I'm a full-time mummy

(** Article first published as Book Review: Phillipa Knickerbocker Glory & the Ice Cream Castle by Sarahjane Funnell on Blogcritics.)

I came across a Tweet message by the author asking for bloggers to review her upcoming book and as usual, I will first check out what the book is about and then browse around the website and author's info. The first thing that struck me when I landed on her website was:

Purple

I LOVE ALL THINGS PURPLE!

And seriously... ICE CREAM?!

How can I say no to purple colored things and ice cream?! And look at that adorable and cute little girl? I immediately replied the Tweet message with my interest to review it and to my surprise, the author was prompt and soon enough, the book arrived at my doorstep oozing with cuteness and oh my, oh my.... just read my review for the "Phillipa Knickerbocker Glory and the Ice Cream Castle" book below, OK?

Title: Phillipa Knickerbocker Glory and the Ice Cream Castle
Author: Sarahjane Funnell (Author), Amie Bilsby (Illustrator)
Publisher: Gibson Publishing (26 Mar 2012)
ISBN-13/-10:  978-0957081130 / 0957081138
Paperback:  32 pages
Dimension:  27.4 x 20.4 x 0.4 cm

Description from the product page:
"Phillipa loves ice cream. She loves ice cream almost as much as she loves her pet cat Little Miss Whiskers. Little Miss Whiskers is her fluffy white cat with a purple collar and bell. She doesn’t like ice cream at all but loves nothing more than to curl up into a ball and fall fast asleep on the end of Phillipa’s bed.

One day Phillipa Knickerbocker Glory and Little Miss Whiskers embark on a deliciously exciting journey. Through a secret tunnel, they enter a magical dreamland where they find the Ice Cream Castle and discover every flavour of ice cream imaginable. The Ice Cream Castle seems like a dream come true but will it be just how Phillipa imagined? With all that ice cream, will she and Little Miss Whiskers ever want to go home? Find out just what happens in this deliciously delightful adventure… "

'Fun, fun, fun!' is all I can think of as I flipped through this book! Each page that I turned just got me more excited and anxious to see what's coming up next and boy oh boy, the pictures included in this book is just gorgeous and droolworthy! 

Although Ben is into boyish stuff (robots, trucks, cars, soldiers, ninja those sort) this book manages to capture his attention because of:

ICE CREAM!!

He sticks around long enough for me to read the book and we oohs and aahhs over the gorgeous pictures. My girl on the other hand is still too young to understand the storyline but I'll definitely be keeping this book and introduce it to her again later.

The book is not too thick and I love the paper quality and as for the storyline, it is about a girl named Phillipa who loves to eat ice cream and enjoys looking forward to Saturday which is a special treats day where her mum will make her the Knickerbocker Glory ice cream which is made of all different kinds of ice cream and toppings.

One day as Phillipa was having a hard time deciding which colors and flavours to try on her Knickerbocker Glory ice cream, she decided to close her eyes and when she opened her eyes, she was in this magical place with all kinds of colors and flavours and she found herself standing in front of the Ice Cream Castle.

I'll not explain more of this book, you should go get it and find out yourself what happened to Phillipa at the Ice Cream Castle!

In summary, this is an easy to read book with beautiful illustrations that will capture your child's heart (Ok, ok, even mine!)

You can get this book from Amazon or at http://www.phillipaknickerbockerglory.com/shop/.

I am so excited to be able to hold this giveaway for my lucky blog followers and readers! TWO of you lucky people are going to win this awesome book! SIGNED! You will absolutely love it! Now, let's read below for the giveaway terms and conditions OK?

To enter the giveaway, kindly read and follow the instructions as stated in the Rafflecopter form below.

• You can enter either via login through your Facebook account or just key in your name and your valid email address.
  
• Please also leave your valid email address in the post comment so that I can contact you if you win this giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book by the author in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

I came across this wonderful product while I was surfing around the Net looking for pictures on potty training (I was in the midst of writing up a blog post about Ben's potty training) and immediately decided to ask whether they are OK with international bloggers, and my oh my, they are happy to provide me a product of my choice from their website for my review!  So here goes my review for the "Potty Target - 12 Pack":

Description from the product page:
"Our goal at PottyTarget.com is to make the world cleaner one bathroom at a time. This simple product helps kids to go where they are supposed to and creates laughs along the way. Give them something to aim for and you will be amazed by the results. "

I requested for the Potty Target 12 packs for my review. It has 3 of each: Boat, Duck, Tree, and Target Decals. The stickers came with an easy to understand and follow instructions to apply the stickers.

