Family Board Game Review- Santa's Rooftop Scramble!

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Ravensburger played Santa to us this week, delivering their new Santa's Rooftop Scramble Board game for us to test out. It's a traditional travel-round-the-board style family game, for 2-6 people, with a suggested age of five and above. Our family consists of our son, almost six, my husband & me, and we sat down on Sunday afternoon to throw the die.

My initial thoughts were, 'there are an awful lot of instructions, this seems quite complicated for under 8s'. Straight from the box it does take ten minutes to get the hang of how to play, but once you get going it's less fussy than it looks. We wouldn't need to re-read the instructions if we took it out to play again for example. 

The object of the game is to spin a wheel to collect presents that your Santa must deliver, then move to the board and roll the die to travel around trying to land on the houses your lists match up with. The first Santa to deliver all his presents is the winner. My son won, much to his delight.  

Santa's Rooftop Scramble suggests it will become a tradition in your family to play every year around Christmas time, and I certainly agree it will be fun to bring out every year in December with the decorations & play together.  It's available on Amazon.

Who Wants to Win a Ponycycle in Time for Christmas?

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I bring news from the stables of Ponycycles. There are a couple of opportunities coming along to win a Ponycycle for your family that I think you all would appreciate knowing about. There will be a prize of a cycle to win at the Manchester Magical Christmas Fair from 29th November to the 1st December.

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The second chance to win comes via the Good Toy Guide. They recently awarded Pony Cycles 5 out of 5 in their rating system, and starting on the 30th October they will be giving away a pony in a competition running on their Facebook & Twitter @goodtoyguide. 

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Finally, if you are planning on assisting Santa with the adoption of a Ponycycle pet this Christmas, they have opened a Christmas Club to allow you to spread the cost over three payments, with a small deposit. 

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Darling Spuds' Sweet & Salty Popcorn Tastes Exactly Like Cinema Popcorn

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I could tell you all about how Darling Spuds' new Sweet & Salty popcorn is gluten free, vegetarian, and lower in fat than other similar snacks. I could also mention the corn is popped in small batches and flavoured with simply sea salt & cane sugar. Or that there are no GMOs or other artificial ingredients and each snack pack is under 40 calories.

The real important part to me is- does it taste good? We tried it out and it tastes exactly like cinema popcorn. Some sweet popcorn can be a bit too sugary, and nothing like cinema style, but Darling Spuds is spot on. Adding in the subtle salt to the mix makes it extra delicious.  

You can buy online here, or watch out for packs in your supermarket. 

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An Entire Rainbow of Kettles to Brighten Your Kitchen in Autumn from Debenhams

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It's the month of bundling into the house and sticking the kettle on. Big pots of tea with sugarcubes, mugs of hot chocolate with mallows. Debenhams sent me this beauty of a kettle to kickstart the hot drinks season. 

Their online store has an entire rainbow of kettles to choose from, you just have to decide which would make the coolest kitchen talking point. Debenhams are also running their famous Blue Cross Sale this weekend, so you can save some money.

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Personalised Party Themes from Snapsterprint. We went Aquabats Crazy

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It's my son's birthday next week, and this year he wanted an Aquabats themed party. Aquabats is an American kids' show that airs on CITV, but there is absolutely no merchandise available in the UK yet, let alone party supplies. 

We turned to Snapsterprint where you can create your own party banners and invites using images of your choice. This could also be photographs of your child, or images of their favourite toy. It makes for a very special and unique party theme, and the website makes it so easy to design the pieces, even for someone like me who isn't skilled in Photoshop.   

We absolutely loved the results. The invites can be tailored with the party details, but when we ordered them we weren't 100% sure of party times etc. so we had them printed blank. 

I wish I'd known of Snapsterprint years before this. My son was totally obsessed with hoovers as a toddler and I would have loved to have seen his face if we threw a vacuum cleaner themed birthday! One of his favourite birthday cakes was a specially made Henry Hoover one! I'm sure we will be back to Snapsterprint next October too for whichever obscure party theme he will request for turning seven. 

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The Planet's Ugliest Websites?

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Putting together this post made me a little nostalgic. I've had my own badly cobbled together website since the late 1990s. I was desperately trying to remember the Freeserve address to locate it with the Way Back Machine, but alas it's lost to the sands of time. 

Back then, the landing page and animated gif were king. Scrolling marquees & putting little quizzes on your homepage made you a god of the Internet. I spent hours fiddling with designs, always to lazy to ACTUALLY learn how to code (imagine if I'd taken the time!) & I can embarrassingly admit I STILL don't know basic HTML. But I can always get a buzz going about whatever I have managed to throw at the web, which has led to where I am now. 

These days I still use templates and behind-the-scenes hosting, and everything these days is far more accessible for anyone. You can put together a website for your small business by yourself- no third party consultant fees, or by the hour tech support needed. It's as simple and click and dropping elements on a screen.  

You can find out how to build your own website at 1&1, and be in control of the whole project. They'll also help you avoid falling into design traps such as these busy home pages.

But now, a look back at the website designs of old. For you young ones, this is what the web looked like 15 years ago. I don't escape either- the final screen shot is my own website Rudedoodle.tk in 2006. Before everyone had digital cameras, never mind iPhone cameras, used to take photos of bands that played Belfast (from about 2001-2004). It was a messy time, but one I treasure. 

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Vintage Kitchenware from HandyHousehold.co.uk

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Handy Household specialises in bits and bobs for a smart looking house. I love their collection of Tala Kitchenware including this jolly, retro, biscuit tin for £7.49

Would look great in a country-styled kitchen, something from the pages of Pinterest. 

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