Playing for time

What started out as a simple need to gather all the Playmobil bits from the four corners of the apartment has turned into the task of the century. Trying to sort them all into their correct groups and find all their accessories might actually break me. Especially when 'people' come home from school and I find myself growling "Don't you TOUCH a thing!!! I have spent 4 solid hours on this so far and I'm not even half way done!". There will be no "We just want to play with you", nor "Can I help?" allowed to turn my head and let them mess up my cowboys with my air hostesses. "It's MINE!" I yell. "I AM PLAYING NOW!"

Kids: Why can't they just go and clean the windows or scrub the balcony or something and leave me to the important stuff?

The best advent calendars: 2012

Last year I wrote about all the advent calendar choice I discovered in Berlin. I was pretty impressed. We settled on two Playmobil advent calendars and I was pretty pleased with them to be honest. I managed to shop around and get them at a good price in Germany, and what would be a really good price in the UK :)

This year, I am slightly less impressed. Why? Because they look the same as last year!!!! I'm always disappointed when I get the feeling they've just rolled out all last years stock from the stock room but are still selling it at full price. Pah! I know that this isn't really the case but on the whole this years selection of advent calendars doesn't really look like it's differing from last years.

So here's the run down:

Playmobil (around EUR 12.99 - 14.99)

Playmobil this year have a choice of 6 advent calendars this year, which includes 2 new ones this year. All of them are available on the Playmobil.de website for a great price between Euros 12.99 - 14.99, which is cheaper than you can usually find them in the shops, but there is a delivery charge to add. I'd quite like either of the new ones this year, or both to be honest. One is snappily called in English (thanks to Google translate, no doubt) 'Police Alert Treasure Robbers on the run'. With a title like that the only other thing you need to know is that the scene is set in a museum, and you get to lower the robber from the ceiling in a Mission Impossible kind of way!

The other new advent calendar from Playmobil is the Reiterhof, or horse stables. I like this one a lot. It's got a 3 horses, some people, and a little carriage you can attach to a horse and pull around. This one is potentially more for girls, but I reckon both boys and girls might like it.

The other Playmobil advent calendars are: Princess Castle; Knights Tournament (which I haven't ever seen in the shops, which Hamish likes the look of); Pirate Treasure Cave; and Forest Animals. Forest Animals is the only one this year which features Santa. There doesn't seem to be Santa's Post Office this year, though I imagine it will be available online somewhere.

Lego (around EUR 19.99 - 29.99)

Hamish has decided that he wants the Lego advent calendar this year. There are a few designs available Lego City Fire and Star Wars and this year there is also a Lego Friends advent calendar. The Star Wars one retails at a higher price than the others, and I do think these are all expensive in relation to what the potential contents might be. Mind you, you probably get the same amount of Lego in these advent calendars as you would in the Friends, City, or Star Wars sets on sale at the same prices. It's just that they are all just made from tiny pieces (for obvious reasons) that makes me feel slightly cheated.

Filly (approx EUR 22.00)
This is Orla's advent calendar of choice this year. She's taken a recent interest in all things 'Filly' and wants this advent calendar more than words could describe! Here's a sneaky peak that I found online:


Filly Advent Calendar - Tv-spot from AZT-Media on Vimeo.

Awesome stuff, huh? Take that girl's look of wonderment and multiply it by 10 and you'll get an approximation of Orla's face when she sees that jewellry.

Littlest Pet Shop (around EUR 15.99 - 22.00)

Along similar lines to the Filly advent calendar is The Littlest Pet Shop advent calendar which retails on Amazon UK for £21.49, and is available on Amazon.de for Euros 15.99 - MUCH CHEAPER! If you buy yours through Amazon you'll see that there are a few styles of advent calendar packaging to choose from, presumably these are from past years.

ZhuZhu Pets (from £10.98*)

I'm not sure how popular ZhuZhu Pets are fairing in popularity nowadays, but if you want an advent calendar a bit cheaper than the others, Amazon UK has the Zhu Zhu Pets one for £10.98 (previously £29.99). It has a board to lay out which is designed as a little house set, and each of the daily windows contains either a little plastic hamster or a piece of furniture. It looks quite sweet I think.

