My Little Pony: My Little Saviour (Call of the Cutie DVD review)

A tired mother’s best friend.

Picture the scene: the EC family have had one children’s party too many this month. With birthdays and Halloween, our two girls are in an excess sugar and tiredness induced meltdown. At home, Mr EC and I are each thinking up ways we can escape the tantrums, quarrels and demands for attention. Who will come to our rescue?

Hooray for My Little Pony!

I’ve previously written about my three year old’s love for her last My Little Pony – Welcome to Ponyville DVD. She really enjoyed watching our last DVD and has been asking me for more “My Little Pony programmes” since watching the last one over and over.

I used to love My Little Pony as a child. I spent hours combing and adorning their hair, dressing them up and engaging in make believe hair. Now I love them for a different reason.

My Little Pony DVDs let me have a sit down!

Call of the Cutie rescued us from tearing our hair out this weekend. While three year old – and this time one year old – watched it, I sat nearby reading an actual newspaper and drinking a rather refreshing brew.

Of course I therefore don’t have a clue of the storyline myself. Here’s what the promo says:

“Within the cheerful Ponyville classroom, teacher Cherrilee tells her pony pupils about cutie marks, and how they are created. To discover their cutie mark, the special symbol which appears on a pony’s flank once they’ve discovered their purpose in life, each pony must discover their unique talent.

Meet Cutie Crusaders Apple Bloom, Sweetie belle, and Scootaloo, who want to discover their talent and decide to found a secret society- “The Cutie Mark Crusaders”.

Join Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, as they aid the young fillies through their voyage of self-discovery. Working together, their quest takes them on a fun-filled journey, learning valuable lessons about friendship along the way.”

As ever, I asked three year old why she enjoys My Little Pony so much (she now has two Ponies which she received for her birthday):

“I like it because they’re ponies and they’re little”.

Straightforward as ever!

I think My Little Ponies and accompanying DVDs are great vehicles for imaginary play which is so important at this age. Check them out as potential gifts for Christmas or stocking fillers.

My Little Pony: Call Of The Cutie [DVD] is available from the 14th October 2013 in all good retailers and http://www.clearvision.co.uk priced £12.99. Certification U: Suitable for all audiences.

I received a copy of My Little Pony: Call of the Cutie free of charge but was under no obligation to write a review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Blog every day in August: When I grow up

This month I am taking part in Yummy Mummy in Training’s ‘Blog every day in August’ challenge. Read all my posts to date here.

Day 28 is ‘When I grow up’.

Does anyone really ever grow up? I suppose there are some people I can think who seem a lot more ‘grown up’ than me.

Those who do the ironing for their partner and have a tidy, sparkly clean house all of the time. Those who own a leather-bound Filofax which is with them at all times.

Those who don’t find children’s TV funny, and don’t secretly wish they were the presenters.

Of course I am a grown up in many of the ways I imagined as a young(er) person.

I have a job, a house, my own children. I listen to Radio 4 and watch Question Time (when Mr ExpressionConfession allows. He gets annoyed at “normal people getting awkward about politics”).

Crucially though, I don’t do any ironing, which leads nicely onto…

I recently wrote in my post 37 reasons to love life, now I’m 37 about my love for ‘being silly’.

What I meant by this is that I find it provides relief from the pressures of modern family life to just let go. Do something stupid. A silly dance, an inane text with one of those ridiculous smilies, singing with my children to tots tunes, gurning, relating an inappropriate joke I heard at work.

Ignoring the washing up because I just feel like it. Not even noticing the ironing (what’s that?).

Not (completely) growing up is a lot of fun, and it lightens the load.

Read day 29 here.

Blog every day in August: things you should know about me

This month I am taking part in Yummy Mummy in Training’s ‘Blog every day in August’ challenge. Read all my posts to date here.

Day 19 is ‘things you should know about me’.

Well, I recently blogged about 37 things I love about life, now I’m 37, which gave you a good insight into what makes me tick.

So what can I add to that? Maybe a few of my little idiosyncrasies, that only close friends and family will know.

Here goes:

I’m a complete hypochondriac. I have got marginally better as I’ve got older, but it’s still there.

I have got Rick Astley’s autograph.

I prefer to sleep on the left hand side of the bed.

I have several missing teeth, which just never appeared (not visible missing teeth – I’m not a toothless witch, yet!).

I used to write rude poems at school and pass them round the class for comment.

I get OCD about where the TV remotes are and must have them in plain sight at all times when relaxing in the lounge in the evenings.

I used to be a platinum Bros fan club member.

I make a very good cheese and tomato ketchup toastie.

I don’t do ironing. At all.

