Baking With Lily - Making Krispie Cakes

Lily has been having lots of fun over the Easter holidays, and one of the things she decided to do was make Rice Krispie Cakes. We all know how to make Krispie Cakes as adults. So It would make a very boring blog post for me to instruct you how to do it. So, instead, here is Lily, telling all her little learners how to make Krispie Cakes.

So get your self some chocolate to melt, chocolates to decorate and some bun cases and get Baking With Lily. 

Hope you enjoyed Baking With Lily!!!

What would you like to see her bake next? 

Blissful Domestication

My Sunday Photo 08/04/18

Zoomer Zups Pretty Pony's Review

Lily is a huge fan of all things that are animal related. So she was super happy when a Zoomer Zups Pretty Pony from Spin Master turned up at our house. 

There are 6 Zoomer Zups Pony's out and we got Star. All the pony's are really colourful and also really pretty. Star was no exception and she looked great sat in her box ready to come out and play. 

She has pink and purple hair, a blue body and a purple star around her eye. She also has some symbols on her body which are a pinky purple colour and some are yellow. She is so cute and Lily was so pleased with her and held her in her hands saying "So Cute!" She is the perfect size for Lily to play with.

Lily really enjoyed making her pony move about and walk around, all of the Zoomer Zups legs move so you can change there position and you can make your pony sit down.

Already Lily thought this was a great toy but it was about to get better. 

When you switch on the switch on her belly, Star's eyes light up and she starts to make pony noises. She sounds so cute and the more you interact with her, the more noise she makes. 

She has a sensor on your head and all you need to do to activate it is stroke it, and your pony will make noises and neigh happily. If you stroke and hold her head, your pony will also neigh out "I Love You". 

As well as the head sensor, the pony's nose also acts as a button. Press it once and the pony will make cute sounds. Press and hold the nose and the pony will make a kissing sound. 

The pony also has a secret trick, and you can care for it by pressing its nose to feed it. It also loves to play games and so if we stroke its head and press its nose at the same time we can play a hurdle race game where the pony makes galloping noises. Lily loved it when it made these noises and moved it along like it was racing.

Lily loved all the noises and loved that she could interact with her Zoomer pet. 

If you don't play with the Zoomer pet for a while, it will go to sleep, to wake it back up you need to simply press its nose. I do like the fact that it goes into sleep mode though. Nothing worse than a noisy toy hidden somewhere making noise as you haven't switched it off.

Another thing Lily loved about the Zoomer pony was that it came with real hair and a brush. She loves brushing her toys hair at the moment and so this made her very happy.

These Zoomer Zups pretty pony's are aimed at children 4+. Lily is only 3 and she loves hers but I think when she is 4 she will understand how to use it a little more. For now she just loves that she can use it for imaginary play, take care of it and that it makes noises. 

Each Zoomer Zups Pony is £13 to buy and can be bought from the Entertainer store. 

Would your child like the Zoomer Zups pretty Pony? 

Our Spring Park Activity

Yesterday was such a lovely day that we just had to make sure we spent some time outside. With not planning anything we couldn't go too far. So we decided just to go to our local park around the corner. Problem is, we have been to that park a million times before. So I thought of a plan to make our walk a little more interesting. 

I decided that we could make a list of things to go searching for while on our walk at the park. So I sat down with Lily and we discussed things that we may find at the park in the spring.

Lily came up with some good ideas, leaves on tree's, grass, flowers, squirrels, birds. But she did also add a few strange ones that I wasn't quite sure we would find at the park, such as pigs and a whale?
I also helped her and we added some more spring related things, like daffodils, butterflies and blossom tree's. 

So when we got the the park we got out our list and Lily took a good look at it. A few things on the list were really easy to spot. We had sunshine, and we had grass which we ticked off our list straight away. Our next thing we looked for was daffodils, and we were lucky to find lots of them. Lily said they were flowers, which I said that yes they are but they are a special Spring flower called a daffodil. 

We then set off walking in the direction of the playground. On our way we were looking out for birds, and Lily also reminded me that we needed to see if we could find any pigs. For some reason this seemed to be top of her list of things to find. 

