More things to do at home on isolation with the kids

So things have been posted on FaceBook (FB) and ive saved them so i can share with others. Please do the same (in order to keep each and every mum sane during this time)

Many schools have sent out/home homework packs for children to do, but please remember they are just as scared (if not more so) than us adults are. My thoughts are yes do some of the work everyday BUT it's more important to be there for them, so play some board games, read a book together, get a notebook/diary and log down what you do (it's proof they weren't watching tv or on a pc for the next however many weeks.)

This was shared as a joke on FB and it did make me smile, I hope it does you as well. However, my sons Godmother said that after they have counted the rice they need to write one word on each grain of rice and then make stories. That made me laugh even more than the post did.




Before i start adding activities i will share a few websites that WILL be a godsend to all parents/guardians.

• Pinterest has hundreds (more like thousands) of things you can do, it is free to join and you can save all the things you like in one place, make different sections etc, you can find crafts, meals, school worksheets all sorts on there.
• Twinkl has loads of free worksheets and activities use code PARENTSTWINKLHELPS to get more free ones.
• Scouts UK has shared activities you can do at home (you could even make your own certificates and badges to award).
• This blog  has a list of loads of free worksheets and websites, ive not looked at them all but they may help someone.
• Quirky Momma on FB has shared many things including virtual museums  and places you can "visit" online.
• colouring pages can be found everywhere online if you dont have books at home, and this page on FB has shared loads for free - you just need to print them.
• glasgow science center is doing online science bits
• cre8tive resources has loads of free worksheets 

if you google "free school worksheets" there are pages upon pages that come up.

Now for the activities ive saved.

• Make your own monopoly board - use  local places etc, this would be best done on cardboard and use proper monoply money if you have the main set. There are blank templates online for monopoly boards.

• Make a RAINBOW and put in your window - the idea is for people to create rainbows for others to find when they are on a self-isolating walk, there are many groups popping up on FB linked to it, this one is linked to Whitehaven, Cumbria. I have also seen groups doing similar with hearts.
• my personal pinterest boards have hundreds of items saved type in "yummymummyamy" and you should find it.

• In summer 2014 i made an activity journal/book for my sons, yes it's mainly summer themed BUT i'm happy to share it and hopefully you can make use of it with your children. I didn't make the worksheets they were found all over the internet. 

There are also loads of websites offering free courses for adults to do, alison.com, skills network, futurelearn, and the open university have some

i hope this info helps someone.

September 11th 2015 - Android Tablet

September 11th 2015 - Android Talet

Just over a week ago on the Martin Lewis Website there was a freebie come up for a free Alldaymall 7" Android Tablet in pink.  You entered the money off code and selected free shipping on Amazon and the order went through. It turns out that this was a BIG mistake on the comapnies part, and the code shouldn't have been to get the item free.

Sadly I didn't know this until after I had ordered it, received it and allowed my children to use the free tablet that I got.  Well i'm not a cruel mother and was not prepared to take it away from my children.  I do feel sorry for the company as a lot of people took advantage of the freebie, but I will give it an honest review and write up here.

The item was packed very well and was protected and it arrived a day earlier than I was told it would arrive.   The package contained everything that it should it would.  If this tablet had to have been bought it would have been £29.99 plus shipping.

The device had no power to start with so we put it on charge for an hour and then turned it on, my first thought was how loud and clear the sound was, not bad for a cheap tablet.  It took you through a start up menu of which you could customise to suit yourself.  The colours and display were very bright and clear, the only thing was the screen didn't go fully edge to edge.

Once set up the tablet was actually quick to load and run pages, it worked well unless my children tried to open too many things which slowed it down (but this happens on all devices).  The screen is great for looking straight at but if turned or angled slightly you can't fully see what is on the screen.

It has both forward and rear facing cameras, I can't comment on the quality of pictures it takes as we have not tried this yet.  It also has room for a memory card to be inserted, again we haven't done this but probably will.

