A couple of months ago we teamed up with Dream Town and gave away a Rose Petal Cottage in one of our Freebie Friday giveaways. At the same time, I was asked if my girls would like to review their new pet inspired property, Puppy Lane Cottage, which we were thrilled to accept.

The perfect place for a little girl to look after all her pets, Puppy Lane Cottage comes complete with Candyfloss, a very fluffy puppy, plus a Kennel, Collar Tag and Lead, Brush, Bowl and Bone. We were also sent another accessory pack including Coco the Kitten, plus a fabric covered Sofa and pet accessories.

Further pets and accessories are available including a Kitchen Set which comes with Pip the Mouse who lives in the cooker and a fabric Garden with Nutmeg the Bunny and gardening accessories.

Asthetically the Puppy Lane Cottage is very pretty, and the attention to detail is really beautiful. A stone cottage, with thatched roof, a picket fence, flowers  creeping up the walls and even a butterfly settled on the roof, all makes for the ultimate girlie hideaway. The cottage also has a stable-style door with magnetic clasps, pretty curtains and lace edging around the roof.  So if you have a real girlie-girl as a daughter, she won’t fail to fall in love with this playhouse.

From a mum’s point of view, the cottage was simple to assemble and the instructions were very clear. The frame of the cottage is made from plastic poles, meaning the house is lightweight to move around, and when not in use can quickly be broken down and stored back in the box. But if you don’t want to disassemble the cottage, you can store one half of the cottage neatly inside the other slightly larger half, stacking the accessories inside.

My girls loved playing in the cottage, but what really made it for them were the pets. They fell in love with Coco and Candyfloss and loved playing with them and all their accessories, quickly announcing that they wanted Nutmeg the rabbit and Pip the mouse too!

So, if you’re thinking ahead to Christmas already, and have a very girlie daughter who loves animals, you won’t go far wrong by asking Father Christmas to bring her a Puppy Lane Cottage on 25th December!

For stockist details and more information on the complete Dream Town range, call 0800 389 8591 or visit www.worldsapart.com

Visit the Dream Town Club – www.dreamtown.co.uk – for exclusive games, downloads and chances to win!

Popularity: 10% [?]

For this week’s Freebie Friday we have teamed up with Little Dish who have recently launched a new range of fresh baby purees. Mum’s The Boss member Helen Lindop, owner of www.businessplusbaby.com, a website that helps mums of babies and toddlers start businesses, was sent some sample are here is her review:

“Little Dish’s fresh baby purees arrived at my door by courier in a cute baby rucksack that my toddler immediately grabbed for herself!

There were six purees, three sweet and three savoury. The sweet ones were mango and banana; strawberry and apple; and blueberries, apples and bananas. The savoury ones were butternut squash, carrots and apples; peas, pears and apples; and sweet potato, parsnips and leeks. The purees are chilled, but you can freeze them too.

Baby Tom loved all of them, but the sweet ones went down so fast they barely touched the sides! He’s ten months old, so usually eats mashed food rather than purees. This wasn’t a problem, though as I served the savoury meals up as side vegetables and the sweet purees with yogurt or custard.

My two-year-old insisted on trying some, too. She had the sweet potato, parsnip and leek puree and decided to use it as a dip for her other vegetables! When she had eaten it all, she asked for “more squirty” but sadly her little brother had already eaten it all.

I do buy baby food in jars from time to time, but I don’t like to use it too often. I’m concerned that the high temperatures used to cook jars take away some of the nutrients and that if babies get used to the bland ‘canned soup’ flavour of food in jars they won’t learn to like the taste of real food.

What was great about the Little Dish purees was that they tasted like real food. The berry purees I could have happily eaten myself with a nice pot of Greek yogurt. They really did taste that good. The savoury purees cleverly combined fruit and veg to give a mildly sweet taste and that my little ones loved.

In short, a glowing review from this mum, baby and toddler!”

Today we are giving away 3 Little Dish rucksacks, each with a set of purees in. To be in with a chance of winning, you just need to answer the following question:

Q.   What are the names of Little Dish’s 2 chief tasters?

Email your answer to info@mumstheboss.co.uk by 7pm today (9th July) to be in with a chance of winning.  Please write LITTLE DISH in the subject line of your email. Winners will be emailed directly by Monday 10th July.

For more details of the full Little Dish range and stockists please visit www.littledish.co.uk

Popularity: 30% [?]

Footprint Bags are an ingenious product range created by two environmentally-aware young mums, Hanny and Claire. When Hepden Bridge in Yorkshire, near where they lived, decided to become a plastic bag free town this sparked an idea, and 3 years later a fabulous and practical product – the reusable shopping bag pack.

I still get excited at the anticipation that comes with expecting a parcel – especially a product for review. However, this time when the postman knocked with my parcel – a sleek and shiny black jiffy envelope – even my husband was intrigued. Inside the lovely packaging continued – wrapped in black tissue was my new 4 bag footprint bag pack.