Polly Pocket (around EUR 11.99 - 17.99)

I had reckoned we would be buying a Polly Pocket advent calendar this year, but Orla's not quite as keen on Polly Pocket as I thought she might be. Which is a shame really because Amazon.de have the 2012 advent calendar on sale for Euros 11.99 and if I bought both my advent calendars from there I'd be eligble for free delivery! So what do you get? Well it looks to me like you get one doll (Polly) and every day you get an item of clothing or an accessory. I reckon most Polly Pocket fans would love this calendar, and you'd have a good collection of outfits for Polly by Christmas Eve. I wish I could gather a Christmas wardrobe in a similar fashion.

Barbie (EUR 18.39 - 29.99)

Oh dear Barbie, I'm not impressed. Orla is just getting to the stage of being 'into' Barbie in quite a big way, and I might have considered buying the barbie advent calendar had I not just seen a photo of the contents. One dress??? Seriously? That's crazy. Even with all the accessories, the only way I would think this was good value was if they had included one of their entry level basic Barbie's in the box. They're only a couple of Euros, surely it wouldn't have hurt. I've seen this on sale at 30 Euros which just seems ridiculously overpriced. It's not even a fancy Christmas 'gown'!

Haribo (around EUR 7.99)

I've not really had a look at the chocolate advent calendars this year. Instead for the non-chocolate lovers, here's an advent calendar that seems to be pretty popular on Amazon. Behind each door is a different Haribo sweet or (I think) a little toy. It gets pretty excellent reviews, and apparently "is an excellent gift". So there you go.

Die Drei??? (around EUR 14.99 - 19.99)

Now I have to say, I feel this year there's not an awful lot on offer for boys. I haven't seen a Hot Wheels advent calendar this year, and there doesn't seem to be an equal plethora of hideously expensive tiny plastic toy advent calendars for boys as there are for girls (read: Littlest Pet Shop, Filly, My Little Pony, Barbie, Polly Pocket....). Why not? Who knows. Maybe most boys want a Playmobil one or a Lego one and that's it. Nice German boys also like the Die Drei??? advet calendars which are a spin off from the Die Drei??? mystery books and radio series which is very popular here. Admittedly, I know utterly nothing about this but I do know that the advent calendar contains lots of clues which build up to allow you to solve a mystery. Sounds like a pretty cool idea.

Playmobil Olympics: Is it wrong to be more excited by this than the real thing?

So, I am still thrilled by the fact that I am now here in Germany until at least November. I couldn't be happier. Well I could but that would involve finding out a giant Tesco was opening up round the corner selling everything I wanted it to sell at UK prices.

The funny thing is though that when I found out that we had a 6 month extension there was a bit of me that kind of went 'oh', in an ever-so-slightly, how-can-I-admit-this, disappointed way. Because I think once you think you have settled on the idea that you are going back, (whether you like it or not,) you start making plans about what you are going to do once you get back, and you start thinking more seriously about all the ways you can make this move a good move. And I know my list of 'things to be positive about' was not exactly large, but I suppose I had decided in my head that this wasn't going to happen, and I had made my peace with that.

I'd come up with a few more things that I was looking forward to, though still not feeling over-enthused about trudging through the Peak District on my weekends. One of the things I was looking forward to was being in England for the Olympics this summer. Not that I have tickets for anything, but it would be nice just to get wrapped up in the excitement, watch the events in English, and maybe even take a wee jaunt down to London to soak up the atmosphere for a few days (of atmospheric shopping). So my happiness was tinged with a little sadness for the things that we're not going to be doing in England at the end of May.

But look! Look what I saw in the new Playmobil catalogue!! Germany might not be hosting the 2012 Olympics but they have launched the Playmobil version. Aren't they great? I have already been dreaming about expanding the range to include a whole Olympic village and sports arenas and tv cameras, and medal podiums, and a little Playmobil Heather Small at the centre of the opening ceremony with a little Playmobil microphone that you can belt out "What have you done today to make you feel proud?..." while you re-enact everything. Wouldn't that be AMAZING?

Alas, there are just a few figures to collect. My favourites are the weightlifter and the gymnasts.

Beach Volleyball - Great tans & one that the men no doubt will love.

