Posts tagged Product Reviews

MissB and her Nameart top

2 years ago
by DawnieBrown in

I am very lucky having a sister who is a professional photographer Sonia Thorpe Photography as she was asked by Nameart to take some photographs of their personalised hooded tops and seeing as we were visiting Sonia got MissB a top so that she could be one of the models :)

These hooded tops are lovely and warm and look gorgeous :) Below is a photo of MissB wearing her hooded top with her name embroidered on the campervan. We are in good company as Dannii Minogue has also ordered one for her Ethan. The tops start at £25 and there are a range of embroidery designs, check out their website for more details Nameart . The baby sized hooded tops are limited in colours so I can’t wait until MissB is big enough for me to order her a bright coloured top with a butterfly embroidery on it though I need her to grow a little bit first. She is pictured wearing size 18-24 months (she was 10 months old at the time but is currently in 12-18 month clothes) as it is advised to order a size larger than you would normally buy!

I’m going to be a Quinnycaster

2 years ago
by DawnieBrown in , , ,

Oooh I’m so excited :) I am probably one of the world’s biggest Quinny addicts so when I was chosen to be a Quinnycaster you can imagine how happy this made me :) Over the next 6 months I’ll be testing the new Quinny Zapp Xtra and I can’t wait.

I already have the Quinny Buzz 4 which I absolutely love and it to date has been one of the best baby buys I ever made. We use it all the time, although we did add to our collection by buying the Quinny Zapp when MissB was about 6 months old as we wanted a smaller, nippy pushchair for quick trips to the shops and again this pushchair has been an absolute godsend. My one little gripe with the Quinny Zapp is that the seat doesn’t recline and so on longer days out we still use the Buzz as it allows MissB to have better naps on the go in the reclining seat. The Quinny Zapp Xtra however solves this problem as it combines the nippy, smallness of the Zapp with a seat that reclines and can be forward or parent facing. I can’t wait to receive it and start testing :) Of course with baby number 2 due to arrive in March it will come in extremely handy having 2 smaller pushchairs to fit in the car for our days out :)

Me on christmas day this year with our Quinny Buzz 4 in the snow

And our lovely funky Quinny Zapp (people always stop us and tell us what a cool colour it is :) )

HIPP Organic Review – From a BLW Viewpoint

2 years ago
by DawnieBrown in

Now we are very sucessfully baby led weaning and loving every minute of it and so baby foods are not something we buy or use. However there are occasions when it’s good to have some baby friendly finger foods to have close to hand to offer as snacks or extras to add to a meal when parts of our meals are not suitable for MissB.

HIPP Organic very kindly sent us some of their finger foods to try out and see what MissB thought of them. What is important to me when giving MissB food is that it is as natural and unprocessed as possible. We are vegetarian so this is also a must and where possible we try to use organic food.  Low salt and sugar are of course top of the list of things I look for and HIPP Organic are great as when you read the list of ingredients it’s a list that you can understand and not like reading some kind of chemical analysis. You can check out their website HERE for more information about their products and you can even find them on twitter @HiPPOrganic

MissB particularly loves their rice cakes which come in 3 flavours. Apple, Carrot and Pumpkin and MissB’s personal favourite Tomato and Sweet Red Pepper. The great thing about these rice cakes are that they are ideal finger foods for when we are out and about. It’s easy to pop a few in a little container which can be whipped out and offered to MissB in order to distract her from her mum eating chocolate cake or a thousand and one other sinful foods which she doesn’t want to share :) They are also relatively mess free which is always a boost when out and about as it doesn’t require constant bibs/outfit changes to keep her looking immaculate for her public. The rice cakes also form a fabulous base for homemade houmous or guacamole. These are definitely a must have for our store cupboard from now on :)

Another fantastic finger food we tried were the Crispy Biscottes, little wheat biscuits which are an ideal base for mashed up banana, fruit puree, yoghurt and anything else you care to pile on them. MissB loves these by themselves and will quite often have one or two with her breakfast which usually consists of fruit and yoghurt. The crunchiness of the biscottes is a texture that she seems to particularly enjoy and it seems to soothe her teething. Yet another item that will be living in our store cupboard from now on :)

