Every Christmas holiday season, I begin the search for the perfect family gift (which I am sure so many of you do too). Every Friday night we try to have a family game night, it helps us unwind after a busy week and we can re-connect over friendly competition and team work. We get to hear about the kid’s week at school and we can tell them a little bit about our week. For an hour or two there is no thought about work, what needs to be done around the house or worry about driving to extra-curricular activities.
Not all family games are suited for bonding and unwinding. You need an activity that requires team work, encourages talking, has a goal and is not connected to an electronic (sorry for all you gamers!).
The Observation Puzzle Enchanted Forest fits all these must have requirements and more. The Enchanted Forest has 100 puzzle pieces to put together as a family. Once the puzzle has been put together around the edges are images of items that you will need to find inside the puzzle.
We had a lot of fun putting this puzzle together. While it is a 100 pieces, the puzzle pieces are on the medium size so that little hands can put the puzzle together with just enough difficulty to help them with their fine motor skills. The box includes a large poster of what the finished puzzle should look like which helps you fit the pieces together.
Once the puzzle was completed, your family can move onto the second challenge – find all the images on the outside white frame within the puzzle. Some of the images were easier to find while others really made you think. This was a great addition to this puzzle and added extra fun to this activity. You can even through some competition in this one – the person who finds the most items wins something special or gets to choose the family movie.
You can find more information on the Observation Puzzle Enchanted Puzzle on iLo307. The puzzle can be purchased at specialty toy stores and select book stores across Canada. The puzzle sells for $19.99 CDN.
What is your favourite product to purchase for a family gift?
Disclosure: I received the above mentioned product in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
My kids love to create battle scenes and whenever their cousins come over, our toy room becomes a huge battle ground. We have soldiers versus soldiers, soldiers versus superheros – anything is game!
Awesome Little Green Men bring a whole new take on your typical soldier figure. These small little figures are full of spunk and authority! These characters, both male AND female, are truly epic with fantastic features and even better names (Sgt. Major Attitude and Major Boo Book to name a few!).
Your child can create their own battles OR follow the super easy Battle Game Guide (which can also be found online). Each player picks their army so that each player has the same amount of power points, which can be found on the bottom of each soldier. They also require a small coin, large coin (which are included in the packs) and a “prized possession” – which can be anything but each player should have an equal sized possession that becomes the goal to capture. The smaller coin becomes the attacking slider and the larger coin the march slider.
Your child should set up either on the floor (no carpet!) or a long table in order to have a good-sized battle. The youngest player always goes first (this is actually in the rules not just our youngest making it up). Each player can use their march slider to advance their soldiers or their attack slider to hit an enemy soldier. They have to hit the enemy enough times to match their Hit Points in order to capture that soldier. The main mission is to capture the prize behind the soldiers but if your children are anything like mine they will love the marching and attacking just as much if not more. All the obstacles and bandaids that you will need for your attack are included in the package or you can print them online.
The boys even made up their own battles too which was pretty awesome and fun. They enjoyed battling just as much as they did playing and setting up their characters in their rooms. The characters are well designed and they loved showcasing and just carrying them around as is.
Check out this video showcasing these adorable and spunky characters:
You can purchase Awesome Little Green Men at Toys R Us, Amazon and Walmart. They are sold in starter packs of four, deluxe battle packs and blind box. The starter packs include 4 soldiers, 4 dog tags, 1 chain and a collector poster. The deluxe battle pack includes 8 soldiers, 8 dog tags, 2 chains and a collector poster.
Make sure to check out the Awesome Little Green Men website for more information, super cool videos and more!
Disclosure: I received the above mentioned products in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
In Domengrad, there are rules all must live by: Fear the Gods. Worship the Magicians. Forsake the Iconoclasts.
About Colorless
To Annabelle Klein, the rules laid down by the Magicians are the mere ramblings of stuffy old men. As far as she’s concerned, the historic Iconoclasts, heretics who nearly destroyed the Magicians so long ago, are nothing but myth. She has much more important matters to worry about.
Heiress to a manor mortgaged down to its candlesticks and betrothed to her loathsome cousin, sixteen-year-old Annabelle doubts the gods could forsake her more.
