MixPixie.com Personalised CDs

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I don’t know about you, but back the day, I was all about the mix-tape.  My early efforts consisted of diligently sitting in my room listening to The Pepsi Chart Show on a Sunday night, index finger poised over the record button, ready to press down for each song I liked as it came on.  Of course the trick was always to try to record a minimal amount of the DJ talking over the track, whilst still getting enough of the track down on tape.  Fun times.  So when I was approached by online personalised CD store MixPixie.com to review their site and product, I thought it was a genius idea and was delighted to give it a try.

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MixPixie.com very kindly sent me two CDs, which they’d compiled on my behalf – with no input from me at all essentially – and I have to say, they did rather a good job.

IMG_3220The first is Songs for the Cox Family (… that’s us!) and is a fun combo of nursery rhymes and kids’ movie soundtracks, so Old Macdonald Had a Farm and Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, are on there alongside You’ve Got a Friend in Me (Toy Story) and Hakuna Matata (The Lion King).  Well, to say it’s gone down a storm with Allegra would be an understatement.  Basically she LOVES it and every time we now get into the car she DEMANDS that we put it on and there she’ll be in the backseat, singing along at the top of her voice.  It’s amazing actually that she’s getting very good at mastering the lyrics to many of the songs (yes, that’s how many times we’ve played it in the last 3-weeks since it arrived!) and it’s hilarious to hear her singing “when I was a young warthooooooooooog!” “and OH the SHHHHHHAME” from Hakuna Matata:  comedy moments all round!

IMG_3221The second CD we received is rather appropriately entitled “Keep Calm And Carry On Bianca” (I’m trying…. trust me!) and is a more eclectic mix of songs for the grown-ups.  There’s a couple of classical numbers on there, I rather enjoy listening to Le Onde – Ludovico Einaudi, which I wasn’t familiar with before receiving this CD but find rather calming to have on once Allegra has passed out from over-exertion of singing along to Justin Fletcher on the other CD.  There are some West End hits (not so much my bag), some pop classics from Stevie Wonder (always a winner) and Angels by Robbie Williams is on there too, and then there are some more up-to-date numbers like the very lovely Just the Way You Are by Bruno Mars (love that), Greatest Day by Take That (gotta love a bit of TT), and One Day Like This by Elbow, which is a great song to listen to in the car when you’re bombing driving carefully along the motorway.

MixPixie also gave us a 20% off voucher, so I decided to set to work to put together a CD for Allegra with 10 of her favourite songs right now.  She is going to LOVE it, I can hardly wait for her to get her hands on it and for us to get it onto the CD player.  So what’s on it you ask? – well, check out the track-list below:

  1. Candy, Robbie Williams
  2. One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks), One Direction
  3. I Like To Move It Move It from Madagascar
  4. Hakuna Matata, The Lion King
  5. Live While We’re Young, One Direction
  6. Beauty & The Beast, Disney Soundtrack
  7. Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Toes
  8. Under The Sea, Little Mermaid
  9. What Makes You Beautiful, One Direction
  10. The Duck Song (Lemonade Stand), Bryant Oden

Yes.  Quite a mixture.  But all songs that she requests me to sing on a daily basis like I’m her personal jukebox.  Songs that we sing when she’s having her bath, or when we’re reading one her of many Disney story books or when we’re just having a dance around the living room.  And now, we can pop on the CD and have the songs ready to rock whenever we like (without me fumbling about on YouTube or just trying to sing them myself!).

She is going to LOVE this CD.  Seriously, love it!  And I’ve personalised it with a couple of pics of her too on this rather sweet rainbow themed album cover.

So yes, I highly recommend you check out MixPixie.com because it’s a great fun idea and would make for a fab gift for someone.  You can choose an album cover design from the range of designs they have, personalise it with your own wording and in some cases own photos, then you can build your track-list of up to 10 songs.  There are over 14 million songs to choose from, so you’re pretty much guaranteed they’ll have what you’re looking for!  A simple idea that’s really personal and affordable too.  Genius.

