The holiday when I became a stay-at-home dad

I’ve been asked by travel agent Thomas Cook to share one of my favourite holiday #DadMoments photos.

I chose this snap from almost 5 years to the day in 2012, when our daughter was a 5 month old baby. It was taken in a cafe on Venice Beach, California. Continue reading The holiday when I became a stay-at-home dad

Father’s Day treat – surf and turf recipe of steak and prawns

**This surf and turf recipe of steak and prawns is a sponsored post in collaboration with Iceland Foods**

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A suggested Father’s Day treat from one dad to another – get a day off cooking! Continue reading Father’s Day treat – surf and turf recipe of steak and prawns

Wonder Woman review: A superior superhero movie

Took our 5yo daughter to see Wonder Woman yesterday. I was probably going to wait a while, but then we kept seeing this poster, and she was obviously taken with it. So was I.

Wonder Woman review, Wonder Woman movie review

Continue reading Wonder Woman review: A superior superhero movie

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: A collection of feminist bedtime stories

I have tended to avoid children’s books that proclaim themselves to be ‘for girls’ (or boys), as they usually conform to traditional stereotypes. But Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls – a collection of feminist bedtime stories – is different. And is the children’s book of our dreams. Continue reading Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: A collection of feminist bedtime stories

Star Wars Blade Builders: Spin Action Lightsaber

Lightsabers have vastly improved from the Force Beams of my youth.

Star Wars The Force Beam advert

These were translucent plastic tubes fixed on the end of a red plastic torch with a piece of coloured plastic over the bulb. They only came in Green and Red (despite there being no green sabers until Return of the Jedi), and weren’t even licensed – yet they were so brazen that they not only mentioned Star Wars in their advertising – this ad was on the back of UK Star Wars comics.

Modern lightsaber toys are a much improved product. They have authentic hilts, retractable blades, and flashing lights with saber crackling sounds.

The simple pleasures of these toys are not enough for Hasbro (these toys are also properly licensed now), who have introduced the Blade Builders range, where saber toys can be joined together in increasingly complex and unwieldily forms.

This is the Star Wars BladeBuilders Spin-Action Lightsaber set.

Star Wars BladeBuilders Spin-Action Lightsaber

It features a full sized lightsaber toy, a ‘dagger’, two ‘elbow’ joints, and a spinning hilt.

The aim is to basically enable the owner to create their own bizarre Lightsaber configurations. Our daughter is lucky enough to have a few saber toys with the required ‘Blade Builder’ joints, so she put them together. The results were rather difficult for her to manage.

Still, she had fun putting it together and trying to use it. But to be honest, nothing really compares to the joy of staging lightsaber fights of crashing blades with the basic interactive sabers – and trying to do that with one of these contraptions is difficult at best.

As a set, it’s good to have for the extra saber toy, and the light up dagger is nice to. The spinning hilt connector (as seen on Star Wars Rebels) is tricky for a kid to use without the potential for smashed ornaments (well, in a house as compact as ours) but perhaps in a bigger space it would be ok.

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Disclosure: Hasbro sent us this product for the purposes of this review