The Pixies are playing at the Manchester O2 Apollo Arena in November and I'm not going. It's even a week after my birthday, so I'd have the perfect excuse to work out logistics of getting someone to babysit, and go out on our 2nd date in 6 years. I can't really say that there's any other reason for me not attempting to get tickets other than sheer apathy. I'm quite disappointed with myself.

To be honest I didn't even pay attention to the date when tickets were released, and they sold out in 3 minutes, so I probably wouldn't have got a ticket anyway, and that whole panicky 5 minutes is something I've been through several times and it's rarely any fun. It used to be so much better in the olden days when I could walk down to Way Ahead and buy a ticket and the bloke behind the counter would rip it out of a book. It's the same for everyone though, it doesn't matter if you're going to see the Pixies or Jesus Christ Superstar Arena Tour.

It would have been super-cool to go and see them again though. The first time I saw The Pixies was in October 1990 in Sheffield, long before the O2 existed. I was a wide-eyed 18 year old just embarking on my first serious relationship. I put my hair in bunches and thought I looked really great.

We were up on the balcony and had a fantastic view. The sound really rumbled around the building too. I have those memories instead of making new ones. There are photo's somewhere, but I have no idea where and I can't really remember any of them, it's all just in my head. I think my version is probably in brighter colours and on a grander scale than the photo's would be too...


If you're going to see the Pixies, or any other gig/concert/band then enjoy yourself,  and spare a thought for us because in November, instead of seeing the Pixies, one of us has to chaperone 3 teenage girls to You Me At Six and 30 Seconds To Mars (no, I've not really heard of them either... it was so much easier when they wanted to see Rizzlekicks or One Direction...).

We think it's a great DVD, it's always good to see people get what they deserve when they behave abominably - especially if it's in a humorous way. Our full review is in this post.

The DVD has a total running time of over 2 hours and contains 11 episodes -

Nuclear Wart
The Ugly Prince
Cat's Eyes
Message In A Bottle
The Dragon Moth
The Long Face
The Kingdom Of Wax
The Spelling Bee
The Flat Pack Kid
The Blood Doctor
The Apostrophic Expositor


Entry is by Rafflecopter below....

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The DVD contains 11 episodes and has an epic total running time of approximately 121 minutes. The stories are taken from a range of modern day tales by Jamie Rix, animated for DVD and narrated by Nigel Planer. Each tale has a warning for children who break the rules or are rude or selfish, or in some other way act anti-socially and then receive their comeuppance!

The illustrations and animation are colourful and modern, and the people are really expressive, pulling great faces and having real character. 

The DVD contains 11 episodes -
Nuclear Wart
The Ugly Prince
Cat's Eyes
Message In A Bottle
The Dragon Moth
The Long Face
The Kingdom Of Wax
The Spelling Bee
The Flat Pack Kid
The Blood Doctor
The Apostrophic Expositor

One of my favourite episodes is The Dragon Moth, this tells us about a boy who never follows the instructions on signs and labels. At one point this has him with his finger stuck up his nose because he picked it after using superglue. It is really funny, and all of the tales are very light-hearted in spite of some of the 'terrible' fates the children face.

I love Brothers' Grimm stories and have read them to all of my children, and this is in a very similar vein, but the modern aspect makes it more accessible for youngsters today. We've really enjoyed this DVD, we really like the Gruesome Tales anyway, so we've watched this through a few times in the past few days.

Grizzly Tales For Gruesome Kids: Nuclear Wart has a suggested age range of 3-6, but I really think that's too limited because I enjoy them and so do our teenagers. It is released on 7th October with an RRP of £7.99, and is currently available from Amazon for £6.99.

I'm delighted to have 3 copies to give away just in time for Halloween. Entry is by Rafflecopter on this page...

The jelly pots each come with their own fold out spoon and don't need to be refrigerated, so they're ideal for lunchboxes and picnics or travelling. They are made with real fruit, so they are lovely and tasty, and they have no artificial colours or preservatives, which gives the blackcurrant jellies a really interesting colour, but has no effect on the flavour.


