E45 Body Lotion

I received some E45 cream recently as a BzzAgent to try for free. I was delighted to receive a package with 2 full size bottles and a pack full of samples. 

E45 Pack from BzzAgent

I have given some samples to my mum and sister to try and will be dishing out the rest soon. 

I received this body lotion with a great deal of scepticism. I don’t usually like body lotion as I find that is just makes me feel greasy and then my skin is drier the next day. However, I thought “I’ll give it a try what can I lose?”  I decided to just try it on my legs to start with as I find that most tolerable and I decided to use the “nourish and restore Lotion” to start with.

I was pleased that the lotion had no fragrance, making it very inoffensive and spread onto my legs really easily. It was easy to rub into the skin and whilst I was aware I had it on, I didn’t feel greasy after applying it. I had to wash my hands after so it wasn’t completely grease free and rubable but very close. I am very fussy so it is very unusual for me to not need to wash it off afterwards.  My legs felt nice and moist and soft but the real test was what they feel like the next day?!

Next day I investigated the effect of the lotion from the night before, I’d had a shower by then so any excess on the skin would have washed off. However, my legs were really soft, as if I’d just applied the lotion. My skin was smoother and generally felt really lovely. I was very impressed and as this is by far the best my legs have felt the next day after any other creams.

I haven’t yet tried using this on other parts of my body but my experience with it, using fairly regularly, on my legs has encouraged me to give it a try. This cream is gentle and kind to my skin and lives it feeling lovely. I felt like I’d had a pamper just by applying it to my legs!!

So overall, it’s a lovely cream, I would definitely recommend it to everyone (and have done so) the only negative for me is that I have to wash my hands after applying as I don’t like the feel on my hands. As I’m fussy I know this won’t be an issue for most people and you should definitely give it a try!! 

Commando Dad: How to be an elite Dad or carer:

The front cover

Commando Dad:

AS I think I have made clear I am becoming a Dad, this is exciting and somewhat daunting, not scary, at least I don’t think so as I feel the wife and I made this decision and have prepared well for it. We could not have prepared for everything such as her hyperemesis gravidarum and her having to quit work but we work well as a team and have managed to counter the obstacles in our way.

IT was kind of a joke present but at the same time it could be a way for me to take on some information, this present was Commando Dad, a book for Dads. There are many books out there that try to cover this information and I always feel that they are not aimed at me and that they are aimed at irresponsible Dads who haven’t thought it through.

Commando Dad so far has done a good job. It is very nice to look at, there is a good range of pictures and it is well spaced which makes it more pleasant to read, more importantly the content is good.

As I imagine you would expect from the title and format of the book there is some humour and this makes a book about parenting a bit easier to read, don't get me wrong it is not laugh out loud funny but it will have you smiling and I did read it quite quickly, more so nearer the time of the birth than when I first got it as then it all seemed  so far away.

The book has plenty of helpful cartoon pictures on things such as how to hold the baby, how to change a nappy and things along those lines, thing we all know but there is no harm in having a Manley reference. He is also fairly good at admitting that he way is just one of many and just because this was the way he did it not to expect other opinions or to find a way that works for you.

So what does the book cover? Well it starts off in the obvious place of guiding you though some useful basics of how to set up the room. To be honest we already had everything set up and felt that what was included was pretty much common sense but then there are a lot of people lacking in that department so there is no harm in including it.

Then of course it is a case of guiding you through from birth to 3 years, the sections are actually broken up pretty well and just because he feels something should come first doesn't mean it only includes information for the first few months, rather it will include all the information but it is set out in a logical fashion.

I will not go through all the chapters but they include advice on sleeping patterns (some of which my wife did NOT agree with), feed baby, entertaining them and some basic things to watch out for from a medical point of view, which at the very least still hopefully stop you from panicking if something does happen.

Personally I do feel that it would be nice if he had put in a bit of information on labour, I know the book says from birth to 3 years but he does start off by talking about getting the room ready and I felt it would have been nice to have a man's perspective on what to expect at that time.

                                                                                                            
Overall it is a good  book with lots of information, the kindle price is pretty good but not sure I would pay full price for the book itself as too much of it was common sense or things that I already knew, never the less I did enjoy reading it.

http://www.commandodad.com/#1

Andrew James 1500W Mixer

We decided on an Andrew James mixer as they are so much cheaper than the competitors on the market but have really good reviews. It has a powerful motor with a capacity of 1500W (ignore the title on Amazon, it's wrong!), I wanted something powerful enough to manage all my tasks and this seemed to meet the mark.

I was very excited when this arrived, just 1 day after I ordered it, it arrived so quickly and on my birthday too.

New mixer all packaged up

I couldn't wait to open the box and explore the contents.... 

Contents revealed

I chose the red model to match our kitchen and kettle and because it's so beautiful. The red is a lovely metallic colour, rich and deep. 