Then Annabelle is informed of her parents’ sudden and simultaneous deaths, and all of the pigment drips out of her skin and hair, leaving her colourless. Within moments, Annabelle is invisible and forgotten by all who know her.
Living like a wraith in her own home, Annabelle discovers that to regain her color she must solve the mystery behind her parents’ murders and her strange transformation.
Meanwhile, hundreds of the Magicians’ monks, with their all-black eyes and conjoined minds, have usurped control of Annabelle’s family manor. An Iconoclast is rumored to be about—a person who they claim goes unseen, unheard, and lost to memory, yet is the greatest threat to all of Domengrad. For the first time in a hundred years, the monks plan to unleash the dire wolves of old.
Their only target: Annabelle.
My Thoughts
In this novel we are transported to a fantasy world of magic, religion and myths. The audiobook opens with a little bit of background information and the death of our main character, Annabelle’s parents. Their death marks a huge turning point in her young life, a parent passing away is awful enough for a young child but in her case it becomes even worse. Annabelle begins to lose all of her colour – it literally drips off of her. To top it off anything she touches loses its own colour – her furniture, paintings – everything she holds dear. Slowly everyone forgets her and it is almost like she has never existed. What I found amazing was that animals could still recognize her presence and a few special people who want to help her.
The monks in this story are maddening and creepy. They make you feel angry and wish they would just leave Annabelle alone. She is fighting for her life against the monks and you want to be able to defend her every step of the way. You are constantly on the edge of your seat the whole book waiting to see what happens next for her.
I listened to the audiobook of this novel and I really enjoyed the narration of the characters. It was easy to identify by voice alone who was speaking and the narration really helped to bring the characters alive. The monks voices especially! They leave you with this yucky feeling and that you want to lash out at them on Annabelle’s behalf.
This was a fantastic audiobook although the beginning left me a bit confused as I tried to follow the history, I would have loved to have known a bit more about the history and religious beliefs in the beginning but it doesn’t affect your understanding of the novel throughout.
You can purchase a copy of this audiobook on Audible and Amazon.
Rating: 4/5
About the Author
Rita Stradling is the author of Ensnared, Making Bad Choices, The Deception Dance series, the Dakota Kekoa series and The Fourteen Day Soul Detox Novella Serial. She has a BA in Art History and a particular love for modern and medieval art.
Rita lives with her husband and son in Northern California.
She has an insatiable novel addiction and mostly reads young adult and adult: romance, paranormal, urban fantasy and high fantasy.
About the Narrator
Lauri Jo Daniels has had her nose in a book since before she started kindergarten and has been reading stories out loud to anyone who would listen ever since. Her mom has always said that from the moment she was born she has never shut her mouth, so it just makes sense that she would make a living with her voice.
It was this love of reading that inspired her to major in English Lit and later to become a Young Adult Librarian and it was this career that introduced her to the wonder of audiobooks. She began dreaming of narrating them one day herself. Today that dream has become reality.
Lauri Jo has a very versatile sound and a knack for character voices, both skills that truly bring a story to life. Those skills and her passion for storytelling have made her dream a reality.
When she’s not busy trying to organize the chaos of 2 teenagers and 6 animals at home, Lauri is producing material from The Huffington Post, Slate, and Playboy for SpokenLayer’s news podcast, SpokenEdition, voicing Alexa flash briefings for Biden’s Briefing, and narrating news and short stories for Medium Members while working on her next audiobook masterpiece.
In the Heart of the Highland, Keira is caught in the middle of a war that she does not understand, will Keira’s secrets be safe, or will she succumb to the Highland warrior who now threatens to capture her heart?
About Heart of the Highland: The Beast
For hundreds of years, Scotland has battled the English for their freedom. Now, they face a new enemy. In a divided world between politics and religion, the young King James V faces the threat of his own people rebelling against him. As civil war breaks out among the Highland clans, James recruits a secret group of warriors for protection. He calls them the Protectors of the Crown.
Ian MacKay has one mission; to defend the crown no matter the cost. Along with his men, Ian’s mission is to hunt down one of the most dangerous men in the Highlands. But when the daughter of an enemy enters his life, his heart becomes captured instead.