 The Blackcurrant Jelly Pots have no added sugars or artificial sweeteners and are vegetarian, which is really impressive and incredibly rare. All the taste and sweetness comes from the fruit. I tried Blackcurrant myself and it was lovely, not tart at all and plenty sweet enough. We simply don't need artificial sweeteners in everything. The apple however do contain Sorbitol.



My 3 and 5 year olds thought these were brilliant, they were incredibly excited by them and ate them in moments. I think we'd definitely buy these again as part of a picnic meal or for when we were out for the day.

I've hardly had chance to make any personal posts recently. I don't have very much time, but more importantly I don't want to turn into a one-trick depressive 'woe is me' pony (here follows a post about how ill we all are). 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not after sympathy, we're coping and everyone's going to school in clean clothes and we're all still eating mainly sensible meals. It's inescapable though that having a broken leg and a partner who's still recovering from Meningitis is all-consuming. It takes over every aspect of our family and personal life. We can't go places, we can't do things. We're terminally frustrated.

Cooking tea used to take me an hour or 2, now it's taking 3. Sorting the washing used to be a 5 minute job, now it takes me that to get up the stairs and fling the wash basket down, then come down myself. The school run is so epic that I'm spending an hour and a half of my day on it, despite my partner spending his lunch break driving back and doing the nursery pick up for me.

My partner's Mother had a stroke last week, and although she's doing fine, it'd be lovely for my partner especially to go and see her. At 200 miles drive each way it's just not possible for him to drive that far, and I can't drive at all while I'm still in a leg splint.

There are, believe it or not, good points to all of this. Our teenagers are having to take on more responsibility for household jobs that they probably should have been doing anyway really. They're all learning exactly how the washing machine, tumble drier and dishwasher work. They're becoming used to having to do chores each day, and taking a responsibility for tidying and cleaning. They're all learning about the importance of doing a 'proper job' because I'm not there finishing off after them.

We've all learnt a lot about mortality, and taking our health for granted. I think that's a troublesome lesson to learn, but one that we all have to face at some point. 2013 has certainly shown us that your physical well-being can be altered in an instant. You can't prepare for it or see it coming, but it throws into stark relief all that drivel you used to think was important.

I promise I'll work harder on the content posts, aside from my 3 month Meningitis update I'll try and avoid mentioning aliments for a while, and I'll make more time to stop and look around me and enjoy what I see. And trust me, I am still smiling....mainly....

We've been sent Angry Birds Ca-Cool Masks by Top That Publishing and as soon as they saw it my young boys were excited!


As far as I know they've never played Angry Birds, but they certainly know what it is! The book has pages with loads of information about the different characters and my boys soaked it up! We read it at bedtime one day, and made the masks after tea the next, and they knew everyone's name and what skills they had - if only children could learn everything so easily...


The masks are incredibly easy to put together. Each part is labelled with letters, put the letters together or 'through' the right slit and in 2 minutes you have a mask. There are extra instructions to follow to get some of the trickier aspects right. I was also impressed with how well the mask parts came out of the book. We didn't rip anything!


The masks are great quality and really well designed. Loads of the paper fastening flaps 'lock', so the mask is really quite stable and unlikely to fall apart. 


Plenty of elastic is included, plus loads of little cushioned pads which you can use inside the masks to make them more comfortable around your nose. The masks are designed for children, so not very big, and the eye holes can be a bit off, but they look brilliant and are a real fun novelty.


We love this book and I think it is really good value for money. It's a book and 8 masks in one. It has an RRP of £5.99 and is currently available from Top That Publishing for £5.39.

The very very best thing about all of these Chewits sweets, aside from the taste, and the chewiness obviously, is that they're ALL vegetarian, which means for just about the first time ever, all of my children can have equal share and no-one has to 'make do' or find something else.

My teenagers were a bit put off by the 'Carnival' initially as they didn't know what was going to happen and they had to either fill in the form, or connect to Facebook. They're dubious of 'spamming' and didn't want to post loads of Facebook status they had no control over, alternatively the form option asks for your school name, which in our house they're banned from sharing. I told them they could just put 'school' and after that initial hiccup, they were off.