Fencing - Is that a riposte or a parry? I don't know, I'm only getting these words off of the Olympic's website . If it wasn't for the 'foils' I could easily mistake them for beekeepers.

Gymnastics - The balance beam. -  She's already lost out on a perfect 10, sadly marked down for her lack of flexibility (unless they've made her out of bendy rubber, which would be awesome!)

Hammer - Just LOVING the fact that the hammer thrower is a little bit 'chunky'!

Pommel Horse - He's great, isn't he? Look at the attention to detail: you can see his toes are in tights. I wouldn't be surprised if he got the gold.

Javelin - Nice to see she's made an effort to look pretty by putting on her mascara.

Judo - After 5 minutes of getting thrown around, I bet one of these competitors won't be smiling.  Oh, it's making me wish they had made sumo wrestlers. Can you imagine how cool that would be? That's not in the Olympics though is it?

Asymmetric bars - Love this. I hope she has enough room to swing round the high bar. I'd be disappointed if she couldn't. Maybe with bent legs, you think?

Rings - Love that he is Asian. And that could be so much fun to play with on your desk. 

Shooting - This one doesn't excite me very much. Can I swap it for a sumo wrestler please?

Swimming - sweet. Take your Olympics with you into the bath. Mark out lanes with bath crayons.

Table Tennis - I know, I know, it's a terrible racial stereotype, but I'm putting my money on the guy in blue, and I'm also turning his bat upside down in that funny professional hold ping pong players do.

Tennis - I wonder if they'll reissue this set in time for Wimbledon and give the guy on the right brown hair. It looks just like Andy Murray losing yet again in the final stages :-)

Track cycling - digging the glasses, but I am hoping that helmet is really streamlined at the back.

Weightlifting - Mr Awesome. LOVE the stubble, and love the bend in the bar with all the weight.  Hope he grunts too.

They are available to buy on the Playmobil Deutschland website now, and will be available in the UK from June.

Link: Olympics figures for sale on the Playmobil.de website

Advent calendars galore!!!

Have you noticed the sudden glut of advent calendars on the market? When I was a kid you just got one where you opened the little doors each day and there was a different picture behind. That was pretty exciting. It was especially exciting if the door for the 24th was extra big. I could barely contain myself. As I was growing up I remember the introduction of advent calendars with chocolate in them. In fact I can still taste the horrid cardboardy taste of that awful brand Kinnerton. To give them their due, it says on their website that they offer a 'dairy-free' chocolate filled advent calendar (you can find a downloadable order form on their site). As I recall even way back in the 80's you'd be hard pressed to taste any dairy in that chocolate. Now maybe their recipe has changed since then and it takes much better, but I am in no rush to try. Especially when there are Milka advent calendars on the market. (Kids ones too - here)

Hello, I am made for mummies. Oh yes I am! That's why I am priced at Euro 13.99 - no way you're spending that on a kid. Plus I have more child-friendly versions for them. Cheaper too. Look you could hang me right beside your side of the bed. I have a lovely satin ribbon. Why not buy one for both sides of the bed to balance the room? He doesn't like chocolate anyway....

See? This is the one to get the kids (or maybe store under your pillow). It's only  Euro 5.49. Not as pretty as the mummy one, but not as much chocolate either. 200g versus 329g...

Of course nowadays it is possible to even order your own branded advent calendars with chocolate in. And when I say 'branded' I mean YOUR OWN brand. You might need to order 1000 of them to get a good price £1.76 each per 1000 I saw somewhere, but you could sell them on to your friends, hand them out to promote ..eh...diabetes.... or just eat them all yourself. That would be 24,000 chocolates. You could build a little cairn around yourself and eat your way out.

Anyway, prepare yourself for some pretty awful photographs. I was in the toyshop and I wanted to sneakily take some photos of the new breed of advent calendar - those with gifts! Last year, we had 2 Playmobil advent calendars but I saw the range of alternate advent calendars on sale this year and I was very tempted.

Here we have a car construction one, followed by  two Star Wars ones. 

 I have also saw a Hot Wheels one (ah, it's in the photo below) which I thought gave you a car behind each door but it's one car with lots of bits you can interchange. Not that great for the overall cost in my opinion, and no use really for anyone under 5 really.

