Simply having a wonderful Fortnite time !

Pierre will be having a fabulous Christmas this year as he and his sister (Juliette, as Sophie is away studying) are getting a brand new PS4 as a joint gift. Before then, he only had a PS2, so this will be a much welcomed present, especially as this means that he can FINALLY play on Fortnite ! He's been a fan for a while, as all of his friends at school play, but he could only listen to their stories and watch videos on Youtube. I can tell that I won't be hearing a peep out of him once he's started playing ! You may remember that I shared my review of the Fortnite Battle Royale Toys last month and Pierre got a lovely gift from the reviews team for Christmas.

Along with two exclusive Fortnite themed crackers (which apparently have a secret FBRC skin tucked inside), we received a fabulous present to pop under the tree - a Battle Hound and Flytrap playset, which comes with weapons and back bling that can be swapped around with the other play figures that we received.

Happy Christmas, and if you have a little Fortnite fan in your midst ...

Deck the halls with boogie bombs and gliders!

Pew-pew-pew-pew-pew! Pew-pew pew pew !!

Disclosure : We received the Christmas gift and crackers as a gift.

Fab freebies of the week 21/12

Woohoo ! We've made it to the holidays - phew ! I'm really looking forward to finally chilling out and enjoying spending some time with the family. Fingers crossed, we might even get a bit of snow - I haven't made a snowman for years ! Anyway, whatever happens, I hope you all have a lovely time with your families. Here's to some great freebies in 2020 !

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British Gas have 25,000 of these ultra cute Wilbur toys to give away in their Rewards section

Andrew are also giving away 10,000 puppy soft toys, which are equally cute :)

Sign up to get your FREE Letter to Santa kit plus FREE stuff every month

Print out the page for a free can of Coca Cola Energy (valid until 31st December)

Try to grab one of 120 spy kits (or maybe a family trip to NYC if you're REALLY lucky !)

Claire's have hundreds of instant win prizes up for grabs and they have a no purchase entry option

Sign up for a free 4-pack of Red Bull

You may still have time to grab one of 1000 Listerine samples

Grab yourselves a sample of Comme Des Garçons Wonderoud perfume

Request a sample pack from Suu Balm (good for itchy skins or eczema-sufferers)

TEST YOUR BIC® is a programme designed by BIC, to get some of our newest products into your hands in exchange for your honest reviews.

Use code SUPERQUIZ for a free Supergizer bar (add to cart then use the code)

You can see previous weeks' freebie roundups by clicking here but be warned, many of the offers are only valid for a short time. Let me know if any have expired and I'll remove them from the roundup.

You may also like to enter my current giveaways :

Giveaway #735 : Win 2 x Dora And The Lost City of Gold DVDs - closing date 29/12

Giveaway #736 : Win UglyDolls on dvd - closing date 29/12

Book review : Chickenfeed - Minette Walters

I will admit, I was browsing through the titles on my book shelf last week, hunting out the smallest books that needed to be read, so that I could try to catch up on my Goodreads target before the end of the month ! I came across this Quick Reads book which was first published in 2006. I remember that the author Minette Walters appealed to me, but having just checked, I haven't actually read any of her other work.

The story features the sad tale of Elsie Cameron, a young woman from London who is desperate to get married to her boyfriend Norman Thorne, but ends up buried beneath the chicken farm where he lives and works. Elsie is far from perfect, even in the eyes of her parents, but Norman, perhaps from his lack of experience, is happy enough to go along with her life dreams. The chicken farm is planned as a way for him to make enough money to pay for the wedding and future life that they will have together, but things don't go to plan. His feelings for Elsie start to falter too, and he soon sets his eyes on another young local girl.

When Elsie's body is discovered, the policing methods of the time (back in the 1920's) are incapable of proving whether or not Norman was a murderer. He declares his innocence but what will the courts finally decide? As Minette Walters says in her Author's Note, she has shown the way she interprets the police reports and newspaper articles of the time, but nobody really knows for sure what went on in the Crowborough chicken farm.

