Mummy & Moose
clapping, napping and yapping our way through the day

Review| Cool Maker Go Glam Nail Salon and Hollywood Hair Extension Maker

Disclaimer – we were sent both of the Cool Maker products featured in this post free of charge in return for an honest review.  All opinions are our own

If there is one thing I know about girls is that no matter what else interests them, they all at some point want to be just like their Mum. Maybe not for long and almost definitely not in front of their friends but at some point they will copy what you do or what you say and hold up a mirror to your own self in a way that only daughters can.

With this in mind. It makes it all the more important that you show them good habits and there aren’t many places easier to do this than by teaching them to take time out for self care.

Self care can mean vastly different things to different people. Some might just need a good book and a comfy spot, others a clear space and some music to move to. My sister Jo, along with writing at The Knight Tribe also enjoys taking care of her hair and nails and as little girls do, my nieces love to play with her pretty nail polishes and hair bits and bobs.

When I was asked to review the Go Glam Nail Salon and Hollywood Hair Extension Maker I just knew that my Sisters girls would love them. I was not wrong..

Go Glam Nail Salon

The GO GLAM Nail Salon is really easy to use.

First, choose a pattern and pop it into the machine. Next, paint each finger or toenail with one of the non-toxic GO GLAM nail polish base coats (two colours included).

Then place your nails under the dryer, switch on the button and wait five minutes for nails to dry. Lastly, insert each nail one at a time into the machine and press the button to stamp. Remove your nail from the stamper to reveal a perfectly patterned nail. Paint on a layer of shiny top coat (included) and GO GLAM with your squad.

For even more nail polish and pattern combinations, look for the GO GLAM Pattern Pack and Mini Pattern Pack refills (each sold separately) and never run out of ways to style your nails. The GO GLAM Nail Salon is a fun sleepover party activity and is a great gift for birthdays or special occasions for kids aged 8 and up.

My sisters nails always look lovely so I wasn’t too surprised that the Go Glam Nail Salon was a massive hit with her girls too. They loved it. I think it will get used a lot.

even though this is a toy it is such a neat piece of kit. I cannot wait for lockdown to be over so that I can visit and have a go too!

Hollywood Hair Extension Maker

Design, create and style your own hair extensions! Customise a hair ribbon with the included markers or choose a printed design. Load your ribbon into the Hollywood Hair Extension Maker. Next press the button and watch as it magically transforms into a stylish hair extension! Use the heatless curler to create beachy waves, tight curls, sleek straight looks and more!

It was so cute to see how invested the girls were in designing their very own hair extensions. I love that you could choose ribbon in any colour or pattern to create a unique look.

Both of the sets are £19.99 and are available from Smyths and Amazon.

Funko Games: Marvel Battleworld and Something Wild! | Review

The products in this post were sent in exchange for review. All opinions are honest and my own.

Marvel Battleworld

Moose absolutely loves superheroes. I know a lot of children do but with my child it’s next level. He watches the Marvel movies pretty much on repeat and plays with his action figures constantly. When he isn’t doing that he is making up stories and talking about battles. So yes, he is quite a fan!

He was absolutely delighted then to receive a Marvel Battleworld ball to review from Funko.

What’s inside?

Inside the Battleworld ball you will find

  • 1 Hero, 1 Hero Card
  • 5 Battle Cards
  • 1 Thanostone (containing a mystery Hero)
  • Instructions.
  • 1 mystery Hero Card sealed in black plastic
  • 1 Attack Die
  • 5 Danger Tokens
  • 1 Danger Coin

 

How do you play?

I will be honest, this is an easy game to play but it did take us a couple of goes at reading the instructions before it clicked. I would recommend watching this how to play video.

 

What did we think?

Moose really loved playing this game. Once we got the hang of it it was an easy and pretty quick game to play. You can play as a single player but I think it would be much more fun with multiple Battleworld balls. The little character are incredibly cute and well made – the detail is everything you would expect from a Funko figure.

Priced at just £6.99 I think that this would make a really great stocking filler and with it’s mix of collectible, blind bag style and fast paced game I could see it being a really popular toy.

Something Wild Game

Card games are always a big hit in our house. We love games that don’t take lots of time to put together. Even better are those games that don’t take long to play. Something Wild ticks both of those boxes. Better yet it comes with a cute little Funko character!

What’s inside?

Inside the box you will find

  • 45 Character Cards
  • 10 Power Cards
  • 1 Funko Pop Character
  • Instructions.

How do you play?

Something Wild! is a quick card game that feels a bit like a mix of Go Fish and Uno. The objective of the game is to play down a set of 3 cards of the same number/character or a set of 3 cards of the same colour in sequential order, and when this is accomplished you’re able to collect the Power card in play. When you’ve collected 3 of the 10 Power cards, you win the game.

What did we think?

I really enjoyed playing this game and I know Moose did too! It was also a hit with the teenagers. A good, quick game that has an air of familiarity about it which will appeal to the whole family. Definitely a great game to take on a holiday (remember those?)

