Part Time Blogging and the perils of 'time off'

This isn't what we do all day. It just feels like it sometimes!

I don't think I've ever met a blogger whose sole purpose in life is to put together blog posts. Every single one of us (well, all the ones I'm aware of) blog away as a part-time 'hobby'. Writing is therapeutic, and sometimes reviewing things can be quite therapeutic too.

Though there's that phrase isn't there - 'PR Friendly'.

We're extremely PR friendly. In fact we're PR Friendly to a fault sometimes. Virtually every single one of the PRs we've ever dealt with have also been friendly, and for that we're extremely grateful. After all, they're essentially offering to send you things free of charge in the hope that you'll put something worth reading about them on your blog.

So it's the 1%, the ones that just don't get that we have a young child (a very busy little Princess C) that we look after - and at weekends and during holidays we're incommunicado. Neither of us (well definitely not me anyway) are wedded to our smartphones. Neither of us are online 24/7 and neither of us would ever consider screwing up a family holiday by dropping everything to blog or be at the behest of a PR, even if you're offering to send us a free Rolls Royce or gold plated loo seat. We squeeze our posts in during the evening, schedule them to scatter throughout the working day, and truly hope that folk see them and read them. Sometimes we're even up late into the night putting posts together, not necessarily because we have to but because we enjoy it.

We pride ourselves that even though we do this part time, we put a massive amount of effort into both our blogs to make them informative, good to read, and above all honest. But our only 'boss', and the only person who can tell us what to do with our time and when to be at their beck and call is 5 years old and is the best boss in the world...!

Toy Review - Vannelope Von Schweetz and Taffyta Muttonfudge Toy Racers from ThinkWay Toys

Vannelope Von Schweetz and her Candy Kart

We've been looking for Wreck-It Ralph tie-in toys for a while, and it looks like a few are slowly leaking out onto the UK Market. Argos now sell three of the superb Thinkway Toys racing karts from the movie's 'Sugar Rush' segment, including the two we bought.

Vannelope Von Schweetz's fantastic hotch-potch go-kart is super-detailed, and comes with a posable Vannelope figure which 'plugs in' to the kart, so when kids are driving the kart around the floor like mad things (as Princess C has for most of yesterday and today) the figure stays put. A good feature.

Decorated just like her kart in the movie, it comes with biscuit wheels, wafer spoiler and lots of tiny little details. The wheels are free-rolling and it's a nice robust toy for even the roughest toughest playtimes.

We also purchased Taffyta Muttonfudge's candy racer:

Though she's the 'bad girl' in the movie, Charlotte actually preferred Taffyta's car (probably because it's so shockingly pink).

It's a bit of a shame that Argos only sell the three racers (the third is The Swizz / Tongue Twister) as Thinkway and other manufacturers have put together some fantastic toys to compliment the movie.

With the blu ray and DVD release coming up in UK territories, we might see a few more toys arriving - but so far, the only way to get them seems to be to hunt online where prices can be extortionate (both these karts were £12.99 each in Argos which isn't cheap but they're very good quality products).

We are bloggers - Feedback is like cheese or chocolate to us!

It's interesting when we go to Blogger events, or get the opportunity to meet other blogging folk, or people we've been tweeting at for ages. We meet some very lovely people, and the one thing that most of us have in common is that we're all feedback junkies.

Let me explain. To a blogger who tells you that they write their blog for therapeutic purposes, Feedback probably isn't that important but I've rarely ever met anyone who writes anything (for a living or purely as a means of spilling the contents of their over-active mind onto a blank blog post) who wouldn't want feedback of any sort.

After all, we're out here in the public domain, talking about...well...stuff, so it's like cheese or chocolate to us.

Sometimes it can be very frustrating when you've poured your guts, your sweat and most importantly your time into a blog post only for it to meet static and silence.

It's also very frustrating when you put together a well-meaning post, or a positive review and then someone drops by the comments box or tweets you about it to tell you that "you missed the full stop at the end of the third sentence" (yep we do make mistakes from time to time, but so did the Dalek who ended up on a blind date with a dustbin).

Feedback is important. We try to give it where we can, if we're popping by other people's blogs we usually will comment - or if someone's put together a stonkingly good blog post and tweets about it we'll fave and retweet it.

We only ask that you try and do the same. You've no idea how much it thrills us.

When did Pass the Parcel get so complicated?

You can now buy ready-made pass the parcel parcels! No, really!

We'll be straight with you here. We hate Pass the Parcel. If there was ever one party game to cause instant groans and moans of dismay (amongst adults that is, not kids!) it's Pass the Parcel. We purposely avoided doing it at Princess C's birthday party and quite a few folk seem to have cottoned on that it's a sucky waste of time at a kid's party but still it prevails.

But it's changed. Here's a then and now comparison:

THEN

• One parcel, one prize!
• Parents randomly operating cranky old Binatone music centre while simultaneously glugging down a delicious beverage / holding down a conversation with other parents
• Wrapping paper was nearly always newspaper or cheap stuff
• All kids, regardless of gender, took part
• Kids passed the parcel with scarcely a pause in between
• The prize at the end was always massively disappointing

NOW

• One or two parcels (sometimes even gender-specific pass the parcel sessions going on simultaneously to ensure the prizes 'fit' the winner)
• A prize in every single layer - usually something you don't want your children to eat before they ruin their dinner / teeth / best clothes they came to the party in
• Parent strategically operates iPod and Speaker Doc, following complicated hand and voice signals from strategically placed other parent who makes sure all children get a go
• Wrapping paper must be at least M & S / John Lewis. Cheap stuff not allowed even though it's going to end up scattered all over the party venue
• All kids take part, but the ones who don't still win a prize anyway
• Kids pass the parcel with strategic clinginess just in case the music stops (pointless because of point 3)
• The prize at the end is still always massively disappointing. 

