Peppa Pig GoGlow Night Bright Light Review

Today has been a loooong day.  Lara and Holly have been hard work from the very moment they woke, until the moment they finally crashed.  At bedtime, after reading a mountain of stories, confiscating an "uncomfortable" duvet cover and resolving a giraffe/elephant dispute I finally resorted to threatening a visit from the "bedtime monster" if they didn't quieten down and go to sleep.  Bad Mummy.  It worked though!  Thankfully, the girls now both have these GoGlow night lights from Worlds Apart so I know that they are now not really worrying about monsters in their room and seemed quite happy for me to leave them with the lights gently glowing in their room.

The GoGlow Night Bright Light acts as both a night light and a torch and it is so easy to use that even Holly at 2 years old is able to operate her GoGlow on her own (it is suitable from 12 months upwards).  The GoGlow is available from WorldsApart in lots of different designs including Peppa Pig or Thomas the Tank Engine and my girls LOVE their Peppa torches and have been known to spend quite some time in the morning waving them across the room at each other!

The GoGlow is rechargeable and sits on its own compact base to charge it.  You can leave it there overnight, or lift it off and place it wherever you fancy.  When it is resting upright on a hard surface, the upper part of the lamp glows to reveal Peppa and George but when you lift it up, the light moves to the base where it acts as a bright torch.  Lara likes to use it to play games in her room during the dark evenings!  To switch it on and off you simply press the base.

Holly has been suffering with restless nights over the past month, sometimes waking as often as every 20 minutes due to teething pains from those pesky back teeth.  It has been great to have the GoGlow available for us to switch on, either to soothe her, or else simply to get enough light in the room to see what we are doing when we go through to her, without disturbing her too much.  The light is bright without being harsh.  There have also been times recently when Holly has woken up shouting for us, to tell us that she doesn't want the lion/elephant/rhino/other large safari animal and has settled back down again quickly once we switch on her night light for her.

As a torch (for use inside) I think it the GoGlow is excellent because it is chunky, and easy for the girls to hold and control.  As a night light I think it is also pretty awesome as it has enough charge to last all through the night (although in my ideal world it would sneakily switch itself off after the girls have fallen asleep).

If your child is showing signs of being afraid of the dark then a little night light like the GoGlow is a great way of helping to prove there are no monsters (especially, if like me, you are the one responsible for making them think that there are!).  Tonight, I have just checked in on the girls and found them settled and peaceful!

   

Movie Night with House of Fraser

The clocks going back last weekend came as a bit of a shock to Lara.  This year was the first year when she has really noticed that sudden change in the light levels during the evening; one day we were eating our evening meal watching the sunset... the next, we're eating it in total darkness.  I was secretly quite proud that she noticed but also a little sad that this means that the evenings will now be a lot darker and we have to prepare ourselves for the onset of far colder weather.

House of Fraser want us to be well-prepared with lots of warm, snuggly ideas of things to do during the colder evenings and they asked us to host a little family movie night complete with snuggly pyjamas and family-friendly DVDs.

The girls love a good movie and our movie night comprised Tinkerbell and the Pirate Fairy and The Snow Queen.  We snuggled up on the sofa, Lara and Holly in their new House of Fraser pyjamas for girls, and me in my two-piece women's pyjama set.  I think the girls were a lot more snuggly than me in their long-sleeved cotton tops and matching soft, fluffly flannelette trousers which remind me of the pyjamas I had as a kid. These two-piece sets are part of the Mini ZZZ range of kids nightwear and we LOVE them now that the nights have got a bit cooler.  My jammies have an owl motif and, quite aptly, feature the "tweet me" slogan!!!

With a big fat duvet on hand, and a bowl of freshly-popped plain pocorn we were ready for action...

...Our movie night didn't end up quite as relaxing as I had planned!  Combined with a bit of a late-night strictly catch-up and the awesome Natasha Bedingfield soundtrack played at the end of the Tinkerbell movie, the girls ended up doing less snuggling, and more boogeying.  Ah well, it just goes to show how comfy their jammies are.  I quite enjoy the Tinkerbell movies and I think every one we've watched has a fab soundtrack with at least one really memorable song that the girls have bopped along to.

At the end of a hard night, the girls did finally collapse when they were ready for bed.  I love our family chill-out time (rare as it is) and I can't think of a better way to spend it than snuggling on the sofa together.

Disclosure: Pyjamas and a movie were provided by House of Fraser for the purposes of this blog post!

Start-Rite - Our Shoe Summary

The first half term of the new school year has come to an end and Lara's new school shoes are still going strong.  At the start of term, Start-Rite asked us to put a pair of their school shoes to the Lara-test. As part of a group of Start-Rite mummy bloggers, I've been sharing my experiences with Start-Rite and their online community (you can view our shoe profile here), the results of which are in the video below.

Lara was hesitant to try a new pair of shoes at the start of term, partly because she had been suffering a bit with her old school shoes which were a similar style and she had got herself worked up that any shoe with a velcro-style band across them was going to be painful.  She did eventually pluck up courage to try the Start-Rite shoes and was obviously surprised to find that they were incredibly comfy!

Lara's school is a very outdoorsy school so her shoes have been through all sorts of tests from digging to climbing.  From skipping to fungus-hunting.  By the end of the half term, Lara has become so attached to her school shoes that she insists on wearing them when she isn't going to school, or on Friday's when we relax our own rules on what she has to wear to school.  I guess she finds them to be her most comfortable shoes now - casual or otherwise.

week one

week seven

Lara's Start-Rite school shoes are looking a bit grubby (I cleaned them once, it didn't seem like a good investment of my time!) and a bit scuffed at the end  but I'd expect them to last well into the new year and beyond.  You can find out more about fitted shoes and foot measuring from Start-rite on facebook and twitter.

If, like Lara, your daughter is in to all things Princess then she may also enjoy the Princess Serena Charm Quest app which accompanies these shoes - point your Android or iOS app at the shoe box to unlock the fun.