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Friday, August 4, 2006

The Blue Balloon - A Magical BIG Adventure

Mick Inkpen has to be one of the most popular authors when it comes to young childrens books. His most famous and popular creation so far has to be Kipper The Dog. Many of his Kipper stories have been shown on TV and can be bought on DVD too. Other Mick Inkpen books include such titles as Penguin Small, Bear, Billy's Beetle, The Great Pet Sale and The Blue Balloon. The Blue Balloon is the book which i've chosen to review.

The Blue Balloon, although not specifically a book about Kipper The Dog, features Kipper within the story which is what prompted me to purchase this. My Son has always been a fan of Kipper and avidly watches the TV programmes and enjoys watching the Kipper Classic Collection dvd time and time again. He also already possessed two Kipper books, Kippers Sunny Day and Kipper And The Treehouse, so it seemed logical to introduce him to The Blue Balloon. Initially we purchased the hardback version from the local car boot sale for a mere 20p which turned out to be one of the best 20 pences ever spent.

The books storyline is pretty simple but also magical and fun. One day Kipper finds a soggy blue balloon in the garden. He gives this soggy blue balloon to his little boy 'owner' and together they discover this particular balloon has 'strange and wonderful powers'. This blue balloon is 'indestructible'. When blown up it grows 'bigger and bigger and bigger'. It 'never ever bursts, never ever'. It can become invisible and even takes them for a fly up to the moon and back.

Mick Inkpen really seems to know how to capture the imagination of children and produce timeless classics again and again. The Blue Balloon is probably my favourite of all his books because it's such a fun read. Regardless of the fact this is a young childrens book I also found it quite enthralling at first, and even after reading it to my Son Jake for the 30th time I wasn't tearing my hair out like with so many other books.

The words and sentences within the book are easy for youngsters to understand yet at the same time Mick Inkpen introduces children to new words. What I especially like about Mick Inkpen is he seems to understand children and he understands how to communicate with them. The fact he didn't start writing childrens books until he had young children himself is probably the main reason he's so good at getting onto their level whereas so many other childrens authors appear to know zilch about the language of children. When Mick introduces a new word such as 'indestructible' he accompanies it with a picture which explains what the word means. In fact throughout this book everything is cleverly explained through vibrant and simple yet descriptive pictures. Many of his books are illustrated by his friend Nick Butterworth but this particular book must have been illustrated by Mick Inkpen himself as there's no mention of anyone elses imput.

Another point i'd like to mention about the illustrations is the uniqueness regarding the way some of the pages magically enlarge. For example when the balloon is blown up and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, the page unfolds and opens out until a gigantic picture of a blue balloon appears. It's these little touches which my Son loves the most as I can tell by Jakes voice getting louder each time he says "bigger and bigger" at the same time as he unfolds the page. Unfortunately the unfolding large pictures do have a tendancy to become ripped when little fingers open them up in an excited manner. It's nothing a bit of cellotape can't fix though.

This is a perfect bedtime story book as it's fairly short at around 24 pages. It's also good for early readers as the words are printed large and clear, the sentences are small and words are explained through pictures. I'd highly recommend The Blue Balloon for ages 2 and above, all children will no doubt love it just like my Son does. In fact he loves it so much I bought him a brand new paperback version from the school book club and sent the hardback version to his Grandmas so she too could share in the delights of The Blue Balloon. At this stage in time both myself, my Son Jake and his Grandma have read it so many times we've memorised the entire book and can read it from start to finish without even having it in front of us. Needless to say i'm very impressed with Jakes memory as it was partly down to him and his constant need to repete phrases which made me memorise the entire book too.

If you're interested in purchasing this book it can cost around £5/£7 depending on where you buy it. Amazon have it on special offer for £5.59 right now http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340757388/202-4703076-0647005 It works out much cheaper to buy from places such as eBay and especially car boot sales where it'll cost you a fraction of the retail price.

The Blue Balloon - A Magical BIG Adventure

Cookie Monster - C Is For Cookie, Ooh Yeah!

I'm as guilty as the next parent for spoiling my Son. When he's been a good boy (for once) I like to treat him to a little suprise. The treats are usually a 10p bar of choccie or a 10p pack of crisps but sometimes when i'm feeling a bit flush I do like to buy him a proper treat.

