My Sunday Photo: The Lord Mayor's Chapel, Bristol

Quality Built to Last with Vorwerk's Kobold VK200

There was a time when, if you bought something, such as a fridge, or a toaster, you would assume it would last for years. In my parent's day, no one expected to replace an electrical appliance. Perhaps perform a repair now and again, but you would anticipate having the same one until it got a bit battered and loved, then replacing it would be a major event. In today's 'consumable' society, everything seems to need replacing every few years and its driving me mad. In the last five years, I have been through three vacuum cleaners, the quality has been that bad. So, in this review I am investigating what you get for your money when you invest in the Kobold VK200, from Vorwerk. An appliance designed to last.

Win a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Duvet Set

Camping Must-Haves and What You CAN Leave Home Without!

Camping can be ideal as a low-cost family holiday option when money is a bit tight. However, on your first camping trip, it can be very easy to get bogged down with the different products available to buy, until you end up spending the cost of a week in the Algarve. As we've got better at camping, we have found some products that have been invaluable, and some that haven't. This is our guide to your camping essentials and how to keep the costs down by avoiding what you really don't need. This post contains items we've bought, and some we were sent to try and really liked. I have marked the review items, with an asterisk * for clarity.

Improving Children's Handwriting with Free Printables

There are a lot of positives to the advance of the digital age. Laptops and iPads are providing a wealth of opportunities for children to develop their writing. Without the limitation of forming the words individually using a pencil and paper (which many children struggle with) it's proving much quicker for them to get their ideas down, so their story writing and other subjects are progressing much faster. However, the downside is that it might discourage them from persevering with the important skill of good handwriting and, at some stage, they will still need to write nicely. It is so much easier to start good habits early, so here are some ideas to encourage good handwriting in children. 

Win a Bertie Brum and Friends Car Transporter

Top Tips for Camping When it Rains

Everyone hopes for good weather when it comes to the annual family holiday, but none more so than the dediated family camper. Like all holidays, once it's booked, it's booked and you are pretty much condemned to suffer whatever is thrown at you and, usually, the worst of these will be the weather. We've just returned from our third camping trip, through Campsites.co.uk and we had spells of dreadful weather during each of them. This time, the tail end of a hurricane made us glad of our storm pegs, and this was just one of the things we learned from our previous trips. With this in mind, this post contains advice from myself and other campers on how to brave the worst of the British weather in a tent!