Soon enough we spotted some birds hopping around on the floor. I asked Lily to be quiet as we could also hear some whistling in the tree's and so we looked up to spot them. One thing we noticed is that there isn't many tree's with leaves on yet. But we did find some, so we could cross them off our list too. 

We got to the playground and Lily instantly found the swings, another one ticked off the list. This is where we took a break from finding things on our list and had some playground fun. 

After a good half an hour on the playground. We set off back walking around our park. It is actually quite a big park to walk around and there is lots of wildlife to see. Soon enough we spotted a squirrel. It was moving very fast through and quickly ran up a tree. But we spotted it so we could tick that off our list.

Now just to find, flowers, an apple tree, ducks, a butterfly, blossom tree, cats, bee's, and a pig and a whale. 

The park does have a stream but I was very doubtful we would see a whale swimming in it. 

Unfortunately there was no friendly neighbourhood cat wandering in the park, and we only spotted lots of dogs and there was no ducks paddling in the stream. Also we only spotted a small amount of flowers which looked like they had just popped up, so there was no sign of bee's or butterflies either. So we got to the end of the walk and gave up on finding the rest of the list and headed home. On the way home Lily told me that we didn't find pigs because you find pigs on a farm and then sang me a whole verse of old Macdonnald had a farm. 

It was a lovely walk and so nice to talk about the things we spotted and what things we see in spring. I think we shall have to do this again when their are more flowers out and the blossom tree's come out. 

Would you do this Activity with your child?

What things do you think your child would add to their list? 

Lumo Stars Review and Giveaway

Lily is a really big fan of her cuddly toys and teddy bears and so when we got offered to review Lumo Stars which is a plush range from Northern Brights, I couldn't say no. 

I just knew that Lily would love them and thats exactly what she did. As soon as they arrived she grabbed them all and gave them all one big massive cuddle.

The Northern Brights Plush range all include common animals that all live in Nordic countries. They come in a range of realistic colours and fantasy colours that are all taken from nature. 

For example their eyes sparkle like auroras, fur colours are from common berries, like blueberry and wild strawberries, and from the different colours of the four seasons, from the trees, sky and sea. Northern Brights have their special patterns inspired by the Nordic nature.

The first thing I will say about these plushes and I think Lily would happily agree, is that they are super soft. The fur material they have used has been carefully chosen so then you get the best soft huggable experience. Stroking them is like stroking a real animal.

Lily was sent 5 plushes. 

We have the large plush which is called Peach. Peach is a cat and comes in the lovely colours of peach and blue. On her name tag it tells you all about the things she loves to do and also loves to eat and also when she was named. peach is a great size measuring at 24cm.

Lily was also sent 3 classic sized plushes that are the size of 15cm. These are Ice who is a blue and white rabbit, Pinky who is a pink and white dog and Katti who is a grey and white kitten.

You can go to the website and see all about your animal as well as see the other animals available.

Lily's favourite ended up being Katti the kitten and she chose it to be the one she took to bed with her the night we received them. 

Another thing that I think is so lovely about these plushes is how colourful they are and also how big there eyes are. They have such beautiful colours in their eyes and they are super shiny too. Each animal also has a different pose, which makes them different to each other. I could really see these being something that children would love to collect. 

As well as all the details of each animal being found on there tag, there is also a special barcode that you can scan to download your character to the free Lumo Stars app. 

So I headed to my app store and downloaded it. As soon as it is downloaded all the characters come up and it asks you to choose your character. So I searched for pinky, and found her and clicked on her on the app. It then asked me to scan her barcode which is found on the tag which is found on the back of where it tells you to keep the tag. 

After pinky was downloaded, she popped up onto the screen. The set up reminded me of a Tamigotchi. Where you have the character in the middle and then options around it of things you can do. You can feed your Lumo star, play games with it, and also put it to bed. Then you can take a picture of it, but not before dressing it up in an outfit. You can also change the background that your Lumo Star sits in. For a free app that comes with the plushes, its brilliant.

I thought that the games were a little tricky for Lily to play yet, so a younger child may appreciate the other parts of the app more.

