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The Christmas tree is up! I'm kind of loathe to have it done before December, but Marianna wanted it and we'll have to take it down quickly after xmas ready for her birthday so I relented. My collection of tree decorations now includes a metallic alligator in a tutu, retro style mini santas, and a rubber ducky in a Christmas hat. Kitsch, galore!

This week has been mostly school stuff. I had a meeting with Jane McCarthy from Estyn on Monday, then Tuesday was school governors at Maendy. I also had another meeting there this week, and we had Marianna's belated parents' evening. It was good to hear that she's playing well with the other kids, and is coming out of her shell a bit.

She's firmly on track for expected level +1 and, possibly, +2 which would be awesome. The most important thing is that she's enjoying school and loves going. :)

Other than that I've gone out as little as possible. I think Anthony's telling people I still have a chest infection, but I suppose it's easier to talk about physical stuff rather than mental. If it hadn't been for purdah I would have definitely had to be signed off sick for a bit. As it is, I'm hoping I can get my head sorted while there is not much on and be okay for 2020...

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Deal of the Week -

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On the blog I wrote a post about International Men's Day (November 19th), a guide to Bandai's Locksies dolls, and a Mini Mart review of Even Tinier store on Etsy. I also posted some scans of Anthony's various appearances in the newspapers this month and a review of Snatch app. For my Friday Five series I wrote about my favourite cryptids.

I've been carrying on with my refer-a-friend collection too. I've got 242 offers on my pinterest board now.

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Song of the Week -

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Marianna has been home all week, again, because the infected stye on her eyelid still hasn't cleared up. It's a lot better than it was though so it's back to school on Monday before we all lose our minds. Fingers crossed the other kids will refrain from poking it this time.

I haven't been able to get out much with Marianna home and grumpy, so I took the opportunity to start to Konmari my life. I don't think my folding is ever going to be up to Marie Kondo standards, but I really like the idea of having more control of my space and, ergo, more control over how I feel in it. So far I've piled up a third of my wardrobe and about a tenth of my books to get rid of.

Now I've just go to try and get to grips with the spare room...

In other news, Anthony is still binge watching Smallville. I'm not sure how much longer I can take it. Seriously, it's awful. I like the concept of it - young Clark meets Lex Luthor and shapes their future destinies - but the execution, ugh. The first season isn't so bad, disregarding the fact Tom Welling makes as convincing a 15-year-old as Olivia Newton John did a high school senior in Grease, but it just gets steadily worse.

My personal headcanon disregards everything after like S03:E09 as one of Lex's fever dreams in Belle Reve. (I mean, Senator Johnathan Kent? Really.) It wasn't stellar before that point or anything, but I thought Michael Rosenbaum did a great job in that storyline.

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Deal of the Week -

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On the blog this week I wrote an explainer of Purdah, a guide to ELLE Magazine dolls, a review of One Sixth Scale Props on Etsy, and my top catchy ad jingles for Friday Five.

I also reviewed the secret message advent calendar from Morse Toad. They have a fab Smile loyalty program which inspired me to get around to something I've been meaning to do for ages - updating my referral code Pinterest board. I have 150 discount codes on there at the moment!

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Song of the Week -

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The only Welsh language advent calendar I've ever seen was the kind with nothing but little pictures behind the windows. Cute, but not really destined to endear me to a chocolate obsessed four year old! And, I mean, sure I could make one myself from scratch but that requires the kind of organisation and forward planning that eludes me at the best of times, let alone in the run up to the Christmas.

I was psyched, then, to come across the perfect compromise: chocolate advent calendars with personalised messages.



The process was super easy. All you need to do is write a note to tell the recipient who it's from - in this case, llawer o gariad oddi wrth Siôn Corn (lots of love from Father Christmas) - then fill in the message you want spelled out in chocolate. The toughest part was coming up with something that exactly matched the number of available characters. Eventually I went with:

❤NADOLIG★LLAWEN★IAWN★MARIANNA❤

(Very Merry Christmas Marianna)



You get 30 characters as some days have double chocolate allocations. They are the 5th (character #5 + #6), the 6th (#7 + #8), the 15th (#17 + #18), the 19th (#22 + #23), the 21st (#25 + #26) and the 23rd (#28 + #29) in case you want to use any of them for Welsh's double letters - eg. the 'LL' in Llawen.

(As an aside, I went through my entire school career without working out how to consistently make that sound. It wasn't until my mid-20s that I came across the advice to press the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and hiss. It really works!)



There are three different shipping options so I went for the mid-range 48 hour tracked. Our calendar arrived on Thursday, beautifully wrapped and ready for action. I love that it's kind of narrow, shaped to fit easily through a letterbox, and naturally we had to conduct a little taste test. For science. Thus I can confirm that the top notch Belgian chocolate definitely hits the spot.