Halos n Horns – Review

2 years ago
by DawnieBrown in

I have to admit I’m unlucky enough to have pretty crap skin, very dry and ezcema so I was disappointed when I noticed MissB’s skin seemed to be like mine and her having to have hydrocortisone cream prescribed when she was only 8 weeks old due to ezcema. Looking back I think this also coincides with when we started using a popular make of baby bath in her bath but it could have been something else so I can’t say for certain. I’d pretty much resigned myself to spending hours applying various creams and ointments to her skin all the time. It was made worse by the fact that we had to bath her every night due to having a UTI and needing to make sure she was kept clean and even though MissB loved baths it was just making her skin awful :(

When I went to the Baby Show at the NEC, I was recommended the Halos n Horns bath products for MissB and to be honest I was willing to try anything and so I bought a couple of tubes thinking that if it didn’t work it wouldn’t be a huge waste of money.

It’s been about 3 months now since we’ve been using Halos N Horns baby bath in her nightly bath and all I can say is I’m amazed. Her eczema cleared up within days and I now don’t use any creams, ointments or moisturisers on her skin at all. We simply have a bath, dry her off and get her ready for bed. OK so she still gets occasional nappy rash or dribble rash but absolutely no sign of eczema or dry skin at all! I’m converted and I now won’t use anything else in her baths.

If you have a baby with dry skin or eczema and have been using other more popular baby brands in their bath then I highly recommend that you at least give Halos N Horns a try. It’s not even that expensive either – I stocked up on them in Asda Living this week and it was only £1.57 a tube. (We are still using the first tube I bought back in the NEC 3 months ago!).

Bathtimes are now fun times with MissB and I don’t have to worry about spending too long in their and it affecting her skin :)

For more information about Halos N Horns visit their website HERE

Success at last! Tommee Tippee Tip-It-Up Cup

2 years ago
by DawnieBrown in

Ever since we started weaning I have been hunting high and low for a sippy cup that works. Now we’ve always used Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature bottles with MissB as she was able to switch between breast and bottle easily with them and so when it came to looking for a sippy cup we naturally looked at Tommee Tippee options first.

I have to admit we were pretty disappointed at first when we tried their First Sips cup as MissB just couldn’t figure out how it worked. We then moved onto a Boots free flow cup which for some bizarre reason MissB couldn’t get to work either. Then a few weeks ago I came across the Tommee Tip-It-Up cup and decided to give it a try. At only £3.49 it wasn’t going to be a huge waste of money if it was another failure and I did have to get MissB drinking at some point by herself! She is such an independent little madam that if we try to help her she just becomes more fustrated (so much like her mum already!)

This cup looked different to most of the other cups on offer as it has a clever spout thing which doesn’t leak water but releases it as soon as the lips are put over it. Surely even MissB couldn’t fail to get water out of that!

The fact that the cup is also BPA free, a bright & funky colour, easy to hold and non-spill are other huge bonuses! It is suitable for babies from 4+ months :)

Check out Tommee Tippee’s Website to see this and their other products :)

It took MissB all of 30 seconds to figure out how to use this cup and now happily uses it all the time :)

After I contacted Tommee Tippee to let them know about how great the cup is, they have kindly sent me a couple of cups, one of course I will keep as a spare one for MissB but I feel like sharing the love so I’m going to give away the other one to somebody who comments on this post.

To enter please let me know whether you would like to win the blue or pink tip it up cup and also what age the cup is suitable from (it says in this post!). If you are on twitter also please leave your twitter name so that I can contact you should you win.

Closing date 31st July 2010.

Guest Blog – My Gorgeous Nappy Cake – A Little Review

2 years ago
by DawnieBrown in

Hi there this is Dawn’s sister Sonia. Dawn asked me to do a little review on this beautiful Nappy Cake that she won from www.bestbabyshower.co.uk and had delivered to me as I am having a baby in a couple of weeks!  I wasn’t really sure what to expect but was very pleasantly surprised with the quality and amount of products hidden inside!!! I would definately recommend them to anyone and will more than likely buy one for family/friends! Here are a few photos!!

Beautifully packaged and presented! I didn’t want to unwrap it!!

Gorgeous floppy bunny rabbit!!

Stuffed full of wonderful baby products!!

The little bunny won my daughters heart!! I have given her the special job of bringing him to the hospital to meet her baby brother/sister!

Finally get over to Best Baby Shower and snap up some totally gorgeous goodies for yourself!!!

Quinny Buzz Review

2 years ago
by DawnieBrown in

When it came to deciding on a pram for MissB, we had a few essential items on our list which needed to be met.

