Home: A home is a place of residence or refuge. When it refers to a building, it is usually a place in which an individual or a family can live and store personal property, such as a single-family detached home or an apartment. It is generally a place to provide safety and is used as a center from which people or animals base their daily activities. Most modern-day households contain sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food.

A few weeks ago when I was attempting (and failing) to sell my house I had the opportunity to go along to the Homesense store in Bristol with some other bloggers.

Excited about moving house I was keen to see what the store sold and if there was anything quirky and individual I could buy for my new house whilst sprucing up my current one to make it more attractive for the viewers. (yes new fancy cushions do sell houses, so I’m told!)

Homesense is actually ridiculously close to where I live and I’m amazed I’ve not discovered it before! It is the homeware part of TKMaxx which I love, and just like TKMaxx the store did not disappoint! As soon as we walked in we didn’t know where to start first. On two floors the store is gigantic and full of individual items for every room in the home. There are sofas, sideboards, mirrors and so much more.

As I was with @ladyemsy we naturally gravitated towards the teapot and mug section. So many to choose from, but naturally this was the mug for me…

Next, unsurprisingly, the bloggers all ended up at the notebook and paper section. What an amazing selection!

I picked up a wonderful pad of paper for scrapbooking and came home and made this to hang up in my study. I don’t often get the chance these days to be creative and I’m pretty pleased with the result!

What I liked about the shop was the amount of different, unique items in it. From strange shell-like massive dolphins (should’ve taken a photo!) to vases in styles I’ve never seen before.


They have deliveries everyday and so the store is constantly changing with wonderfully different things to purchase all of the time. And the prices are amazing too, everything less than it would usually retail for. I also picked up some new cutlery and a baking tray to replace the ruined ones from my oven trouble.

So if you’ve a new home to furnish, or an old home in need of some fab new items then I can recommend you visit Homesense. Stylish, affordable and so many different things to choose from. Everything you need for a home all in one place! Go!

This is a review for which I received a £30 Homesense gift card

Photographs: A photograph or photo is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene’s visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see

A few weeks ago I received an email which genuinely excited me. It was from a company called PhotoBox offering me the chance to review their website and products and I just couldn’t resist.

I take photos all of the time. Not a day goes by when I haven’t got my iPhone out and am snapping away (a fancy camera is on my Christmas list, thank you Father Christmas in advance!) but although I take a lot of photos with my phone that’s generally where they tend to stay. Over a thousand of them, all either in my photo album or uploaded onto Instagram. I am rubbish at printing them out even though I have ink in my printer and proper posh photo paper. I’m not entirely sure why I’m this way, but the email from Photobox gave me just the push I was needing to actually do something with the photos I’ve taken.

I registered with their website, which was quick and easy, and began to browse. You can access the website from your phone or tablet and now they even have an app! The choice you will find is amazing!

There are so many different products to choose from and always some amazing offers. You can buy prints, canvases, photo mugs, perfect for that someone who is difficult to buy for (we all know someone like that!) iPhone and iPad cases, blocks and many different albums. I knew that I wanted to make a photo album of my third child’s first year and so began to look at the many different designs of photo books I could choose from. I eventually chose a bright and colourful A4 book which I am thrilled with. Once you have uploaded your photos, which doesn’t take long you can either choose for PhotoBox to arrange the photos in the album for you (which I did!) or you an arrange them yourself, adding as much or as little text as you like. I absolutely love my album and it is a wonderful reminder of Baby E’s first year.

Now, I am also always someone who changes their iPhone case as often as I change mood swings and so next on my list was one of them! Using the photos I had already uploaded I quickly designed my case…again the options are endless and I enjoyed taking my time to make the perfect case using all of my absolute favourite photos (my OH was most put out and jealous after he saw mine…so I bought him one for his birthday too!)

Finally I decided to get a block as I thought this was a great way to display photos without needing a frame. If truth be told at the moment this is my most favourite of the three products I chose…the photo is perfect, the quality fantastic and it just looks amazing. I plan on purchasing many more of these!

