Category Archives: Reviews

Things We Love

January 16, 2013 By in Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments

Every so often I like to do a quick roundup of things that I’m enjoying in life just now – mainly things I’ve encountered by chance, occasionally things I’ve been sent for review. I meant to do one before Christmas but ran out of time, so I thought I’d do one now instead.

Radio Paradise logo

Radio Paradise: Radio Paradise is a digital radio station, and it’s the only thing we ever listen to in this house. We’ve completely abandoned our own music collections since we found it. Based in Paradise, California, and run by husband and wife Bill and Rebecca Goldsmith, it is commercial-free, listener-supported, and they play nothing but brilliant music. There is no chat at all, just an eclectic mix of old and new music in almost every style. It’s a bit like Spotify, but with more chance of you finding previously unknown music that you love. Continue reading →

Arbonne Cosmetics Review

November 2, 2012 By in Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , 22 Comments

Collage of photos showing Arbonne's liquid eyeliner

I am imagining some of my friends snorting with laughter when they see the title of this post. I’m not widely known for being a connoisseur of cosmetics.

But when I had my makeup done by a very lovely lady at the MAD Blog awards I was stunned by what a good job she did. Bad experiences in the past meant that I had envisaged leaving the room looking totally overdone, and having to rush away to scrub it all off with wipes and start again myself. But the results were actually lovely and very natural. Me – but better.

Arbonne Cosmetics – who provided all the products at the MADS – have offered me a few goodies to try at home. So here goes…

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A Few of Our Favourite Things

September 17, 2012 By in Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

A few months ago – while I was still slightly shell-shocked from BritMums Live – I said that I wasn’t going to do any reviews on the blog, but that I hoped it would be okay for me to still have a bit of a gush occasionally about products that I like.

DorkySon and I have bought a few new bits and pieces recently, and we’ve also been lucky enough to be sent a few things – just because people are lovely rather than on condition of review – so I thought I’d gather some of those together in one post.

Here are a few of our favourite things at the moment.
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Map Geekery

June 28, 2012 By in Family, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , , 18 Comments

Barefoot Books atlas

I mentioned in my BritMums post earlier in the week that once I’ve fulfilled my current commitments I’m not going to do any reviews on the blog… but that doesn’t mean that I can’t still have a big old gush about a company if I love them. This is one of those gushes. 

I’ve always been a map geek. I love them. Sometimes when I was a wee girl, instead of asking for a bedtime story, I used to sit with my Dad or my Grandpa and pore over a map of some place I’d never visited before. Maybe the Pennines, or Kansas, or Madagascar – it didn’t really matter – maps meant possibilities, adventures, fulfilling dreams. I had a brilliant jigsaw puzzle of the world, where all the countries were different colours, and you had to work out how they fitted together.

I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I never really grew out of the map geekery; when I was eighteen I won the award for being the top geography student in Scotland. Give me a packet of colouring pencils and a map to colour in, and it still makes me happy.
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