Keira Sinclair has lived a life of peace and simplicity until now. With her clan on the verge of losing everything, she is forced to wed a Laird from a neighboring clan to ensure that hers survives. During her travels to her new home, her carriage is attacked and Keira is taken hostage by a ruthless man.
My Thoughts
I am sure so many of you already know how much I LOVE historical romances. This is especially true for Scottish historical romances, I love the language, the strength in the characters and of course the romance!
This novel had everything I love about historical romances set in the Highlands and more with an amazing plot that kept you guessing as to what would happen next. In this novel, we have Keira a young woman who has been forced to wed a man that she does not love all because her clan is about to lose everything. This man clearly has no love nor respect for her as he refuses to meet her halfway for the wedding and sends young, untrained boys to help her travel to him in order for them to be wed. This is when she meets Ian – who mistakes her carriage for her husband to be.
Ian is still suffering under the weight of his deceased wife’s death. He holds the blame for her death and has had a hard time moving forward with his life. There is something in Keira that brings out the better in him, making him want to hope, be a better man and to protect her. He takes her under his wing and tries to help her see what a mistake it would be to marry her betrothed.
This is when the plot becomes really juicy! We learn about the deceit her betrothed had done to her and her Father, and how truly evil he really is. We learn about how her Father betrayed his own beliefs and family, and my heart broke for Keira. We also learn more about who Ian is and his connection to the Scottish crown.
This was an amazing novel from start to finish – it was full of excitement, betrayal, hope and romance. I loved how the plot was developed and there was an importance placed on the plot just as much as the romance. A great read for historical romance fans!
April is an Award-Winning Author for her Scottish Historical Romances. For more than ten years, she has worked full time in the direct marketing business, but developed a passion of historical romances through her love of reading, history and genealogy.
We all know how important education is – I am personally very fond of the sciences. I did my Bachelors in Kinesiology and many of my electives were in Biology and Chemistry. I want my boys to understand this same love I have for sciences and how much fun the sciences can be (how can you not love mixing chemicals for reactions or building up a car that moves?). When you can combine learning with fun in a toy, this is a definite win win for this parent!
This year, HEXBUG has released a whole new line of products that are perfect for children from three to their teens. These products will find your child building, using their imagination, battling and so much more.
The HEXBUG nano Space Discovery Centre allows your child to take their HEXBUG adventures to space and beyond. The set is very easy to build and put together. My son and I had it ready to go in under ten minutes flat. The set comes with two nanos, space suit, a rover and all the necessary pieces to make their space adventure come to life.
Our son had so much fun creating space battles and even added in extra nanos to race around the space centre. He used his larger HEXBUG as an alien that would attack the Space Discovery Centre and the smaller nanos would have to do everything they could to protect the centre and not allow the alien to take over.
The Space Discovery Centre provided hours of imaginative fun and can be found at many retailers, including Amazon, Chapters and Toys R Us. There is also a nano Space Cosmic Command and nano Space Zip Line in this product line that would go perfectly with this set.
Maybe you have a child that is a budding engineer? Then the VEX Robotics Tombstone by HEXBUG would be a great gift option for them.
This set will have your child putting together pieces to assemble their own VEX BattleBot. This set is definitely for the older child or a younger child with a lot of patience and a parent nearby to help them. The instructions are excellent (some of the best that I have ever seen) and also includes real size image of many of the smaller pieces so that you can compare each piece to the instructions during each stage (which really helps to ensure that you don’t get near the end and realize you used the wrong piece in step two). The BattleBot took us about two hours to put together, although to be fair we took a lot of breaks.
It was really fun to put together and the pieces snap together easily, although they are a bit trickier to pull apart. I found if you used one of the smaller pieces and pushed from the bottom the pieces would unsnap easily. Once the BattleBot was fully assembled, it looked incredible. We were both quite proud of the final product!
The VEX Robotics Tombstone can be purchased at Amazon and Toys R Us. You can also purchase the VEX Robotics Minotaur by HEXBUG to get into full battle mode.
What features do you look for when purchasing educational but fun products for your child?
Make sure to follow HEXBUG on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date with all the newest products and more.
Disclosure: I received the above mentioned products in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
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