Delivery was very quick, quicker than the estimates given on the website and I received emails all through the process which kept me up to date with the status of my order. So…if you have, like me, hundreds of photos sitting on your phone or computer I would highly recommend you pay a visit to http://www.photobox.co.uk/ and do some amazing things with them, so the memories snapped in those photos can last forever.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by the lovely people at My Pouch asking me if I’d like to review their fab pouches for food on the go.

This idea was new to me as, even though I used the well known pouches in the shops with my second child when we were out and about, I had never heard of pouches in which you could put your own food. What a brilliant idea! I love creating and cooking for my children when they are weaning and so the thought of being able to take this food with me in an easy package was very appealing. I am rubbish with Tupperware and constantly have bowls with no lids or lids with no bowls and even now I have three children am no better at taking home cooked food out with me.

The Reusable Food Pouch is a convenient way to store home cooked food. It is very durable, and can be put in the dishwasher and the freezer. BPA free it’s also very safe and has a cap which cannot be swallowed, very child friendly!

Now my third child can be a pickle when it comes to food and very rarely would take anything puréed from a spoon, so I was interested to see how the pouch would work with slightly lumpier textures. Spaghetti bolognese, a firm favourite with all three of my children, was something he would eat and could with his hands, and something that I didn’t feel the need to purée to a pulp. In short the pouch was fantastic. The wide opening made it easy to fill with the lumpier texture and it was also extremely easy to get out at the other end, perfect!

Also in the hot weather I have been mixing fruit and yoghurt, putting it into the pouches and then freezing them to make a lovely cooling snack. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve also eaten a fruit smoothie out of a pouch…it was very refreshing!

As a mum I wanted to give my child home made food wherever possible, and now whether I’m in the park, at the shops or at the seaside I can!

I would recommend these pouches to use when you start weaning, not only are they brilliant for their very first foods, but they also make useful storage for snacks when they get older. A very convenient way to get healthy food into your children where ever you are!!

Store: Store may refer to: a retail store, a place where things are stored, e.g. a ship’s paint store
expendables released from an aircraft, such as ordnance or countermeasures.

So a few weeks ago now I was invited *coughs* okay, I invited myself along to a blogging event at the newly opened Kiddicare store in Bristol. I’m a bit obsessed with buying all things ‘baby’ and the prospect of being shown around a massive store full of things that I didn’t own, by an award winning company, was very exciting! Now, I will admit to never having used Kiddicare online before as I usually visit another well known baby store, but from now on, along with one million other customers, it is the only place I will shop! By the end of 2013 Kiddicare will have eleven stores and over 1,500 staff all over the country so will be very easy for many people to get to and shop for children from birth to five years old.
The choices for everything in the Bristol store were huge. More car seats to choose from than you will ever need, high chairs in every shape, size and colour and so many lovely clothes. (With an equal amount of boys and girls clothes which never happens in shops!)

We started off in the cafe which is perfect if you are shopping with your children as there is a fantastic play space for them to use which is safe and enclosed. Full up with tea and cake we were shown around the store. Kiddicare stores have been designed to make life easier and happier for young families and I can honestly say the store is brilliantly child and parent friendly. Not only are the children allowed to try out toys and if they fancy, drive or push them around the entire shop, but the parents are allowed to try stuff too without having to ask a member of staff to unlock it! Prams are able to go with you to your car to check they fit in the boot! Brilliant!
Everything is organised into specific areas and everything you will need for that subject is right in front of you. High chairs are with food, and bibs for example.

And you never need to worry about everything being cheaper online as the prices are all electronically linked to the store…matching the prices on-line.

Kiddicare was established in 1974 and part of the Morrisons family from February 2011 the Bristol store also has mum-and-me changing rooms, a Nursing Nest feeding room, free pushchair MOTs, free car seat fitting, free WiFi, 365 days returns and virtual queuing systems. They really have thought of everything!