I hope that provided you all with some jolly Monday evening reading!

Blog every day in August: A summer memory

This month I am taking part in Yummy Mummy in Training’s ‘Blog every day in August’ challenge. Read all my posts to date here.

Day 18 is ‘a summer memory’.

I recently blogged about childhood summer memories as part of a #bloggirls linky. So for this post, I decided to go for something more recent.

Here’s a selection of photographs taken this summer. I think I’ll have lots of great memories from this summer – it was my eldest daughter’s 3rd summer and she really took great delight in the many trips to parks and time spent in ours and friends’ gardens just playing and enjoying the outdoors. For my youngest, it’s been her first summer, and she has particularly delighted in swings and shuffling around the garden!

Summer isn’t quite over yet – it’s been a lovely day today and hopefully we’ll squeeze a few more nice-weather-days in before Autumn makes an appearance.

Read day 19 here.

Summer memories: a #bloggirls Thursday link up

The recent sweltering hot summer days have been bringing back lots of memories of my childhood summers, back in the early 80s (yes, I’m that old).

It seems I keep having sudden flashbacks to memories of these hot, childhood summers, to the extent that I thought I’d better write them down. Being a geek, I note that this topic lends itself to bullet form (you’re lucky you didn’t get a spreadsheet).

Before I commence with the bullets, can I just ask, is it me or were all our 80s childhood summers extremely hot?! That’s the key point I seem to remember. Please feel free to comment!

So here goes – memories of summer:

1. Heat.

I distinctly remember ALL childhood summers being hot. Is this a false memory I wonder? It must have rained sometimes!

2. Fried eggs on pavement fun.

Yes, you read correctly. I remember watching a Blue Peter episode where it was so hot, the presenter cracked an egg on the hot pavement and it fried. I then went to get an egg from the fridge and tried it myself in front of our house. Sadly, it didn’t work. Plus I got told off by my Mum for stealing an egg.

3. Playing out.

My best friend (who lived just around the corner) and I used to meet after breakfast, go home for lunch, meet again after lunch, go home for tea, then meet again after tea briefly before we were hauled back for bedtime. I think 8:30pm was the curfew. This was all in the summer holidays of course. We played out – parents could be more trusting of course in those days and they ‘let us off the leash’ as it were and we would go off to the local fields totally out of sight. What a shame we can’t do that with our children today.

4. Make believe games.

We would amuse ourselves for hours on end on the local fields. We had a number of ‘treehouses’ and ‘dens’, and I remember one game which involved the two of us finding a dog’s head skeleton (bear with me) and pretending we were ace child detectives who were about to uncover a worldwide plot to kidnap and destroy all dogs. We pinpointed a particular neighbour’s house and decided it was him. I think we may have even attached a note to his house saying “dog murderer” or something.

I still to this day don’t know where the dog’s head skeleton came from.

Despite this weird example, I believe make-believe play is so important in the development of a child’s creative imagination!

5. Days out with the parents.

We had many days out – Bolton Abbey, Whalley Abbey, Lytham St Anne’s, Blackpool, countryside walks in rural Lancashire villages such as Sabden. It was a lot of fun.

6. Being sick in the car.

This wasn’t quite as much fun. A day out invariably involved me vomiting in my Dad’s car. I was very travel sick, and to be honest I’m still not that great.

7. No school.

Well I couldn’t end on a point that involved vomit so I end with the happiness I felt at the end of the spring term. I was lucky enough to enjoy school throughout childhood, yet I still felt the same sense of elation as everyone else as term ended and the summer holidays began.

So there you have it – my most vivid summer memories. Please feel free to add your own – I would love to read them.

<div align="center"><a href="https://expressionandconfession.wordpress.com/bloggirls/" title="#bloggirls" target="_blank"><img src="https://expressionandconfession.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/20130726-191003.jpg" alt="#bloggirls" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

This is a #bloggirls link up! Each Thursday, #bloggirls (@HodgePodgeDays, @A_ZMummy, @mumofz and @megster8) will be hosting a link up, based on themes which we simply feel everyone could write about, with potentially many different blogger interpretations!

If you want to join in of a Thursday, simply follow these steps:

1. Write your excellent post.
2. Copy the badge code above (or on the Thursday link up post) and paste into your post.
3. Click the ‘get the code’ link at the bottom of the Thursday post.
4. Copy the appropriate code for your blog, and paste to the end of your post.
5. Publish your post as usual.
6. Click the ‘add link’ link on the Thursday #bloggirls post, add your unique url and you’re away!

All we ask is that you spend some time reading and following the other blogs who post.

Enjoy!

get the InLinkz code