christmas

|Review| Christmas with Smiggle

Monday, November 30, 2020

 


It is almost December so Christmas plans are in full force. As we have been in lockdown and most retail shops are currently closed, Christmas shopping has been very different this year. I like to buy the children stationery and craft items every year and quite often end up browsing Smiggle looking for stocking fillers. This year Smiggle gave me a £50 voucher to spend online and shop some of their amazing offers. 


I found all sorts of great items including: 

  • Sleepy Sprouts scented markers
  • Chatterbox activity book
  • Unicorn scissors
  • Unicorn cable cover pal
  • Set of 30 gel pens
  • Unicorn Universe scented ballpoint pens
  • Dinosaur World scented ballpoint pens
  • Khaki essentials A5 stationery kit
  • Far Away A5 notebook
  • Dinosaur World Eraser
  • Roll eraser and sharpener
  • Big mistakes eraser

All of this came to a grand total of £50.45.


Smiggle have so many great offers online which are changing all the time. As you can see I got a lot for my money and therefore have lots of great gifts to give the children for Christmas. I was really impressed by the gel pens and the A5 stationery kit especially. They will come in really handy for the children's drawing and colouring sessions. I also think the girls will love the chatterbox book, it is full of great fun activities for them to do together. 

Although I didn't get to go in-store and browse like I usually would, I did enjoy picking out the perfect gifts to make sure each child had something nice and special for themselves. We are really big Smiggle fans and I know they will be so excited to open their gifts Christmas morning. 

You can shop the latest offers now at Smiggle and there is still plenty of time to get an order in!

* Disclaimer: I was sent a voucher in exchange for this coverage. All opinions are my own. 

Funko

Review: Funko Snapsies

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

 

As big fans of anything Funko! We were really excited to receive their brand new surprise toy to review. We received a Funko Snapsies ball with no idea of what would be inside. The girls' decided to open it together to investigate. 
To open you simply remove the outer packaging to find a plain purple glittery ball. You then twist open the ball to reveal a parcel. There are a few layers so the girls likened it to a game of pass the parcel and decided to open a layer each until the got to the middle. I think in total there are around three layers (So you won't be unwrapping plastic for days). 



Inside the first layer were a few accessories, I think there was the veil and wings and I can't quite remember the other item. The following layer surprised us and was actually the main figure itself. The girls received 'Promise' who is a 'Llamaid'. The next layer contained another lower body part so the girls could choose whether to have their character as a Llama or a Llama-Mermaid hybrid. 

There are lots of interchangeable pieces in the set including different faces to pop onto the character. My guess is that if you were to collect a few of these Snapsies, you could probably change them into whatever you want. Looking at the leaflet that came with ours, it looks like you can also get Dragon, goat, hedgehog and shark parts so you could make all sorts!


Verdict- The girls absolutely loved the Funko Snapsies, as I expected they would. They love the interchangeable aspect of the toy and they liked that there were so many things they could do with it. I could honestly see them becoming the next 'big thing' amongst their age group.

They are available to buy now from Tesco, Smyths Toy Superstores and The Entertainer for around £8. 





|AD| Back to School with Smiggle

Sunday, August 30, 2020


 What an incredible year it has been for children all over the UK. For some, they will be returning to school for the first time in 6 months and things will have changed a lot. Things are looking very different in our school. Children are required to take everything home with them at the end of the day including their PE kits as they cannot leave items in school. They will all need water bottles as a necessity and not just a decoration that returns full of gross water a few days later. 

We are really looking forward to being back in school and are used to most of the changes already as we were in during lockdown. We did our annual back to school shop last week, including a fun-packed trip to Smiggle for supplies and are about ready for the new school year to start. We were given a £50 voucher to spend on some Back to School supplies and I think we managed to get quite a good selection.


Zach needed a new backpack for school as his old one which he had had for over 3 years had finally given up and broke just before we broke up. Although there were some great offers online, we decided to head into store to let him choose one himself, there were so many designs to choose from but he finally settled on this shark design 'Flow Backpack' which cost us £24.50 thanks to a 30% off when you spend £50 offer. The bag is really big and spacious and feels like such good quality. I'm hoping it will last him a long while, it will definitely fit in everything he needs each day for school. He also chose the 'Rad to the Bone' lunchbox as it will be his first year of packed lunches now that he will be starting Year 3. The lunchbox was 50% off in the sale so cost just £7.50. Again, the lunchbox is big and spacious and great quality. It has room on the side to slot in a water bottle for storage. I'm glad I let him choose as I would have got everything matching but he chose items that jumped out at him and made him happy!

The girls both have lovely backpacks which they got from Smiggle a few months back so they didn't need much for school. Elsie did choose herself a silicone roll up bottle which I thought was a great idea. She is so clumsy and forever dropping and damaging water bottles so I am hoping a silicone one will hold up better for her! They had them in lots of nice designs and she chose a purple and pink unicorn design. The bottle cost £9 after the 30% was taken off. 


The other two kids then spent the rest of the money on some stationery bits including these two pens. Gracie chose herself a cute pen with a spinning Narwhal on top and Logan chose himself a squidgie pen. So, that was four happy children with some cool new accessories for school from Smiggle.  