As suggested by the Quick Reads name, it is a short book, just 121 pages long, and I got through the whole thing in one sitting. It's an interesting case and Minette Walters presents a convincing version of events.

star rating : 4/5

• Paperback: 121 pages
• Publisher: Pan; Main Market edition (3 Mar. 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330440314
• ISBN-13: 978-0330440318
• Product Dimensions: 13 x 0.8 x 19.7 cm

Prestat Vegan Friendly Chocolate review

In just one week, it will be Christmas Day - time is absolutely flying by at the moment ! Whether you're still looking for some last minute Christmas gifts or just stocking up on some extra festive nibbles, you could do far worse than opt for some bars of Prestat chocolate. Apart from tasting great, you also get some extra feel-good vibes from knowing that Prestat is chocolatier to Her Majesty The Queen. I bet they'll be nibbling on a few bars at Buckingham Palace over Christmas as they wait for the Queen's Speech to come on the telly !

Prestat have recently launched a new range of eight chocolate bars, five of which are Vegan Friendly. They are the first Prestat chocolate bars to be made with a couverture created by Domori, Prestat's sister company, widely recognised as being one of the finest chocolate manufacturers in the world. We received a few of the bars to test and were very impressed with the whole lot.

Prestat Dark Chocolate English Mint Crunch 62% is a popular bar, based on a best-selling recipe. The single origin cocoa beans give a subtle hint of coffee and hazelnut, which work very well with the zing of mint that comes through as the chocolate melts. A tasty way to finish off a meal.

Prestat Dark Chocolate with Raspberry 62% is based on an award-winning recipe and was a big hit with the whole family. The fruity zing of raspberries comes through, adding a sweet topnote to the smooth dark chocolate. Very tasty indeed !

Finally, Prestat Dark and Stormy Chocolate 73%, which was named as a tribute to Storm Athill, who designed all the bars' new wrapping, was another big hit. I wasn't sure what we would think of plain dark chocolate, but it is actually lovely and not at all bitter, as I expected.

Prestat's new bars are made with a bespoke Domori range of single origin Côte d'Ivoire couvertures, using a manufacturing process that roasts and mills cacao beans at low temperatures to preserve their aromatics. The lower temperatures and a more natural production technique both help to make the chocolate more environmentally friendly.

The five Vegan Friendly dark chocolate bars also include Dark Chocolate With Roasted Almond & Cocoa Nibs (a brand new recipe) and Dark Chocolate With Pink Himalayan Salt (based on an award-winning recipe). Definitely worth a taste, whether or not you follow a vegan lifestyle !

Each 75g Prestat bar retails for £4.50. 

Stocked at the Prestat shop, 14 Princes Arcade, Piccadilly, London SW1Y 6DS. Also available in John Lewis & Partners, Selfridges, Liberty and Waitrose.

Disclosure : We received the products in order to write an honest review.

Muso DJ, The Music Playlist Party Game review

If you're desperately looking for a Christmas gift that "hits the right note" (apologies for the bad joke !), how about Muso DJ, The Music Playlist Party Game ? It's a game that we had never heard of before, but it's actually great fun and is perfect for setting the mood, maybe on Boxing Day or New Year's Eve.

The game invites you to scroll through your favourite music app, play amazing songs and help others guess the secret playlist category. You can use a music streaming service such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music or even YouTube. This instantly means that it will be a big hit with tweens, teens and twenty-somethings, but the whole family can join in.

When it's your turn to play, grab a playlist card and choose a song or artist that relates to your category. There are some varied choices available and while some are quite simple, others will have you scratching your head. Here are some randomly selected themes to give you an idea - while Sounds of the 80's or Get This Party Started are pretty self explanatory, you may have to be a bit clever to find links to Trains, Planes & Automobiles or The Sun Or The Moon.

The other players will win points if they can guess the artist, the song title and the playlist category. You can also win extra points (and get the party started !) by picking a "Sing" card. The first to 35 points wins the game, but that's easier said than done !

The game includes 150 playlist cards, 100 bonus cards and 20 sing cards and is suitable for players aged 12 years and over.

RRP : £19.99

Available from Amazon, John Lewis, Waterstones and Argos online.

Disclosure : I received the product in order to write an honest review.

Book review : Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer

Last summer, we went on a fabulous vacation to Alaska, staying with a friend at his home in the woods by a lake and checking out some of the fabulous places in the state. It was boiling hot and endlessly sunny - they were in the midst of a fairly unusual heatwave - but even so, looking around at the landscapes, it was easy enough to see how isolated some of these places could be in the midst of winter, or even in the springtime, when the melting snow and ice make the rivers rise.