Just over a year ago on one of my suprise buying missions I came across the most fantastic toy i'd ever seen. It was a Fisher Price 'Me So Hungry' Talking Cookie Monster. WOW!!!! I remembered the Cookie Monster from my childhood so I was instantly drawn towards it and stood there playing with it like a child possessed in the middle of the shop. Reduced from £19.99 to £9.99 it was a bargain and as it was the last one in the shop I just HAD to have it.

What is the Fisher Price Me So Hungry Talking Cookie Monster ?
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This Cookie Monster is a glove puppet which stands at approximately 40cm tall. You put your hand inside the back of Cookie and squeeze his mouth together to hear lots of different phrases. The cookie in Cookies right hand has a sensor in it so as you put it in Cookies mouth he says even more phrases. The phrases are hilarious and if that isn't enough to entertain you in his left hand is another sensor which once pressed you can listen to Cookie sing the Cookie Song.

Below i've listed some of Cookies phrases for you:-

"More cookies please"
"Oh, me so hungry"
"Me tummy is empty"
"Me so full but me could always eat one more"
"Oh boy oh boy oh boy"
"Me think me had most cookies ever"
" Buuuuuuuurrrpppp"

And the Cookie Song goes like this:-

C is for cookie that's good enough for me
C is for cookie that's good enough for me
C is for cookie that's good enough for me
OH cookie cookie cookie starts with C, Yeah!!!!

Was it worth the money?
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Oh yes!!!! Cookie Monster was our little showpiece at home for quite a while. Whenever someone came to visit (adult visitors that is) we loved to get Cookie out and he never failed to make everyone chuckle. Everyone (adult) loved it and wanted one too. It has to be one of the best toys we've bought, although I don't think my Son would agree. The only downside I can think of is the fact you can't machine wash him due to the electrics inside. All you can do is dab him with a damp cloth and hope he doesn't get too mucky. Keep sticky fingers, drinks and everything else away from him otherwise you could end up with a mucky Cookie.

So what does my Son think about it then?
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Not a lot to be honest. When we first gave Cookie to him he looked at it rather funnily and then backed away and hid behind the sofa. Mmmmm, maybe it wasn't such a good idea for a toy seem as he's never heard of or seen the Cookie Monster before. Even after having Cookie for a few months it was still being ignored by him. Oh well, at least me and Hubby and visitors got the monies worth out of it.

Would I recommend Cookie and where can you buy him?
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I would actually recommend Cookie for kids though it's probably better to let them have a hold and play with it before forking out money. For adults it's definitely a little party piece.

We bought our Cookie from Woolworths though he's incredibly hard to find these days. Cookie has turned into a bit of a collectors item. Best place to look is at specialised toy stores or collectables sites and auction sites on the internet. Unfortunately due to the rarity of Cookie the price has jumped right up. I sold Cookie a short while ago on eBay for £32.50 which was a fantastic profit. Why did I sell him if I loved him so much? Well because I love money even more *grin*. eBay prices can vary between £10 and £35 so keep a watch out and grab yourself a fabulously entertaining bargain. Watch out at carboot sales too. Not many owners of Cookie will know about the price hike so you could possibly get your mits on him for just a few pounds.

Cookie Monster - C Is For Cookie, Ooh Yeah!

Zebra's Stripes - Gaby Goldsack

Whilst on holiday we were browsing round the shops in Llandudno one cold wet miserable day when we happened to come across Poundstretchers. Poundstretchers had a sale on and they had some childrens books reduced, just the thing to keep our Son entertained in the miserable holiday weather. One particular selection caught my eye - the selection consisted of 4 books which were all part of the Furry Tale series. Now we didn't want to be spending too much money on Jake and as the books were to be bought seperately at a cost of £1.90 each (reduced from £3) we decided to just buy him one. We handed Jake the books and let him choose himself - would it be Zebras Stripes? Lions Mane? Tigers Tale? or Elephants Trunk?..........................He chose Zebras Stripes and insisted on carrying it to the till himself so we could pay for it.

Zebras Stripes is a great little book consisting of only a few short pages. The short story is written as a poem and is really fun to read, even from an adults point of view. The front page of the book has a colourful picture of a Zebra which comes complete with a 'touch and feel' furry mane. It is this 'touch and feel' furry mane which initially attracted us to the books as Jake likes to read things which he can interact with and take part in.

On each of the pages are a number of different animals all brightly coloured which Jake loves pointing out and repeating the names of and copying the sounds of. On one of the pages the animals are playing hide and seek and it's upto the reader to try to spot where each animal is hiding.

