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It’s Christmas! A Meme.

By Mum's the Word on December 13, 2012 in Christmas

I’ve been tagged in a Christmas meme by My Mills Baby which involves answering all sorts of festive questions and I’m hoping it’ll put me into more of a season-appropriate mood, so here goes!:

What’s your favourite thing about Christmas?

When I was younger, I’d have said going out with friends and celebrating the festive period, but now I’m a Mum my favourite bit is the moment after Sausage wakes up. For a split second, she forgets it’s Christmas and it seems like waking up on any other day. Then the realisation kicks in and a look of excitement and happiness crosses her face and it makes every second of stress in the run up to Christmas 100% worth it.

What is your favourite make-up look for the festive season?

Probably fairly similar to my usual going-out look, smoky eyes, lots of mascara and clear gloss on the lips, but maybe with the addition of a bit more sparkle on my cheeks and eyes.

Real or Fake trees?

I know a lot of people will disagree with me here, but I like fake trees. I kind of hate the way we chop down beautiful trees just to put them in a pot in our front room for a couple of weeks, then thrown them out. I’d much rather see real trees growing outside. As a kid, my family always did fake trees too, so there’s something about the smell of a fake tree coming out of the loft that is so quintessentially Christmassy for me. Plus, sod hoovering up all those fallen needles!

Giving or receiving presents?

This is a difficult one for me to answer because I much prefer giving but it also sends me into a state of heightened anxiety so it’s not all that straight-forward! I’m both blessed and cursed with a Husband who is amazing at buying gifts, in previous years he’s remembered me mentioning that I want something around the beginning of August and actually bought it for me as a Christmas gift, which is pretty good going! On the flip-side of that, it’s a stark contrast against my frankly appalling gift-buying skills, so it just makes me worry about getting it wrong for everyone each year!

Do you open your presents in the morning or evening?

MORNING! Do people really wait until the evening to open their presents? If they do, I’ve never met them and I don’t know if I want to – surely anyone who can be that restrained on Christmas Day takes life FAR too seriously?! In fact, one side of Husband’s family is part German and they do most of the gift giving on Christmas Eve, which suits my impatience even better!

It’s A Wonderful Life

What’s your favourite Christmas film?

Oh gosh, well ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ was introduced to be by Husband about 6 years ago and we’ve watched it every year since as we both adore it, so that’s my absolute fave. In fact, Husband and I have said on many an occassion that we’d love to move to Bedford Falls! But actually, I love MOST Christmas films, I even sit and watch the tacky made-for-American-TV ones that they show on Xmas24. Anything set in New York goes down a particular treat too as it’s been a dream of mine to spend Christmas in NYC pretty much my whole life.

What is your favourite Christmas food?

Hmm, that’s a toughie, we all know how much I love my food! Roast dinner is one of my favourite meals at the best of times, so obviously the whole Christmas dinner is high on my list, and actually I’m one of those people who really likes turkey and thinks it’s a very underrated meat. A very close second, or possibly a draw is Christmas Day supper though. We usually spend Christmas Day with Husband’s family who will put out cold cuts of meat, pickles, crackers, smoked salmon, cheeses, homemade pickled onions, all sorts of delights and we all just tuck in and help ourselves round a big table. It’s lovely!

So, now I have to tag three other bloggers, but I’m cheating and tagging four!:

Jamillah at Bare Beginnings

Lauren at The Wonderful Adventures of Spud and Spike

Paul at I’m Well Confused, Me (maybe you could sub the make-up question out for a ‘What’s your favourite thing to wear on Christmas Day’?!)

And Mummy Barrow at Mummy Barrow!

Good luck and godspeed!

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What to Buy The Kid Who Has Everything! – Bean Bag Bazaar Review

By Mum's the Word on December 5, 2012 in Christmas, Parenting, Review

This year, Christmas present buying hasn’t been quite so simple. Sausage is getting older now and is at a bit of an in-betweeny phase – lots of stuff seems either too young or too old for her and she has quite a lot of everything already. Plus, don’t you find that you spend a few months caching ideas of what to get your kids for Christmas, only to be asked by lots of relatives what they’d like and you end up giving all of your ideas away?!

One thing that has saved us a bit, in terms of ideas, is that we’re giving Sausage’s bedroom a bit of a makeover to bring it up to her new ‘big-girl-who-goes-to-school-now’ standards so we’ve been thinking of things that we can get her to make it into her very own girl-cave! For one of her big presents, we’ll be getting her her first TV so that she can watch her DVDs in her room and have her Wii console in there too. We had wanted to get her a small armchair to go in there too but all of the ones we liked were astronomically priced, so we looked at beanbags instead and found Bean Bag Bazaar.

Bean Bag Bazaar doesn’t just cater for kids, they sell bean bags for adults too for both indoor and outdoor use, bean bags which are ideal for gaming and some beautiful kids ones to boot. They also have a range of Jacqueline Wilson bean bags which are brightly coloured and perfect for a reading corner or a spot of TV watching, and we’ve been lucky enough to be sent one to review.

The one we chose was the Jacqueline Wilson™ Kids Classic Bean Bag – Bookshelf (£49.99 pictured above) and although we’ve put it away for Sausage to have at Christmas, Husband and I have given it a through once-over and the quality is really very high. The material that the bag is made of is not only bright and beautiful but feels incredibly hard-wearing too and I can imagine it taking a real battering without any problems! The blurb on the site says:

“This Jacqueline Wilson™ style bean bag is officially designed by BeanBagBazaar. It has a pretty bookshelf print and is the perfect accompaniment to the latest Jacqueline Wilson™ book. It is made from strong and sturdy water-resistant fabric and features double zips, to keep all beans secure inside the beanbag.”

