Play with your food!
We are big fans of crisps (understatement) – when we watch Doctor Who we always have crisps as that is The Law. But El does not generally get crisps in her lunchbox as Jae knows that she would rather have an apple or some tasty bark. Mmmm bark.
But still, we have been hard at work testing out a new crisp-type snack from Walkers.
We were sent a cute & cuddly toy monkey who was clutching a bag of beef flavour Hoops and Crosses. However, since we are vegetarian we didn’t fancy the beef flavour (though it turns out they are actually suitable for veggies – how does that work?). Jae toddled off to the supermarket and bought some of the salt & vinegar flavour which cost £1.80 for a multipack of 6. We love salt and vinegar. Yum nom nom.
The reason Jae doesn’t put crisps in lunchboxes every day is mainly because she thinks they’re too salty. Crisps once or twice a week is OK, but any more than that she’s not keen on. El disagrees but Jae won’t listen to her that crisps are what they’re on about when they say 5 a day.
Nutritional info:
Each individual packet of Salt & Vinegar Hoops and Crosses contains:
- 84 calories
- 3.7g of fat
- 0.7g of sugar
- 0.3g of salt (5% of an adult’s daily amount – children’s daily maximum amount of salt varies and is lower than an adult’s)
We also suspect that the small size of these packs probably helps the nutritional aspect. How unhealthy can you get when there’s only 18 grams in there? We quite like that the bags are small, it’s a bit healthier than those mega ‘grab bags’ you can get. Here’s the bag and what you get in it:
This shows you the packet on the left and on the right are the contents.
Taste and texture-wise they’re similar to Monster Munch. As a wholegrain product we didn’t notice anything different to other non-wholegrain crispy-type snacks.
We like the fact that they are baked rather than fried.
When El had a packet in her bag one day it made her super happy! They were quite puffy which was nice as it meant that although there probably wasn’t a lot it felt like there was more. There weren’t so many that it was unhealthy but El didn’t feel cheated of crisps. Plus they didn’t crumble in the bag which means that they were WHOLE! They were satisfying and for once El didn’t feel a bit left out at break time because most of her friends have crisps everyday.
Disclosure: We were sent a packet of Hoops & Crosses and will be compensated for this post
El & Jae
Fried, not baked.
It’s the pits! But treat them kindly…
Make no mistake – we’re talking about stinky pits, rancid arm caves, skanky hollows, whatever you want to call them.
Personal hygiene is very important, which is why we recommend that you HAVE A WASH. Don’t wait until you feel smelly because by then it’s probably too late.
But if you are a kid then you probably want to feel fresh but not necessarily with the aid of chemicals. But there isn’t much choice for natural teen de-stinkifiers, even in Brighton where we live, where everything is made of knitted lentils.
So we were pleased to be asked to try a new range of natural deodorants for kids which go by the lovely name of Keep it Kind. They are for pongy kids aged 11-14.
El was sent the spray called Missy for girls (there’s also Blast for boys in the range) and Fresh Kidz which is a unisex roll on. She’s been putting them through their paces during heavy duty PE classes.
The good thing about this range is that they aren’t tested on animals (other than kids) and are free from aluminium, parabens and alcohol. Fresh Kidz is also fragrance free. They contain natural ingredients specially for younger skins and won’t mark your clothes like some deodorants can.
The packaging is designed to look nice in your bag.
El is a deodorant user (thank god) and in comparison Keep it Kind worked very well. Also it was fun to spray Missy around like in an advert. Jae thought that Missy smelt like a garden. El wanted to know why Jae was using her deodorant. Hmmmm…….
Keep it Kind deodorants for tweens and teens are available now from Boots priced around £3.
El & Jae
Well-washed
El meets Stephen Fry and his yellow tights
Do you remember when El live blogged Stephen Fry’s Gadget Man (I don’t think anyone could forget it)? Well on her birthday El had the ultimate Stephen Fry experience. First of all she got a bunch of Stephen Fry audio books.
Then she was given the ultimate Stephen Fry-related gift – tickets to see the great man himself live on stage in Twelfth Night.
Here is a picture. If you look up on the right hand side you can see El.
One of El’s favourite bits was when they first went in and some of the cast (Stephen Fry included) were getting their make up and costume done on the stage (as seen in the photo).
It was an absolutely amazing play and Stephen Fry was truly astounding, he was flabghastinglyaboslutelyterrifichewassogooditmademyeyespop! (Yes, I know that’s not word!) They put him in box at one point and he wore some magnificent yellow stockings. He was sososososososososo good!
