my fairy garden - new website & product review

When i was a little girl i spent all of my summer holidays out playing in my garden or down the park with my older sister and friends, When i first saw products from my fairy garden ( made by interplay )  i wished they had something like this when i was the right age, so when given the opportunity to review a my fairy garden i jumped at the chance.

The website is amazing in its own right, with games, meet the fairies , a garden diary and then a page full of the items you can buy. Bodhi and i both took the which fairy are you quiz ( link to the fairy quiz ) Turns out I'm Heather and Bodhi is Blossom the site is full of fun games and make and do ideas. 

                                                                         I‘m Heather

‘Hi, Heather here… My home is really important to me as it is also home to wildlife. There is nothing I like better than going for walks in nature which usually ends up being great fun. My friends and I pick up litter which we wash and turn into treasure for our garden. I also love baking cakes for my friends on their birthdays. Autumn is a busy time of year for my family as we have lots to do to get ready for winter.’

I‘m Blossom

‘Hello, my name is Blossom. I have a spring birthday so this is my
favourite time of year. I love to sing and dance amongst the flowers.
I’m good at painting and making things for my garden. I like spring
because flowers start to grow and birds sing and lay eggs.’

We was kindly sent the grow & play fairy garden. You get a whole range of items to make your own garden perfect for indoors or outside play. The pack of grass seed is a lovely touch. We have gifted our garden to Bodhi's cousin who has just turned 8 and loves all things pink/fairies and anything girly. 

you can buy online for £14.99 this kit is the best seller, They also have many add on items such as packs of more fairies ( this one comes with Belle ) I am very much looking forward to helping out with the making of this set with Bodhi's cousin, Last summer Bodhi and i did a DIY Dinosaur garden i did hope he would want to play with this set himself but I'm sad to say my little boy is turned off by the "girly-ness" ( his words ) maybe a little boy elf is needed to join the group? 

Baker Ross Review ( Spring / Easter / Mothers day crafts )

Bodhi & I are very lucky to be apart of the Baker Ross bloggers Team, we were recently sent some items to review from the Baker Ross Spring Range.


Spring has some many great crafting inspiration dates such as mothers day / Easter / spring flowers / lambing, I love spring and seeing the back of the long cold winter each year we put up an Easter tree and decorate for the event we have been kindly sent the Easter bunny train kit to test out and i will be filming our make of this a little closer to Easter. 


Bodhi was really keen to make the super mum kit so we got stuck in you get everything you need in the kit bar glue ( not really an issues tho is it ? ) 

The kit comes with enough to make x6 mum magents and i for one think that its great that you get a range of skin tones and hair colours for the mums i let Bodhi pick 1st for his ' mum ' and i also made one to give as a little gift to a special mum friend. 

all of the parts apart from the capes come with peal off backing so they are foam stickers ( this is why you need glue for the cape ) its very simple to follow the idea from the packaging to create your own supermum the whole crafting time was only around ten minutes 

I could have left Bodhi to it while he was busy making it a perfect time to pop dinner in and unload the dishwasher. once Bodhi had finished making we glued the capes onto both of our mums and that was that, The yellow haired mum is now living on my kitchen fridge holding up the latest party invite. The kits come in a pack of six  ( £3.95 ) or you can buy in bulk with a x30 costing £18 these would be ideal for nursery/school/playgroups for mothers day makes we are going to use the x4 that our left for card making for mothers day. 

After we had packed away Bodhi wanted to do some more arts & crafts so we started off our creative colouring flower wreaths these come in a pack of six for £2.50 and i am a little bit in love with these and very much looking forward to putting these up around the house once they are all coloured in. 

The website has a huge range of products from kits like these shown to bare craft items such as foam sheets / card i really do feel that spending some screen free time with your child is key to a happy family life i really enjoy getting the colours out and sitting at the table with Bodhi. 

Thank you once again to Baker Ross for our box of items. 

What I love and really LOVE about my husband

Now I really do love my husband ( wouldn't have said yes to marring him if I didn't ) but sometimes he really drives me up the wall with things I "love" about him so I thought with today being valentines days I would list them down !

Things I "Love" 

His late night love affair with his phone and candy crush ! I would also like to add the brightness of his phone screen is like that of the sun so all I see while trying to sleep is flashing lights ! 

How his socks end up next to the dirty washing basket ....everything else makes it in just the socks don't ??? 

Same for the dishwasher we havnt had it long so maybe he is getting used to it still? But by putting your plate next to it and saying your helping me really isn't love ! 

When said what he would like for dinner the reply " whatever/ I don't mind / you pick " isn't at all helpful  just suggest something I will of course say no and cook what I want to eat but yeah.

After working a late shift coming home to find he has eaten the last of the cheesecake ( other food item ) that I have been thinking about for my whole shift.

