I'm a full-time mummy

Our family is a big fan of all things LEGO. Check out the robot made by our 7-year-old boy 2 years ago!!!

Our kiddos are constantly creating new things with LEGO, so I created an album on my Facebook fan page to share the pictures of Lego creations made by them, do feel free to hop over and check them out in my FB album. Also a while back, I reviewed some LEGO books and even wrote a post to share my personal tips on buying LEGO for your child.

Now, recently I heard that LEGO will be having an upcoming "Build Your LEGO Christmas Event" but unfortunately, as much as I would like to attend this cool event with our family and kiddos, I had to restraint myself from any public functions... images of birthing in public is not a comforting thought at this phase of pregnancy LOL and hence, I told hubby to go ahead with our kiddos (so that mummy can rest before baby #4 pops out anytime hahaha)

Now you wonder what is going on? FYI, with few weeks left to approach the season of joy and giving, LEGO® Malaysia will be hosting an exclusive "Build Your LEGO® Christmas" event at the LG Oval Concourse area at 1 Utama Shopping Centre from 9th to 20th November 2016, 10 am-10 pm.

If you want to find out more about the event, here is the info:

Date:  9-20 November 2016

Time: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

 Venue: 1 Utama Shopping Centre, Lower Ground Oval Concourse area

FB Link on the event: http://bit.ly/BuildYourLEGOXmas

Some of the exciting series of activities to look out for during the event includes:

• A mini cinema screening popular LEGO® TV series

• Dioramas of various LEGO® CITY and LEGO® Friends scenes, organised by three LEGO-certified user groups in Malaysia – LOM LUG LEGO® User Group of Malaysia, Synergy, and Asia Bricks

• A LEGO® Friends amusement park ferris wheel ride

• A free-playing area for children to build and display their LEGO® creations

• Meet-and-greet sessions with LEGO® CITY mascots, as well as a LEGO® Santa

• LEGO® CITY photo booths with props and costumes for fans to take memorable pictures

• Workshops for children to learn how to build their very own Santa sleigh

• On 19 November 2016, there will also be a special meet & greet session with LEGO® product designer and master builder, John Ho, the creative mind behind LEGO® series such as LEGO® Bionicle and LEGO® Star Wars Buildable Figures.

In addition to that, during the ‘Build Your LEGO® Christmas’ event, shoppers will be able to take home a free Photo Printout with any purchase of LEGO® Play Sets/ Play Materials (exclusive to all ONECARD Kids & ONECARD members), and 1 free pack of LEGO® Christmas Cards with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets/ Play Materials worth RM100 and above.

Additionally, customers who purchase LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM200 and above are entitled to one free pack of LEGO® Geoffrey & Friends Set (exclusive to Toys R Us Star Card members whose birthday falls in the month of November or December) and 1 box of LEGO® Santa’s Visit Set with any purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM300 and above.

ANY CONTESTS?

In case you are wondering, yes yes yes, LEGO® is asking children to save Christmas this year by designing and building Santa a new, modern, cool sleigh.

Hence, from 1st November until 4th December 2016, children can lend a helping hand to Santa by joining the Build Your LEGO® Christmas contest on www.LEGO.com/XMAS. There are suggested sleigh building instruction sheets available on the website which the participants can use to build and upload a photo of their very own LEGO® Santa’s sleigh with a matching description.

There are attractive prizes that you can win such as a total of 5 consolation prizes of LEGO® products worth RM200 each, as well as a Grand Prize of LEGO® products for a year worth RM2,000, which you can choose from your preferred theme. The Grand Prize winner will also have their winning sleigh featured in a final stop motion digital video aired in mid-December. How cool is that huh?

ANY OTHER OFFERS?

Yes, yes, yes of course there are!! Customers who shop at LEGO® certified stores and LEGOLAND will also be entitled to 1 pack of free LEGO® Christmas Cards with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM100 and above from 1 November (while stocks last), and 1 box of free LEGO® Santa’s Visit Sets with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM300 and above (starting 21 November, while stocks last).