1) It had to have an adjustable handle as I’m 5’10″ and my husband is 6’3″ and neither of us want to be stooping down to reach the handles or baby all the time. The QB was about the only pram we tried (and we tried dozens) which felt comfortable for us both to push.

2) It had to be convenient, we love the QB for this. We teamed the QB with a Maxi-Cosi Cabriofix car seat and an Easybase so we were able to fasten the car seat to the QB frame if MissB was asleep and push her around the supermarket etc. She loved sleeping in the Dreami Carrycot – in fact she preferred this to her moses basket. Now MissB has outgrown the carrycot we now use the memory foam seat which she loves. It can be parent facing or outwards facing and has various recline positions which makes it so adaptable. It also fits in my Ford Fusion quite easily.

3) It has to be stylish. Now I admit some of the prams considered stylish at the moment are becoming a bit too “common” for my liking and wherever you go people seem to have them but the QB still looks great and isn’t being used by every parent within a 50 mile radius.

4) It has to be good on most terrains. We like to go for walks down country lanes and here in Durham we have lots of cobblestones to steer over so a pram that can handle relatively rough terrain is a huge bonus.

5) It has to be easy to use. This is where the QB really beats the rest of the market hands down. It has a rather nifty self opening facility and so there is no fiddling around with pushing and pulling buttons and levers, you just pop off the fold latch and voila the frame is up and then you just pop in the seat. So easy even my husband could master it.

There are a couple of downsides to the QB but I think these are far outweighed by the advantages. The back wheels on the QB are quite wide which can sometimes make negotiating small shop aisle a bit tricky. I’ve never found myself unable to fit down them but it can sometimes take a bit of careful moving. The QB can also be quite heavy to push – this only really applies when going uphill and again I’m not really sure how this compares to other prams and it certainly doesn’t put me off using it.

Overall I love my Quinny Buzz – we’ve had almost 8 months use out of it so far and when MissB eventually outgrows the memory foam seat we can switch to the XL seat which also comes with it so we can carry on using it for even longer. This is probably one of my best baby buys so far :)

Photos show us both using the QB on Christmas Day 2009 in the Snow

Lifft Sling Review

2 years ago
by DawnieBrown in

As part of the Get Your Hands Back review panel I was asked to try out a Lifft Sling with MissB.

You can find out more about Lifft slings on their website here Lifft Website

The lift sling costs £49.99 and so is cheaper than some slings that are on the market and when it arrived it looked extremely simple to use. It is basically one large loop of fabric with a stretchy panel in it. No buckles or ties to fasten, just fold it, put it over your shoulder and insert baby. Great!

As MissB is now a 20lb 7 month old baby, we were limited in the carry positions that we could use with the Lifft. It has 3 main carries that you can use; a Front Lifft (suitable for newborns and smaller babies where the baby is carried in a lying down cradled postion), a Little Buddha Lifft (for babies from 2 months old that can’t support themselves yet but want to see what is going on) and the Side Lifft (suitable from 6 months old). With MissB I could only use the Side Lifft which was a bit disappointing as I would have loved to be able to try this sling out with a newborn baby as the Front Lifft looks like a lovely position.

As you can see from the photo, MissB enjoyed being carried in the Lifft. I was initially a bit concerned that if she wriggled too much she may slip through the bottom of it but despite her best wriggles she still felt nice and secure. I did find that after carrying MissB for around 20 minutes that I could start to feel the weight on my shoulder and I don’t think I could use this sling for long days out but for short trips it would be very useful and quick to use. It also looks good to, I particularly liked the colour options.

One downside to this sling which disappoints me is that you buy the Lifft to fit yourself (I used a Size 1 Sling which fits UK Size 8/10) and whereas this is good in that it gives you a nice secure fit, it meant that my husband was unable to use the sling. In our family we like to share carrying MissB on days out and it would mean buying two of these slings for us to do that.

Overall a lovely looking and easy to use sling, just a shame my husband can’t use it and a shame I haven’t got a newborn baby handy to try it out with. :)

Dyson Air Multiplier – Is it worth the money

2 years ago
by DawnieBrown in

OK so yesterday our lovely dyson air multiplier arrived. We have been looking for a solution for our super heated bedroom for a while as sleeping in temperatures of around 29C was proving difficult.