Something Wild is available to buy from Amazon and prices start from £6.99 making it another great stocking filler idea.

Meal Plan – the “how is it half term already?” edition

If there was ever a clearer example of the phrase “is it that time already?” It has to be the Autumn half term. The past 6 weeks have gone by so fast that I actually feel a bit dizzy! Or maybe I was just enjoying that glorious break after a spring and summer of my family just being so THERE all the time.

Anyway. Time marches on and we find ourselves hurtling towards Winter and now with a week of home based fun. I hear that some poor souls get a 2 week half term? Godspeed to you. We don’t have plans because I, unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at things), have to work every day all bar one.

Luckily MrG has taken a couple of days off but given that I cannot think of a single time he has taken our kids out without me being present and he is still very much in lockdown mode… I’m not sure how helpful it will be to have him home. He can flipping well cook on those days though at least. I forgot just how tricky it is to cater for a family and work a structured full time working week.

Colder weather means my kind of food though! No salads for me, it’s all roasted veg and sausages from here on in. I am still trying to avoid takeaways (trying being the operative word) and I am just really conscious that our local rules concerning lockdowns and what not could change at any moment. I obviously wouldn’t do anything as selfish as to buy up everything in our local supermarket but I like to make sure I have enough to tide us over until my next day off.

It’s so hard at the moment to make plans for anything less immediate than dinner I think. Maybe we would be best just to write off the rest of the year and start again in 2021?

Gnocchi bake

Our week in food

Friday – sausage and egg ramen bowl.

I layer grated carrot, pea shoots and sweetcorn and top with instant noodles (which are suspiciously cheap but also the kids favourite), a bit of chicken broth (aka the water I just boiled those cheapo noodles in) and top with chopped up sausage and a boiled egg cut in half. It’s quick, cheap and the kids ask for it at least once a week. If I am in need of amusement and not in a rush I give them chopsticks. We have to make our own fun at this point.

Saturday – Homemade Burgers and Wedges with some kind of veg – maybe a “what’s in the fridge” slaw.

Sunday – Roast Pork with cauliflower cheese, Brussel sprouts and an obscene amount of roast potatoes

Monday – Gammon, egg and new potatoes with peas.

Tuesday – chicken and bacon gnocchi bake with lots of spinach because my energy levels need all of the help.

Wednesday – Fish and chips and mushy peas.

Thursday – Turkey drummers, mashed potato and baked beans – I just found out that Aldi sell their own brand turkey drummers so we are having a proper nostalgic feast!

 

Katykicker

6 Slimming World Breakfast – Perfect For New Members

There was a time when breakfast (when I bothered) meant either toast and peanut butter or cereal. I don’t like cereal. It was just quick and easy. 

Slimming world rules means that I could still have either of those (yay) BUT if I do I have then used up my healthy extra choices for the day (boo), and I don’t like to do that. I prefer to save them up most days just in case I am feeling a bit depleted later in the day (spoiler: I always feel depleted later in the day) 

With that in mind here are some of my favourite go to ideas for a Slimming World friendly breakfast;

1.Good Old Cooked Breakfast

It’s big, it’s filling and it’s delicious. I love onions so I always add them to the pan with my bacon medallions but you could also use Courgette or chopped Sprouts (think bubble and squeak) or Asparagus.

There are masses of great tasting low syn sausages on sale nowadays but I usually buy the Linda McCartney Red Onion & Rosemary one because I know they are syn free leaving me lots to play with for the rest of the day.

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2. Banana Pancakes

These pancakes are bananas – no, really. They use just 2 ingredients; 1 banana and 2 eggs. A cooked banana is 5 syns but you can get 8 pancakes out of that so in my opinion are well worth it! If you add a pinch of baking powder you will have a lighter, fluffier pancake. I like to have mine with berries and a teaspoon of choc shot or fruit syrup (1/2 syn per tsp) 

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3. Sausage and Egg Notmuffin 

Roasted peppers, 2 large baked mushrooms, an egg, 2 Quorn breakfast patties (1/2 syn each) and a slice of cheese if you want to use your healthy extra A choice. 1 syn for a great tasting breakfast.

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4. Just Fruit

Being a serial breakfast skipper before I started examining how I ate, I do still have days when I just want something very light. On those days I like fruit. Sometimes I even have time to arrange it in a fanciful fashion on my plate – if you think for a second that I got to eat all of this without a 2 yr olds hand diving in, you are very much mistaken! 

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5. Baked Oats

1 way to use your healthy extra B choice is to have baked oats for your breakfast. Porridge, sweetener, yoghurt (low or no syn of course), an egg and a little vanilla essence. Just mix it all up and pop it in a cake tin or a dish and cook it in the oven. You can change the flavours, I love adding raspberries and almond essence for a bakewell flavour. 

