Never ending Laundry..... #WotW

This week my word of the week has to be.....

It has dominated the week....

On Monday morning I had 4 baskets piled high full plus a pile in my bedroom to do....Recently I have been struggling to get more than one load a day done because I refuse to use the tumble dryer and put the heating on just to dry clothes on the airers and the weather hasn't been that good to get them outside on the line.....

The weather was perfect for drying clothes on Monday....It was cold but the sun was shining and it was very windy....I got load after load done....Tuesday & Wednesday were the same....I was putting a load in the washer and hanging some out....by the time the washer had finished the clothes outside were dry....

By Wednesday I had done it all.....There was nothing else to wash.....Then came the sorting and putting it away....That was yesterday's job....I don't iron....I really have better things to do with my time....The kids helped....Everything looked so tidy so I decided to wash the bedding....

And so it begins again....

 

Stargazer Lottie Doll - Review!

We love Lottie Dolls here....Last year we were lucky enough to become Lottie Ambassadors and in the past have reviewed the Branksea Festival Lottie & the Super Lottie outfit....

In case you haven't heard of Lottie dolls they became the first fashion dolls to display childlike characteristics....A healthy childlike body shape, childlike clothing (no make-up, high heels, tattoos, etc) and are themed around wholesome activities....

Ellie has been sent a new Lottie doll to add to her collection or her family as she calls it.....

Stargazer Lottie....

Stargazer Lottie has already won the space.com ‘Little Scientist’ Space Age Award at the New York Toy Fair 2015 and the original idea came from a five year old girl called Abigail from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, whose passion for space led her to suggest her ideas for an astronomy-themed Lottie doll.

“It’s a cold Winter night and Lottie has found the perfect spot for stargazing. Wrapped up warm in her jacket, hat, scarf and boots, Lottie feels as though she can see all of space through the lens of her telescope. The sky is full of thousands of twinkly stars and Lottie is excited to explore the beautiful night sky and learn about the star constellations and planets. If she is lucky she just might see a shooting star!”

The Gold Collection Stargazer Lottie doll has a dark blue velvet bomber jacket over cerise coloured dungarees, a long sleeve t-shirt and sturdy brown boots...A brown hat and spotty scarf keep Lottie snug and warm....Essential clothing for stargazing outdoors on a cold night. 

This special doll is a collaboration with the European Space Agency and includes a telescope modelled on the Galileoscope, a tripod, a set of special solar system collector cards and a pull out with facts on notable women in astronomy.....All of this is presented in a gorgeous gift box which is very handy to keep to store your Lottie dolls and accessories in.....

As I mentioned before we loved Lottie Dolls here so before it even arrived Ellie was excited....She was very pleased when the postman knocked at the door....

For the last couple of days she has been playing with her collection of Lottie Dolls....Swapping their clothes and chatting along to them....On Tuesday evening Ellie was wanting to go outside with the telescope so Lottie could see the stars....If it wasn't so windy I would of let her for a few minutes! She had to make do with playing on her bedroom windowsill looking at the stars....The aim with Stargazer Lottie Doll is to get children (especially girls) interested in astronomy....This has worked on Ellie....She now wants her own telescope! 

Stargazer Lottie is available to buy in the UK and Europe for £19.99

The wonderful people at Lottie have created lots of STEM themed content for kids on their website...They have a whole load of fun science activities and lots of information about great women and girls from history which we have found very interesting....

You can find more about Lottie on their site, Twitter, Facebook and now on Instagram too!

We were sent the Stargazer Lottie Doll free in exchange for our review....This is our honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my girls and my own...

Top Tips For A Fantastic Easter Egg Hunt!

In a few days it's Easter....Hooray!! A perfect time for an Easter Egg hunt! I haven't done one for years and this year I'm organising a little one for the girls around the house and back yard....

While you might think organising one of these is as easy as hiding a bunch of foil-wrapped eggs in your garden there are a few other things you may want to consider if you want it to run smoothly.

 If by a miracle the weather is warm bear this in mind when you are hiding your eggs if they are left to long before the hunt they may melt.

Write down a list of each of the eggs and where you have hidden them....You don't want to lose any!

Remember you do not need to use large eggs....You can buy a mulit-pack of small foil wrapped eggs and hide them in the grass and in flowerbeds.

Although the weather is supposed to be nice, make sure you have an indoor back-up plan if the weather takes an unexpected turn.

To keep things fair make sure everyone ends up with the same amount of eggs.

Set boundaries and tell the children where they are.....Explain there will be no eggs hidden outside of your back garden for example....That will help stop anyone from wandering off. 

If you have older children you could set treasure hunt clues to help them discover the hiding places.....You could use riddles or rhymes for them to figure out or map out the hiding places on a treasure map.

Make a rule before you start about how many eggs they are allowed to eat once the hunt is over. Unless you want a bunch of hyperactive kids throwing up all the chocolate they are stuffed with....

April Fools!!

It's the mischievous media's favourite day of the year....Newspapers and broadcasters revel in reporting implausibly silly stories on April Fools' Day...I'm sure today will be no different! So before you fall for this year's inevitable crop of pranks here are some of my favourites from over the years....

 The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest....

One of the best known public pranks is the 1957 news show broadcast by Panorama. It was a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The show said: "For those who love this dish, there's nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti."

Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree....To this query the BBC simply said: "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."  

Flying Penguins....

Another corker from the BBC which claimed to have discovered 'a colony of penguins unlike any other in a 2008 nature documentary trailer.

Harsh Antarctic winters had forced them to adapt and 'fly thousands of miles to the rainforests of South Africa where they spend the winter basking in the tropical sun it claimed.

The documentary, titled Miracles of Evolution, was hosted by Monty Python's Terry Jones and filmed by Prof Alid Loyas - an anagram of April Fool's Day.

Newspapers were also in on the act - the Mirror carried the wind-up on its front page while the Telegraph hailed the film as an 'instant classic'

Left-Handed Whopper....

 

 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today in 1998. The advert announced a new item on their menu: the Left-Handed Whopper. Especially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans, the new burger included the same ingredients as the original Whopper, but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees.

Thousands of customers went into restaurants to request the new sandwich while many others requested their own 'right handed' version.

No Gravity....

During an interview on BBC Radio 2 on the morning of 1 April 1976 the astronomer Patrick Moore announced that at 9:47AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to take place. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation.

The BBC received hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported she and her 11 friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

Instant color TV....

On April 1, 1962, Sweden's Sveriges Television hosted a "technical expert" who offered a way for viewers to convert their black-and-white TV sets' pictures into color....Drape a nylon stocking over the screen, so that the prismatic qualities of the nylon mesh will refract light waves in the proper way (although they added that moving your head back and forth will help the effect). How many stockings were ruined by hopeful Swedish viewers?  

Big Ben Goes Digital....

BBC listeners were shocked, outraged and naturally a bit confused when the broadcast company announced in 1980 that the famous London landmark would be given a digital facelift to keep up with the times. As part of the announcement, the BBC was offering up the clock’s gigantic hands to the first listener to call in.

Richard Branson Buys Pluto....

Billionaire and wannabee astronaut, Richard Branson, showed his soft spot for Pluto in 2011 by announcing that he had bought the forgotten planet and was reinstating it in the solar system.

From Virgin’s press release: “Virgin has expanded into many territories over the years but we have never had our own planet before. This could pave the way for a new age in space tourism.”

Have you been sucked in by any of these classics?