelmed, perhaps because now I do actually know quite a lot of people and I was always able to find someone to chat to. Lots of people also came over to speak to me which was wonderful and made me feel like a celebrity - thank you so much for coming over if you are reading this and I'm sorry if I didn't recognise you straight away, I'm hopeless with faces!

Race for Life along Worthing seafront

Yesterday I took part in the 5km Race for Life event along Worthing seafront. Coming the day after the BritMums Life blogging conference I must admit that I was still in a bit of a daze, as well as suffering after two long days standing on feet unaccustomed to wearing heels. But it was a beautiful day, sunny yet cool, and there was the added motivation of trying to keep up with my friend's six year old daughter, who quickly out paced us all!

It was a lovely run along the seafront, and we were very proud of ourselves when we finished! It was lots of fun, a great challenge, and we raised plenty of money between us for charity.

I was invited to join the Brioche Pasquier Race for Life team, who paid for us to enter the race and started off my fundraising with a £50 donation. They also sent us each a fab t-shirt, water bottle, and some samples of their brand new breakfast brioche super cereals to try, which are also given out to people taking part in Race for Life events around the country.

It was a great atmosphere, it was amazing to see that almost everyone was wearing pink and looked to be really enjoying taking part, and I was proud to be there. There were plenty of crowds to cheer us on, and Harry and Mia even joined in for a little way en route before heading to the playground!

Brioche Pasquier covered the entry for me and two friends to the race, as well as giving me a head start with my fundraising.