It was very funny when Olivia was on the stage because the whole plot point depended on her being this beautiful girl that everyone falls in love with but because she was being played by a man she was a very ugly girl (although the actor who played her was not an ugly man).
The only other actor El had heard of was Barty Crouch Snr (can’t remember his real name). You know, he was in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And he was the cyber controller in that episode of Dr Who. He is a very famous stage actor but El only knows him from these things.
In conclusion Stephen Fry was amazing hewasbetterthananyoneheisagodtomeomgheWASmalvoliohewastransformedmylifeiscomplete!
And if you get a chance to see him then you MUST go. Also Shakespeare AMAZING! People who think he’s boring just haven’t seen the light yet!
El and Jae
Makingwordsup
Guess how much we love you?
We were recently asked if we’d like to review personalised valentines cakes.
So who could we get a personalised message for? Who do we love with all our hearts, more than anything? Who is our special valentine?
Why, it’s you, dear readers. This is how much we love you, expressed via cake:
This is a letterbox cake from Baker Days. It is quite a small cake, but then if it was too big it wouldn’t fit in the letterbox. We thought it was really cute!
There are lots of different flavours of cake – we tried the chocolate and it was mega yummy. The cakes are pretty dinky so it just makes 4 slices so alas there isn’t any left for you dear readers. But we thought of you when we were eating it, we really did!
It was very easy to add in the personalisation on the website and you can see how your cake will look before you order. There were loads of different designs for Valentine cakes, you can even upload your own photo if you want to eat somebody’s face.
The only thing we would add on the website would be a search box. We wanted to search for turtle-themed cakes for Eye but it was not possible to do this. We chose the owly design because we thought it was cute and we liked to think the owls were a bit like us. 
The cake comes really well packaged inside a padded cake tin (which you can keep) packed inside a sturdy box. We thought the cake might come bashed and squashed but it was perfect. So you can send it to your love even if they are far far away in Narnia and the cake will arrive nice and fine.
Personalised letterbox Valentine’s cakes from Baker Days are available now, priced from £14.99 including postage. We were sent this one free of charge to review.
But sorry readers, for not saving you any cake. We wanted to give you some but this magical unicorn ate it. Apart from the bits we ate.
El & Jae
Big hearted
Our greatest hits – packed with nutritious goodness
Eljae is now a year old! It’s grown from being a baby blog and is now going to be a terrible toddler. But Jae wrote a book about toddlers so we think we can cope.
We’ve been looking back over the last year to see which posts were the most popular.
Number one by a long way is Reasons why homework should be banned – this has had thousands of hits and is on page 1 of Google for that phrase, proving once and for all that homework is evil. Unfortunately El’s teachers haven’t listened.
Number two is the main home page which makes sense really as it’s the first page you come to. PROOF THAT YOU GUYS LIKE US FOR US! 
Next most popular is our list of Top 10 cool kid bloggers. We really like this post and we hope that we have introduced many people to new blogs.
Jae’s favourite posts of the year are the ones where El reads books in all kinds of weird places. None of this is staged, THIS IS WHAT EL IS REALLY LIKE (she feels a little frightened if she ventures out of the house without a book).
Jae also likes the post about What to say if someone at school calls you a nerd because it’s good advice.
El’s favourite posts have also been the extreme reading ones but she also really likes the things that make you go lol post because it’s funny and whenever she watches the videos she gets a happy.
We have been asked to review a few things which is cool but we won’t be doing too many of those unless it is to tell you about something that is super super fun.
Most of all we like writing random stuff that nobody else does. There are millions of words on the internet but you can still be an individual. Please stay and read our blog in 2013 if you like being an individual too. And where else are you going to hear about beards and moustaches that are not beards and moustaches?
El dreams up new blog posts
In the year to come we intend to write about such things as moustache sandwiches, more Dennis the cat and what to expect when the aliens arrive.
El & Jae
Keep Calm and Blog On
2012 – an extremely Eljae year
El and Jae say Happy New Year
We’re just squeezing in a last post as 2012 draws to a close.
So – how was it for you? Did you enjoy the Olympics? Did you do Gangnam Style? Did the rain fall on your lovely head?
This is what we liked about 2012 (not necessarily in order):
1. The royal pregnancy being announced.
El is very into the royal family as she considers them to be history in the making (El is into history). When she heard about it El did a happy dance. We look forward to seeing the baby in 2013. (Will it be a boy or girl?)