I've got to admit there's not actually much to this book. It only has ten pages and not much wording, but it's the pictures and the interaction between adult and child which makes this appeal to kiddies. Basically it's up to the parent to elaborate on the book, point things out, teach the child the names and sounds of the animals etc...........But that's the kind of books I tend to buy for Jake. I don't like huge long stories, they can be darn tedious reading, but short stories like this allow for *me* as the parent to almost make up the story as I go along which i'm hoping Jake will pick up on and use his imagination himself.

As this is written in the form of a poem/rhyme it's a lot more jolly to read than his tedious Thomas The Tank Engine ones (which I used to love reading him but he's overdone them now) As an example as to how this book is written i'll give you the first two pages of this book - "Zebra has a host of friends of every shape and size. So if they all look different, it's really no suprise"................................Yes that was two pages worth, so you see it's a really short book which isn't too tasking to read.

As Jake loved this book so much we were really keen on buying him the rest of the collection but our holiday was at an end so we were unable to go back to the shop to buy the rest. So, a few days after getting home I trotted down to Doncasters own Poundstretcher to see if they also had the books. Imagine Jakes delight when he saw that they did!! Jakey is now the proud owner of the entire collection which he keeps beside his bed as he likes to have them read to him as bedtime stories.

Other information
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These books are written by Gaby Goldsack and the wonderfully bright pictures are illustrated by Charlie-Anne Turner. To be honest i'd not seen or heard of any of these books before buying them but the money was well spent. I would recommend this book/series to be suitable for the 18 months to 4 years age bracket but like everything it really depends on each individual child.

Zebra's Stripes - Gaby Goldsack

Cashbag - Who the hell needs a proper job ?

I came across Cashbag.co.uk in late December whilst surfing for reward sites on Google. To my suprise I was already a member of Cashbag and had apparently joined in August. I must have registered with Cashbag through another reward site or something but i'd never bothered looking at the site and forgot it even existed until finding it by chance in December. As a member of other reward sites Cashbag really appealled to me as it seemed like a much easier place to earn rewards than my usual reward sites such as iPoints, MutualPoints and the shockingly bad SweetCollect.

What is Cashbag and how does it differ from similar sites?
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As previously mentioned Cashbag is an internet reward site where you can earn cashback by shopping online with hundreds of merchants, completing free offers, entering competitions and doing daily recurring clicks. It differs from many other reward sites by aiming as much towards non-online shoppers as it does to online shoppers. A lot of other reward sites such as iPoints generally appear to aim towards the online spenders and it can be hard to build those rewards up just by completing the free things.

Cashbag is much easier to earn high rewards without having to spend a penny. Plus Cashbag offer proper money as Cashback and completion of offers/clicks whereas iPoints and MutualPoints pay out in points which you then have to convert to cash. It seems much more worthwhile to see cash build up in your account rather than points. Also as a member you feel more inclined to take your time completing offers and clicks when the reward for doing so is stated in pounds/pence. As an example, MutualPoints offer 9 points per product search through the Kelkoo and Pricerunner comparison sites which I can never be bothered to complete because 9 points sounds crap. Cashbag offer 5p per Kelkoo seach and 10p per Pricerunner search which is much more encouraging and motivating.

First impressions about Cashbag
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As you've probably guessed my initial impression about this site was pretty good. The rewards seemed very encouraging and the site looked professional, none cluttered, easy on the eye and extremely easy to navigate. One thing bothered me though. Cashbag seemed too good to be true. Some of the offers and rewards appeared much MUCH too generous. One such cashback reward was for Blue Square Casino where to receive £36 cashback all you had to do was join the site and deposit £5. How would that work? Another one which seemed too good to be true was the eBay rewards scheme where for each bid you placed you'd be rewarded with 8p cashback and you were able to do this up to 100 times per day. This would enable you to earn up to £8 per day if you were shrewd enough with your bidding. Madness!!

Because of the one little niggle I had about Cashbag sounding too good to be true I read some reviews of the site before plunging headlong in, though unfortunately not many reviews existed. I also placed a message on a forum but again no-one had heard of the place. If it wasn't for Cashbag looking so professional and even having it's own member forum (which i'll talk about later) I may not have been so willing to jump in the way I did. I've dismissed other sites instantly due to the way they looked.

