We also liked the strawberry laces variety which is also fun and it’s very pink, so that might be particularly good for encouraging girls to wash their hands.  The original version is also effective, but it’s not such fun for children, so I’m keeping that one by the kitchen sink for the adults of the house to use.  They are anti-bacterial too, which can be useful too.

I previously told you about The Carex Live Life Hands On Awards.  The awards were set up to celebrate all the wonderful things that we do with our hands.  To enter the competition Carex wants people to share a day in the life of their hands.  In return they have some wonderful prizes on offer.

Disclosure:  I received payment for the original post about the Carex Live Life Hands On Awards.  I did not receive payment for this post, but did receive products to test and give my views upon.

Hi Everyone. Erica has very kindly let me takeover her blog today as we both went to Tots100 BlogSummit in Birmingham last weekend. As part of BlogSummit, we all had to put our blog names in an envelope and randomly pull one out of the hat and do a guest post on that blog. I was very pleased when I got Erica’s blog as she is not only very local to me and I love reading her adventures with H. My son Thomas is only 18 months old so it gives me a taste of things to come!

I first started blogging as a food blogger five years ago at Jo’s Kitchen. I started my parenting blog, Jo’s Nursery just over two years ago when I discovered I was pregnant with Thomas. I still love cooking despite having to work round a toddler to make things and I do not get as much time as I would like to cook.

Despite being a food blogger for five years, I have never attended a food photography workshop until I went to BlogSummit last weekend. We had a session by John Arnold, geek mummy’s husband. He taught us some simple tips below to help improve our food photography:

•  For flat food, use a straight down shot looking directly above the food

•  Use foam core white boards (available from art shops) to move the light where you want it in the shot

•  Use natural light where possible

•  Use dark colours to provide a contrast to the food

•  Use a variety of table mats to bring colour and texture in your photographs

•  Finally, tell a story with your photographs – the cooking of our dish, the finished dish and the eating of the dish are an example of a story. 

Here is a simple and easy recipe for flapjacks. These are ideal as a lunchbox treat, after school snack or for taking out on an adventure together. I tried to take John’s tips into account when taking the photo but I did have a toddler running around me at the time. I also did not put quite enough golden syrup in my flapjacks so they are a bit crumbly. I have adjusted the recipe accordingly so your’s do not do the same!

Fruity Flapjacks

Ingredients

•  250g unsalted butter

•  10 generous tablespoons golden syrup

•  500g porridge oats

•  150g dried fruit (sultanas, raisins or glacé cherries are good)

Method

1.    In a saucepan, melt the butter and golden syrup together over a gentle heat.

2.    Preheat oven to 180 degrees c

3.    In a big mixing bowl, put the oats and the dried fruit in and give them a good mix to spread the fruit through the mix evenly.

4.    Pour the melted butter and golden syrup into the mixing bowl with the oats and the fruit and mix thoroughly until all the oats and fruits are covered with the melted butter and golden syrup.

5.    Put the mix into a medium roasting tray (I used the foil trays you can get from a supermarket – if using a normal tray, line the tray with baking parchment/grease proof paper first)

6.    Put in the oven to bake for 15-20 minutes until slightly golden brown. Allow to cool and cut into squares as big or small as you like. Eat and enjoy!

Thank to Erica for allowing me to do a guest post today. I hope you have enjoyed reading it.

I’d taken a Sofia Mia Tui bag on holiday with me as my only handbag.  It was incredibly useful.  For me it was just the right size: big enough for all my bits and pieces, room for my holiday reading, a water bottle and some snacks for H.  So I was delighted to get home to the gift of a new Lottie bag in Steel Blue.  It’s the perfect size if you are just nipping out on your own for a few hours, with room for a few essentials.

H always likes to investigate anything I’m sent to review even if it isn’t for him.  He couldn’t keep his feet off my new Clark’s sandals which I’ll be covering on my other blog A Little Luxury For Me.

In this week’s Magic Moment post I told you about H swimming a length while we were on holiday.  On Thursday we went to our usual swimming class and it was very obvious that H’s confidence and skill in the pool had really increased.  His swimming teacher was delighted.

As a budget airline Monarch will charge you for everything they possibly can: seat allocation, food, drink, baggage, etc.  We weighed up all the options and studied their website before we went and decided which ‘extras’ we would go for. The times of our flights were such that we would need to allow for a meal on the journey.  We decided that rather than rushing to find something to eat in the airport or loading ourselves down with packed lunches, we would opt for the airline meals.  The meals weren’t cheap at £7.99 each, but we decided to go ahead to save on hassle.

On the way back our flight 9.25pm Greek time and was due to land 1.45am (or 11.45pm BST).  After the plane had taken off and climbed to the right altitude the aircrew started out with the drinks and food trolleys.  We were in row 10 and it took an age to get to us because nearly everyone was desperate for something after lengthy transfers, airport check in queues and basically no time to get anything in the airport before boarding.  The staff got to us and I said that we’d ordered food.  They said we had to wait till after they’d finished serving the whole plane.

The cabin crew knew we had a young child who was waiting for his meal.  But, they carried on serving everyone their food and drinks, then they decided it would be a good idea to collect all the rubbish before serving our food.  Would it be cynical to suggest that Monarch Airlines already had our money, so the service they gave us didn’t matter?

I kid you not, we waited 2 hours to get our meals: it was 11.30pm Greek time when we were served.  By the time H had finished his food and could settle down to sleep it was midnight.  His normal bedtime is 7.15pm.  Now it was always going to be later than usual, but I hadn’t anticipated it being that late.