It is small and light weight and ideal size to fit in a bag.  It will be used a lot at hospital appointments as wont take up much room to take with us but is enough to keep the children amused whilst waiting.  It has a hard plastic shell around the tablet which i'm sure is strong enough to protect it but I plan on buying a rubber one just encase it does get dropped.  It is a well built little machine.

The tablet is able to connect to wi-fi which is great an it is also bluetooth enabled.  It runs on Android which is what myself and children are used to (they have use my mobile phone for games etc).  Apps install on it quickly, but as it has low memory I wouldn't advise you to add too many, unless you plan on adding a memory card to boost it.

It can be charged via mains plug or the mini usb cable.  My youngest son is happy to play on it whilst on charge from my laptop so that he can sit and snuggle with me before bed.  The battery life isn't the best and is about 2-3hrs depending on what you are using the tablet for, but I really don't want my children glued to a device for this amount of time let alone longer!

For the price the tablet is (and even better for me as was free) I can safely say it is a great little device, it does what you would hope a small tablet could do etc.  It is ideal size etc for children and slipping into a bag for waiting rooms or even whilst shopping.

I would recommend this product to family and friends.  Thank you for sending it to me an i'm sorry that I wasn't aware of the mix up and that it shouldn't have been free.  I hope that you accept my apology and review as fair exchange.

June 2nd 2015 - Bzzagent

June 2nd 2015 - Bzzagent

A few months ago I came across a website called Bzzagent who send their members samples of products to try for free in exchange of an honest review and discussions with friends/family about the products.

So far I have received a sure deodrant, caramel and hazlenut Douwe egberts coffee and the latest one was for F&F school uniform.  I have left reviews of the products on the bzzagent website.

The deodrant was the first product I tried and in fairness my review wasn't that great as I hadn't done this type of thing before but it was a start.  The product was packaged nicely, smelt nice, applied nicely and left no marks or residue on clothes or skin.  I would consider buying it in the future.

The next products were the coffees.  I thought they would be a couple of sachets like you get in hotels, but no they were full size jars.  The roasted hazlenut smelt really nice, but was very strong and I wasn't too keen on the after taste of it.  The caramel smelt and tasted lovely, it was even better when I added a couple of drops of caramel essence to it as it sweetened it more.  I have actually bought more of this since I trialed it.

The latest trial I am currently doing is the school uniform from F&F.  I was sent a voucher to use towards the cost of some school uniform products (of my choice).  Luckily for me the coucher was enough to completely pay for 4 pairs of trousers for my 5yr old.  I chose the ones that have re-inforced knees as he always goes through them!  I haven't been able to review them yet as they only came yesterday, but upon opening them etc they seem nice.   Review to follow in a few days.

If you would also like to try prodcuts for free in exchange for an honest review, you can find out more by following this link: http://u.bzz.com/whffa

April 20th 2015 - Free Wood

April 20th 2015 - Free Wood

Who ever says you get nothing for free obviously hasn't asked the right people or places!!!  A friend of mine told us that she got some free wood in the form of pallets from a local building firm, so me and hubby went down there and asked the lady.  Whose answer was "how many do you want?"  Me, looking rather silly replied I don't know!

I asked hubby and he said however many we can fit in the car, so the man told us to reverse the car up to where they were and we would see what we could fit in - we got 5, and the people from building firm said we know where they are if we need more!  BONUS!

Well we had dinner and then spent the next half hour trying to take 1 apart - easier said than done.  We tried hitting the pallets with a hammer, using the claw of the hammer, using a crowbar, using a chisel and all these succeeded in doing was splitting the wood, not so good.  So I did what I always do and went to pinterest to see if I could find a pin on how to demolish a pallet.  I  found quite alot actually, some said the ways we had tried but the most useful and easy way was with a metal saw and cut through the nails.

We ummed and arrred and said we didn't think we had a metal saw and then hubby disapeared inside.  I went to see what he was doing and he was reading the instructions for the electric saw we bought to cut down trees - it had a metal saw attatchment.  He fixed it to the saw and off he went cutting the nails from the pallets.  It's not quite the 2minutes per pallet as the pin says but it is working much quicker than what we tried and  the wood is not breaking.