Disclosure:  MixPixie.com sent us two free CDs for the purposes of this review and a 20% off voucher for us to create our own CD, which I spent £14.91 on including P&P.  All opinions are honest and my own.

Baking Cupcakes for World Baking Day

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Today is World Baking Day apparently, who knew?!  So in honour of this very good excuse to make and eat cakes, myself and little Miss Allegra spent some time in the kitchen trying our hand at some cupcakes.  Yum.

IMG_3157Now, what I probably should mention is that we had somewhat of a head-start on the cupcakes or rather a bit of a cheat, as we were armed with Morrisons’ Confetti Cupcake Kit:  pretty much all you need in a box to create the perfect cupcakes, just add 1 egg and 60mls of milk, oh and a bit of butter for the icing is required, and that’s pretty much it.  Everything else is in the box.

Given how baking with my toddler can be a little on the stressful side (she refuses to accept that she can’t eat cake mix no matter how many times I warn her of the dangers of consuming raw egg…!), I’m actually a bit of a fan of these kits as they tend to be straight-forward to use and mean we can get in and out of the baking/kitchen experience fairly speedily!  However, I’ve had mixed results with them and the cakes have never really turned out all that brilliantly.  This was the first time I’d used a kit from Morrisons though, so I approached with an open mind (as I do in all cake situations).

So, we grabbed the box:

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We put the cake mix in a bowl and added an egg and the milk:

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We mixed it up and then we added the confetti sprinkles and mixed those in too.

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We baked them in the oven for 15 minutes, then took them out to cool.  Then we (well, truth be told, I… Allegra had more or less lost interest by this point…) mixed the icing with the butter and then Allegra – assisted by Richmond Daddy – decorated the 6 cupcakes we had baked:

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And then they were done!

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Then we scoffed them after our dinner!  YUM!!

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Honestly, they were DEEEEEEEE-LICIOUS as Miss Allegra would say (and did).  Light and fluffy, the sponge was gorgeous and the butter icing was really really yummy.  In fact, as a treat I let Allegra oversee the most important part of any cake baking… licking the spoon with the icing on it!

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Happy World Baking Day!

Disclosure:  We were sent a Morrisons’ Home Baking Confetti Cupcake kit (RRP £1.59) for the purposes of this review but all opinions are honest and our own.

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Fun at the Richmond May Fair

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Last Saturday, despite the howling and blustery wind and the frequent downpours of rain, we took ourselves off to Richmond Green to enjoy the Richmond May Fair.  It was rather unfortunate that on arrival the heavens opened and despite our best efforts to shelter under some flapping canvas by a cramped stand selling its wares on behalf of a local charity, we got pretty drenched… Not the best of beginnings.  But anyway, spirits a little dampened but not entirely washed out, once the rain had cleared up and the skies brightened a little, we set about enjoying what is a lovely annual local event.

We’ve brought Allegra for the past couple of years actually, but up until now she’s really been a bit young to enjoy it properly but this year was very different.  She really got stuck in!

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She loved watching all the various local children performing different kinds of dance routines on the main stage (this makes it sound like Glastonbury, it’s not, but it does have a “main stage”!) and of course she was very keen to try out the array of snacks on offer throughout the fair, but the main things that caught her eye and really thrilled her to bits where the old-fashioned fairground rides, which she dragged Richmond Daddy onto more than once….

Whizzing down the helter-skelter with Daddy:

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Having fun on the carousel:

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Driving a bus:

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She did also go on her current most favourite thing in the world ever…. the Bouncy Castle! But I didn’t capture any photos of that because I was too busy watching her like a hawk, praying she wasn’t going to get her teeth knocked out by some 12-year old lanky boy who really seemed far too big to be going on a bouncy castle, and counting the seconds until her 5-minutes on there was up!

A fun day despite the weather.  Here’s hoping for sunshine next May though!