More about the ways to earn cashback rewards
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Cashbag has over 750 retailers/merchants participating in their reward scheme. Some of the retailers are well-known companies such as Marks & Spencer, Woolworths, Play.com, Comet, Asda and Direct line etc etc but also included are many smaller and less well-known retailers such as GroovyChocolate, eDiets, FragranceBay and GlassesDirect etc etc Hell they even offer cashback if you order online from Dominos Pizza and Cadburys which aint half bad. For online purchases the cashback awarded can be anything from 1% to 10% and even beyond.

Daily recurring clicks which involve completing searches on comparison sites are a permanent fixture on Cashbag and require no money to be spent. Rewards here range from 2p per search to 10p per search. This is a good way to build up your reward account at a steady pace but it can become extremely tedious doing them everyday when there's a much better way to get that reward account shooting right up almost instantly. This leads me nicely on to eBay.

Yes eBay. I loved the offer of 8p cashback per bid placed but unfortunately that offer has now ended. I probably made easily in excess of £100 through placing these eBay bids just during the last few days of december and 3 weeks of January. Shame it had to end as it was an excellent money earner once you worked out which items to bid on and how to go about doing it to the best advantage without ending up winning something (doesn't take brains to work out if you bid on a dvd box set which starts at 1p you can bid it up by 5p each time and make a fortune cashback without having any chance of winning) No problem about the offer ending though as now there's a much better eBay reward. Receive 35p cashback for every eBay item you purchase on a Buy It Now (BIN ) and you can purchase up to 100 BINs each day. You don't need brains to manipulate this reward either. Just purchase items such as ebooks, pictures or information etc which is on a BIN for 1p. If you do this you can earn £35 cashback per day by only having to pay out £1. If I had no life or Son to attend to i'd be purchasing 100 BINs each and every day. It'd make me an absolute fortune. Sod a real job in the real world.

The other rewards offered are in an area of the site called Fast Cash. Here you'll find dozens of offers and competitions which take only a couple of minutes each to complete for cashback rewards spanning from 5p to £3+.

Oh and let's not forget the £2.50 you get just for joining Cashbag and the 25p bonus you'll receive for recommending friends and family through your own unique referal link. For each person who joins using your link you'll also receive an added bonus of £2.25 when each person makes their first payment request. There's so many ways to earn money, is there any wonder I thought it all sounded too good to be true?

How long does it take for rewards to be added to your account?
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Some cashback rewards are added to your account after only a few days as I found out with a few of the Fast Cash offers I completed, but generally it takes between 30 and 45 days for each offer/reward to be validated, verified and added to your account. From what i've gathered from the forums most of the time Cashbag dedicate a certain period each month to upload certain things. For example the eBay rewards tend to be added around the 20-25th each month as one bulk lot.

For the first 4/5 weeks of becoming a member you may become disheartened as your account balance barely moves but stick it out and you'll soon see the cashback coming in thick and fast. Trust me, i've been there. My reward account remained pretty low for most of January but towards the end of the month the eBay rewards were uploaded and my account was shooting up before my eyes. Very pleasing.

What if i've got a problem, question or things go wrong?
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If you find you have a problem such as not receiving a particular reward there's a very simple form to complete. On the left side of the site there's a link called 'submit claim' which takes you to this form which you complete with basic details and claim information. This form then goes off to the claims department who'll look into it for you and aim to sort it out within 30-45 days. They'll apparently also let you know by email the outcome of the claim investigation. I can't give my opinion on this process as i've not had to go through it yet. (fingers crossed I won't ever have to)

For other problems, concerns, worries or just general chit-chat with other Cashbag members there's the Cashbag forum which is a great idea and addition to the site. I visit here every day as a guest and occasionally make a post or two. Cashbag Team Members and Staff even visit and are available to personally answer anything to do with Cashbag, they can even be seen having a bit of light banter in the General Chit-Chat area when they've got nowt better to do. It's rare to find an internet site these days where you can interact with the people who help run it.

The forum also has conversation areas dedicated to non-Cashbag chat such as competitions and freebie/samples/money saving hints, tips and links. I've ordered quite a few free samples from links given by members on this Cashbag forum. It saves me having to visit seperate freebie forums (such as Bobs Free Stuff) when this forum here has it all in one place.