Free wood and a helpful hint on how to break it!

February 2nd 2015 - Paid to search

February 2nd 2015 - Paid to search

Towards the end of August of 2014 whilst on a paid survey website, I saw a link to a site called Qmee, offering money for searches.  I had never heard of it so started a google search to see what I could on it.  Everything seemed legit so I went back to the Qmee page and started reading what they had to say on their own site.

It's very simple you sign up for an account, which is free.  You then install the simple add-on facility with 1 click and its added to your toolbar and you don't need to re-start your browser either.  And away you go.  I found a helpful article about it on Pinterest that links to a lady's blog page.

As you search for things on gooogle, amazon, ebay, yahoo or bing etc, you sometimes get a narrow box appear on the left hand side of your screen, it looks like this:

These are adverts from companies linked in with Qmee, they all have a price next to them, if you click on them they will take you to that page where you can browse and then go back to your original page.  The Qmee add-on will track that you visited that page and tracks you the amount it said.  If you then visit your Qmee account it will show the amount that you have earned. Sometimes these links stay for a couple of searches and you can get multiple amounts, other times they appear once and vanish.

The prices on the Qmee adds vary from £0.03p upto £1, i'm yet to find anything higher than £0.15p.  There doesn't seem to be a fixed thing that makes it pop up and if sit and "try" to find things it doesn't work either, its as though it knows what your doing.  But when you are doing random searches like at Halloween I was searching for spiders to make my house it a spiders lair it came up a few times.

Unlike other paid to search and paid to click companies Qmee pay out in cash via paypal and there is no minimum amount (YAY!)  they also don't pay out in points like others do.

I wasn't sure last year that it would actually pay out as it seemed to good to be true, and you know what they say if it seems too good to be true it probably is.  But I thought it's money for nothing, so I will give it a try.  From August until 31st Dec 2014 I managed to collect £4.02, which I cashed out on new years eve, and received in my paypal account a couple of days later.  The reason I cashed out was so I could see 1. if it does work and 2. how much I can get in a year.  So far in 2015 I have £1.16 from the month of January.  This isn't a get rich quick scheme by any means, but if you are going to be searching the net for things anyway you may as well get paid a few extra pence for doing so.

I told my hubby and a good friend about it and they both installed the add-on and neither of them have had as many links show up as I have.  So again it shows how random it is.  There are blogs with posts about Qmee all over the internet, with the odd few claiming they have made £40-50 a year through using it, now if they would like to share exactly HOW they managed to get that much it would be nice, but the majority are just a few pounds.

You can also donate your earnings to charity through the site.  Overall I would say if you don't mind the company tracking your data by searches and don't mind adding a few seconds to your time when searching by following other links, give it a try. 

The postman is nice....

.....NOT in a romantic way but in the fact he brought me LOTS of nice things today!!!


FIRSTLY in the delivery of my Angel Oracle Cards.  They were initially ordered as a birthday present from my hubby and sons BUT they never turned up and we had to wait ages to get the money back as the seller wasn't very helpful.  Once we received the refund I found another site that sold them and a month to the date of my birthday they arrived - that is a good sign I believe. I have ordered some purple fabric to keep them in.  Now to start reading and getting used to them.

 

SECONDLY in the delivery of 5 red Carnelian crystals from my good friend and boys godmother Dianne.  I asked her if she had any as I was told by a lady I have come in contact with who is a crystal healer, that they are a good crystal for healing and i'm hoping that they will work for my knee. 

and THIRDLY in the delivery of a book I won.   At first I was a bit confused as to where the book had come from as I didn't recall entering anything to win it.  It wasn't until I came back to here that I realised it had been a book giveaway from a few days ago.

All in all a good days deliveries!

ALSO today I read the book that the Author sent me in exchange for an honest review - this is the book:

 

and this is my review of it: