My Phonics Kit contains three workbooks (Kipper’s Phonics Workbook, Chip’s Phonics Workbook and Biff’s Phonics Workbook), instructions and guidance for parents, a reward chart, stickers and a CD-ROM with eBooks and related activities. The pack costs £10, though it’s currently available on Amazon for £6.
My Phonics Kit is based on the, almost certainly very familiar, Oxford Reading Tree, that most schools use and so contains familiar characters and artwork. Each of the workbook has some words for your child to read to see if they’re at the right level for the workbook. (The kit is aimed at children reading at or above Level 5 of the Oxford Reading Tree.) There’s then a page with some tips and guidance for learning together with your child. There are then nine pages, each looking at a specific sound, and the different graphemes that can make that sound. (For example, in Biff’s Phonics Workbook there’s a page on the sound ‘k’ and it covers ‘c’, ‘k’, ‘ck’ and ‘ch’.) There’s a section of words to read and then one or more ‘alien words’ to read (the alien words are indicated by a little picture of an alien and are clearly differentiated from the actual words by being in a different coloured and styled box, as well) that use some of the graphemes introduced on that page. And then there’s an activity for the child to do using the graphemes from that page. For example, there might be an activity to match sentences to pictures, to fill in gaps in sentences, to find sounds within sentences, and so on. Interspersed throughout these pages are whole-page activities, such as larger gap fills, colouring activities (find the words in the picture and then colour the picture) and matching captions to pictures. Each of the workbooks ends with a ‘Silly Ditty’ using lots of words and sounds from that workbook and then a final activity (a wordsearch in one, pairing words together in another and putting words together to make other words in the other workbook).
Throughout the workbooks, children can earn stickers to put in the workbooks and stickers for Floppy to go on the reward chart. The reward chart also has indications of where to read the eBooks on the CD-ROM, though you can actually use the kit in any order you want, including going through the workbooks in whatever order you want. There are six eBooks on the CD-ROM with activities to go with each. There’s also a section for grown-ups, where you can hear the different sounds and find out about the screening test and also read some tips and guidance about helping your children learn to read.
RoRo has tested out My Phonics Kit and really liked it. She enjoyed reading the book on the computer and the way the pages turned. She read the words at the start of the book with no problem (in fact, I was surprised how quickly and easily she read them). She enjoyed doing the activities and wanted to keep going, despite it being late and time to go to bed. She enjoyed finding the stickers and sticking them in the right places. She read the alien words fine, though she definitely struggled more with them than the real words (because, as I mentioned in last week’s post, she doesn’t just decode any more, but uses context and her knowledge of vocabulary to work out a word that she doesn’t already know – neither of which can be used for alien/nonsense words).
I was pleased, as well, that working through some of the pages in the workbook together, had RoRo talking to me about what they’d learnt at school in phonics and spelling – she does talk about school a lot more than she used to, but it’s still always nice to have something that prompts her to talk more about what she’s doing there.
I thought My Phonics Kit was excellent. Oxford University Press have integrated the alien words in an unobtrusive way that should introduce children to the idea of needing to read nonsense words without too much confusion and help them become familiar with the idea. It covers the sounds they should be familiar with at that age and will help them with reading words in isolation in addition to within stories and other texts. I think that My Phonics Kit would be a useful pack to use, regardless of the test, and will be very helpful in providing additional reading-related activities for children to familiarise them with the different graphemes – both for reading and writing. I think there’s a strong chance I would have bought a copy of this and would certainly recommend it to others. The price is very good for what you get – we often buy workbooks from Wilkinsons or the Works which cost a couple of pounds each. They usually have a stickers and definitely more pages than these workbooks, but they don’t come with eBooks and activities on CD-ROM and I don’t think the activities themselves are as targeted as these ones. The familiarity that theOxford Reading Tree brings to the children as well, is an added bonus. I might be tempted to buy it in Reception, rather than Year 1, though, depending on the progress of the individual child. I’m sure LaLa will, at the very least, be reading the eBooks on the computer, as she loves Kipper and Floppy!
Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of My Phonics Kit to review by Oxford University Press, but the opinions expressed are my own (and RoRo’s).
I read a few articles and blog posts about Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother when it was causing so much controversy in the US. And I admit to feeling outrage at many of the incidents and attitudes described. But, like many of the authors of these pieces, I had not actually read the book. I recall Chris suggesting I blog about it at the time, but I never got around to it and also felt wrong about ranting about a book I hadn’t read.