The mixer has a large 5.2L bowl made from stainless steel. It feels nice and solid, however, it doesn't have a handle so this makes it slightly tricker to get in and out of the machine. It locks into the machine through a twist and lock system so just twists in and out. 

The machine comes with 4 different mixer attachments. Here are 3 of them. 

Mixer attachments

The attachments are a dough hook, balloon whisk, Aluminum beater blade and a flexible beater blade. This means that the machine is capable of a variety of task including beating egg whites, cakes and bread. The instructions recommend using the flexible beater for sticky mixes as it pulls it away from the sides, whereas the aluminum blade is for stiffer mixes. 

The attachments attach by pushing into the machine and then twisting into place, this is very easy to clip in and out but will mean holding a dirty beater to extract it after mixing so could get messy!! Online there is some criticisim that the attachments don't reach down to the bottom or the sides of the bowl, having tried it out I can confirm this is the case.

Middle mixed but not the outside

This picture shows how the middle is mixed but the outside is untouched. All this needs is a quick mix around with the handlily included spatula. I also found that once I'd increased the speed slightly it pulled the mix away from the sides better. I was making pastry and once I'd added the liquid to the mix it pulled together nicely and combined well. 

Well mixed pastry

I have now tried the mixer with a the flexi mixer making a cake recipe. I was really impressed with how the machine firstly coped with creaming together the margarine and sugar and then later how it coped with combining the whole mixture. I did scrape it off the sides but only a very small amount wasn't mixed in. The mixture was really light and fluffy, I will certainly be using this attachment more frequently as it really did the job.

Very well mixed margarine and sugar with the flexi mixer

The mixer stayed firmly in place on the side, even when at high speed and I didn't find it overly noisy or obtrusive. 

The machine comes with a splash guard, which I was please about as this would prevent icing sugar scattering the side as it does currently!! The instruction book explained how this came off, however, it was so stiff when it arrived it took the combined effort of me and my husband to get it off. Now that it's come off once it is much loser and more usable now. 

The cost, the mixer cost under £100 coming in at £79.99 not including postage. This is an excellent price for a product of this standard and made it much more affordable. Any equivalent products are well over the £100 mark. It isn't an all singing and dancing machine, it does the basics but this is all I wanted and needed it for. 

So a quick summary:

Pros: An affordable product

High power capacity (1500W)

4 Attachments covering a variety of tasks

Beautiful colour

Cons: Doesn't mix all the way down to the sides when using the aluminium mixer but does a good job with the flexi mixer. 

I would recommend this product to anyone that asked, it does the job and makes tasks much easier. I'm looking forward to many more products in it. 

Cheap, stable and extending tripod

The tripod in its bag with a PS3 controller used
 as a comparison

I recently ordered the following Tripod from Amazon to use with my camcorder to record badminton, the thing is great and read more of my review. 

When the box arrived I thought "hmm this seems a bit small" Still I opened the box and though the product looked pretty solid, light and compact and it was just left down to the user test to see how good it actually was at standing up.

This is an extending tripod so you can raise it up and so the first thing to work out was how to extend it, this is really easy, all you have to do it unclip the clips on the bottom of the legs. 

The three clips used to release the extensions.

Fully extended unit,
ready to record. 

There are 3 clips per leg, this allows you to extend it to differently lengths really easily and just close the clips back up to secure the unit. 

The unit once it is standing is actually really solid and although my aim is not to use it outside I have no doubt that should I wanted to use it outside it would be fine as long as the wind was not too strong.  (Video of how to do it all is shown in the below footage).






The stand also has a little level on it so that you can make sure you are (or maybe aren't?) recording at an angle. Attaching the camcorder is really easy as you just line up the screw with the slot on the camcorder and screw it in. The unit is then ready to go, there is another screw on the side so that you can move the aim up and down and you can use the handle on the side to move the angle left and right, this means if you are panning around.

Needless to say that the footage that I got using this was much more stable than recording by hand and it was much easier to get it to the right height and angle than using a table.

Summary:

This is a great little unit which for the price is a steal, it extends to a good height (around a meter) and is solid enough for my uses, if you are more serious about recording outside then get something more expensive, though with little wind or indoors this is perfect. It is compact enough to fit into my badminton bag but makes a world of different to the footage I obtain. 5/5 - To find the exact product I got follow the link below to Amazon. 

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

Krispy Kreme doughnuts are the subject of my review today, I had not planned to get them but my pregnant wife decided she wanted them and she has not been eating well so who am I to deny her (and I don't mind eating them myself). 

 We had quite a good selection of them with lots of different flavours which included chocolate, raspberry, butterscotch, lemon and caramel.  