Well the air multiplier certainly looks interesting – I’m not sure whether you could call it beautiful or stylish, it reminds me of the Stargate but rather than using it travel through wormholes in space to different planets I was hoping it would just cool our room down a little.

Well the cats were certainly interested in it, Izzy attempted to use it for jumping through whereas Indie thought it would make a good scratching post (bad kitty). MissB was fascinated by it, in a way that only a 7 month old baby could be. At least she won’t be able to get her fingers trapped by spinning blades with this fan.

The noise – I have to admit the dyson is noisier than I expected it to be, even on low settings but after a while you kind of tune out from it. It’s a low consistent hum which to be honest is actually quite a soothing sound compared to the whirring noise you get from traditional fans.

The air – now this is where it gets hard to describe, with a normal fan you feel the breeze but with this one the airflow is really gentle so it doesn’t really feel like a breeze, you can feel it but its more refreshing if that makes sense. It’s certainly a lot more comfortable sitting in front of the air multiplier than a normal fan. It also seems to cover a wider area than normal fans, we didn’t have it rotating and it still managed to cool both myself and my husband lying in our super size (7ft) bed.

The lack of blades – this is certainly an advantage, especially when it comes to little baby fingers and cleaning it. I hate having to clean normal fans, taking off the cover, wiping all the blades, putting it back together again etc, with this one I can just wipe it with a duster and job done.

And so nightime fell and the big test began – ok so last night was actually cooler than most so we couldn’t test it in extreme conditions but it certainly felt lovely. It was pleasant, the air felt nice and comfortable without feeling I was being blown away. The noise certainly didn’t interupt our sleep at all and when I woke up this morning the room felt lovely, I assumed it meant it was a cold day outside until I went out of our room and down the hallway to realise it was actually hot and sticky out there.

The big question however is, is it really worth the RRP of £199.99 – hmm its a tough question to answer. I like the fan a lot and it certainly does the job, but could I have just lived with a normal fan and paid a fraction of the price – probably!

A grand day out with our Snugbaby

2 years ago
by DawnieBrown in

This is another one of those products that I am completely in love with (and no I haven’t been paid to say that!). I purchased my Snugbaby after being lucky enough to meet Claire at the NEC baby show where she let me try one of the carriers and I found it so comfy I just had to buy one. We already have another structured baby carrier but we never really got on that well with it, it was fiddly to put on, made my back ache after 15 minutes of using it and I felt like I was constantly having to support MissB with my arms as the weight was just too heavy on back. I had none of these problems with the Snugbaby and both myself and my husband love this product.

For more information on the Snugbaby carrier and to see more of their lovely designs check out their website
Snugbaby Website

I have to admit that when you first receive your Snugbaby and the various carry instructions it does seem a bit daunting but with a little bit of practice it soon becomes very easy to use. My main tip is to make sure you fasten the straps tight enough – and it helps if you hold the baby close to you when tying so that their weight doesn’t pull on the straps until they are secure. This ensures that the sling stays in a comfortable position and feels more secure.

For this review I decided to show you our trip out today, I think it’s pretty obvious from all our faces how much we all love our Snugbaby!

Today we  went out for a trip to Durham Botanical Gardens and had a lovely day out exploring the gardens and greenhouses with MissB. Initially daddy was hogging the Snugbaby as he usually does and took MissB to see the greenhouses with her in a front carry.

She loves being carried like this as she gets to see everything up close and personal and Daddy loves showing her all the jungle plants and the rain from the sprinkler system.

She even got to get up close and personal with some bird eating tarantulas! Wow I couldn’t see that from my pushchair!

When Daddy eventually let Mummy have a turn at carrying MissB for a while we opted for the back carry position, this is probably the trickiest carry to master as it involves throwing baby over your shoulder but once you get the hang of it, it’s actually quite easy and worth persevering with as it’s my favourite carry position and MissB loves it too!

With MissB now seeing the world from my viewpoint we set off for a long walk around the gardens, we must have spent about an hour wandering around and my back felt absolutely fine and MissB was very happy in her position although I had to make sure she didn’t grap hold of too many plants on the way round.

At the end of a lovely walk we were both still smiling.

I can now give you a lovely discount code that you can use when ordering your snugbaby online to get a 5% discount off the price – please enter FOS_DB at checkout. :) or you can just click on the badge below to take you straight there and automatically add the discount for you :)


SnugBaby Baby Sling

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