Smaller than I had anticipated, the  pouch is secured with Velcro and contains 4 reusable bags – and the really clever part – a trolley coin attached to the handle so when you are shopping it hangs discreetly off the back of the trolley. The reason for getting the smaller of the 2 was I was thinking about ‘going in to town’ trip, or to keep in the glove box of the car so when I stop to pick up some essentials on the way home I always have bags.

Normally dreading the supermarket I had a lighter than usual step as I set out to road test the bags. Firstly – massively less bulky to carry than the hessian/cotton/plastic bag for life ensemble I usually cart in with me – and just hang neatly off trolley or sit discreetly in corner.

Then came the real test – would they hold enough? In fact they are a great size – larger than a carrier bag – but not so large you can’t then lift them up! The shape is great and very flexible, and the handles are wide and strong. Even the checkout commented on what a great idea and how neat they were.

Carrying the bags from the car up the garden path revealed another advantage –the material the bags are made of means that the handles don’t cut into your flesh – even when heavily laden – result!

One of the best and most practical products I have used this year – real thumbs up.  I just need an 8 pack one now for the weekly shop – 4 just aren’t enough.

Footprint bags are available to buy online from www.footprintbag.com

Popularity: 10% [?]

One of the great pleasures and perks of having a blog is being sent products to review. A couple of weeks ago a large box arrived at my house and generated a great deal of excitement with the boys; it was new set of Meccano.

21^st century Meccano has some similarities with that of my childhood, in that it is still a system of coloured plastic pieces held together by plastic nuts and bolts; however the variety of pieces and the sophistication of the models that can be built has moved on significantly.

We were trialling the new Tipper Truck set; a large box with many pieces and instructions to build 5 different models. We chose the tipper truck to start. The instructions are detailed and easy to follow, but are quite complex. My son is just 6 and would not have been able to complete by himself, however he and his younger brother (4 ¾) enjoyed collecting the pieces and helping to bolt it all together. The Meccano has a built in ‘helping hand’ which allows the bolt to be held still whilst little fingers tighten the screw with either the spanner or the screwdriver. 

I am a big fan of construction toys and kits for young children – I think they really help develop fine motor control skills and instruction following. This kit is recommended for 5 – 8 year olds, and I do think that the lower age bracket is optimistic – and it is necessary to help a child of that age if they wanted to build a set model, but I also see this as a positive point as I like things that challenge.  But best of all it was a great excuse for me to have some fun building something with the boys, and of course there are limitless possibilities they can build of their own creation.

The end result models are robust and practical, and unlike many construction based kits, can withstand some heavy duty play without falling apart as we tested to the full! So – would I recommend this? Yes definitely.

Popularity: 5% [?]

A month ago, if you had asked me what my dream job would be, I would probably have replied with something flippant like Johnny Depp’s personal secretary or a chocolate taste tester. Well, my friends, be careful what you wish for, because sometimes dreams do come true!

Thanks to the magic of Twitter and the British Mummy Blogger community I heard that Green and Blacks were looking for blogging taste testers. Without hesitation I volunteered my services and several weeks later, quite unannounced, a large jiffy bag arrived in the post, bursting at the seams with scrumptious chocolate! Since then I have been on a culinary chocolate journey, using my Green & Blacks bars to nibble, suck, scoff, melt and bake.

My surprise parcel contained 11 bars of chocolate – 8 to eat, and 3 bars of cooking chocolate. First off I ate the ‘flavoured’ bars – Butterscotch, Cherry and Almond.  Now I am a firm fan of Milk Chocolate so found both the Butterscotch and the Almond bars quite divine – both creamy and sweet with the perfect amount of burnt toffee flavour crunch in the Butterscotch and whole almonds in the other. Last up I tried the Cherry bar. I normally find dark chocolate too bitter for my taste, but the bittersweet tang of the whole cherry pieces made this bar really enjoyable, and not harsh in the way I normally find dark chocolate – in fact it’s definitely a combination I could get used to!

Onto the plain bars – Milk, Cream Milk, White, Dark 70% and Dark 85%. Now I could have just eaten these – no problem – but I thought I’d be a bit more creative and use some to bake with (although I’m ashamed to say the Cream Milk did disappear in a single sitting!). The Dark 70% was lovingly turned into Valentines Molten Chocolate Pots (see right) by being melted down and mixed with butter, ground almonds, 1 egg, 1 yolk, caster sugar and Baileys liqueur. Once melted the 70% Dark was like pure, black silk and the resulting pudding was incredibly rich but not in a sickly sweet way. Needless to say, my ‘Valentine’ was very impressed!