Each Kiddicare store also values community and at the end of the visit we were shown the community event room, which has a wonderful and varied daily schedule of activities for mums, mums to be, babies and toddlers.
They really have thought of everything in the store to make shopping a stress free and happy experience. I for one, shall be visiting regularly!
You can find Kiddicare on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google+

Book review: A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit.[1] A book review can be a primary source opinion piece, summary review or scholarly review.[2] Books can be reviewed for printed periodicals, magazines and newspapers, as school work, or for book web sites on the internet. A book review’s length may vary from a single paragraph to a substantial essay. Such a review may evaluate the book on the basis of personal taste

Hello! My name is Fred and I am four years old, which is very big. A couple of weeks ago my mummy went to London. I didn’t like the sound of this at first as I quite like my mummy being here, but she told me it was for very important things so I let her go. And I was pleased she did because when she came back she brought some amazing books with her for me to read!

The first book she brought back was about dinosaurs which are my most favouritest things ever! It is called ‘Things you never knew about dinosaurs’ by Giles Paley-Phillips and I only had to look at the front cover to know I’d like the books as the pictures of the dinosaurs were all very funny and made me laugh! There was one with slime in his mouth!

I asked mummy which one made her laugh and she said the one with the sunglasses on because he had a funny smile. It’s a rhyming book and tells me about all of the things dinosaurs do, did you know they like trampolining? And it says they don’t like Maths which is silly because Maths is brilliant! I was a bit scared on the last page though when I saw a dinosaur with a big knife and fork….I really hope he doesn’t want to eat me, I don’t think I taste very nice!

The other book mummy brought home from London was a book called ‘Goodnight Little One’ by Margaret Wise Brown. I like this one at bedtime as it makes me all nice and sleepy. It’s got lots of my favourite animals in it like monkeys, I love monkeys, they are super cool. The book shows lots of animals going to bed and when mummy reads it the rhythm of the words makes me feel sleepy too. *yawns* I’m tired just thinking about it!

I like both of these books very much and have decided that mummy can now go to London whenever she wants, as long as she brings me back some books!

Hello, Monty the Monkey here. I’ve taken control of Instinctive Mum’s blog, just for this post. You see, a couple of days ago I was happily swinging in my tree, eating some bananas and Walkers Baked Hoops and Crosses crisps, when I was bundled, along with a packet of the roast beef flavoured crisps, into a box. I wasn’t in the box for long, thankfully, and when it was opened I was in a house, a house that contained three small people. They looked at me (well, to be fair it might’ve been the crisps) and grinned! There were ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhhs’ and I was passed around them all, still holding onto the crisps at this point! Then a big person put me up on a shelf and said the small people could eat the crisps next time we had a picnic.
Again, I didn’t have to wait for long as the weather yesterday was beautiful and a picnic was on the cards. Whilst I was sat waiting for the picnic on that shelf all I could hear were the small people taking it in turns to say, ‘Mum, I’m hungry, what can I eat? Please can I have chocolate or crisps?’ The big person would always say, ‘How about a yummy banana first.’ My kind of lady I thought! But I wanted to let her know that the Walkers Baked Hoops and Crosses crisps weren’t actually as bad as other crisps, I wanted her to know that they contained 56% wholegrain, which small people need, and that they were also low in fat and contain no artificial colours or preservatives…so I whispered it in her ear, and she liked these facts! She agreed that they’d make a great snack, which I also thought myself, and was tempted to open the packet, but…I resisted! (And at only 85 calories per pack I could see her struggling to resist too!)
A short while later we all climbed into the car and went to a nearby park for the picnic. Sausages and sandwiches were opened and then…the crisps!

I could hear the small people saying, ‘Yummy, these are delicious!’ and, ‘Can we please go to the shops to buy some more?’ It wasn’t long before they were all gobbled up. They only gave me a couple! Cheeky monkeys!

Oh, but they did have a quick game of hoops and crosses first.

The crisps and lunch seemed to give everyone some energy and we all went for a long walk, I even managed to do a bit of tree climbing along the way!

And then it was time to come home, but we stopped at the shops on the way back to pick up some more Hoops and Crosses (this time the prawn cocktail flavour ones!) as both the big and the small people thought they tasted great, and were a good way of eating more wholegrain, essential for a balanced diet. Maybe they will share some of these with me before they all get eaten in their packed lunch boxes?

Love Monty xx

This is a paid review post