Here we have some of the Lego advent calendars on the top (Hamish rather fancies the Lego Police one) and then the Hot Wheels one. On the second row you can see a couple of the Playmobil ones, followed by something to do with volcanoes and jungles and then the girl version with a unicorn. I have no idea what's in these. Bottom row: more Playmobil and the My Little Pony & Filly ones you can see better below...

 I like the Lego ones, but what puts me off is the fact that they say "Other sets will be required to create this scene" or very similar wording to that effect. Really? Well, that seems like a bit of a swizz. Cause I would like to think that what you see on the box is what you get in the box. So what are you getting? A brick behind each door? Probably not much more than that. If it takes you longer than one day to create say the Christmas tree then that's just too much waiting for a child I'd say.

I am a big fan of the Playmobil ones, though I have noticed that they are a fair bit more expensive in the UK. At the moment you can get these for around Euro 12.99 in places like Kaufland. The toy shops are a bit more expensive at around Euro 14.99. This years' Playmobil themes are: Princess Wedding; Santa & Woodland Animals; Pirates; Dinosaur Expedition; Santa's Post Office; and the Knights one. In fact, I've just seen that most of these are reduced on the Playmobil.de website to Euro 11.99. Which is good, but if you add on the delivery charge you are back to the original price...might as well wait until after Christmas then buy one for next year in the Karstadt sale.

Finally here we have the My Little Pony and the Filly advent calendars.

Orla would love both of these. I did think about getting her the Filly one but it was Euro 19.99 (which seems to be the more or less standard price for these gift filled advent calendars) and it was just too expensive. Especially if I think about the fact that I would need to buy one for Hamish too. Euro 40 makes me kind of choke. Orla would probably also really like the Barbie one or the Littlest Pet Shop one (Both not pictured), but I thought they were kind of dear too.

So there's a lot of choice out there. Of course looking at these I can't help but think I should buy a nice wooden one with little drawers and fill it myself and use it year after year. There are loads of them here and they're all very pretty. So what would you choose?



Guardian article on advent calendars v selection boxes
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/poll/2011/nov/17/advent-chocolates-calendars-or-selection-boxes)

Advent calendars for cats (I know, this is truly mental, isn't it?):
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=advent+calendar+for+cats&x=0&y=0)

Gawd-awful Kinnerton advent chocolate:
(http://www.kinnerton.com/Products/Seasonal/ThisChristmas/CharacterConfectionery.aspx)

Freezing inside & out

Oh dear Stevie, looks like you're only getting 3 old fishfingers this year seeing as you've been so horrid of late. Impatience never pays. Let that be a lesson to you young man.

Present hiding in this apartment is so hard. There are very few cupboards and those I have are constantly being explored by my two little helpers. I started getting myself organised for Christmas tonight and began the wrapping of the presents. Orla's are the red and white, Hamish's the blue and white. It looks like I'm going for an American theme, but really, it was just the case that the nicest paper I saw was in IKEA. I have really pretty German ribbons to tie them up, but I got bored so that'll be tomorrow nights task.

That, and putting together the Playmobil. (At least I can hide that in the now defunct washing machine)

P.S. This freezer has never been on, so I am not actually freezing the presents. I brought my freezer with me, and since the fridge above this frrezer is crap, I didn't see the point in trying it out.

Saturday-Shoplifter Stevie

So at the end of my last post I mentioned that I had thought I'd had my purse stolen and then I tried as I thought, unsuccessfully, to cancel my Commerzbank card, and got the neighbours upstairs involved in the cancelling before Stevie came up holding the purse that had been sitting on the sofa.

As things turned out I had quite a lot on my mind the next day what with people poking about with my eyes and then an afternoon split between entertaining the kids and mulling over the prospect of needles in my eye every 8 weeks. Apparently what I should have been doing is going down to the Commerzbank and checking whether I had actually managed to cancel my card. But I didn't. I reasoned that I either had done it, or I hadn't. If I hadn't then, great, next time I used my card all would be fine. If I had cancelleed it then my card wouldn't work and no doubt a new one and a new PIN would be making their way to me some time around Christmas. Or New Year, knowing the Commerzbank.