The designs are cute and eye catching.  

At the moment, Ben is still using potty and has yet to migrate over to using toilet seat. I am not in a hurry to rush this process as I am trying to train him to hold his pee longer and in the meantime, look out for a suitable and sturdy step stool so that he could stand on it when we decide to let him try peeing into the toilet seat.

So this review is based on the application of the decals on Ben's plastic potty. Ben immediately chooses the Target design (maybe because he likes red?) and he is excited with the idea of trying to pee to hit the target sticker!

On a few occasion, I caught him peeing into his potty and trying to aim hard at the Target sticker. Normally he pees into the potty and look elsewhere. So far there has been very minimal incidents of him accidently splashes out some minor trickles but I think the idea of a sticker in his potty for him to practise his aim is good!

I will be keeping the rest of the sticker and try it out on our toilet seat when we are ready for him to use the toilet seat later.

You can get these stickers at Potty Target's website.

I am so excited to be able to hold this giveaway for my lucky blog followers and readers! FIVE of you lucky people are going to win this awesome product! You will absolutely love it! Now, let's read below for the giveaway terms and conditions OK?

Please note that this giveaway is only available for US and Canada residents. (apologies to the rest, please don't get mad, OK?)

To enter the giveaway, kindly read and follow the instructions as stated in the Rafflecopter form below.

• You can enter either via login through your Facebook account or just key in your name and your valid email address.
  
• Please also leave your valid email address in the post comment so that I can contact you if you win this giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the product by Potty Target in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.

I came across a Tweet on the opportunity to review a kids related iPad app, of course being the usual busybody mummy blogger, I immediately checked out the company and the app and find out that it is an app to track a child's growth, vaccination schedules and more! What a cool app that I must simply review! Hahaha... Anyway, long story short, my review as below...

* Title: My Kid's Health
* Price: $8.99
* Category: Health & Fitness
* Released: Jan 18, 2012
* Version: 1.0
* Size: 6.3 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Pomelo Limited
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPad.Requires iOS 4.3 or later.

Description from the product page:

"Vaccination schedule, doctor/dentist appointments, growth & illness history, and more. Reminders sync with the iPad calendar. All through a beautiful, user-friendly interface. Developed by parents, for parents, to create the perfect tool for keeping track of your kid's health and development. No more looking for papers, it's all there on your iPad! "

Here in Malaysia, when a child is born, parents will be given a medical book which will list down the vaccinations taken, required and so on. Picture below is how my daughter's medical booklet looks like.

What's good?

I started off with this app by selecting my country (Malaysia) followed by entering my children's details.

* I am impressed with the objective of selecting the country (there are 194 countries in the list), which is to personalise the vaccination schedules for my child, and this data are provided by the World Health Organisation and national health organisations.

* I like that I am able to personalised each of my child's records by selecting their photos from my albums on the iPad

* I also like that I can enter details such as blood type, weight, height & head circumference by different dates and then view those data in graphs (growth charts)! Look at the picture below of Alyson's record on the app. And I can also see her growth rates indicated by the blue line are above the normal range in green line hahaha... (This was also mentioned by our paed few months ago)

* I am also impressed that the app can prompt the next vaccinations which are due to be taken (even the date!)

* I think this is a very handy and useful app to help a parent to track the health and development of their child as all the information is available right at our finger tips! No more flipping through pages of records and books!

Room for Improvement?

* I would love to see notes of what to look out for or to be alert for (such as growth spurts at which months and what symptoms or clues to look out for) as these would be an added special touch for the app user.

* I would like to have the option to email the details out as well.

You can purchase the "My Kid's Health" app from the iTunes App Store.

I am so excited to be able to hold this giveaway for my lucky blog followers and readers! TWO of you lucky people are going to win a copy of this awesome and useful app! You will absolutely love it! Now, let's read below for the giveaway terms and conditions OK?

To enter the giveaway, kindly read and follow the instructions as stated in the Rafflecopter form below.

• You can enter either via login through your Facebook account or just key in your name and your valid email address.
  
• Please also leave your valid email address in the post comment so that I can contact you if you win this giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code by the sponsor to redeem the application for free from iTunes Store in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous iPad Apps reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My iPad App Reviews"