Hillmount Garden Centre are holding their annual Ladies' Nights, with the Belfast event tomorrow night, and Bangor's Centre hosting on Monday.
Between 5pm and 9pm you can partake in Christmas food tastings, with discounts throughout the entire store to help your gift buying budget spread a little further. Admission is free and there is a drinks reception.
There will be live music, and you can even visit Santa!
I'm a bargain hunter, it's in my genes. From my Gran Phillips teaching me the ways of the reduced counter, to my own mental map of every local supermarket in the area's mark down product section, I'm all about the savings, and rarely care about the packaging.
However, put something in a retro style design container & I will buy it despite not even particularly liking it- see the 1970s' 7-Up tins that have been available over the summer; I never drink the stuff otherwise.
Thats where today's product comes in, with its colourful, mid-centuryesque, simple design. I had them in my basket in Sainsburys before I'd even read what they were properly.
What are they then? Fancy rice puddings, with the puntastic name Naughty But Rice. The flavours are Raspberry & Coconut, and Chocolate Orange. There's also a Salted Caramel variety, but Holywood Sainsburys didn't have it in stock.
I wasn't mad about the raspberry one, despite being a coconut fan, but the chocolate orange is AMAZING and is getting bought again.
As with traditional rice pudding you can serve hot or cold, and they are so filling they could even be a sneaky treat of a breakfast. They also might make a good break to send in to school. Let me know if you try them what you think.
Everyone with eyes surely must have seen this year's Christmas advert offering from Sainsburys by now. The nostalgic feast of a mini-movie with our childhood friend Mog the Cat brought to life, and as ever finding herself in mischief.
If you haven't seen the ad yourself, get on YouTube & give yourself a treat. It's had 13 MILLION views since it launched 8 days ago.
But if you haven't seen it then anyone with ears surely must have HEARD about the resulting Mog-mania, and stores across the country selling straight out of plush Mogs the same day they come in stock.
You can order and buy the Christmas Calamity Mog book online for just £3, with the majority of that going to charity to help child literacy in the UK. You can't however get your paws on the plush Mog toys on the website. They are like gold dust. Some eBay sellers are stocking them with prices between £30 and £100. Considering the toy is sold for charity, and that these bulk buyers are taking away the chance of a child buying a £10 toy instore, I can't help but feel quite cross and hoping these folks end up with coal in their stockings from Santa this year.
I was thrilled to be able to get the Mog book in Sainsburys in Bangor NI last week. I think there were four or five copies left, so I was lucky. They had zero plush toys though. I took a notion to phone them this morning to ask the questions they must answer a hundred times a day, "when is your next batch of Mog toys due in stock?". They told me they don't think they'll get another shipment at all. So I tried Sprucefield, who said no, but they thought Forestside & Holywood had some arriving today.
I phoned, then dashed up in the car to Holywood and got THE LAST MOG. Smix is over the moon (& so am I). So my suggested Mog obtaining strategy is phone around stores. If you're quick today, the Holywood store still had a large number of the books, but I imagine they'll be gone by tomorrow too. Good luck!
I'd heard good things about the Festival of Light at Mount Stewart, which returns this year from 20th-29th November.
The preview night was wet & cold, and on the drive over we almost turned back three times, but I'm so glad we wrapped up and persisted!
The house, lawns and lake walk are brought to life with grand & magical displays complete with atmospheric music. Booking is essential, you can do so here.
I've lots of lovely photos, but much like photos of fireworks, you have to really be there to experience the scale of the light installations.
There are also large tepees with open fires to keep warm and dry in, with views of the lawns.
It's a wonderful experience for all ages, and we will definitely make it a yearly event. The weather next year can only be better than our experience this year, and we still loved it!
View across the lake
Smix has grown up playing Toca Boca game apps. Their creative play games are not only fun, but your child will be learning as they interact with the various locations or act out the jobs Toca Boca brings to life on screen.
The majority of the apps have no instructions, so if your little one can't read yet, they can still enjoy Toca apps. Game play involves tapping items on the screen to see what reaction they have.
For example in Toca Town, and now also in Toca Life: City, combining food items can reveal a surprise. Drag an image of say a prawn onto an image of some rice and poof! it transforms into a sushi roll. Select a sausage and a bread roll and they'll turn into a hot dog. In the lab game you experiment with different combinations of elements, and lab equipment.
The original Toca Kitchen was one of their earliest app releases. In it your child can cook for their character using various foods, and food preparation methods. Toca apps are a modern day version of playing house. It's fun but your child will be picking up little life skills along the way.
Another of the latest releases is Toca Life: School. We are yet to try it, but will do soon. I think the maximum price of any of the apps in the Apple AppStore is £2.49. A lot of the games are available on Android and Google Play too.
The app we are looking at today, Toca Life: City is £2.49 which I was happy to pay because of our previous experiences with Toca Boca apps, you are guaranteed that it's worth buying. Smix gets a lot of play out of them, and City is a great example of why. Each location on the map has different stores to explore.
You click on any of the items shown and some of them will react, for example lights turn on or off, the ATM dispenses money, but there are more impressive results than just those. If you enter the hairdresser location on the map, you'll find a whole working salon. You can place a character under a machine which scrolls through various hair styles, then you can transform your person's look. Then drag your character to the sink section and shelves of hair dye in a rainbow of colours, select one and your person's hair will change.