The app only works on a computer, it isn't able to work on a mobile yet, which meant they ended up taking turns.

My 13 year old girl played with the 'Carnival' for longest and she really enjoyed taking the faces of her 2 best friends and installing them onto cartoon bodies so that they could visit the carnival with her.


I tried the app myself and connected via Facebook, choosing to share 'only me'. The app did share 5 stills from the Carnival, which is a little excessive, but they had the faces of my 2 chosen friends on cartoon bodies, so they were quite amusing. Because I'd connected to Facebook my latest status update, birthday and school name also appeared in the carnival, as well as bits of other information which were quite funny - I especially liked the 'I love Euan' on the back of my character's bag, as that's my partner!



There is all sorts of information about Chewits here, photo's from 'Treat Truck' travels, information about sports courses and plenty of space for you to have your say. There are 5 games to play too -  Mystic Chewie, The Claw, Castle Adventure, Spaceship Adventure and Taste Adventure.

Mystic Chewie is an animated fortune teller. You choose a subject and are given a one sentence fortune in return.  For example choose 'Flavour' and you might get this is reply - "Chewie sees your favourite flavour to be Fruit Salad because you are so fruity and fun!"

The 3 Adventures games are 'point and click' puzzles. These puzzles are okay, some of it is very logical (e.g. try the key in the lock) but some is a bit random and very much open to chance and searching around the page for clickable items.



The Chewits Claw is the big game. You can actually compete to win prizes including an iPod Touch. It's based on the claw machines where you grab at toys and try to lift them up and you have to be very precise with where you place your claw or you score!

Points are gained by collecting Chewits. You can get extra points by filling up the bars on the right and collecting specific amounts of particular Chewits when asked.


It's very simple and addictive in the same way as Tetris, but actually a bit more frustrating because once you get tired you simply can't get a good score at all and you need to walk away! My best score so far is a disappointing 18400, sadly massively beaten by my teenagers!


So what did they think of the Chewits Cool Crazy Carnival? 

13 yo -

• I like the heads, they're funny.
• I don't understand why I had to put all that information in?
• The carnival is good, but I don't see where it goes because you can't choose the rides there
• No Claw score given

 14yo

• The Claw is a bit hard to get in the right place. 
• If it was a phone app I would probably get it because I'm competitive
• No Claw score given

15yo

• Carnival set up was longish and led to very little apart from a link, and the data wasn't even included when playing the games
• The Claw is very addictive
• It would be better on phones
• Best Score 52500

15yo (Winner of the most thorough review ever by a teenager)

Fairground

• No pause button =(
• Asks personal questions
• Can't save photo's

Castle

• Kind of frustrating
• Simple point and click
• Puzzle solving fun

Aliens

• Yay!

Mystic Chewie

• Highly amusing - not gamey

The Claw

• I don't like 'invite your friends' feature
• Super addictive
• Makes me want Chewits
• Not Chew Bad (Gr9* pun)
• Best score 28900

*Gr9 is like gr8, but one better....


Overall it got the 'thumbs up' from my lot. They all messed around with it a bit and completed at least one of the 'Adventures', and at least 2 have returned to try and better their best scores.

The website can be a bit glitchy and asks for upgrades to Flash that aren't helpful sometimes when you play 'The Claw' or 'Mystic Chewie', but these games can be played directly through Facebook from the Chewits page with no issue anyway.

Plenty of good harmless fun!

Sky Ride Big Rides are huge events which take place in towns and cities the length and breadth of the UK and include all kinds of entertainment for children and freebies for cyclists. They close whole streets an areas to cars and let cyclists rule the roads and enjoy cycling safely.

Sky Ride Local Rides are led by British Cycling Ride Leaders. They follow planned routes through scenic areas and are available for all different abilities including routes suitable for adaptive bikes. All rides are free of charge.


Sky Ride also facilitates Social Cycling Groups and 'Buddy' link ups everywhere, so that anyone can find someone else to cycle with.