When Sophie chose the book Into The Wild as one of her titles to study last year, I was intrigued and asked her to pass it on to me when she'd finished. The book follows the real-life story of a young man, Christopher McCandless, fresh out of university, who left his well-to-do family behind in Virginia in 1990 and set off across the States, first in his 1982 Datsun, then hitch-hiking. His journey ended two years later in a decrepit school bus in the Alaskan wilderness. How did he make it there? And how did he die ? Was he ill, under-prepared or just plain unlucky? The author tries to find answers to some of these questions, revealing more about McCandless's travels before he made it to Alaska.

The book started out as a  9,000-word article by Krakauer called "Death of an Innocent", which appeared in the January 1993 issue of Outside. In the book, Krakauer also recounts his own youthful adventures attempting to climb Devils Thumb in Alaska, suggesting that he shared many of McCandless's experiences and motivations. He also explores the tales of other young men who shared McCandless's fate in the wilderness, which show that his unexplained choices appear to be more universal.

I found that the character of McCandless remains very mysterious. The author managed to track down various people who picked him up while hitch-hiking and they frequently had long conversations with him, even giving him some of their own equipment to help him survive, but he seemed poorly equipped and poorly prepared, both mentally and physically. He managed to survive for just over 100 days, which was his initial target, but his attempt to return to civilisation and ultimately his death both seem like complete failures, particularly as he was so close to "the real world". 

I found the book to be interesting but fairly unsatisfying, as I still didn't really know what happened in the Alaskan part of his adventures - maybe nobody will ever really know what happened to him, despite the investigations into the plants he ate and the possible mistakes he made when foraging. Ultimately, it probably doesn't even matter. He has been turned into a modern hero for some or criticised as careless, notably by the Alaskans. 

The book was also adapted into a film of the same name in 2007, directed by Sean Penn with Emile Hirsch starring as McCandless. I think I'd like to see this, as I'm sure it would provide more of the Alaskan wow-factor that I was hoping to find in the book. Or maybe I just need to go back to Alaska for another trip !

star rating : 4/5

RRP : £7.19

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Pan; Main Market edition (7 Sept. 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780330453677
• ISBN-13: 978-0330453677
• ASIN: 033045367X

What's Cooking at The Madhouse? menu plan 2019 week #51

And we're into the final menu plan of the year - woohoo ! This week will be a pleasantly normal week, with no extra meetings and after-school commitments. Thank goodness for that ! We even have Sophie home for the week, so this week's menu plan will be including several specially requested meals ! 

Sunday 

lunch - enchiladas

dinner - sandwiches or toast

Monday 

dinner - pasta carbonara

Tuesday 

dinner - tartiflette (potatoes, bacon & stinky cheese !)

Wednesday 

lunch - saveloys with rice & green beans

dinner - meatballs with tomato sauce & couscous

Thursday 

dinner - sweet & sour chicken & rice

Friday  

dinner - flammekueche/pizza

Saturday 

lunch - our regular Saturday lunchtime fast food trip. Probably McDonalds as usual. (Although we've been to a pizza/pasta restaurant for the past two weeks.)

dinner - sandwiches, quiche & salads

***Click on my Menu Plans tag to see all my other weekly menu plan blogposts.***

Book review : The Sacrificial Man - Ruth Dugdall

The Sacrificial Man is Ruth Dugdall's second novel featuring probation officer Cate Austin in a new case. You can read my review of her first book in the series, The Woman Before Me, here, but this book can be read and enjoyed as a stand-alone novel if you don't know the first one. The author worked as a Probation Officer herself for almost a decade, working in high security prisons with numerous high-risk criminals, and this personal experience gives her work great authenticity and credibility.

In this case, Cate comes up against a young, well-educated, professional woman called Alice Mariani, who is charged with the assisted suicide of a man she met online. Cate must get to know Alice and her motivations, deciding whether it was indeed assisted suicide or something a lot more sinister and suggesting a suitable punishment for her - a prison sentence ? A hospital stay and psychological help ? Was this a one-off or is she a threat to society ?

Just as Cate must do, delving into Alice's past life and the things that led up to the death, the book goes right back to the start, revealing Cate's tricky childhood and adoption. We follow her early years, getting glimpses of events and relationships that may have influenced the woman she grew into. Her relationship with Smith, the victim, is very unconventional but actually seems to make both of them happy. What makes a man want to kill himself? And, perhaps more importantly, what makes a woman want to help him ? Was he really as innocent as he appeared? It's all very complicated, and Cate has her work cut out trying to understand how it all came to pass.