So, when Bloomsbury asked if I’d like a copy of the new edition (due out in paperback and ebook on 9 February 2012), I jumped at the chance. Let’s see what all the fuss is about, I thought, and I also warned the publicist that I might not be positive in my reaction to the book.
Well, I’m very glad to have had this opportunity, particularly as I think it’s quite unlikely I would have gone out and actively bought a copy myself.
I loved this book. It was a fascinating read and while, yes, there were some incidents and attitudes described that did make me feel uncomfortable, the overall read overshadowed these. I enjoyed the writing, I enjoyed the glimpses into another culture (I love getting inside another culture and having my world view challenged – I usually do it through fiction, but it was equally appealing to do so through a memoir) and I also enjoyed, somehow, a little element of relief that I’m not doing awfully as a mum.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is not a parenting guide. Amy Chua never set out to write an instruction manual on how to bring up a musical prodigy or how to get your children to receive constant A grades. This is a memoir, an engagingly and sometimes comically written one, that centres on the author’s attempts to bring her children up in the traditional Chinese way. It looks at her successes and her failures – both in terms of her children’s achievements and in terms of their happiness, the importance of which the book shows her growing to appreciate over time.
Amy Chua is self-critical – she is emphasising the extremes of the ‘Chinese parenting’ that she was adhering to. She admits to its failure for her younger daughter and father. She shows how she had to adapt her ideas and principles, because no two children are identical (something most of us with more than one child discover soon enough).
One of the things Amy Chua talks about in the postscript to this new edition of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and her eldest daughter talks about in the letter she wrote to the New York Post (which is reprinted at the end of the book) is that the book cannot possibly convey the whole story of their family dynamic. Of course, it can’t. As someone who blogs about her children I can testify to this. There are a million incidents in our family life that never reach this blog – both positive and negative (and, of course, plain boring). There are things I don’t write about because my children or husband (or other family members) don’t want me to. There are things that I choose not to share because they would paint me in a bad light and, in a rather British way, things that I don’t write about because they would sound too braggy.
Amy Chua’s book conveys mostly one element of their life – a very big element, admittedly, but not the entirety – her efforts to raise her children to excel in academics and music. It shares some parenting methods and strategies that will make many people (myself included) cringe. But, as she mentions in her new postscript, it doesn’t show the laughter and hugs that they share and the fun that they do have together.
Amy Chua’s parenting methods (or the Chinese parenting method, as she calls it) are definitely not ones that I want to adopt. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t get some interesting and useful insights out of reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. One thing in particular that struck me, is something I’ve talked about in a post a few weeks ago – how we sometimes need to adjust our expectations of our children. I talked about expecting both RoRo and LaLa to be more mature than the actually are, but I also mentioned the problem of having too low expectations of a child and therefore preventing them from pushing themselves. I do think that we (or more I, really) am often too quick to let RoRo (and LaLa, actually) give up on something. With reading and spellings, if she’s not enthusiastic I tend not to force the issue, even a tiny bit. Because I know she does fantastically well when she is enthusiastic. But sometimes a little bit of a push is all it takes and putting that extra effort in can make all the difference.
But, no, I’m not going to give up on playdates (actually, we only have time for one playdate a week as it is, with all the overscheduling we already fit in) and have the girls drill times tables and Latin conjugations or spend lots of money on tutors. But I might expect them to a bit more now and then and reassure them that they can do something, rather than letting them accept defeat.
I would definitely recommend reading this book, whether you see yourself as an authoritarian parent, a laissez-faire woolly liberal or a progressive something-or-other. You might scream and shout at Amy Chua, you might gasp in astonishment, you might put your head to one side and wonder, but you might just enjoy a good read, without having to take any particular learning or message away from it.
Disclaimer:I was sent a copy of the book by the publisher, but this review is my own honest opinion.
We love Oliver Jeffers here. My dad bought RoRo How to Catch a Star when we were on a day trip to Weston-super-Mare a few years ago. Reading it always brings tears to my eyes. Because it’s such a lovely story, but also because it has the added effect of reminding me of my dad.
Lost and Found brings tears to my eyes, too (yes, OK, it’s not a major accomplishment as it doesn’t take much to get my tear ducts streaming). The fairly simple tale of friendship and misunderstanding is made more evocative by Jeffers’ beautiful (and, again, seemingly simple) illustrations.