Jaffa have given me the opportunity to give away a fantastic cycling kit worth £50. It includes a Halfords bike pump, water bottle, bike lights, t-shirt and Tesco money-off vouchers as well as Jaffa fruit shaped bike reflectors.

Especially at this time of year when the nights are drawing in, it's an excellent time to ensure your lights and reflectors are clean and working as they should be, and replace them if necessary.


For your chance to win the Jaffa Cycling Kit please enter using the Rafflecopter form below...

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We've reviewed for Ozeri before, so when they asked me if I'd like to review again I was more than happy. Last time we reviewed their Glass Digital Kitchen Scales and now they have sent their Ozeri Curva Artisan Series Double Wall Beverage Glasses - or Glass Tumblers to you and me.

 



Unlike most glass tumblers, these are made from borosilicate glass, which is stronger and more durable than standard glass, and is heat and shatter resistant. This means that you can use them with ice or hot drinks with confidence. Because they are double-walled whatever you choose to drink won't burn your hands or get them wet because of condensation - brilliant.


Like the scales we reviewed beforehand, these are an item often overlooked, that is generally designed for usefulness only, but in this case is a thing of beauty. 


These are quite large, somewhat clunky, glasses but they're still comfortable enough to hold.The glass feels thin and delicate, but as it's borosilicate we're assured it isn't - we've had them a week now and my teenagers haven't managed to break any!

They look stunning. A real discussion point and a beautiful thing to have on display. I'm delighted with them and have really enjoyed having something so nice, and which makes standard tumblers look incredibly boring.


The Ozeri Curva Artisan Series Double Wall Beverage Tumblers (bit of a mouthful!) have an RRP of £29.99, and are currently on sale on Amazon for £24.95 with free UK delivery.

We love Orchard Toys, and we love Christmas, so I was delighted when they asked me to review a new game that has been produced especially for Christmas! Christmas Surprises by Orchard Toys is our new favourite game. It's brilliant fun!


Christmas Surprises is actually 2 games in one - a shapes game and a colour game - printed onto 100% recycled board and recommended for children aged 3+. The games are played on 4 double-sided game shaped boards with 24 baubles and 24 presents. There are 2 special dice, one for each game.


The Colour Game is played using a Christmas Tree board. It's incredibly simple and ideal for a very young child. All you have to do is roll the special dice, take a bauble of a matching colour from the table and cover the matching circle on your board. If you have already covered it then play passes to the next player. The winner is the first person to cover all of their baubles.


This game was nice and simple and quick, easy for anyone to grasp and actually quite competitive towards the end. 

The Present Game is played using a Santa board and play is very similar to the bauble game only instead of matching coloured baubles, you match shaped parcels. What's special is that you don't get to see what is inside your presents until the end of the game, this is brilliant as is it gives a real excitement and buzz and the same air of expectation and anticipation that you do feel at Christmas.


It doesn't really matter who wins this game because everyone gets to turn over (open) their presents, so everybody feel a winner. It's an all-round feelgood game.


Both games are brilliant for observation and turn-taking skills. They promote memory skills and teach colours and shapes. The wide array of fantastic presents are brilliant for encouraging discussion and broadening language. Matching the shapes onto the correct places on the gameboards is also excellent for manual dexterity.


We think this is an absolutely brilliant pair of games. We all prefer the shaped presents game over the coloured baubles game, mainly because the idea that you have all of those amazing secret presents is really exciting. It's also an excellent way to teach your child shapes.

Unusually for an Orchard Toys game, we do have one complaint. The colours on the dice and baubles don't quite match up, which immediately led to a disturbance when we played. When we investigated it was clear which side of the dice was blue, but because the blue bauble is slightly purple and the purple side of the dice is much darker and more 'blue' than the lilac bauble, it does make it confusing.


Christmas Surprises has a recommended age range of 3-6, and clearly my 3 1/2 year old had no problems playing either game. The games were also popular with my teenage girls, especially the Present/Shape Game. Christmas Surprises retails at £9.50 and is exclusive to Tesco, where it is currently on offer at £7. In spite of the confusing colour dice we give it a very well-deserved 5/5 because the Christmas Present/Shape game is so excellent.