I contacted Monarch Airlines about the problem when we got back.

Is it normal @monarch to keep people waiting 2 hrs for prepaid inflight meals & to serve them after everyone else has bought food & drinks?

— Erica Price (@ericahughes) May 11, 2013

They kept me waiting till today for a proper reply because they had to check with their catering department.  I was told:

@ericahughes Hi Erica, the drinks service is always offered first along with buy on board food, followed by the pre ordered meals….

— Monarch Airlines (@Monarch) May 17, 2013

So it seems it’s Monarch’s policy to keep those who’ve preordered and prepaid for food waiting until everyone else has eaten.  They seem to think this is acceptable customer service.  As a general rule if you prebook and prepay for something you either get it first or at least are not disadvantaged by prebooking/prepaying.  It’s pretty basic customer service, isn’t it? Monarch don’t seem to agree.

Monarch say this on the order of their service:

@ericahughes It has been tested many other ways but this works best. Buy on board meals are limited so you are still better to prebook. ^NG

— Monarch Airlines (@Monarch) May 17, 2013

Later in an email Monarch Airlines Sales Support Manager says:

After speaking with the  In-flight service manager,
 I can  confirm the order of service was correct
and provided in a safe, well practiced and in the
most efficient way we have researched possible.

On neither Twitter or email have they given any specifics for this research that suggests it’s the most efficient way.
I can’t find anything on their website that suggests that they advise passengers, in advance, that they will have to wait for their prebooked and prepaid meals, until everyone else on board has eaten.

So are Monarch going to change their policy of keeping you waiting if they already have your money?  No, they say not.  In fact, they don’t seem to care about that.  What compensation have they offered for keeping us hungry and messing up our son’s routine in a big way?  A refund of our meals.  Well, Monarch Airlines, it simply isn’t good enough.

The key idea behind Walkers Baked Hoops and Crosses is that they contain 56% whole grains.  Apparently, quite a lot of children in the UK don’t get enough in their diets and 27% get no whole grains at all (according to research published in the British Journal of Nutrition). It can be difficult.  Like many children H isn’t keen on wholemeal bread, so I’m willing to try out other ways of increasing his whole grain intake.

Walkers have tried to make these snacks as healthy as possible without compromising on taste.  So here are the facts and figures:

• Each bag has 85 calories.
• They have been baked rather than fried, so have a fat content that was a lot less than the standard bag of crisps that I compared them to.
• Hoops and Crosses are made from whole grains, have no artificial colours or preservatives
• They come in three flavours.  All of the favours are suitable for vegetarians  including the prawn cocktail and roast beef flavours.  The third flavour is salt and vinegar.

Hoops and Crosses seem ideal for lunch boxes, but I took them along to school as an after school snack because I wanted to canvas a few opinions plus it gave me a chance to see and hear H’s reaction to them.  H is always starving at 3.30 and I always pop something for him to eat in my pocket.

We offered the roast beef crisps to the adults and children that walk home with us.  The reaction was mixed, but generally more adventurous eaters liked them (some were very keen) and more conservative tasters were less enthusiastic.  H enjoyed them to start with, but found the flavour a little too strong as he got to the bottom of the pack.  I think we might try out the other flavours to see if he prefers the salt and vinegar or the prawn cocktail to the roast beef flavour.  I’d like to see them offering a ready salted variety too.

I was sent the crisps for review and paid for writing the post.

Goggles courtesy of Munchkins and Poppets

We’ve were away on holiday last week.  H’s only criteria for choosing a hotel was that it had to have a pool.  We chose a hotel with a reasonably big pool to keep him happy.  It worked.

Every day that we weren’t on an all day excursion, we were in the pool.  H would swim and play with both of us and we would go in separately too to share it around.  I usually had to insist that H get out of the water because he was shivering.  The air temperature was warm in Crete, but the pool was quite cold.  H is quite thin currently following a growth spurt so there’s little in the way of natural insulation to keep him warm.  Added to the fact that he takes after his father when it comes to feeling the cold, he does seem to shiver quite dramatically and go a bit blue after a bit.

All week he practised his swimming, as well as just having fun in the water.  We’d offered a prize if he could be swimming a length by the end of the week. On the last day of our stay he was determined to swim a length of the pool, without any aids, to win the reward that he’d been promised.  His positive mindset paid off and he achieved his length.  The morning after we got home I had to provide the promised reward of a Lego Bionicle.

The journey there was very exciting and full of interest for H.  He wanted to fully understand everything.  He insisted on being able to see the full safety demonstration by the cabin crew, he spent a long time studying the safety procedures card and he asked question after question.

After a late night arrival we were keen to explore the next day.  H was desperate to see all of the hotel first thing, so we did that straight after breakfast.  We wanted to explore the old town of Rethymno next.  It started off well, but we ended up having to coax H along.  I think we underestimated how tired he was and how much he just wanted to get to the pool.  Note to self:  do the pool the first day and worry about exploring later.

We learnt our lesson after that and took it easy for a few days before doing some more sightseeing.  Our first big trip out was a boat trip out to the island of Spinalonga.  It’s a really interesting place as it was a leper colony until the 1950s.  There was fun too as we had a beach stop with a BBQ for lunch.  Another day out was to the capital Heraklion and a visit to the unmissable Knossos, Europe’s oldest city.  H has been learning all about Greek myths and legends and a number are connected to the palace complex at Knossos.

After all that history, we had a quiet few days at the beach and by the pool to rest and relax before coming home.