Things We Love: August

So we are nearing the end of the summer. Or the British summer, at least. I am trying not to shout *too* loudly about the timing of our move, which is going to give us two summers in a row…

Anyway, with just two days left in August, it’s time for the monthly roundup of things we’ve been enjoying. Most of these are things we have stumbled across ourselves – if that’s not the case and we’ve been sent something to review, it’ll be mentioned in the disclosure statement at the bottom of the post. Continue reading

Book Reviews: Barefoot Books

The cover of the children's picture book 'A Farmer's Life for Me' by Barefoot Books

I’m delighted that we have been asked to review some children’s picture books published by Barefoot Books. It is always a joy when the postman knocks on the door with a parcel from Barefoot Books, and never more so when it happens the day before a long journey! We took these with us on the train to Kent a few weeks ago, and they made the time pass much more quickly. Continue reading

A Few of Our Favourite Things

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

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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