Does Cashbag pay-out then? How long does it take?
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Yes Cashbag does pay out. My initial impression may have been it all sounded too good to be true but I can 100% clarify and promise that Cashbag does sound too good but IT IS true. Though I didn't start using Cashbag until towards the end of December I ended up with nearly £30 in my account at the end of January. Bare in mind that this £30 i'd been credited was mainly due to things i'd completed in December so it wasn't bad going at all. I'm looking forward to them crediting the January eBay bids which they should be processing in the next week or two. I'll have a small fortune coming to me (all being well)

You can cash out when your account reaches £15 which I think is a reasonable level to achieve. At the end of January I requested £25 of my earnings as a Paypal payment. In total all it took was ten days to reach my account. I was impressed.

There must be some bad points, surely?
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Well yeah I gotta admit that sometimes the site is a little slow to load pages. This is especially true when you're trying to view your account balance which seems to take forever. Cookies need to be cleared on your computer very regularly otherwise full rewards may not be received which isn't a big problem, just a minor inconvenience. Also there's a link called Daily Play on the left hand side which is total crap as all it takes you to is a useless Jackpot Joy scratchcard. Another downside could be the amount of spam/junk email you'll receive from offers/clicks completed. Now spam/junk emails don't bother me, it makes me feel loved when I receive hundreds of emails, but I know other people aren't so fond. At least the spam received from Cashbag isn't anywhere near as bad as other sites (SweetCollect instantly sprinds to mind) though a seperate email address would be wise if you're a spam hater.

One thing which really bugs me is having to go through the Cashbag link every time I want to do a BIN on eBay. It takes longer to keep closing the eBay browser down and reopening it through Cashbag for each and every purchase than it would to just keep eBay open and do 100 BINs all in one go. Unfortunately and understandably this can't be helped as eBay need to track all BINs individually and the only way to do this is to go through Cashbag each time. The same rule also applies for other daily multiple offers like the searches on the comparison sites. Whenever you're allowed to do something more than once a day you HAVE to go through the Cashbag link each time.

For non-UK based people there is one huge downside. Cashbag.co.uk is primarily for UK based people. You can still become a member if you live elsewhere but Cashbag can't guarantee you'll receive the rewards offered. I'm sure I read somewhere on the forum that there are some non-UK based members and quite a lot of the rewards do get credited to them though some don't. I'm sure I also read that although Cashbag allow non-UK members to join they don't advertise or encourage it and they will not chase reward claims up for them if they've not been credited to the persons account. This is because the decision to pay overseas members the cashback is up to the individual sites who are offering whatever the cashback is. So if Kelkoo are happy paying overseas members then you WILL be credited, but if Pricerunner only want UK based people you WON'T be credited (those were just two made-up examples) Don't take my word for gospel on the above comments but i'm sure it's more or less correct.

Let's sum up the good points then
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Simple and quick to join and each new member receives £2.50 in their account instantly. Easy and quick to earn good rewards without having to spend a penny. Extensive list of merchants who offer Cashback rewards for buying online. Great referral reward scheme. A community forum where members can chat to each other. Approachable staff who are available to answer questions and queries through the forum. Can redeem your reward money in 3 different ways. Quick to process and send out your reward money.

My overall opinion
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Cashbag.co.uk isn't particularly unique as an internet reward site as various other sites can be found offering more or less the same offers and cashback. Uniqueness doesn't bother or interest me though. What I am interested in is whether a site is pleasurable to be a member of and whether the site lives up to and honours what it states. This is why I love Cashbag. I may only have been an active member since the end of December but it's up there at the top of my favourite sites. I visit every day and probably spend more time using this site than anywhere else online.

These days most of the offers/clicks available are ignored by me as i've become addicted to the eBay rewards. I can't believe how easy it is to earn 35p by spending 1p on some rubbish ebook or an emailed photo of someones rusty old moped. OK so these particular eBay rewards haven't been added to my Cashbag account yet so I can't vouch for the manipulation of the scheme working, but there's absolutely no reason why it shouldn't work. I was credited full cashback for my December eBay bids and I manipulated it back then too. In fact if you read the Cashbag forum it appears everyone is doing the same thing when it comes to eBay. The forum is full of conversations involving members trying to get as much money possible for doing nothing. We're all a bunch of scammers, lazy arses and money loving manipulators at heart. Are you one too? If you are then give Cashbag.co.uk, and especially the eBay reward scheme, a good old try. I'd certainly highly recommend it anyway.