I think you definitely pay for quality in Smiggle and thanks to the great offers they often have both online and in-store, we always feel like we have done well when shopping there. The items are made to last and even with everyday use, our items still always look and feel good. Smiggle stores are now open with social distancing in place within the store, we found that the staff were still very friendly and helpful and as always we were approached to see if we needed any assistance and were informed of what offers were available in store on that particular day. 

You can find your nearest store or shop online at www.smiggle.co.uk

Rebrand!

Friday, July 31, 2020

As you may have noticed, I have had a huge rebrand on the blog. A few months back I realised I had lost my domain name (www.mummyandthechunks.com) and the company holding it wanted me to pay a massive annual cost to get it back. So rather than let them win, I have bought a brand new website name, which hopefully no one will feel the need to take from me and along with a fresh new header I have a fresh start! 


 During these crazy times, I haven't been anywhere exciting to share but hopefully in the coming months I will have some fun new content and plenty of adventures to write about. We finally broke up from school last week and are looking forward to an exciting summer together! We've been enjoying baking and arts and crafts lately so I will start writing up some of our favourite recipes and perhaps share some of our fun creations. 

 Anyway that is it for now. I have a lot of tweaking to do to get the blog fully functioning but thanks so much if you are still reading!

|AD| Casdon Flymo Review

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

We have spent a lot of time in the garden recently. The children have been helping a lot with weeding, watering plants and tidying up the garden. They love to be involved and we can see such a difference in the garden already. We can't wait to have it looking exactly how we want it to. The garden hasn't just been about work though. We have done interactive learning, outdoor PE lessons and we have been playing a lot! Elsie was sent this super cute children's Flymo lawnmower by Casdon to play with which is great as cutting the grass is something that is far too dangerous for any of the children to do but she can use her imagination and pretend she is cutting the grass for us.


She absolutely loves her new Flymo and has been playing with it every day out in the garden. She has been racing the dog down the garden with it, making the garden pretty and running over her brother and sister for fun. Elsie says 'She thinks everyone should have one because they will love it'.  

It is great little toy and makes little clicking noises when it is moving so it sounds like it is working. It has kept Elsie very entertained recently and has really encouraged her imaginative play. It is very well made and I would absolutely recommend it as a gift. It is available at a range of toy retailers but I've added a link to Amazon below (affiliate link).

|AD| Fun with Spinmaster

Thursday, April 23, 2020

We have plenty of time on our hands at the moment so we are taking the time to do fun things which we usually have to put off until school holidays or weekends. We love Spinmaster and they have recently sent us some cool kits to try out at home. Here is what we thought:

KumiKreator


We had so much fun with the KumiKreator, we made a couple of bracelets and a necklace complete with tassel charm. We found the initial set up seemed difficult the first time, but once we had done it once we found it super easy. We have made similar bracelets before manually using wool and cardboard which has taken days, if not weeks, so we were amazed at how quickly you watch the necklace or bracelet form before your very eyes! The KumiKreator kit comes with enough reels and clasps to create 3 bracelets and 2 necklaces and comes with 5 different pattern cards to follow. 

Mothers Day Gift Guide 2020

Thursday, March 12, 2020

Now we are in March, which means it is almost Mother's Day again. I really enjoy putting together guides full of lovely gifts and this year I have been sent some amazing gifts to share with you all. (Please note these items have been sent in exchange for my views but all opinions are my own.)

 Tru Bamboo Premium Extra Large Cheese Board and Knife Set

If your Mum is a cheese lover then this gift would be perfect. The bamboo cheeseboard is amazing quality. It is solid and heavy and has a pull out drawer containing a selection of cheese knives. It was much bigger than I expected it to be so would fit a great selection of cheeses for entertaining guests. It is a bargain at just £22.45 and is available to buy here. You could even buy a selection of cheese or some nice crackers to go with the cheeseboard to gift your mum a proper cheeseboard experience. 

Review: Smiggle #Justbeyou

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

I was recently contacted by Smiggle who had a great idea for a new post. They wanted to give me a voucher to spend and let the children loose in Smiggle choosing whatever they wanted regardless of colour/design to celebrate their individuality. So last weekend I took Gracie, Zach and Elsie over to Smiggle to do some shopping. 





They loved being able to roam around the shop trying to choose what they wanted and they surprised me with how sensible they were with the items they chose. Elsie loved the Star Wars BB8 lunchbox but said she didn't need one as she already has a pretty Frozen one from Smiggle. The children have really enjoyed drawing and colouring lately and I could tell that this influenced the items they chose. 

Meet Archibald

Sunday, January 26, 2020

I have been so busy lately that I neglected to share our new arrival. This is Archibald, Archie for short and he is our beautiful Border Terrier/Westie cross. We had been visiting him since he was born way back in September and we bought him home on the 1st December. He has fit in so well with family life. He loves attention and gets plenty of it between us and the children. He loves going out for walks and we have plenty of lovely local places to visit with him. 

The Children have declared Archie is their little brother already and they love playing in the garden with him, throwing him balls and sticks, as well as snuggling up to him on the sofa for some downtime. He does love his cuddles.

He also has his own Instagram because he is just adorable and I love sharing photos of him and enjoying all the other doggy pictures in his news feed which brighten my days. He will occasionally pop up on my IG and FB pages too but feel free to follow him if you want a daily dose of puppy cuteness! 

Instagram