Pass the Parcel is great for two things. 1) Ensuring huge swathes of time at your children's party are taken up by this long, boring, drawn out process (watch parents faces if you do the whole thing twice!) and 2) For lulling children into the false sense of excitement that perhaps, just this once, they will be "THE ONE" (even though we all know that the winner is picked in much the same manner that Eurovision winners are - so it'll be a decision that's long been cogitated over and decided on weeks before your child has even turned up to the party!)

I look forward to the bright shining future when Pass the Parcel has been superseded by "Pass the Smartphone around randomly until the winner is chosen and wins an unlock code for Angry Birds 20"

how to get princess hair

My little princess seems to master messy hair very well. She has curls (thankfully not as curly as mine) but it's very fine and fly away. It seems to knot so easily and trying to get a brush to her hair involves screaming sessions and ouches that you didn't know could ouch so at the weekend we just let her leave the house extra messy and don't brush it.

But with school each morning and having to tie her hair up I got fed up with the arguments and took her to Boots. Where upon she fell in love with the tangle teezer. We tried this out in Hamleys a few years back, the lady back combed Princess C's hair and then brushed it out with not a whimper.  I was sceptical she had very little hair then and always behaves like an angel to strangers so didn't stump up the cash. But following this a few friends at work happened to say they wanted a good hairbrush as their hair knots easily, I directed them to the tangle teezer and they haven't looked back.

So there we were in Boots and her eyes went straight to a pink flower pot tangle teezer that involved parting with more money than I really wanted but hey lets give it a go. Well its working and she's even brushing her own hair. Its the perfect shape for smaller hands to hold and it nestles in the little pot below that can keep a selection of clips and hair bands in.

She loves it and has told everyone about it and we now have no tears. We have brushed wet and dry hair and combined it with anti-tangle spray for an extra breezy brush. So maybe I shouldn't have been so sceptical 2 years ago when we were in Hamleys and it would have saved us 2 years of tears!

The case of the curiously coloured Tadpoles in Class.

Children's drawings rock!

It's been nagging away at me for some time, and it's something that quite a few arty folk are also concerned about. Are schools trying to stifle artistic talent before it's even had a chance to bloom?

There was a short sharp example of this at School this morning. One of Princess C's classmates is always drawing, and she draws some beautiful (and quite surreal) things. The class has a new Tadpole tank and the children were all busily drawing the tadpoles and the tank.

We were talking to C's teacher and one little girl came up to proudly show off her drawing. The most beautiful rainbow-coloured tadpoles, all happily swimming around in a crayola-storm of cobalt blue, a work that I thought was utterly enchanting, amazing and brilliant.

"Are Tadpoles that colour? Are they really? Did you look?" said the Teacher. The poor little girl looked utterly crushed or like she was about to burst into tears. I wanted to give her some encouragement and tell her that I thought her picture was awesome but there was that moment of nothing that passed between the teacher and I, that silent "I'm the boss here, don't disrupt the calm cool waters of my pond"

So creativity then? With the current strive to produce perfect little robot children who are literate and numerate, do we neglect to allow them the freedom of expression that drawing and creative play nurture? I don't get that. I don't get how there could ever be a way of thinking that literacy and numeracy are adequate substitutes for creativity when it comes to measuring success (particularly at school).

So what if the tadpoles were multicoloured, to me it still looked like a busy and thronging tadpole tank with all the elements in the correct place - the colours were actually an added bonus not a detriment.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say from the top of my wobbly soapbox but I hate seeing instances where children are put down or dissuaded from creative moments because they're 'not doing things right' - Art was never about right or wrong, even when you get into the more technical aspects of exploring line and shape, colour and shade, anatomy and observation. Art was always about the amazing imaginative process of taking something that you have tucked away in your mind and letting it loose so others can share it.

That day the bully dropped by...

I don't like bullies, I never have - and after I left school (where bullying was rife, largely uncontrolled and always swept conveniently under the carpet by our head and deputy head - something that sounds shocking today) I thought I'd never see another day where a bully held sway over me or anyone else I was directly involved with.

Of course, you soon get to learn that bullies don't really change magically overnight like you see in the movies. In real life, Bullies usually grow up and merely sharpen their 'skills' in other ways - sometimes even at your place of work.

I lost my cool completely this morning. Something I've managed to avoid doing for the majority of the time I've been in my current role - mainly because someone in my office was being bullied (verbally, thankfully not physically) by someone else.

I flipped. I could probably blame a lack of sleep (didn't get quite enough sleep last night, one of those disturbed nights where deep sleep slips through my fingers like mercury), but it could also be because over the past 7 years or so I've seen this particular bully's modus operandii and method of exerting his bone-brained will on various people I work with. Normally I'd keep out of an argument if it didn't involve me but there was something about the language this person was using, the methods they were exerting over the person who couldn't stick up for themselves (or wouldn't), that pressed all of my 'Hulk-Out' buttons all at once.

To coin a phrase, I lost my shit, big time. It happens so infrequently that I actually felt like I'd gone into shock afterwards. I ended up in front of my boss, explaining the situation (and sounding pathetically like a kid whose opening gambit is 'he started it') and then again later apologising (though not to the bully - though a tiny voice inside me was telling me I ought to, just to prove I was somehow the better person).

I still don't like bullies. I detest the various excuses that creep out of the woodwork whenever a bully reaches the end of their reign of terror and people finally bring them to task for what they've done. I cannot stand the way that, deep down, though you'd hope the incident made them think long and hard about themselves and the way they deal with people - you secretly know that it's had the same effect on their thick skin as a flea has on a Sherman Tank. Most of all I hate the way I now feel like the lowest of the low, simply because I stood my ground and got pretty shouty (and sweary, ack) in the process.