The Lost and Found Pop-up book has all the magic and emotion of the story and illustrations, with the addition of houses popping up, tabs to push and pull and flaps to open up. Both RoRo and LaLa are enchanted by the book – in particular the house that pops up at the start. Corina Fletcher has been stunning with the paper engineering.
The Lost and Found Pop-up book doesn’t feel especially robust, which has lead me to admonish ‘Be careful!’ or ‘Gently!’ to the girls as they look through it and also to keep it out of reach and only allow supervised reading. Which is a shame. It might well stand up to a good pulling and pushing read and, even if it doesn’t, I should probably let them explore it at their leisure.
But I’m not going to. It’s too nice to risk spoiling it!
Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of the book by the publisher, but this review is my honest opinion.
I was sent this a couple of months ago now and used it for probably around six weeks before taking a yet-to-be-curtailed break for Christmas (and ‘stuff’!). I loved it and I know that once I’ve done a couple of sessions I will be fully back into the Zumba rhythm, with all the enthusiasm I had at the end of last year. … … I just have to take that first step.
Contents of the Zumba Fitness DVD Exercise Kit
The kit comprises two toning sticks, four DVDs and a workout guide. The workouts on the DVDs are Basics, Express, Sculpt and Tone, Cardio Party, Flat Abs and Zumba Live.
The Basics workout is 60 minutes long and takes you through the steps and moves. As a very unco-ordinated person, I spent three hours replaying each bit trying to get the steps right, before I realised that an approximation would be OK and I’d probably improve over time. Now I can do most of the steps pretty well, but there are a couple that I just can’t do fully – mostly these are Salsa steps and I’ve always found Salsa steps hard. However, I do them well enough to get benefit from it, so that’s fine by me. So, I would say don’t worry about trying to get your steps perfect before you move on from the Basics workout – just do it once or twice and then jump in.
The Express workout is 20 minutes long and is ideal for doing daily (not completely daily, of course, as it’s important to take a couple of days off for recovery in any exercise programme). You can fit it in without too much hassle – in the evening after the children have gone to bed, in the morning, while they’re eating breakfast… – but it’s long enough to make a difference to your fitness.
The Cardio Party workout is hard work, but very exhilarating. You can definitely feel that it’s working and I would make sure you did a week or two of just the Express workout before jumping into this if your fitness level is pretty low to start with.
The Sculpt and Tone workout uses the toning sticks and if you’re anything like me your arms will ache at the end.
I haven’t tried the Flat Abs or Zumba Live, but I’m sure they’re as effective as the rest.
My ideal programme would be to do three Express, 1 Cardio Party and 1 Sculpt and Tone each week, with two days off for recovery. Usually, though, I’ve tended to end up doing two Express workouts and 1 Cardio Party or Sculpt and Tone.
How I found the Zumba Fitness DVD Exercise Kit
This is by far the most fun exercise DVD I’ve ever tried. Every other one, I’ve done two or three times and then given up. With this one, when I finish a workout, I’m already looking forward to doing another one the next day. I tend to still be dancing a bit in the shower afterwards. I remember a lot of the steps and sometimes put on some Merengue and do some steps while cooking or dancing with the girls. The music is great, the steps are fun and, while the presenters can sometimes come across a little irritating, they’re actually very motivational and positive.
As I’m not a very co-ordinated person and have a very changeable schedule, I really appreciate the ability to do this at home in my own time, rather than in a class. I am very self-conscious and really hate exercising with anyone – even Chris or my sister! I’d also recommend it to get to grips with the steps first if you’re just a bit unco-ordinated, or to do extra sessions at home on top of your weekly Zumba class.
As with all exercise DVDs (or routines or programmes), though, you have to keep it up for it to have an effect. While I kept it up for longer than any other exercise DVD in the past, I did stop when it wasn’t really necessary. My schedule had been to do my workouts while Chris took the girls to school three days a week, so it fell by the wayside over Christmas. However, there really was no reason not to just change the schedule around – do it in the evening after the girls were in bed, for example, or do it when they were around and let them join in or watch.
Welcome to the 6th stop on the Global Blog Tour celebrating the publication of a beautiful new picture book I Want My Hat Back, by Jon Klassen. We were lucky enough to receive an advance copy of the book and first impressions were ‘Oh, that’s lovely’ – and that was just about the binding and the paper. The illustrations are stunning in their simplicity. And the story is fun. The girls both enjoyed the book, with Eleanor giggling most of the way through and Rosemary responding with ‘Huh?’ at the end. On further discussion, she decided that the ending was a ‘bit odd, but it was funny’.