Lily was super happy with her Lumo Star plush's and she has been snuggling them loads.

The Lumo stars are all listed and available from Tactic Games and Amazon. The large Lumo star is £12.99, the classic Lumo star is £6.99 and their are also mini's available that come on keyrings and are £3.99.

Which of the Lumo Stars would you like? - See them all here. 

If you love the look of the Lumo Stars Plush and App. You can enter the competition below to WIN a bundle of them! Enter on the Gleam app for your chance to win. 

Win a Bundle of Lumo Stars

Monthly Book Roundup - What we have been reading in March

Each month I write about which books we have been reading during the month. I usually introduce Lily to 4 or 5 new books each month while at the same time reading some of our favourites. We have story time each night and always read 2-4 stories, depending on how tired she is. 

You can read all the other book roundups from the last 2 years here. 

This month we didn't really have a theme. Easter has kind of fallen at the end of the month and so it didn't feel right to start introducing easter books to her at the start of March. Especially as it has still been snowing. So I let Lily choose a selection from her books and these are what she chose.

1. Dylan the Teacher by Guy Parker-Rees 

Lily is a huge fan of Dylan and I have a feeling we may need to buy all of his books. Lily has read Dylan the Doctor before and so she was delighted that there was a new Dylan book for her to read. This story is all about a group of children animals and they are all role playing. In this one Dylan is the teacher and his friends are the students. But as Dylan tries to teach things, he realises that its very tricky to teach, and some of his lessons fail. In the end he finds the perfect lesson for them all to do and they all play happily. One of the things about the Dylan books is that they have some repetition in them. In this one, Dylan rings the school bell and so you shout "Ding a Ling a Ling" as he does. Lily loved that part of the story. I would say that Dylan was Lily's favourite out of this months bunch of books. I was sent this from the publisher Scholastic but you can find the Dylan books online. 

2. Celestine Drama Queen by Penny Ives

I would say we probably read this book the least out of the lot. I don't think it related to Lily too much and although she did enjoy it, I wouldn't say it was one of her favourites. But this story would be perfect if you have a little dancer or performer in the family as thats exactly what all this story is about.
Celestine loves to perform. So much that she takes it into her every day life and she must have a special breakfast and must wear her tiara to school. It is about to be the school play and Celestine has the biggest part. But when she gets on stage she gets scared and can't sing. So instead she decides to do what she does best and dance. It is a great story and mums will relate to the drama queen parts that Celestine plays out. You can pick this book up online. 

3. The Mouse Who Wasn't Scared by Petr Horacek 

I am really starting to love Petr Horacek's books and this one is no different. I really love his illustrations and Lily enjoys the story lines. This book is all about a brave little mouse that decides to adventure out into the woods. His friends warn him not to but mouse says that he isn't scared. On the way he meets all sorts of animals that he should be scared of, but he isn't, and instead wants to play. It's only when he finds a house that he finds something he is scared of when we meets a cat, and this time its the cat that wants to play. But the mouse decides to run home scared. This was my favourite of the bunch to read and we read it quite a bit over the month. The only thing I would say about the book is that I was disappointed there was only one flap to lift in it, as for something that describes itself as a lift the flap book, I expected more. You can find out where to buy this book here. 

4. Dangerous by Tim Warnes 

The first thing that was exciting about this book for Lily, was that it was all about stickers and it even came with 100 free stickers. The story is about Mole who loves to label things. He writes out his labels wherever he goes and sticks them to things he see's. One day he comes across a crocodile. But he wasn't sure what it was, so he decides to start putting descriptive words on this large green thing he found. Soon the crocodile yawns and scares the mole so he decides it needs a Dangerous label on it. But as he creeps up to stick it on, the crocodile wakes up. But instead of eating Mole, he eats the labels which makes mole displeased. Mole makes the crocodile cry and soon crocodile feels bad for eating the labels and so makes his own label saying sorry. Mole forgives the crocodile and decides to make a label to place over the sorry label saying friend. It really is a nice story and I love that they make friends in the end. I won this book in a competition but you can pick it up online.

Which of the above books do you like the sound of the best? 

My Sunday Photo 01/04/18