It’s suitable for ages 3-10 and the he best part about the beanbag is that it can be used indoors and outdoors, which means it will be perfect for Sausage to sit on in the garden and read her books or do some drawing when the weather starts to improve. We can even imagine taking it camping or to the beach in the summer as a handy seat too!

If you’ve got a kid who’s hard to buy for, I can highly recommend any of the Jacqueline Wilson range and judging by the quality of this beanbag, the rest of the ones on the site would be a great buy too! Oh and all kids beanbags are buy one get one half price at the moment. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up from The Crammonds!

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Mum’s the Word Recommends…The Christmas Edition

By Mum's the Word on November 18, 2011 in Review

This year, we’ve found it a bit difficult to come up with a list of things to get Sausage for Christmas. Of course, we’ve had the inevitable “Oooh, I WANT ONE OF THOSE!” during every ad break on Nick Jnr., but not all of her selections are suitable (a dog who shits as part of the game? Not gonna happen.) She’s at that age where she’s kind of in-between, lots of stuff is way too young and lots of stuff is way too old. Oh, then there’s the problem that she’s the child who has everything, including two parents who don’t know how to say no!

Husband and I have been brain storming about the things that we want to get Sausage and I thought I’d share some of our ideas, just in case they prompt anyone else who’s struggling. There’s a couple of bits in there that she already has and loves too, just for some added inspiration. So, without further ado, heres:

THE CRAMMOND GUIDE TO CHRISTMAS

(or, What to Buy the Under Five Who Has Everything)

1. Sylvanian Families - starting from under £5.00

We’ve been looking longingly at Sylvanian Families for a while and we finally think Sausage is at a stage where she’ll look after them properly, and not let all of the little pieces go missing! We’ve been very kindly sent the motorcycle and sidecar set which includes two characters, the awesomely named George and Mildred Mulberry, but we’ll be adding to her collection with one of the houses, some furniture and some more characters. One that I totally love is the Special Edition Kate and William Balmoral wedding set, which includes the Bride and Groom, two beautiful bunnies, Bridesmaids, Page Boys and even Rev. Kelvin Waters, the beaver clergyman!

I had Sylvanian Families when I was a kid, I vaguely remember a tree-house and some cats, and I can absolutely attest to the fact that they are still just as brilliant quality as they were back then. I adore these toys, they’re sweet, innocent and such brilliant sets for little girls and the beauty of it is, there’s so many to choose from that if a relative or friend is stuck for what to buy for your child, they can pick from any one of hundreds of Sylvanian flavoured options! What’s not to love?

2. Disney Princess Magic Rise Oven - £32.99

Now, I know we should all be against the subjectification of little girls and that toys should be unisex…yadda yadda…but sometimes, a girl just wants to wear a tiara, pretend she’s a Princess and bake some flippin’ cakes. The Disney Princess Magic Rise oven is a brilliant bit of kit, which actually makes your play cakes look like they’re rising in the oven (hence the name…). You can then decorate the cakes using the prettifying bits they give you, and hey presto!

I have to admit, as much as Sausage loves the one that we were sent, it’s actually ME who’s mesmerised by it! There’s something about putting those squashed bits of rubber in the oven and watching them magically pop up that just blows my tiny mind! Sausage and I have had hours of fun with this thing so far!

3. Julia Donaldson ‘The Gruffalo’ set – £9.99 (should be £59.99)

We were probably a bit late to the party on this one, as I know the world seems to be Gruffalo mad at the moment, but we’ve bought Sausage a few other Julia Donaldson books lately that we absolutely love. This set is full of the slightly lesser known books, but if all of her others are anything to go by, these will all become firm favourites too. I can’t wait to read them all to Sausage, curled up on the sofa at Christmas!

4. Playmobil Zoo – £71.99

For as long as we can remember, Sausage has been mad about animals. We took her to the Sealife Centre on her first birthday and she still talks about it now! One of her favourite places in the world is Colchester Zoo, so when we saw that Playmobil have a Zoo set int heir range, we both thought that this would be ideal for out little animal-lover.

It’s not cheap at just over seventy quid, but Playmobil stuff is brilliant quality and we know she’ll adore it so it’s worth every penny. It comes with a huge amount of animals, characters and scenery and all of the reviews on Amazon are really positive, which has concreted our choice in our minds.

5. Kinectimals, Now with Bears! – £31.98

Just recently, I’ve been doing some work for a software company and we were lucky enough to be given an Xbox 360 and a Kinect so that we can review games. I really love the Kinect concept because unlike the Wii where with many games you can kind of get away with just shaking the remote up and down, with the Kinect your whole body is scanned, so there’s no way of phoning it in.

As I mentioned above, Sausage loves animals, so what better console game for her than one where she actually gets to pretend to be an animal? I cannot wait to see her prancing about the living room, enjoying this game, I suspect there will be a lot of post-Christmas video footage of her playing this, while me and Husband squeak on about how cute she is!

Well, there you have it, a Very Crammond Christmas! I hope I’ve inspired some of you with my choices and if any of you have any other suggestions of things you think the kids will love, I’d love to hear them, just leave me a comment below.