2. Diamond Jubilee
60 years on the throne! How do we celebrate? Draw some boats in the rain. Marvellous!
3. Olympics
Other than getting to watch a bit live and the opening and closing ceremonies El was a bit ‘whatever’ about the whole thing. She’s not that sporty. We just put it in because the Queen parachuted out a helicopter. Jae enjoyed it all more than she expected to.
4. The aliens landing
Only Jae really knows about this and no one believes her. But you will in 2013.
All in all it’s been a good year. And now 2012 is ending and El is now a teenager. Will we get out of it alive???????
Happy New Year, we love you!!!!
El and Jae
New year, same old bloggers
These boots were made for Eljae
How are your feet in this frosty weather? Are they chilly and frostbitten or toasty warm? El has been experiencing extra toastiness in the feet direction, ever since shoe company Barratts invited her to review their range.
El in Boots
We had heard of Barratts, but somehow the shops have managed to pass us by, even though apparently there is one in the centre of Brighton.
The junior girls section has a few styles with low heels, and lots of flatter heeled boots and shoes which of course are much better for stomping about.
Every girl, young or old, needs a decent pair of stompy boots.
El chose these Biker Boots with a buckle trim. The regular price is £28, but at the time we ordered there was 30% off everything which put them down to under £20.
Right there’s still 30% off everything and free delivery for orders over £30 (don’t know when this is ending), so if you know your size then it definitely pays to order online.
El thought that the boots were completely gorgeous and they are. They’re really lovely. Lovely, lovely completely amazing! Yaaaaay!!! Seriously they look AMAZING!!! And feel super comfy to wear.
They’re manmade (not leather) and the inside of the boots has a cosy fleecy feel. For some reason the design makes El’s feet look smaller than they really are (which freaked El out)!
Our only slight quibble is that delivery wasn’t particularly fast(though to be fair, quicker than promised) - we opted for the standard delivery which promised to arrive in 7 days, but it actually took 6 days. Jae placed the order on the Monday morning and El’s boots arrived on Saturday afternoon. You can pay for faster delivery but it’s quite pricey at £5.50.
Also we noticed that the company doesn’t offer free returns, which many online retailers do. You can still return shoes if you don’t like them, but you’ll have to pay the postage (unless there’s a fault).
But all in all we give a big thumbs (and toes) up to Barratts’ boots. Thank you to Barratts for sending us these boots to review and for saving El from the horror of unfashionable footwear.
El and Jae
Stompin’ up a storm
Fun, fun, fun!
Can you guess where is one of El’s favourite places on earth?
Could it be the library, a big bookshop or a sweet shop that’s having a half price sale?
Actually it’s all of those, but there is one more to add to the list – Lush!
Lush is an amazing shop to visit – full of delicious smells and staff who want to be your best friend, even if you’re not buying anything.
So it was a lovely jubbly day when Lush offered to send us a new product to 
review. And the great thing is that the new product is called Fun, and we love fun even more than we love Lush.
The Lushinators sent us 3 portions of Fun, so we passed one on to our friend and fellow blogger Mim, and you can see her review over here at Mim’s Review.
So what is this funny product? The best way to describe it is sort of like play doh crossed with soap.
You can take a chunk of it and play with it, squish it into shapes, then use it to wash yourself. And not just yourself – you can use it to wash your hair or clothes as well.
El used a little on a small stain on the leggings she was intending to wear and it worked well on the fabric with some water to remove the stain in time. It would be useful if you find muck on clothes you have set your heart on wearing and will need in 10 mins.
It comes in yummy fragrances, and once you’ve used it then you will too. If you have ever walked within 5 meters of a Lush shop you will know what we’re talking about. And so will your bathroom. Each bar of Fun costs £5 but you only need a little bit so it will last a long time.
It comes in lots of different colours including blue, green and the red and yellow you can see here.
It doesn’t mould as well when wet and it doesn’t lather well but El has a kind of net sponge that really helps lather up soaps so that wasn’t a problem for us.
10p from every sale goes to help children in Fukushima affected by the Japanese earthquake.
We recommend you get some FUN in your life!
El and Jae
Fun times!
Gifts for…everybody, really
You may have noticed that there is a gifting season coming up. Actually, double gifting if your name is El and you have a birthday in the same week.