As with most Toca Boca apps there is no wrong way to play the game. It inspires investigation and creativity. With the AppStore version you can now record little stories from inside the game, with your characters and locations. That's a whole new way to play, your child can play out situations or stories and play them back for the family to see.
The Kindle App Store version which Smix is playing hasn't got that option yet, but here is his video taking a quick tour of Toca Life: City and showing you some of the interactions, but not all of them as that would spoil the surprise of your child discovering them by themselves.
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Here are the other Toca apps. Some are free on the AppStore right now and also available are multi-app bundles which are cheaper than buying each game separately.
Hair Salon is great fun and you can use it with your own images.
Toca Tailor is a fun fashion app. Toca Band is a unique choral game with different layers to add and remove until you have the ideal song. Toca Train is a straightforward enough app, and the countryside you travel through is gorgeous.
Kitchen Monsters is a version of the other Kitchen app. The difference is the monsters love all sorts of gross foods which you can chop, microwave, boil or fry. Serve it up and your Monster will tell you if they like it or not.
We also have Toca House which is fun, but if you're only getting one Toca app to try, I'd go for one of the newer ones, like Toca Town, or indeed the Toca City.
We haven't played the Birthday Party app but it seems to be another 'playing house' type of gameplay with cakes to cut and decorations to choose. It's free to download on AppStore right now, which is even better.
Toca Hair Salon Christmas Gift is a free version of the Hair Salon app. You can cut, dye or grow Santa's hair.
Toca Store is a two player game. One person takes the role of the shop keeper, the other is the buyer. The shopkeeper first chooses which products they want to sell, then the customer picks what they want, then pays the correct number of coins at the till. It's a super way to teach nursery or even pre-nursery children to count to five, as they count out the coins in their purse to match the total the shopkeeper has requested.
Toca Doctor is another simple role playing game, and IPad Tea Party is a lot like Birthday Party I imagine.
Toca Boca also have an online store. I'm a fan of their cute periodic table. They also sell t-shirts, paper crafts and even socks.
Tis the season to eat all-y! Christmas has arrived in Marks & Spencer with 3 for 2 offers across party food as well as gifts & beauty departments. Stock up now, freeze and avoid the crazy rush in late December.
I called into the Belfast city centre branch to pick up some of the Christmas food that's just hit the shelves.
There are lots of party food favourites back in store, with some cute additions like mini chicken buckets and chorizo cups.
Again Marks and Spencer are partnering with Shelter with their Christmas lunch products. You can eat & be merry while also helping the Shelter charity.
The orange and clementine juice tastes like childhood Christmases with a baby orange in your stocking from Santa.
Christmas dinner is my all time favourite meal, so I'm glad M&S have a sneaky pre-Christmas roast turkey dinner for one.
The glitter poinsettias caught my eye.
That is one big walnut whip. The hot chocolate flakes are part of the 3 for 2 offer on Christmas trimmings.
My favourite part, the party desserts. They are all mix and match on 3 for 2.
This is a nifty little idea. Ice your own letter to Santa. I don't quite know the logistics of how Santa reads it if it ends up in your stomach, but we can put it down to Christmas magic.
They've a range of Christmas crisps on a two for £2.70 deal. I have to be honest and say I wasn't keen on these parsnip ones.
More from the lunch selection, very cute mini traybakes.
Stunning macarons you have there, M&S.
I wish I had picked up this parsnip drink now. Can't imagine what it might taste like!
Scandinavian brand Tiger have opener their first Northern Irish store, in Castle Lane in Belfast (near Lush). We discovered Tiger in the summer in Dundalk, and spent a small fortune on bits & bobs for crafting, homeware, toys, etc. and the best thing is the price, it's tiny!
Here is a snap shot of just some products Belfast has on sale for the Christmas season. I got two rolls of tapestry print wrapping paper, £1 each! The matching advent calendar is for me too.
I've picked up an advent from Lidl which you build yourself into a little village of Christmas houses. So I was able to buy some little fillers for that for Smix in Tiger, growing elf washcloth, set of stamps etc. I also have some fun stuff from today for him to make a vlog about. You can find it at the end of this post.
These are sweet. You stuff them with your cotton wool balls that poke out the back as the bunny's tail.
Dozens of quirky napkins got Christmas and all year round, £1.
Also a great selection of bargain cards.
Tiger don't have an online store, but they do show the items that are new in store that month.
I brought Smix a bag of goodies, here is his latest video. The audio is overlapped at the start but evens out quite quickly.
IKEA Ideas Festival is this month, encouraging families to 'play everyday'. One of the fun events is the Toy Design Competition. Kids can enter by drawing their dream soft toy and the winning designs are made into real toys to be sold in IKEA stores nationwide.
Here are last year's winners. For every soft toy sold, IKEA donates €1 to Save the Children.
One of last year's toys made its way to Smix in a mysterious parcel, his first time receiving cool things to vlog about on his YouTube channel, I'm a proud first generation blogger!
Check out his video to see what awesome items he was sent. Thank you, IKEA Belfast!
As heard on BBC Radio 6's Lauren Laverne Show.
