I'm a full-time mummy

Few weeks back, I dreamt of Ashton Kutcher.

Before I continued on, please note that I am not that crazy of him at all. I know he's the dude in That '70s Show and Two and a Half Men and he's dating Mila Kunis (Ok, I'm quite the celebrity gossip fan) and he's divorcing Demi Moore.

OK, enough about the details.

Anyway, in that dream, I found myself in a cafe of some sort, quite dingy place and I could instantly recognize him from far. I was thinking to myself in my dream 'OK, this is obviously a dream. I'm in Malaysia, how the heck could this be real?' Anyway, in my dream, he was sitting next to 2 of his male friends chatting happily.

I thought of walking away but then in my dream, again I thought 'Hey, it's a dream. What else can go wrong? Just go to him and get a photograph or something!'

So I walked towards Ashton. When I was standing right in front of him, I panicked. Couldn't say anything. Even if it's just a dream.

He asked me what's up. I asked him whether I can take a photograph with him for my dream memories.

He asked why should he agree to that.

I said 'Because I'm a blogger.' (In my mind, I can't believed I said THIS!)

To my surprise, he said 'Okay, fair enough' and stood right next to me.

I don't trust his friends to take the picture plus I prefer to hold the camera myself so I extended my left hand right in front of us and clicked. I thanked him and walked away happily thinking 'I am sooooooooooo going to post this up on my FB page!'

Then I woke up from my dream.

Arghhhhhhhh.... so for the sake of reliving my dream, the picture sort of look like uhmmm... this?

I don't often received pitch email asking me to review iPad apps with the promo code given along as well, so whenever I do get emails like this, I feel obligated to redeem it and try it out and then share my feedback. When I saw the title of this app, I thought 'OK, this is a unique concept, a house that went on strike? Hmmm... must check this out!' Without further ado, here goes my feedback...

* Title: The House That Went On Strike
* Price: $2.99
* Category: Books
* Released: Jul 23, 2012
* Version: 1.0
* Size: 121 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Jumping Pages Inc.
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later.

Description from the product page:

"This clever, rhyming, musical and interactive original story teaches kids of all ages, and their parents, respect for the house. Legendary House "mom", former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Pat Schroeder narrates, leading a modern day movement of a house and its appliances going on strike against its errant family to win respect!"

* I love this app! It is engaging and interactive! The colored objects on each pages allows us to touch and then see the animations of it!

* I particularly enjoyed the page shown below. It is kinda like we use a torchlight to shine and see through the contents of the house. I used the opportunity to explain to my almost 4 years old boy that the house looks sad as nobody maintains and take care of it. Then I showed him the insides of the house which is a total mess, cobwebs on the ceiling, water spilling in the bathroom, etc etc and told him that we must take care of our house and belongings and to be responsible and clean up our mess.

* I like the storyline where it tells how the house team up with the appliances to go on strike in order to send a message to the family staying in it that they should maintain and take good care of them.

* One thing I would like to recommend is the settings icon at the bottom right to be placed further a bit from the next page navigation icon, other than that, this app is fantabulous!

You can purchase the "The House That Went On Strike" app from the iTunes App Store.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code to redeem the application for free from iTunes Store 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. And if you'd like to read my previous iPad Apps reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My iPad App Reviews"

Last year, I had the opportunity to review "Kids 1st Shape Puzzle" and "Trucks and Things That Go", a both are fun and educational apps for my boy to play with and this time, the same developer approached me again asking whether I would be interested in reviewing their latest app. Without further ado, here goes my feedback...

* Title: Animals Babies and Homes
* Price: $1.99
* Category: Games
* Released: Dec 14, 2012
* Version: 1.0
* Size: 101 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Gil Weiss
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Description from the product page:

"Children delight in spotting familiar animal friends and learning about their different homes; a doghouse, a birdhouse, a mouse hole or a goldfish bowl and babies; bird chicks, cow calf’s, owlet, baby giraffe. These colorful puzzles of Animals Babies and Homes is a challenging and enjoyable game that will develop your child’s ability to visual recall and build up his/ her English and Hebrew vocabulary.

Kids match the pieces correctly on the puzzle to hear the word of an animal and it’s match (home \ mother) duck – pond, owlet – owl, horse – stable, tadpole – frog, cub – lion, camel – desert and much more! Animals Babies and Homes is an eye and ear catching puzzle enhances matching and listening skills. Let your toddler play with it, while enriching their language skills, developing their fine motor skills, and learning names of numerous objects."

* As part of our learning activities, I am always looking for more activities and stuff that I can let my boy try and work on, whether from books or iPad apps, so I am very happy to be able to review this puzzle app as I hope he will learn where animals stay and also the names of the animals when they are babies and grown up.

* I like this app in the sense that I myself get to learn new things too! So yes, learning with my boy at the same time is kinda awesome as well!

Room for Improvement?

* I would prefer to have some buzzer sound if the puzzle is placed incorrectly so that we can know that it is wrong. Maybe that's just my weird preferance.

* There are few occassions where I noticed the puzzle pieces are a bit not sensitive, meaning we need to put it really, really close to the puzzle shapes (shadows) to solve it. Unlike other puzzle apps we reviewed before, I find that these few occassions make us quite frustrated as we have to keep trying and moving the puzzle very slowly to ensure that it is almost fill up the shadow of the animal puzzle in order to solve it.

You can purchase the "Animals Babies and Homes " app from the iTunes App Store.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code to redeem the application for free from iTunes Store 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. And if you'd like to read my previous iPad Apps reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My iPad App Reviews"