So perfect timing for us to be asked to try out the Gifts for the Girls website.
But we are not particularly girly girls. El is a long way from being a pinky princess and Jae gets twitchy if she’s wearing less than 3 items of black clothing. We like gadgets and practical stuff, we like toys and we don’t like useless fluffiness (unless on kittens – KITTENS RULE!).
So could Gifts for the Girls deliver to very particular girls/women like us?
Well, you can’t fault them on choice. There are over 3,000 gifts on the site, including lots of things under £10, so you could get a big chunk of your Christmas shopping done at once.
We were invited to choose two gifts up to the value of £40 and after a lot of chin scratching and clickety clicking this is what we went for:
Rotary Motorised Coin Sorter (RRP £24.99)
This is the Rolls Royce of money boxes. You put your change in the top and it automatically sorts it out for you. The tubes of coins swing out like arms so you can extract your sorted loot. It’s very simple but totally hypnotic. Jae has a change box where she saves up pennies for Christmas, and this sorted them out in seconds.
We loved this item, (there was somthing highly amusing about it – Jae was giggling like a 5 year old) but it wasn’t perfect – the coins got stuck a few times and we had to lever off the top to get it going again. It wasn’t entirely accurate (why is that 1p in the 20p tube? Why?! If that was true I would be 19p RICHER!) Also batteries aren’t included, so you’ll have to supply two C sized batteries. And occasionally coins have disappeared in there that didn’t resurface till the next time we used it.
So not a 100% success although we did like it a lot and would be pleased to receive this as a gift (if we didn’t already have one).
We also ordered the Make Your Own Lip Balm kit. (RRP £14.99)
This is something which you could either give as a gift in itself, or use it to make 4 further gifts. It contains (almost) all you need to make 4 lip balms – all you have to add is a little sunflower oil. There are also gift bags and ribbon to make your lip balms look good.
The instructions are very clear and easy to follow – it’s basically a process of melting the ingredients together. It needs adult supervision and has the potential to be messy but really it’s quite simple and fun to do.
El ADORED this, it was fun to make and the lip balms were extremely moisturising (MOIST! What a pleasing word!) and smelt of orange but not too strongly. It made a great gift and there is something oddly satisfying about using lip balm you have made yourself.
We know that girls aged around 12 can be hard to buy for, but we think either of these would be a good choice for the tweenager in your life.
The Details
Gifts for the Girls has over 3,000 gifts. We found the site easy to navigate – we didn’t have to wait ages for pages to load. Yes there is a fair amount of pink stuff, but to be fair a lot of girls like that stuff and you might have to buy a present for them. Plus there is also a good selection gadgets, geeky stuff and a talking toilet roll holder. (Who DOESN’T need one of those? You can record your own message. Imagine the comedy possibilities?!)
The site says they’ve been trading for over 23 years and have over 1 million satisfied customers. Delivery costs from £4.99 (overseas delivery is more) and orders in most cases arrive within 5 days.
What gifts are you buying for the girls in your life this Christmas? Leave a comment, we won’t tell.
El and Jae
Thank you very much
Horrible Histories – now it’s a comic
We LOVE Horrible Histories in our house – the books, the TV show and even the stage show. So when we heard it was going to be made into a comic we were super excited. Even more so when Jae said she would buy it.
But could we find it in a shop to buy? Horribly, no.
The first issue came out just before half term and we looked EVERYWHERE for it. Well OK not quite everywhere but definitely lots of shops in Brighton, Norfolk, Wales and any service stations in between.
But it was nowhere to be found – perhaps all the Horrible Histories fans had got there first.
So we were superextracallifragically chuffed when the PR for the Horrible Histories comic got in touch and offered to send us a copy
to review.
So assuming you can get your hands on a copy, what can you expect from the Horrible Histories comic?
First of all there is a suitably horrible gift with every copy – we had a yucky rat that made Jae squeal.
It was filled to the brim with facts (did you know that in 1535 Henry VIII hung drawn and quatered three monks?), pictures (drawn by the amazing Martin Brown), quizzes (according to Which Mean Queen Are You? El is Queen Elizabeth I and Jae is Queen Victoria) and even song lyrics (Born to ruuule over yooooou….)!
We all completely love it and would definitely recommend it to any Horrible Histories fan.
Horrible Histories Magazine is out every 4 weeks priced £2.99. Each issue contains a free horrible gift and loads of horrible stickers.
El and Jae
Hearting the Horrible