Want to try it for yourself? The Morse Toad Secret Message Advent Calendar is available now for £12.95. Or, use the code CHOCPOST15BL to get 15% off, bringing the price down to £11.01. (Yeah, I totally just googled that...)

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Make sure to sign up to their Smile rewards scheme before you order too; you can earn 'gold toads' for purchases, following on social media, etc, which can be exchanged for free extras or discount coupons. :)

FIVE CATCHY AD JINGLES

TV advertising arrived in the UK in 1955 and the accompanying jingles have been burrowing deep into our brains ever since...


#5. Shake n' Vac

Glade's Shake n' Vac hit stores in 1979 though, thanks to strike action at ITV, the ad didn't make it onto screens until 1980. Jenny Logan reprised her role as the original Shake n' Vac dancer in 2010, but many others picked up the slack over the years. YouTube has ads from 1982, 1988, 1989, and way too many people conducting their own re-enactments!




#4. Club

Club launched in Ireland prior to WW1 and quickly won over Irish and British tastebuds alike. The 'if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit' jingle first aired in the early 1970s and in 2012, according to Wikipedia, it was voted the seventh catchiest jingle ever in the UK.




#3. Um Bongo

Nestlé introduced Um Bongo in 1983, expanding into Portugal in 1988 where it proved popular enough for Portugese company Compal to acquire the brand in 2003. There's now a full length version of the tune, complete with cool animated vid, though your chances of finding anybody drinking it in the Congo remain minimal at best!




#2. Milkybar

Nestlé's Milkybar, known as Galak across most of Europe, has been around since 1936. The Milkybar Kid was introduced in 1961 and has been extolling the goodness / good taste in the bar ever since...




#1. McDonalds

It's been off the air for decades but the 'Makes Your Day' campaign is still a classic. And hella catchy!





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We've just come back from the Remembrance Parade in Cwmbran. I usually go to the one in Pontnewydd, but because purdah (the pre-election period) has started I was asked to lay a wreath at Cwmbran on behalf of the council as my role as chair makes me technically apolitical. Anthony laid one at Pontnewydd as his charity (as chair of Cwmbran Community Council) is Pontnewydd British Legion.

Anyway, I had already told Marianna she could come with me this year so she was scurrying along to keep up with the march, bless her. I didn't realise the Cwmbran parade is like twice as long as Pontnewydd's! Still, she was very good and managed to keep quiet during the two minutes silence.

Purdah has been wrecking havoc on my entire diary, to be honest. Most of my meetings have been cancelled and we'll be gearing up for lots of leafleting in the next few weeks...

On the blog I've posted about Marianna's Santa Letter, a review of Helen's OOAK Miniatures on Etsy, a guide to Beautiful Blessings Dolls, my 2019 Children's Christmas Gift Guide, and Five Tragic Silent Starlets for my Friday Five series. I'm also running a giveaway for a Dr Who doll, check it out HERE.

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Song of the Week -

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Happy belated Halloween! Marianna felt brave enough to go trick or treating this year, so she dressed up as a skeleton witch and we went around ten or so houses. She didn't want to do anymore after that but, to be fair, she had already managed to amass half a carrier bag full of sweets. Then we went around to my mum's for a Halloween tea party. Marianna wasn't too sure about her costume.

Aside from that it's been a fairly quiet week. I've been laid low with cold/flu something awful so all the stuff I hoped to get done over half term is still waiting for me... Hopefully next week will be more productive!

I had some good news, blog wise, with the new Tots100 ranking putting me at #100. Let's hope I can keep it up! This week I posted a Halloween playlist for kids, my top five Halloween cartoons, a think piece about where this blog is going, and 30 Kids TV Shows of the 1930s.

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FIVE HALLOWEEN CARTOONS


#5. Swing You Sinners

I dunno what the Fleischer Brothers were smoking in 1930, but this was definitely the result of it!



#4. Minnie the Moocher

Betty Boop and Bimbo run away from home in 1932 then take significant amounts of those hallucinogenic drugs. At least that's my take on how they come to be serenaded by a ghost walrus while ghosts relive their experience in the electric chair...



#3. The Haunted House

Mickey Mouse gets more than he bargained for while sheltering from a storm! Released on December 2nd 1929, it reuses animation from The Skeleton Dance which had premiered that August.



#2. Spooks

Flip the Frog had his own turn in the haunted house in 1932. (Flip, all but forgotten today, was Ub Iwerks' first solo project after falling out with Disney in 1930.) The similarities run deeper than subject matter - Iwerks was the primary animator on Disney's The Haunted House and animated almost all of The Skeleton Dance himself.



#1. The Skeleton Dance

First of the Silly Symphonies series, Disney's The Skeleton Dance - released in August 1929 - is a masterpiece. (And creepy enough that the Danish censors banned it for being too macabre!)




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