Book trailer
Here’s a book trailer to give you more of an idea:
I had some questions for Jon Klassen about the book and his career.
Questions on the book
The book has quite a surprise ending. Did you set out to have a shocking ending or did it just come out that way?
The ending just sort of came out that way. I hope it doesn’t come off too much as a shock for shock’s sake, because it really does make sense to me in the story. The best thing I’ve heard from a kid who read it was when he was asked if maybe it should’ve ended in a gentler way, and he said "No, that’s what HAD to happen.". I really like that a lot.
Following on from that, a lot of modern children’s books set out to show goodness and morality as to be rewarded and tend to avoid unhappy or frightening endings. Did you set out to go against this trend?
I didn’t set out to react against anything, but I don’t enjoy stories that feel like they were built around a lesson or a moral as much as stories that feel like they found one on their own.
How long did it take you to write and draw the book?
The writing was quick, but it’s hard to say how long it really took because I was thinking about it for a little while before. The illustrations took a few months. There was a little bit of experimenting to see what kind of technique would look best. It was a pretty smooth project, all in all, though.
Do you intend a deeper philosophical (or other) message in the book?
I think I like it better as just a story by itself. The only larger thing I can think of came up in the illustrating of it, when it was time to draw the rabbit at the end. I decided not to give him any clear visible reaction to being found out or to what was about to happen to him. I didn’t want to make the rabbit "evil", I wanted to make him indifferent. I think that indifference can feel more dangerous than someone who is going out of their way to be bad.
Can you tell us a bit about your drawing process for this book (for example, do you start with sketches or jump straight in, do you use a computer at all)?
I started with sketches after the text was written. The sketches were digital, partly because it was easier to show the detail of the dialog changing color for the different characters who were talking, and partly because I’m just used to working digitally and it’s easier to make changes. There is actually a lot of digital work involved in the finals, too. The artwork was done with black ink, and then colored and modified a lot digitally. Most of the characters’ eyes and noses are all digital. They were mostly just grey silhouettes before being brought into the computer.
Questions about Jon Klassen’s work in general
Did you study illustration or are you self-taught?
I studied animation at school, so there was a lot of drawing involved. Also, animation involves a lot of sequential story stuff, and that helps a lot in book work.
Do you prefer drawing your own ideas, like I Want my Hat Back, or working to commission?
I think I probably enjoyed this project the most out of the book projects I’ve done, because I’d never gotten to do one on my own before. But working on your own thing by yourself can be very hard. Working with other people has a lot of advantages. It helps you surprise yourself and end up with something different, and it helps keep you sane. When it’s just you, there’s always a little bit of terror that you’ve had too much time on your own with it and it’s not going to make any sense to anybody who wasn’t with you at 4am that one night when you thought you finally solved it.
What has been the commission you’ve enjoyed working on the most?
I have to take what is going to look like the easy way out and say they’ve all been so different from each other that there really isn’t a way to rate them like that. There’s two commissioned books coming out early next year after this one, and they both had such different but satisfying problems to solve, and I was honored to get to be the one to do it.
Do you have any advice for aspiring illustrators reading this post?
Just to work on what you’re interested in. Even if you have to dig for it in a job that might not appear to have that, initially. I think so much what is special about this kind of work is that it really does encourage you to find things that matter to you inside topics and stories that, when they arrive at your desk, can seem very broad. It really is the best job ever.
You can pre-order the book at Amazon and it will be published on 6 October and should be available in your local bookstore.
Win a signed copy of I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen
Or, if you’d like to win a signed copy, leave a comment below, telling me what your favourite children’s picture book is. I’ll pick a winner on Sunday 2 October, so you have until midnight (GMT) on Saturday 1 October to leave your comment.
Before I go any further, this is not a sponsored post. I just have to share this with you – crazy though that might seem.