Now things that I really do LOVE about my husband 

He puts me and Bodhi first he will do overtime and get up at silly o'clock and never wakes me up when he leaves

He always stays up until I am home from work in the evenings to make sure I get home safe

He calls me every lunch time for a little chat and asks about my day

He will give foot / back rubs when asked and does a pretty good job 

He lets me rest when I'm poorly and doesn't moan ( too much ) about the state of the house on my off days.

So why don't I tell him more often about the things that I do love about him and maybe moan a little bit less about that things that piss me off ? Well .... Because I'm a female ..... But Chris ( I doubt your reading this ) but I really do love you ! Just please put your stinky socks in the washing basket !!!! 

baker ross - simple craft idea for counting - After school activities

With Bodhi starting school in September i am keen to help him on his learning path, He isn't overly keen on learning and keeps telling me that school is boring and that he doesn't want to go to school so i am trying my best to help him in anyways i can. I set up this simple after school activity for him to help with his numbers & counting. So thing i felt would be simple and he wouldn't see it as learning. 

We used the woodland friends foam stickers for our activity 1st thing i asked Bodhi to do was to sort out the stickers into same groups and to then count out how many of each he had biggest to smallest. This could be done with a range of the stickers from bakers ross the pack we used can in a pack of 100 for £2.99 

Next i showed Bodhi the page with the numbers on and asked to him add the right number of stickers to the numbers, He did this with no problems and taking off the backing sheets was also a great for fine motor skills.

Once finished, Bodhi counted out all of the stickers from the page, We also enjoyed the leaf sand art kits also from Baker ross ( £3.49 ) for a pack of 5 i didn't get a chance to take any photos of this project tho as this was a little bit messy !!! But the out come was lovely and we both enjoyed sitting at the table together and crafting, much better then watching the TV or having iPad time after school if you ask me!

I am a member of the Baker Ross Blogger Network and received this product to review

Kids birthday parties - how to host and still have fun

When i was pregnant with Bodhi i was often wonder about my child's life and Birthday parties was something i thought of often, I wondered what kind of things my child would like, if they would be shy or outgoing all kinds of silly things really. In real life tho the thought of planing and hosting a child's birthday party is pretty overwhelming ! 

1st thing was deciding if we was going to have a small party at home for a few close friends or if we was going to hire a hall space and invite everyone. In the end we went with the hall for 2 reasons, reason number 1, It meant i didn't have to host in my house and worry about mess and clearing up after ward then the 2nd reason was i didn't want to make Bodhi chose a few friend his class has x30 children in it and trying to get a 5 year old to pick just 5 close friends is hard work! so the hall was booked for the bargain cost of just £10 an hour. 

But then we had to pick if we wanted to shell out £100+ for bouncy castle ( in the 2 weekends leading up to his party Bodhi went to x2 parties of class mates and they both had bouncy castles ) or if we was going to go old school and play games and let the kids run around for 2 hours. We went with party games and running around! 

The only game i spent out on was for pass the parcel for the prize and a few other small prizes for game, looking back on it now the children would have been more then happy to have just run around the hall with sone pop music on in the background of the whole time! I think the key is to not stress out , if no one wants to play a game so what ?! the main thing is they are having fun and the parents are okay with it. 

I did buy a photo booth and props from amazon and this went down well with some children others ( Like Bodhi ) didn't even go over to it, so i have loads of photos of the same children but none of others, But for a few pounds it was a bit of fun and something I've put in the loft for us to use again at other parties / events. 

When it comes to party food i do think its key to think about what time you are holding your party Bodhi's was 2 - 4:30 so my thinking was that guests would have had lunch before coming to the party but come 4pm would be pretty hungry from all of the running around. We had use of the kitchen in the hall we hired so went with hotdogs & chips i also chopped up pepper sticks, carrot sticks and cucumber sticks for them to munch on while they waited for hotdogs, This seemed to go down really well and all the parents said what a good idea it was. The food only cost around £15 pounds and the parents helped out with the left over hotdogs.

I brought a tray bake cake from sainsburys 1.6kg cake for only £10 !! hardly worth the stress of making your own is it ! this was cut up and put into party bags for the children to take home. talking of party bags i feel this are a waste of time and money but something you have to do at a party! I went very minimal with Bodhi's 

Cake

pack of stickers

small chocolate bar

small toy spilt from large pack from amazon

balloon 

all the children went home happy and once we had cleared up and packed up we left the hall and headed home to open the boot full of birthday gifts Bodhi was very kindly gifted. 

my top tips if you are planing a party for your child. 

Ask for helpers ! 

Make sure the helpers know what needs doing and set them jobs, My mum was on food duty with me and my sister and my dad was taking photos and my sister in law offered to do face painting.

Photos !!! you will be too busy to take any so ask guests if they have any they can share with you

Don't get stressed - Your child will be happy as long as they have cake & music