Additionally, customers who purchase LEGO® products worth RM500 and above at LEGO® Certified Stores and online at http://brickmagic.asia also stand a chance of winning awesome prizes such as a LEGO® Star Wars Super Destroyer, LEGO® Star Wars Ewok Village, LEGO® Star Wars B-Wing Starfighter and many more!

Customers who shop at outlets such as Toys-R-Us, Hamleys, Box of Bricks, AEON, Parkson and Isetan will be able to enjoy one free pack of LEGO® Christmas cards with LEGO® Play sets / Play materials worth RM100 and above from 1 November, while stocks last. Exclusive deals are offered at Toys-R-Us, Hamleys and Box of Bricks where customers will be entitled to a LEGO® Reindeer set with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM200 and above from 21 November, while stocks last.

I received no monetary compensation for this review. I was provided with the press release kit 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.
 

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.
 

We have previously reviewed the Play-Doh party pack a while back and everyone enjoyed the experience so when our kiddos saw the Play-Doh Town Firehouse box on my office table, they went crazy excited and can't wait to open up the box to play with the new Play-Doh set!

In the Play-Doh Town Firehouse box set, it included a Firehouse set, firefighter figure with hat, puppy extruder, roof, flame stamper, water cannon extruder, axe, hydrant extruder, and 4 cans of Play-Doh brand modeling compound (color: yellow, neon orange, teal green and bright blue). After making them wait for few hours (testing their patience hehehe!)

I finally opened up the box and slowly assembled the items according to the user-friendly manual that came along with the box. According to the usage guide on the box, the Play-Doh Town Firehouse is for children 3+ years, just nice for our 3 krakens age ranging from 3 to 7.5 years old at the moment :)

Like every other Asian parents, I'm very OCD and concerned that it will be messy when my kids play, but the trick is to lay a good "foundation mat" around before they start playing. I like it when our kiddos play with the Play-Doh as I truly believe it helps to cultivate their creativity and helps improve their motor skills as their little fingers squeeze and mould the compound and watching them immersed themselves in their role-play world is just a sight to behold!

I took the opportunity to show our kiddos how to make the fiery flame sculpture from the flame stamper, a bit of yellow in the center bottom part surrounded by some neon orange Play-Doh and voila... fiery flames ready to be played with! I should've used more yellow but I decided to let our kiddos try and figure it out by themselves hehehe... As parents, we should know Play-Doh is a really awesome teaching tool! You get to teach kiddos to identify colors, to mix and create new colors (blue + yellow = green for example). Just gotta seize the moments when the teaching opportunities come along!

I also allowed our 3-year-old girl to experiment on making the teddy bear sculpture herself. As you can see in the pictures below, she took a slab of bright blue Play-Doh and stamped out the teddy bear sculpture. Awesome!

The nice part is our 3 kiddos were sitting quietly and playing together, not fighting and just enjoy discovering the cool things that they can churned out from the Play-Doh Town Firehouse set. What a nice siblings bonding and teamwork activity hahaha!

By the way, Play-Doh celebrates its 60th birthday this year! Whoaaaa!! 6 decades of awesomeness for many generations of kiddos! The iconic yellow can has expanded into more than 80 countries across the globe, with more than 3 billion cans of Play-Doh compound sold - that’s enough Play-Doh compound to reach to the moon and back THREE times! Cool-ness!

The Play-Doh Town Firehouse is available in all leading departmental, toy stores, baby shops and hypermarkets.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the products 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. 

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I have been cutting down on doing product reviews since 2014 and what more with baby #4 on the way this end of year, all the more I need to be particularly picky and selective with the products that I'm reviewing. Not that I'm trying to be hard sell, no, definitely not! But with 3 kiddos + 1 on the way, being a housewife at home with kiddos all the time and helping out with hubby's business, I just feel it is not fair to make companies and PR reps wait for my reviews while I slowly review and look for time to spare to draft out my feedback you know? But of course, like I said, I have to be selective, so products that we can definitely fit into our family dynamics (especially books on parenting or homeschooling stuff, family products, something along those genre) will be accepted!