I have been struggling with shaving my legs for many, many years. Ever since the first time I tried…
My mum and dad and I were visiting a friend one weekend and I went to the loo. For some inexplicable reason (possibly down to my mum’s constant warnings that the minute I started to shave I would never be able to stop and I would have incredibly hairy legs, or possibly just out of the kind of curiosity you have when you’ve just started secondary school and so much in the world is new again) I thought I would use this friend’s razor to try to shave my legs. Only, like my dad, he had one of those old-fashioned razors that you fit with individual blades yourself. And I could only find a blade. I figured it couldn’t be that difficult and tried to use this bare razor blade to take some hairs off my calves. Oh, boy, that was stupid. Beyond stupid. Of course, I cut a great big bloody chunk out of my leg and was spurting blood everywhere. I got a whole load of toilet roll and wrapped it round my leg like a bandage, with extra bits where the cut was and then manoeuvred myself back into my skinny jeans. Ow! And then I mopped up the blood in the bathroom and went back into the living room and pretended not to be in pain. I had a huge blood stain on my jeans. How no-one noticed, I don’t know.
I do have extremely hairy legs, as it turns out. I don’t know whether that was down to this early foray into shaving or whether it was just genetic – I think the latter is most probable. And I have a hideous time getting rid of the hair. Waxing and epilating and the like don’t work very well, because it grows back at different rates and I usually have some stubble within a few hours, let alone a day. With shaving, I’ve always had the problem where I have to it every day or once a week, because the stubble between one day and one week is of the consistency that it pulls the pores up and means that I end up in a similar situation to that first attempt – pouring with blood. Whether I do it in the bath, in the shower, with shower gel, cream, soap or nothing. And it’s a real bugger to shave with shower gel and stuff when there are children in the shower with you, as happens far far far too often. They want to play with the shower gel. They want to play with the razor – I don’t particularly want them to dive into the depilatory pool as young as I did, let alone five years earlier. And you always end up having to get out with only one leg – or even half a leg – shaved, to wipe soapy eyes, put a child on the potty, empty the bath of poo or some equally fun task.
At least, until I discovered Wilkinson Sword’s new Intuition Sensitive razor. It has a built-in block of moisturising soap, which lathers your skin before shaving it and moisturises it afterwards. It also has three blades. It shaves so smoothly that it feels like you’re just running your hand up and down your leg. I have not had any bleeding, whatsoever – which is pretty much unheard of for me. Not even when it was cold and my pores did stand up – normally something that would result in at least one or two cuts. And, most importantly of all, I’ve been able to shave after one day, two days, three days, or four. Not that I’ve wanted to leave it for that long, because it’s so easy and so smooth and so painless that, for the first time ever, I am actually inclined to have smooth legs all the time. You get three blades in each refill pack and one blade is lasting me three or four shaves (something else new – one and a half shaves was usually my limit). Oh yes, and I can use it when there’s a child, or even two, in the shower with me. Because I’m not lathering up with shaving foam or gel, they don’t notice. And it’s quick, so they don’t notice.
Anyway, sorry for this rather odd interruption to normal service, but I just had to share this with you, just in case there are other people like me, who have such ridiculous problems with shaving. Try it. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but it’s most certainly for me.
Can I repeat that this really isn’t a sponsored post in any form whatsoever. I decided to try the razor out myself and went into Boots (or maybe it was Wilkinson’s?) and bought one. I’ve paid for every blade (or whatever the replacements are called) myself. No-one has paid me to write this, nor has anyone sent me samples to try.
What shaving (or other depilatory) system do you use, or do you not shave your legs? Have you had any problems? Have you tried the Wilkinson Sword Intuition Sensitive razor or any of the other similar new soap-surrounded razors and, if so, what do you think? Or could you not give a toss about leg shaving and are going to run away and hide under your covers until something sensible like Sunday Reading comes along?
Play Doh have introduced a new range of fairytale Play Doh kits and we got sent The Story of the Three Little Pigs for the girls to try out.
The kit contains brown, yellow and pink pots of dough, a brick house (with a built-in pig mould), a straw house, a stick house, a wolf and a story mat with a picture mat on the reverse. The kit costs £7.99 at Amazon.
Rosemary (five) was very excited when it arrived and played with it for an hour, making pigs, putting bricks on the wall and acting out the story with the dough pigs and the wolf.
She has played with it three or four times since getting it, but generally prefers to play with the ordinary Play Doh, because it can accommodate her imagination a bit more. That said, she did start using the kit to branch out and alter the story, which was still using her imagination.
Being Play Doh, Eleanor (almost two) was able to join in to the extent that she plays with any Play Doh – namely, squishing it into blobs and passing little bits to me saying ‘Mummy make a ball, please.’ She did keep squishing Rosemary’s pigs, so it made it difficult for them to play together, though she was more interested when we made her a (yellow) pig of her own.