(Ok so I like this one because it is quite cakey) 

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6. The No Time for Breakfast, Breakfast

With 3 kids, a business to run and frankly not being a morning person I don’t always have the time to sit and engage in a proper breakfast. On those days I stick a pan on and hard boil some eggs. This is all stuff I can chomp on while I am shouting like a lunatic at whichever child has lost their shoes 5 minutes before we leave for school. Again. 
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So there you have it. 5 reasons for you to start today.

Good luck and let me know what your favourite Slimming World friendly breakfast is by commenting below!

10 Easy and Affordable Halloween food ideas with Jacks Supermarket

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Usually Halloween for us is packed full of fun and lots of people. Most years we all get dressed up and head over to my sister’s house where we have a big party. My Mum sorts out the food while we take our little ones out trick or treating in a big group. Safety in numbers and all that. Except this year that term has become a bit of a misnomer hasn’t it? 

With the world still being hit quite hard by Covid 19 our plans have to be adjusted accordingly and you may well find yourself having to celebrate Halloween at home. With the help of Jacks Supermarket I have created 10 Halloween food ideas which will be guaranteed to help you have a monstrously marvellous time this Halloween! 

Everything shown below was bought for less than £40 and I was really impressed by just how much could be done on a low budget! 

Witches Brooms

cheesestring pretzel witches broomsticks

Our witches brooms were a little fiddly but definitely worth the effort. The broom is made from a pretzel stick pushed into a cheesestring (one cheesestring will make 3 or 4 broom heads depending on how big you want them to be) and then tied with a chive. Jacks sell chives prepared and for pennies – you will find them near the veg!

Spider Pizza

This was such an easy one to make. Jacks Supermarket sell a slab pizza for just £2.79 which is big enough to share. To make the spiders you will need black olives. Just slice longways to make 2 bodies. Slice another across the other way to make 2 heads and then slice a couple of others into thin strips. Simple!

Vegetable Cadaver

Vegetable body halloween

 

Speaking of veg, I wanted a way to make our Halloween spread nice and healthy and thought this was a great solution! I used a pot of tzatziki for the head, sliced cucumber for the spine, baby sweetcorn for the arms and sliced peppers for the ribcage. I popped an olive at each elbow. The peppers were a little long when I sliced them so after I trimmed them to make the ribs I used the offcuts as hair! 

Mummy Dogs

These were a tasty alternative to sausage rolls. Probably slightly healthier as they use less pastry as the usual kind too! I used a tin of large hot dogs from Jacks and then wrapped strips of puff pastry around them. I baked in the oven for 15 minutes and finished them off with some ready made eyes I already had in the cupboard (because sometimes I just add eyes to my children’s food to see if they are paying attention)

Finger Rolls 

With hot dogs being the unofficial official food of Halloween we used them twice! This time around we went for a family favourite with a gross twist. To cook, I boiled my hot dogs (you can bake them but the skin tends to be a little tougher to cut) and then cut a nail shape and made little knuckle cuts with a sharp knife. I added an almond sliver for a grotty looking nail but you could cut a slice of cheese which would work just as well. I then added a generous squirt of ketchup to the bread roll before nestling my “severed finger” in and finishing off with another squirt of ketchup at the base. 

Spidery Soup

Sometimes you want something a bit more grown up and what could be better than a lovely bowl of soup? I was tempted by the ready to go broccoli and stilton soup Jacks sells but in the end I decided on carrot and coriander – the orange colour looked spot on for Halloween! I added a little cream and a plastic spider to finish it off. 

Creepy Crawly Jelly

2 packets of raspberry jelly and 1 pack of worm sweets and you have a definite winner on any Halloween table! My tip to make jelly set faster? Add ice cubes instead of cold water and pour into smaller moulds rather than one big bowl. Easy.

Tangerine pumpkins

I love how easy these little Halloween treats are. Just a peeled tangerine and a little bit of celery or cucumber pushed into the top. That’s it. So simple you could even get the kids in to take over with this healthy treat and this would be a fun way to liven up a packed lunch too!

Mini Meringue Ghosts

What is Halloween without ghosts? These mini spooksters are a must and incredibly simple to make. All you need is a pack of mini meringues and an icing pen. These sweet little ghosts were so easy that I showed Moose (age 6) how to do one and he got on with the rest – I bet you can’t even tell which one I made. 

Monstrous Apple Mouths

I enjoyed making this spooky treat the most. It’s a little fiddlier than some of the others but so worth it and not at all difficult. To make your mouths you will need apples (I chose red but if you use green you could add eyes and make frogs or aliens), some peanut butter or chocolate spread and some pine nuts along with a few strawberries. 

Cut your apple into 4. I soaked my apples in fizzy water for 10 minutes after cutting to stop them going all brown so quickly. Then cut a smaller section out of the middle of your apple quarter. It doesn’t need to be perfect. You need to coat the inside of the cut gap with either your peanut butter or chocolate spread. If you are making these as a trick for someone and you are feeling cruel you could use marmite. Pop a slice of strawberry in for the tongue and some pine nuts for teeth.