The Dark 85% was both eaten and baked. I felt I had to try the 85% because I don’t think I have ever eaten chocolate with that high cocoa content before. However the 85% Dark is ’softened with Madagascen Vanilla’ which you could really taste and did take any bitter edge away from the chocolate. The rest of the bar, along with a bar of G&B cooking chocolate, was melted down and turned into Best Ever Brownies (see left). When I make Brownies I normally use cocoa powder so I needed a recipe that used real chocolate  – and boy could I tell the difference! When I got them out of the oven I was too impatient to wait for them to cool down completely so cut them up while they were still warm. The insides of the Brownies were still gooey but they cooled to an absolutely perfect velvety chocolate consistency which was met with lots of appreciative “ooohs” and “aahs” when I took them along to one of our Mum’s The Boss meetings for some of our members to sample. And to make them even better they also contained chunks of the Milk Chocolate and White Chocolate bars for good measure – chocolate cake heaven personified!!

Which just leaves me with 2 bars of cooking chocolate left. One of these is earmarked to make some chocolate cornflake cakes with the girls and the other will be used to make our signature cake at meetings, and the most popular search phrase that leads people to our blog – Chocolate Fridge Cake!

When I excitedly posted on Facebook that I would be taste testing for Green and Blacks one of my friends replied “What’s to review? It’s chocolate. ‘Nuff said!”  Turns out though, that there’s more to this chocolate lark than meets the eye - and I’m more than willing to learn!

Popularity: 25% [?]

In August this year Mum’s The Boss member Helen Lindop, owner of Business Plus Baby, gave birth to her second baby. Helen was at our very first networking meeting in September 2008 and we lived her second pregnancy with her, watching her bump grow monthly at each meeting!

To celebrate the birth of our first “Mum’s the Boss baby” we ordered a personalised print from business mum & artist Carla Daly.  The print is from one of Carla’s original designs and contained a whole host of personalised information, including the name of baby, mum, dad and his sister, as well as the time he was born, the name of the hospital he was born at, and his weight. But the whole thing is done in a wonderfully quirky way which is perfect if you aren’t a fan of the more traditional pastel shades and teddies.

Carla specialises in art for your baby’s nursery or your child’s bedroom, and her main theme is jungle animals, with the odd octopus or farm animal thrown in for good measure! The colours used are bold and vibrant and the pictures have lots of detail so children will delight in discovering new elements within them all the time. Carla also produces alphabet wall stickers, growth charts, personalised door signs and maps, all of which would brighten up any childs room and make an unusual and thoughtful gift.

For a full range of Carla’s work visit her websites www.carladaly.com or www.carladaly.co.uk

Popularity: 12% [?]

Need to get organised and start planning for 2010? Then how about this pink filofax from online office supplies retailer Euroffice, where £2.20 will be donated to Breast Cancer Care.

Euroffice has a range of pink office supplies where money is donated to breast cancer, including notebooks, diaries, pens and staplers, which would make the perfect Christmas present for the business woman in your life or a bright and cheerful way to liven up your own desk!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Every so often you come across a product that is just so fabulous you want to share it with the world. Well that’s how I felt, about 18 months ago, when I discovered Alison Webb selling her Dinky Duvets on ebay.

My eldest daughter had recently moved into a toddler bed and having just bought a duvet and 2 bedding sets I was horrified at how expensive these special sized sets cost. Fast forward a couple of months to our first bout of sickness in bed in the middle of the night and I soon realised I needed more bedding – and fast!

Dinky Duvets are hypo-allergenic 4.5 tog duvets with a bright and funky cover stitched onto the duvet – so the whole lots goes in the washing machine and tumble drier – genius! They fit a cotbed or toddler sized bed and are perfect everyday bedding for your little ones, great for holidays and ideal as spares in case of illness. 

Alison started up the ‘Dinky Duvet’ business soon after the birth of her first child 5 years ago.  He was seriously asthmatic and had terrible reflux which meant Alison was washing all his bedding at least once a day.  With the lack of availability and choice of duvets coupled with the prohibitive cost of buying a duvet (and possibly a spare) Alison decided to dust down her sewing machine and make her own. No sooner had she finished it, than her friends were asking her to make one for their children.  And so her business began! 

“What started off as a sideline has now become a fully fledged business and keeps me busy every spare child free moment of the day and night!” says Alison.  ”I feel lucky to be able to turn one of my hobbies into something that gives me great satisfaction and earns me some money at the same time. Plus it is a welcome break from hoovering, the school run and my old job of IT project manager.  Give me a sewing machine any day!”

We are now the proud owners of not one but two Dinky Duvets (including the pink spotty one on the right) and I have to say I far prefer them to the boring and expensive bedding I originally bought from Mothercare! In my humble opinion, every home with a toddler should have one!

For a full range of Alison’s homemade products including quilts, blankets, clothing and bags please visit www.dinkyduvets.co.uk

Popularity: 7% [?]