When I received an email asking whether I would be interested to review a range of healthy fruit snack, I quickly inquired for more info and after seeing the potential on how I can incorporate the snack products into our family, I decided to go ahead with the review.  

About the company:

"Nutrio Food is a food company by parents who understand the challenges that a family faced especially in maintaining a healthy family lifestyle. Derek, Frutzee’s managing director, is a father of three adorable children, but turned out they are very picky eaters! With his 10 years background in the food business and immense commitment in providing the best for his family, he and his partners, Eddie, came up with this new concept of snacks that’s not only healthy, nutritious, but also super tasty.

Nutrio Food uses a patented and proven cutting-edge technology, whereby fruits are washed and placed in a vacuum chamber to be cooled up to -30 degree Celsius. By freezing the fruits at fresh point, the natural freshness and taste are retained. In addition, air is pumped out in the vacuuming process, changing the frozen water crystals into gas and leaving the fruit dehydrated. The nutritional benefits are preserved for over one year through this particular process, while also giving the products its trademark crispiness!"

About the products:

"The Frutzee Family is the first healthy fruit snack series to be out in the market. Available in four real fruit varieties, Banana, Grapes, Apple and Strawberries, Frutzee is designed catering to the needs of children starting 12 months old and above, but always supervise your children with care. Made from real fruit freeze-dried immediately after picking, Frutzee locks in all the natural goodness and nutritional benefits of the fresh fruits."

We received the following products from Nutrio Food for our review. Currently there are 4 flavors available: Apple, Banana, Berry and Grapes.

The first thing I take note when it comes to reviewing food products is of course the packaging and safety of the products. Each box comes with 4 smaller air-tight and moisture-free packaging. I like the convenience of the smaller packs as you can easily slot in some in your handbag/diaper bag for snacking anytime. I did earlier wonder why no resealable feature but then I realized, for freeze-dried fruits, once you opened up the seal and the snacks are exposed to the humidity, the crispness will not be long lasting, hence not feasible to have the resealable feature.

The next test is of course whether they are delicious or not! Pictures below is how each freeze-dried fruits look like once the sealed packs have been opened up. I have initially thought all the flavors would have the same look and shapes but am pleasantly surprised that each flavors have their own unique look and appearance. I am also not ashamed to say that I did whacked a few packs of the snacks ahahahah... my personal favorite is the banana flavor. Our 7.5-year-old boy preferred the grapes and berry flavors while our 2 girls are more into apple flavor.

The cool thing with these snacks is the versatility. You can straight eat these freeze-dried snacks as it is or turn them into toppings for your dishes. Picture below is one of the usual dish I cook for our kiddos' lunch. Instead of the usual oats + chia seeds + fish or chicken, I add the berry freeze-dried snacks and it can easily be served up as well. Other than that, you can also add these freeze-dried snacks onto your fruit juice, yogurt drinks, ice cream... endless possibilities! Yums yums!!

There is also a fun way you can do with the empty boxes once you are done with them. Lined them up next to each other and you get a continuous picture puzzle. I have tried different ways to line up these boxes and you get different outlook everytime. Fun way to get your kiddos to play while enjoying their snacks as well.

I also enjoyed the educational information at the back of the packaging box. For each flavors, you get to read the benefits of grapes, berries, banana and apples.

I even brought some of the freeze-dried snacks to our 5 year-old girl's kindy when we celebrated her birthday with her class friends. Gave each of the child there a pack and enjoyed seeing their happy faces as they devoured the healthy snacks. Even the teacher in-charge inquired about the products as well as she has not seen such products before.

Overall, an alternative to healthier snacks for your kiddos! Convenient, versatile, nutritious and has a variety of flavors to try!

The Frutzee Family is now available for purchase online at www.frutzee.my, and www.motherhood.com.my

You can also purchase Frutzee at the following store location: http://frutzee.my/stores/

Do note that I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the products 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.

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.