Am I too casual about things like this? We had cash and I wasn't in any immediate need to take money out. I didn't really give it much thought, and to be honest by Friday I'd forgotten about it. So by today, it was a near distant memory.

Until we went to IKEA. (Why is it that when you combine IKEA, me, and the Commerzbank things go hideously wrong?? Should I change my bank to get out of this horrid cycle?) We had gone sledging nearby and the kids were starving afterwards so as IKEA was handy we stopped off there for some meatballs and I managed to pick up a few storage boxes for the growing Playmobil collection which (note: I handily stacked so they were easier to carry). Oh and they had the kids basket of fabric vegetables back in so I got one of those, and then as we were passing I also thought I should get a new storage jar for my risotto rice. And then because Stevie was getting impatient to the point of not coping with IKEA on a Saturday and because the vegetables were for Orla, he went to the express checkout to pay with his card and I wandered over to the meatball freezer with the kids.

The first thing that really pissed off Stevie was getting accused of shoplifting. It's easy done when you only listen to the first half of your dear girlfriend's conversation regarding toy storage. "Should I get 2 of these? Would you be opposed to me buying another of these storage units in the New Year? Do you even care? Ok, I'm getting 3! Because I am definetly buying that when the car isn't full of sledges and crates of empty bottles.". So he scanned 1 crate twice, and then he got collared and the first I knew about it was him screaming across at me "What? 3??? You never told me you were getting 3? Moan, moan, moan". At this point I could tell that Stevie was getting to the point where he can easily be tipped over the edge of reasonableness into a foul mood not because he was now being classed as a shoplifter, but because the transaction was taking too long.

So I shouted back, "Just forget it then, just get 2. It really doesn't matter", you know as you do, because even though you really want something you'd rather just have an easy life. And then we got to payment. If I had known better I would have walked out of the shop with my children and run for the hills and never returned. But you see, I'd forgotten all about Wednesday night. But I remembered as quick as a flash when his card got rejected and he got directed over to a 'colleague'. Shoplifter and card stealer!

Well, what can I say? I forgot it was a joint account and that he might be affected. Curse the Commerzbank! Curse my successful telephone cancelling!

I am going to end up with a terrible guilt complex. Not only do I feel bad about cancelling Stevie's card, but when we got home I put on the washing machine (with a final big bag of Playmobil in it) and now the washing machine is broken. It isn't able to drain, and we can't find the blockage, and even though there is no substantiating evidence, I think we all know that there is a high probability that a pride of lions are more than likely the cause of our soaking wet floor. Has anyone got a dark hole I can crawl into before the downstairs neighbours come round to complain about the massive costly damp patch on their ceiling?

Christmas in its component parts

I have 3 sodding bags of Playmobil requiring my attention. Literally sodding. I decided I should start getting ready for Christmas whenever I have a chance in the evening as otherwise I'll run out of time. Amongst other things I have got the kids, I have managed to buy them a whole load of second hand Playmobil.

Hamish was desperate for the zoo and I was lucky enough to find it in the second hand shop round the corner from my language school, along with extra elephants and brand new in box pandas.

Orla was throwing desirous glances at the princesses sets, and I managed to get a small/medium set of that at a great price. And they both rather fancied the farm, and lo and behold the very next day after buying the zoo they had a box of farm bits and bobs with the largest herd of cattle imaginable. Well there're about 12, I'm sure you can imagine more, but you get the picture.

I also walked past another second hand shop in Charlottenburg one Sunday and spied what I thought might be a massive selection of zoo animals. So when Hamish was off Kita with the sick bug (but in recovery) I walked 3 miles there and 3 miles back, and all just for a family of polar bears and a camel.

My German teacher recommended washing it in the washing machine on a 30 degree wash, and that is what I have done. I have 3 bags which have zip closings and are washable and I stuffed them each full of Playmobil last night and washed them today.

The result is handbags full of Playmobil chaos. Everything has come apart. Down to all the little flowers coming off the princess garden foliage (I kind of expected that), but I also have a camel missing a leg and anything that can be broken down into smaller parts is in smaller parts. It took us ages to make up the zoo and we broke it back down into more manageable sizes for washing, but I can see I have many hours work ahead of me.