As with other dough kits, the pieces and the dough will be joining the big collection and will be used in all sorts of ways.
At £7.99, I think this would make a good present for a friend’s birthday or a brilliant pass the parcel prize. I probably wouldn’t buy it myself for our Play Doh collection, as it is a little too restrictive in terms of free imaginative play, but I think that it would probably be very useful for children who need something to prompt them into imaginative play. It could also be combined with reading the book – there are many different versions – and could lead onto other activities, such as acting the story out, drawing pictures from the story, talking about what happens to the wolf (different things depending on the version) or even making models of the pigs’ houses out of straws and cardboard and so on.
The competition is now closed and the winner is Comment Number 11, Jen from The Madhouse! Congratulations, Jen – hope you and the family enjoy the hamper.
It’s back to school next week. The summer has gone remarkably quickly, though I think Rosemary probably could have done with going back a week ago. She’s very snappy and feeling quite horrible about and toward the world and I think the routine, stimulation and social interaction will help her get back to her more pleasant self.
Rosemary has school meals, so we don’t have to worry about packed lunches at the moment – except for the odd day trip. From January, though, Eleanor will be going to nursery school two days a week and will be needing a packed lunch (and Rosemary’s been promised she can have one on the days Eleanor does, then, too). Finding healthy food and drinks to put in a packed lunch that still appeal to the children is quite a challenge (one of the reasons why Rosemary has school meals, rather than packed lunch, in fact). Anyway, Innocent recently brought out some lunch-box size cartons of juice, called juicy drinks – watered down just like we do ourselves (to reduce the impact of the sugar in the juice on the teeth). The girls both love them – they especially love sticking the straw in themselves! Interestingly, Rosemary didn’t like the apple juice when it was in a glass, but she loved it in the carton.
Innocent are kindly offering a hamper of juice and other goodies – including some of their fabulous fridge magnets (we love the fridge magnets, here) to one of you. And they’ll deliver it to your door using one of their chilled couriers. We love getting deliveries from chilled couriers – seems so ahem cool.
If you’d like to win a hamper, then just leave a comment below telling us what you like to put in your kids’ packed lunches (or what you used to enjoy in your packed lunches when you were a kid).
UK entries only. Competition closes Monday 5 September. The winner will be contacted using the email address they leave with their comment, so make sure it’s a valid one. If you want to be notified by tweet as well/instead, leave your Twitter id. No addresses will be kept or used for marketing purposes.
Remember how I have this aversion to cleaning and somehow got talked into showing the unsavoury state of our fridge? Normal people probably would have got out the Mr Muscle – or the vinegar and baking soda – and given the whole thing a really good clean. Not me. I bought a whole new fridge-freezer instead*.
We have bought a couple of major appliances from Appliances Online before – our dishwasher and washing machine – and have always been very happy with their choice, value and service, so we went looking there again this time (well, actually, Chris looked at Argos and Curry’s and a few other places first, before I reminded him that Appliances Online is the place to go).
Downsizing
I spent a bit of time drooling over the rather lovely looking Hotpoint Quadro, but then we talked about it and came to the realisation that we actually didn’t need an all-singing, all-dancing, stupidly huge fridge-freezer (the old one was an American-style fridge-freezer with an ice maker and chilled water – neither of which had worked for a fair while – and huge amounts of space), because we really didn’t make use of most of the features. When we first bought it, we used to fill it up (with hideously extravagant ready meals and exotic fruit and veg from Waitrose) and then end up throwing lots of food away because it would go off before we’d managed to finish it. These days, we buy most of our food daily or every other day and really the only times the fridge would get full use were Christmas and parties. And, honestly, it’s a bit ridiculous to buy a huge fridge (and spend a couple of hundred more pounds on doing so) for one or two occasions each year. My sister lives round the corner and we can invade her fridge at Christmas if necessary. And keep stuff in the basement or outside because it’s usually cold at Christmas, anyway. We also thought it might be nice to be able to open the fridge without having to perform crazy contortions – our kitchen is teeny and definitely not the sort of room suited to a huge American fridge. So, we settled for the plainer, but functional and efficient Indesit BAAN12S. It’s a downsize, but it’s actually much more suited to our current lifestyle.
