My Beautiful Room: Interior Design Workbook is written and illustrated by Jasmine Orchard and Olivia Whitworth and published by Ivy Kids. Through gentle tuition and completing of projects your child learns many of the essential principles of design.

If this sounds boring, think of it more as 'designing your own epic bedroom'.


The first thing you realise about My Beautiful Room is that you are jealous of your child's book. My partner and I both poured over it and commented how much we'd have loved it. We were actually more keen to get stuck in than the children.

Nerf have branched out and the Nerf Nitro range doesn't fire darts or water, instead it blasts foam cars. Still with the power we've come to expect from Nerf, it's just as impressive as it sounds and works incredibly well. We've been sent the MotoFury Rapid Rally Set and Foam Car 3-Pack to review.


Included in the Nerf Nitro MotoFury Rapid Rally set are the blaster, 9 foam cars with plastic wheels, including 3 that are exclusive to this set. 12 obstacles (tyres, barrels and crates), a high-jump ramp, a long-jump ramp and instructions.

We recently had an amazing night of mystery and intrigue thanks to Escape The Room: The Secret Of Dr Graveley's Retreat, and you can too by winning a copy for yourself. This is a full on immersive situation game which is a bit mature for little ones, so best suited to teenagers and adults.


Ideal for parties or an evening with friends, Escape The Room also suits an older family and we played with 2 our two eldest boys. By solving puzzles you play through the storyline, opening new envelopes of clues as you progress through the evening, and the game.

The Crystal Maze meets Sherlock Holmes is my best explanation of our latest game review for ThinkFun. Escape The Room: The Secret Of Dr Graveley's Retreat is a one-time only evening of mystery and puzzle-solving for 3-8 players aged 13+, with the main aim being your own escape!


Inside the box is everything you'll actually need to play the game and it requires no preparation at all, but you are encouraged to set the scene and you can really go to town if you wish.

Before Christmas I reviewed the R/C Inflatable Star Wars Toys from Bladez Toyz and they were awesome. This week they released new inflatables to tie in with the cinema release of Despicable Me 3. We've been sent Mel, Tom and Fluffy!


Inside the box you have the inflatable itself - and you will need to blow it up but it's very quick! There is also a drive unit which is attached to the base of the inflatable, a handset, instruction manual and repair patch.

The second of my 3 posts from our day in Blackpool is Sandcastle Waterpark - the UK's largest indoor waterpark. We were guests for the Blackpool Has It All campaign with Visit Blackpool, Merlin Entertainments and Blackpool Pleasure Beach. We've been intending to go for ages, but never quite managed it before...


Sandcastle is really easy to find, a huge building on the seafront just South of the South Pier. There is a busy car park nearby, the tram stop is very close and it's a nice 1 mile walk from SEA LIFE Blackpool and Madame Tussauds, the two other attractions we reviewed. We went by tram, included with our Blackpool Resort Passes.

Maze Hop Time Travel by Anna Brett is another very different sort of book for children aged around 7+. Including 48 mazes which connect from page to page, joining the characters George and his dog Milly, you weave your way through time from prehistory and dinosaurs to the present day and even beyond, with space tourism in the future.


This is a lovely large format book which has 64 pages, most of which are split into 2 halves, each with a maze that connects to the one with the following time period. The pages are not in the correct order, it's up to the reader to find the maze which connects. This is also a genuine history book and the illustrations and text give an insight into each period in a way that is very accessible to all readers.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited down to the Vegetarian Society Cookery School in Altrincham for the launch of the Vegetarian Society Approved vegan trademark. Our day was spent participating on the Vegan Toolkit Workshop - one of several courses on offer at the Cookery School.



I've been Vegetarian for 32 years and I've spent most of that a keen cook for a large family, so I didn't know how much I'd learn on the Vegan Toolkit Workshop. In fact I learned plenty and all in a really friendly, relaxed atmosphere - despite the fact that the 8 of us cooked (and ate) over 20 dishes in only 6 hours!

Last weekend we spent a full day as guests in Blackpool as part of the Blackpool Has It All campaign with Visit Blackpool, Merlins Entertainments and Blackpool Pleasure Beach. We rode on the trams and reviewed 3 of the seafront attractions - Sandcastle Water Park, Madame Tussauds and SEA LIFE.


We're very familiar with SEA LIFE Manchester, we've visited many times, but SEA LIFE Blackpool is different. Whereas Manchester have Turtles and Octopus and more Tropical creatures, Blackpool have more Sharks, Jellyfish and Rainforest creatures. (Click on any image to make it bigger).

Word Has It! is a game for 2 to 4 players aged 7+. The aim of the game is to build a longer word than your opponents during the time limit of only 40 seconds. Your word has to start with a given letter and be on the theme shown on the card. It's fast, it's fun, but it's quite tricky!
Packaging is brilliant, with barely any plastic, only 2 bags to hold the letter pieces in transit. Everything stores inside the box afterwards with no dismantling.