It's an interesting story and I really enjoyed following Cate digging into the background and trying to understand everything. I didn't actually like either of the main characters, as they both seemed too self-important and manipulative, which was a shame. The ending was a surprise and not what I expected, so I won't give the game away - you'll have to read it to find out !

star rating : 4.5/5

RRP : £8.99

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Legend Press (29 Nov. 2018)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1908248009
• ISBN-13: 978-1908248008
• Product Dimensions: 13 x 2 x 19.8 cm

Fab freebies of the week 14/12

Morning all ! So how's everything going? Are you totally chilled about the upcoming festive frenzy or do you still have way too much to get under control ? I'm doing OK, I guess ! I've bought most of the presents (although I'm still waiting for lots of them to arrive in the post !) but luckily, I don't have to organise anything else as we'll be at my mum and dad's so the sweat's off a bit. Phew ! If you need a bit of a break for a while, grab yourself a cuppa and have a quick browse through this week's fab freebies. Enjoy the weekend :)

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Awww I like this one ! Morrisons is handing out free carrots to customers this Christmas 'for Rudolph'

Pet Plan have a cool advent calendar with loads of goodies up for grabs

Claim your free Unicef tote bag

If you have a One Stop Shop nearby, play their augmented reality game and try to win one of 5,000 Maltesers Reindeer, amongst other things

Take the quick Super Savvy Me Christmas survey and try to win a prize

Get some free Disney stickers from Huggies Pull Ups

You could win 1 of 150 Tea India Ayurveda sample packs if you are one of the first people to complete the survey.

Welcome to Secret Readers! Choose a free ebook from our Women´s Fiction selection.

Grab a free sample of Oust Descaler

Win one of 30 Nicky shopping bags

The Insiders are looking for 300 people to trial either Nestlé waters OR Nestlé breakfast cereal.

Keep trying your luck on the Walkers daily entry competition - I've yet to win but I've seen various people winning a box of 36 bags of crisps !

Try your luck at Molton Brown's festive bauble game too

Why join the Pukka Collective? Receive our free welcome pack, which includes eight Pukka organic tea sachets (while stocks last)

You can see previous weeks' freebie roundups by clicking here but be warned, many of the offers are only valid for a short time. Let me know if any have expired and I'll remove them from the roundup.

You may also like to enter my current giveaways :

Giveaway #734 : Win 2 x The Amazing Mr Blunden Blu-rays - closing date 16/12

Giveaway #735 : Win 2 x Dora And The Lost City of Gold DVDs - closing date 29/12

Giveaway #736 : Win UglyDolls on dvd - closing date 29/12

Get ready for Playmobil : The Movie !

This week, the postman dropped us off a fabulous bundle of goodies to celebrate the release of Playmobil : The Movie on DVD. 

This animated action adventure follows a trio of fun characters caught up in an exciting adventure that is sure to appeal to all kids. When her younger brother Charlie unexpectedly disappears into the magical, animated universe of Playmobil, unprepared Marla (Anya Taylor-Joy) must go on a quest of a lifetime to bring him home. She teams up with smooth-talking food truck driver Del (Jim Gaffigan) and the dashing and charismatic secret agent Rex Dasher (Daniel Radcliffe), along with other more unlikely new friends, including a wholehearted misfit robot and an extravagant fairy-godmother. Through their vibrant adventure, tracking down the villainous Emperor Maximus, Marla and Charlie realise that no matter how life plays out, you can achieve anything when you believe in yourself.

We received a fabulous package of accompanying merchandise, some of which has been sneaked away to reappear in Christmas stockings very soon !

I love the Playmobil figures with all their detailed accessories and I may have to pinch the Rex Dasher keyring myself !

The T-shirt is definitely more Pierre's size though.

 And the sticker book is sure to be a big hit too. We haven't collected stickers for ages, so I am sure Pierre will love it.

Looking outside at the wind and rain, I'm actually thinking this weekend may be calling for a DVD day, all sitting under a blanket tucked up in onesies, nibbling on a bowl of popcorn. Sounds like bliss !

Disclosure : We received the DVD and associated merchandise.