Our epic dinostraw

Thanks to Britmums we have received our very own set of Cravendale Epic Straws to play with... whoever came up with this promotion is a genius, they are so much fun!!

Our set came with instructions which Squiggle and I had lots of fun building together, she was very good at finding all the parts I needed and actually found it pretty easy to attach them together herself.

You can feel the concentration!

We were both very impressed with the finished result and she absolutely loved drinking her milk though them. It took a while to get to it but she thought it was so funny and we loved how the straws are transparent so you can see the milk making it's way round.

You can do it...

...did it!

We had two sets which meant once we had build the second construction we could have races. Since we gave up baby milk bottles at night there has been a sudden drop in the amount she drinks, this was a great way of getting the good stuff in her – she drank a lot!!

The next challenge was to come up with our own epic invention, so guess what Squiggle wanted to make... yep, a really tall diplodocus. Hmmmm was my first thought, but I don't think we did too badly. What do you think of our very own dino-straw??!!

Epic dinostraw

 

We have had a great time, I'd really recommend getting a set, if you want to find out more visit www.epicstraws.co.uk and happy slurping!

Tots 100 Home Decor Challenge

Tots 100 have teamed up with Ratedpeople.com to run an amazing competition where you can win £2,500 home makeover. There are 3 categories into which you can enter and I am very excitedly entering the home decor challenge!

The room in our house I would love to make over is our spare room / computer room / storage cupboard / washroom /... you get the idea!

The embarrassing 'now' shot

I am very excited to be expecting my second baby next year which means Squiggle will be vacating the little nursery and moving on up on the world to the bigger room. I have no idea what I am going to do with all the 'stuff' we are currently keeping in there, if only we had a garage!

My little girl loves her little room but as she gets bigger she may as well have the space so I want to make it an easy and fun transition for her. With all the changes that will be happening, the last thing I want her to feel is that the baby is turfing her out of her lovely room and into the boring one! She in fact lovingly calls it the messy room – oh dear.

I would love the chance to make this into a beautiful, fun space for her. If I could, this is what I would do - step into my dream room bubble...

If you would like to see my chosen products in more detail, visit my pinterest board here.

If you would like to see my dream image bigger, try opening this small image in a new window, sorry that's the limit of my blogger skills!

I'd love to hear what you think of my ideas, good luck if you have entered too, it's been so much fun planning this post!

Talking Cloudbabies Baba Blue Review

Our favourite giraffe Geoffrey had sent us a talking Cloudbabies Talking Baba Blue to love and review. I thought this toy might be aimed at younger age groups but my daughter is hanging on to him and there's no chance of her passing him on to one of her little friends!!

Baba is going to look after elephant at night!

I haven't really seen a lot of Cloudbabies on the television but Squiggle knew who he was instantly. He has a lovely little face and then a cuddly body, perfect for snuggling up to in bed. He's easy to squeeze and when you do squish his little tummy he says a variety of 12 phrases. He is very easy to use and so is perfect for little ones, my little girl was quite smitten which you'll see from our video!

Somebody loves him!

If you know any little Cloudbabies fans then I imagine this would be a great gift and a much loved toy. I remember when Squiggle was younger she had a squeezable talking toy from a certain other popular CBeebies programme and she loved him to tatters!!

You can collect the other colours and it looks as though they also do glowing versions of the characters which I imagine would make lovely night-time companions!

A big hit in our house, I might have to sit down and watch an episode with my new friend Baba blue now!

Dyson ball vacuum cleaner toy review

This week my little girl has been helping me with the vacuuming with her very own Dyson. Lucky her, I am yet to get one of my own! Believe it or not she now has two, her cousins passed down a cylinder toy Dyson (which is fantastic) and then Geoffery kindly sent us this upright version to review.

It is very realistic looking and well made, I don't think it would break any time soon. It also makes a great Dyson sound so they feel like they really have their own mini version and are really helping with the housework! You can set it to suction mode or have the little balls swirl around inside which is great fun for little ones!

Having its own real life suction is such a great idea for play that we couldn't help be a little bit disappointed when we put it to the test. I can't help but compare it to the other Dyson toy she has which has similar features and is really fantastic. It could be just our model but this one doesn't really seem to have any suction. I know as it is for little ones it can't really be very strong but this is much weaker than I expected. My daughter tried for ages to suck up a bit of paper in the end became frustrated and gave up. On the Dyson she already had she absolutely loves sucking up the bits and then removing them from the compartment herself... and then, of course, starting all over again.

The compartment on the back of this vacuum is really tricky to remove and she can't do it by herself which is such a shame as this is her favourite part of the game! Maybe as she gets older she'll get the hang of it but I even found it fiddly.

She has also found just turning it on a little confusing to start off with. There is a big red button on the front which is perfect but then you still have to use the more adult style switch on the back to select suction or pretend mode. This doesn't make sense to me, toys should be designed so that little ones can play with them all by themselves if they want to. The overall result is that she hasn't played with it as much as I expected.

I think it could be simplified and aimed at younger children as from my experience it is aged around 1 to 2 years that my little girl wanted to roll play such games and do everything mummy did!

Having said that she says she loves it and when I have been vacuuming she's been having a go too - and there's no denying it looks fantastic and just like a real life Dyson!