All of the doughnuts tasted great, were fresh and yummy and my wife was happy eating several of them which is probably more fat in one afternoon that she has had in the last week. We will wait and see how they last overnight but Brighton is lucky to have one of these shops though it is not going to help the ever expanding waistlines of our population and mine is bigger than it should be already. 

A Game of Thrones!!!

The Front Cover

A Game of Thrones: (Kindle Edition) 5/5

Many people will have heard of ‘A Game of Thrones’, whether this is be through the hit HBO series based on the books or on the books themselves and it was something I had heard of but just dismissed. As I recently reviewed I got a kindle for Christmas and one of my work colleagues has been egging me on to watch or read the books, he has seen the TV series and is impressed. Well after ploughing through my usual post-Christmas reading material of James Patterson and many other crime authors I thought why not see how I find this book, well the first one at least.

The book series is actually called a song of ice and fire with the first book entitled a game of thrones, the blurb sounded interesting and although books set before modern technology came in are not normally my cup of tea I can normally take it with fantasy books.

I am not going to lie to you I was not gripped from the moment I opened the book (well opened the file containing the Kindle version of the book) as it took a while for me to get into it, you see we see the story from the point of view of multiple characters, mainly the Stark and Lannister families, but there are lots of characters, creatures and castles and a whole world with magic (not that there is really anything more than accusations of magic in the first book) and strange names to learn and plots / evil schemes to grasp.

Once you get up and running and get through the first beheading and the first sex scene you are well on your way to an enjoyable ride with a book that is clearly not aimed at children, do not mistake this for Harry Potter. The story soon picks up pace and you are thrown from city to forest, to boat, to castle, to faraway lands learning of each characters plots through the eyes of Kings, Princes, children, the poor and the soon to be dead waiting for each character to be delicately woven together in a deal, love or in all likelihood in a battle to the death.

You certainly cannot say that the author shies away from killing off a main character and therefore you soon have to realise that none of the characters you are beginning to love or hate are safe from the wrath of god, whether they believe in the old god or the seven god and nor does it matter how much they prey.

The header used for each chapter, nice to have something different. 

This book has gore, love, action, strange things that go bump in the night, plots, betrayal, mythical creatures, old stories that we know are going to be true, whores, knights, blood and it is so intense that you want to keep on reading to get to the next chapter on your favourite character and you are aware that if you put it down it is going to take 5 minutes to get back into the complex world that needs to fill your mind as you travel through the book.   

If you give this a fair chance you should not be disappointed though do go into it aware that the book is a long one and will not be completed until you have read the lot, currently this stands at 5 books with 2 more on the way this is an epic that will keep me going for some time.

Without giving too much away I think I can safely give you some background by saying that yes there is a throne and this is about the power struggle taking place between those who feel the thrown is rightfully theirs, those on the thrown and those who want it. The back story is told in a manner that makes it interesting and mysteries are implied that keep you intrigued and engrossed as you wonder who will be the next victim, what will be the next secret and ultimately who will win the game of thrones.

The Amazon Kindle

The kindle from the front in stand by

For Christmas I got an Amazon Kindle, one of the knew ones which when on offer only cost £60 and now allows me to carry lots of books around with me at once and means I can empty the book shelves and clear out lots of space for the upcoming baby which will undoubtedly take up a lot of space so the Kindle is certainly useful in that respect. 

I have to say that I did feel some trepidation in getting a Kindle, as with many people I like the feel of the book in my hand and the speed at which the pages turn. However I can say that all of these worries were ill-founded, the as if anything this is more comfortable to hold in one hand and you can turn pages when it is held in one hand  which I can't do with a normal book, the page turns are quick enough to not hinder reading and reading from this device is no more of a strain on your eyes than reading from a book. Though I guess I should also note that it is worth checking that you can actually read from these devices as my wife could not focus on the black but only the grey background and 

 

I have to admit that I have also found navigating the system very easy, the buttons on the front (shown below) are all that you need to get around, the one on the left is back, the second left brings up the keyboard (typing is not as hard as you would expect) the middle one then moves up, down, left, right and the centre bit is enter.On the middle right you have the menu button and then on the far right you have the home button and also on the sides you can turn pages and once you get used to the fact that it is not a case of left back and right forward but bottom forward and top back it is fine.

The navigation system.

I have to admit to not having used the store at all as I have downloaded all of my books on a PC and then added them to the Kindle rather than use the Kindle but I had no problems connecting to the wireless network and then putting it into non-wireless mode to save battery life, speaking of which it does last a long time although not 4 weeks but this might be because I am a quick reading and so I am doing lots of page turns. This leads nicely to me saying that I do not feel that the device or the speed of the page turns is slow (see video below) and I have been easily reading James Patterson books in a day or 2.

Overall I have found that the Kindle is a great product for me but some people may not be able to use it so check first, it saves space and money and means I can keep all of my books with me at once! Be aware though that they can break going through airport scanners which is a problem that my Dad has had with his.