The new fridge-freezer
Look – no yucky stain! (Yet.) the last photo is of the girls’ favourite freezer drawer. Talking of the freezer drawers, I actually find it much easier to fit things in and access things in this freezer than the old one, which was very narrow. Oh, yes, and it does make ice. Kind of. See those bumpy bits in the freezer? You put water in them and they make ice cubes – you just bang the holder on the side and the ice comes out. I think it’s quite funky, but obviously it’s not quite the same as an automatic ice-maker that’s plumbed into your water supply. We had no problem fitting everything from our fortnightly Sainsbury’s shop in the fridge and freezer and still had room to keep three bowls of leftover salad that evening.
Cheeky request
Anyway, as I said, we were going to use Appliances Online anyway, because we’d had good service from them before and they have a really wide choice of appliances and then I remembered that I was following Appliances Online on Twitter and so I sent a very cheeky tweet asking if they fancied giving a parenting blogger with a PR of 3 a discount. And, lo and behold the lovely David Ingram said yes and gave us a nice refund. Which is great, because it’s kind of like free money. We were going to buy it anyway (actually we had bought it already) and I was probably going to write this post, too (I couldn’t resist the opportunity to show my way of getting a clean fridge), though perhaps not with quite so many direct links!
Delivery service and special mention to Terry
The delivery service is very good. While you’re just given a day of delivery when you order, you get an automated call and text message the night before letting you know the four-hour period when the delivery will occur and then we also got a personal call from the driver giving even more detail about when they’d be there. We had booked and paid for them to take away our old machine but, unfortunately, our old machine was a lot bigger than the new one, so they didn’t actually have room on the van. But the driver booked it in to be collected the next day. There was a bit of a mix-up then, as it had been booked in as a washing machine to be collected somehow and, again, they didn’t have room on the van. But the driver, Terry, arranged for it to be collected the next day. And, then, he went above and beyond the call of duty and checked the next morning whether it had been booked in as an American fridge and when he saw that it hadn’t been booked in correctly again, he arranged to take out a different van and come and pick it up himself go make sure it got collected. Of course, I can’t promise you’ll get Terry (and, if you’re recycling something that’s not like-for-like you should be sure to double-check that will be OK), but all the delivery drivers we’ve had from Appliances Online have been very helpful and friendly.
* Yes, OK. That’s a lie. The old one broke and I’m (fairly) certain it had nothing to do with the yucky stain at the bottom. Fairly certain. We spent over a week without a fridge. Just when the weather got hot. We had milk bottles sitting in the little sink and we bought a teeny little fridge, designed to fit six cans of coke. It was not fun.
This is a Book Week guest post from Joanna, aka Mrs M, aka Madamding.
It’s no real secret that I love a cookbook. At the last count my kitchen shelves were groaning under the weight of approximately 250 books. Whilst I may have hundreds of books, I still tend to play favourites, turning to certain books time and time again at certain times of the year.
When summer rolls around, the first book I always pull off the shelf for inspiration is Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer. For me this book IS summer. I was given a copy of this book by a friend, it having not originally caught my eye but now it has become a firm favourite.
As with all Nigella Lawson books, the recipes are quite simple and easy to follow, with good photography. As you would expect from the title, this book focuses very much on the tastes of summer, ranging from soups to salads, barbecued meat to curries and of course, desserts. Many of the recipes are a little more special than your average summer dinner making them perfect for entraining friends and family as they are simple but have a good bit of the WOW factor.
My favourite recipe in the book, by a country mile, are the lamb patties. These are incredibly good and have become such a staple in our house. Served with copious amounts of hummus and Greek yoghurt, these are completely moorish and I guarantee you will eat them until your waistband pops.
A close second is the Ultimate Greek Salad. This to me is one of the most perfect summer dishes, light and refreshing. It’s designed to be a side but is easily substantial enough to be served as a main alongside some warm crusty bread.
The tremendously titled Slut-red raspberries in chardonnay jelly sound completely decadent don’t they, and they are. Nigella herself describes them as "heaven on a plate" and she’s not far wrong. This is a gorgeous summer dessert that you serve with double cream and would impress your guests no end.
If you’re looking for a cookery book that personifies a lazy, laid-back summers day, then this could be the one for you!
I checked pockets, so where did the stinking great seashell currently scraping against the washing machine door come from? Inside a sock? | 4 hours ago
My Phonics Kit contains three workbooks (Kipper’s Phonics Workbook, Chip’s Phonics Workbook and Biff’s Phonics Workbook), instructions and guidance for parents, a reward chart, stickers and a CD-ROM with eBooks and related activities. The pack costs £10, though it’s currently available on Amazon for £6.
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