dawniebrown
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Posts by dawniebrown
2/366
6You can’t beat the smell of baking bread. My new breadmaker is fast becoming my favourite kitchen appliance. Today’s loaf is 3/4 white, 1/4 wholemeal
Welcome to my project 366 1/366
5Down the eye of a kaleidoscope! The view is forever changing with every turn. Who knows what the picture will look like by the end of the year….
Merry Christmas
4Well it’s been a busy year and it’s time for Mother Brown to take a blogging break over the Christmas period to spend some precious time with the family. Thank you to all readers, PR’s and advertisers for sticking with me throughout 2011 and I look forward to being back with you all again in 2012
We’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Merry Christmas from Knees Up Mother Brown
The Ultimate Christmas Song
1I’ve been tagged by Sian over at Mummy Tips in the Ultimate Christmas Song Meme and it serves me right for not keeping my mouth shut. You see for a Smiths/Morrissey fan to choose a Mariah Carey song is just wrong. I quite rightly pointed out to her that if Morrissey is good enough for the John Lewis Christmas ad then it’s good enough for a Christmas Meme
Of course now the challenge has been passed back to me and having thought hard I give you the following song
Well Christmas Day is on a Sunday this year isn’t it
so I thought I’d go for the most tenuos link possible seeing as I had to bring Morrissey into it too! This also happens to be the last song played at our evening wedding reception.
And because I have to tag a couple of people I’m tagging my gorgeous sister Sonia over at Mummy Loves and the lovely Kara at Innocent Charms Chats
OK OK so if that isn’t christmassy enough for you then I’ll also share the Christmas song which always makes me smile…
Xxx
Rub a Dub Laundry Day Bath Toy – Not Recommended
2I was sent this product to review by a toy shop. In fairness to the shop concerned, I have emailed them and asked them if they would still like to be linked to in this review and as yet I have had no reply so I will be linking to the product on Amazon instead (if you really want to buy it after reading this that is
)

Now in the Brown household we love bathtime. Zara and Oscar share a bath and we love playing with various bath toys so I was excited when I first received this toy to review as it looked like it could be fun. It basically consists of a plastic basket and 12 foam clothes pieces. The clothes pieces have dirty marks on them which according to the pack, magically disappear when washed in warm water. I thought Zara would love this.

Trying to get Zara excited about it, we made a big fuss of the clothes being dirty and she would be able to clean them in the bath. We got into the bath, held a couple of the clothes under the water to “wash” them and …..well…..nothing. The dirt just didn’t disappear at a normal bath temperature at all. We have experimented with the pieces and the dirt does disappear under hot water but not at a temperature which I would ever bath my children in. To be honest I don’t quite understand what the manufacturers were thinking when they made this toy – are they trying to encourage parents to bath their children is hot water?
The toy sells for around £10 on Amazon HERE which to be honest I think would be far too expensive even if it did work properly. It is essentially a flimsy plastic basket (which could probably be improved with a sucker to stick it to the tiles or the bath) and 12 foam clothes pieces. If I had paid for this toy I would have been hugely disappointed, even if it did what it says on the pack I’d still only be willing to pay £3-£4 for it as there isn’t really a lot to it. I did wonder whether I was being overly harsh on this toy but having read some of the other reviews on Amazon it would seem I’m not alone on my concerns with the toy.
A Book About Me – From Baby Patisserie
1The lovely people from Baby Patisserie, recently sent me a Book About Me memory book to review and I have to say I’m very impressed. I’m not usually one for traditional baby memory books but this one is absolutely lovely and we are going to have so much fun filling it in (I need to decide whether it’s going to be for Oscar or Zara first though!)

What I love about this book, is although it contains all the traditional memory book features, it has a lovely modern feel to it. The bright and funky designs on every page are beautiful to look at and make turning each page a pleasure.

The book covers a much wider range than traditional memory books and lets you keep recording all those precious moments through until around 5 years old! We love the fact that by the end of the book your child will be the one creating the memories in it

There is plenty of room for adding scan pictures, first photographs, family trees, first foods and even pages to detail your childs first travels.

We also love the spare pages at the back to allow your child to doodle away their own memories and the plastic pockets for keeping hold of special items you don’t want to lose such as hospital bracelets and in my case the supermarket receipt from the shop I did an hour before going into labour with Zara (I just can’t bring myself to throw it away!)

The trendy and colourful illustrations make the book suitable for both boys and girls and it would make a lovely gift to expecting or new parents. It has a RRP of £24.50 but it currently on introductory offer at Baby Patisserie for £19 which I think is a great price for a product of this quality.
There is also a sister book to this one called For My Grandchild which makes a lovely present for Grandparents and is a lovely way of getting grandparents to record all their memories so that they can be passed down over the years.
The Gallery – The Kitchen
11This post is this weeks entry for The Gallery over at Sticky Fingers
The prompt this week is The Kitchen.
Quite a suitable subject for us this week as a certain little lady in the Brown household turned 2 yesterday! Her present from mummy and daddy was a brand new shiny kitchen so she could open her own cafe
it wasn’t long before her first customer arrived either
























Zara is...



